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Gulliver's Travels has been admired and criticized alike since its appearance in print for its scathing satire. It has mostly been read as an allegory whose prototypes were contemporary events and figures. Critics have found counterparts and analogies for its characters and events in the political and historical scenes of eighteenth-century England. Studying Gulliver's Travels from an allegorical point of view, however, conceals its universality from us. Allegorical readings usually focus on the first and third voyages, and are based on the assumption that Gulliver is a mouthpiece, not a character. The question of the nature of Gulliver's character is still very popular and controversial. Critics are divided into the “Hard” and “Soft” schools of interpretation in their readings of Gulliver and his travels. The former consider Gulliver as an artistic device; the latter as a fully developed character with some psychological flaws. Though “Soft” school critics make a convincing case, they do not fully explain Gulliver's psychological abnormalities. Both the schools focus on the issue of the Swift-Gulliver debate with reference to Gulliver's final voyage alone, and usually overlook the other three parts. Thus both allegorical readings and the “Hard” and “Soft” schools of interpretation create and strengthen the erroneous impression that Gulliver's Travels lacks artistic unity. This study focuses on the universality of Gulliver Travels and argues that Gulliver's four voyages are a journey through the human unconscious. It is the story of Gulliver's encounter with the unexplored and unacknowledged aspects of his personality. The four remote nations and their denizens represent the contents of the unconscious, and symbolize different archetypal qualities, which are common to all members of human race. The worlds that Gulliver visits are all within him but he is unconscious of them due to his lack of self-knowledge. Lemuel Gulliver is a fully developed character who gradually but consistently regresses due to his extreme extraverted-sensation-type personality. Gulliver's excessive dependence on sense perception has widely been documented but rarely explored. This study accentuates the psychological dynamics and social implications of Gulliver's excessive extraversion and lack of self-knowledge, and uses Jungian analytical psychology as a tool to study Gulliver's abnormalities. My strategy involves a close reading of the text to show that a central thread runs through Gulliver's Travels, and that every episode in the four parts of the book contributes to Gulliver's alienation from himself and from humanity.

The psychological realm in which late nineteenth century male romance takes place is not simply an anarchic land liberated from the conventional constraints of Victorian morality. Rather it is a complex male space that reflects the dynamics, protocols and contradictions of nineteenth century middle-class masculine relations as embodied in male fraternal associations such as public schools, secret societies, and the clubland of London's West End. A historical survey of London clubs and secret societies demonstrates the characteristics and social function of these institutions in defining and sustaining prevailing models of masculinity. An examination of Rudyard Kipling's Kim in relation to Masonic symbolism and initiation rites shows the didactic role of boys' fiction in transmitting and sustaining the imperial masculine ideology. A reading of H. Rider Haggard's African novels demonstrates the dynamics of idealized middle-class fraternal relations. Finally, an analysis of Bram Stoker's novels illustrates issues of male communities in dealing with alien others. In an environment in which men perceived an increasing threat from outside social forces, the network of fraternal associations, quest romance and masculine ideologies created a dynamic that illuminates a more complex reading of the culture and literature of the genre.

Rape shows up with remarkable frequency in English novels written in the eighteenth century. It also shows up with depressing regularity in the court records of the times. This thesis examines rape both as it occurred in fact (by examining legal records) and in fiction (by examining a wide variety of novels). The thesis begins with a brief look at the history of rape laws in England, then undertakes an extensive review of rape cases from the Old Bailey Sessions Papers and from the Select Trials. Fictional representations of rape in novels are then considered, with special attention paid to the reasons (fictional) men commit rape and the reasons (fictional) women were often seen as complicit in their own rapes. A chapter is devoted to Clarissa, as this novel's complex representation of rape raises a number of important issues about the connections between rape in reality and rape in fiction. A concluding chapter attempts to draw some conclusions about the differences between rape as it happened in eighteenth-century England and as it is used by novelists from Behn to Richardson.

Charles Dickens' fascination for the figure of the pantomime clown becomes a graphic technique of literary expressivity in his fiction. The clown's performing body and expressive face come to represent for Dickens, the very animating spark and the mask that for him helps humanity keep going in the face of the overwhelming difficulties inherent in his view of life. The clown's silent, emotive expressivity is behind the creation of Dickensian characters and the expressivity determines how they function in his world. Dickens' own tendencies towards hilarity and brooding color the space his clownlike characters create in his world: the wild antics disrupt the propriety of stiff Victorian society and enliven it while the brown study or contemplative state draws the silent performing body closer to death than to life. In the early novels with a comic emphasis, Dickens uses full body antics or performances profusely. For early novels with a more somber tone, he focuses on the exceptionally expressive human face/mask. The clown's spontaneity and magic show the way towards openness of heart while eschewing the greed and social considerations that are anathema to Dickens. The wonder of life for him resides in this figure who embodies and enacts the purest emotions and qualities known to human experience. Openness of heart is the ultimate goal for Dickens, particularly in his early novels. For Dickens, the clown is also an hypnotic presence who holds up the pantomimic mirror of life to other characters to point up both the absurdity of existence and the full range of human possibilities or lived-out qualities and emotions. Moral conversion occurs as quickly as placing on one mask for another. The hallucinatory quality of Dickens' fiction draws part of its drama from the silent, emotive presence of his characters whether they are performing wildly or are weighted down under a veil of sorrow. The reader's need to visualize Dickens' characters above and beyond their verbal acrobatics stems from the clown's animating spark. This spark holds the power to heal and transform, if only temporarily, the pain of everyday life.

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