This thesis addresses the concept of the contemporary muse in the work of six late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century women poets. In my introduction, I detail the history of the muse in literary tradition. I examine the problems that the gendered dynamic of poet/muse presented, by restricting women to a passive, inspiring role. I argue that, due to these problematic aspects, contemporary feminist criticism of the woman poet’s muse has often elided the homoerotic desire and power-play that structures these relationships. To rectify this, I focus on contemporary, living muse figures. I emphasise why these kinds of figures (as opposed to dead, historical or mythological muses) were particularly inspiring to women poets in the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth centuries. I also address the specific ethical dilemmas of claiming a living muse. My four main chapters detail and theorise the dynamics between poets and their contemporary muses: Michael Field and Bernard Berenson; Olive Custance and Lord Alfred Douglas; Amy Lowell and Eleonora Duse/Ada Russell; and H.D. and Bryher. My conclusion draws these individual studies together to emphasise their illuminating similarities, including the increased fluidity between the roles of poet/muse, destabilisation of gender categories, and the presence of a third term that mediates the muse/poet relationship.

This thesis explores what remains an under-studied aspect of Samuel Johnson’s profile as a person and writer – his attitude to social improvement. Confronting past and current critical opinion and adhering closely to Johnson’s various writings, the thesis aims to establish the reasons for the failure to identify Johnson’s relationship to social concerns during his lifetime. The study also considers the influence of particular moral philosophies on Johnson’s approach to social improvement, such as those of Hugo Grotius, Richard Cumberland, Francis Bacon and John Locke. A range of sources include Johnson’s essays in the Rambler, Idler and Adventurer, his various reviews in the Literary Magazine and the Gentleman’s Magazine, his Diary of his travels in the Midlands and the Tour of the Highlands with Boswell, as well as various texts he wrote for others who were also concerned with social improvement. When Johnson protests against the institutions of his day he seeks to alleviate a tangible evil, such as the wretchedness of prostitutes, the agonies of imprisoned debtors and the destitution suffered by their families and the terrors of those condemned to death, often for some trivial offence. The profiles of Robert Dossie, Robert Chambers, William Chambers and John Gwynne together with those of Saunders Welch and William Dodd are discussed in the context of their interests in agriculture, architecture and the law, respectively. Placing those eighteenth-century figures at the centre of historical enquiry furnishes a richer dimension to the analysis of Johnson’s mode of thinking which allows us to respond to his works in a multi-faceted way. The interpretive framework of the thesis is cross-disciplinary and applies ii perspectives from social and cultural history, legal history, architectural history and, of course, English literature. This allows Johnson’s writings to be read against the peculiarities of their historical milieu and reveal Johnson in a new light – as an advocate of social improvement for human betterment.

In the twenty-first century, the remix, the mashup, and the reboot have come to dominate Western popular culture. Consumed by popular audiences on an unprecedented scale, but often derided by critics and academics, these texts are the ‘monsters’ of our age—hybrid creations that lurk at the limits of responsible consumption and acceptable appropriation. Like monsters, they offer audiences the thrill of transgression in a safe and familiar format, mainstreaming the self-reflexive irony and cultural iconoclasm of postmodern art. Like other popular texts before them, remixes, mashups, and reboots are often read by critics as a sign of the artistic and moral degeneration of contemporary culture. This is especially true within the institutions such remixes seem to attack most directly: the heritage industry, high art, adaptation studies, and copyright law. With this context in mind, in this thesis I explore the boundaries and connections between remix culture and its ‘others’ (adaptation, parody, the Gothic, Romanticism, postmodernism), asking how strong or tenuous they are in practice. I do so by examining remix culture’s most ‘monstrous’ texts: Frankenfictions, or commercial narratives that insert fantastical monsters (zombies, vampires, werewolves, etc.) into classic literature and popular historical contexts. Frankenfiction is monstrous not only because of the fantastical monsters it contains, but because of its place at the margins of both remix and more established modes of appropriation. Too engaged with tradition for some, and not traditional enough for others, Frankenfiction is a bestselling genre that nevertheless remains peripheral to academic discussion. This thesis aims to address that gap in scholarship, analysing Frankenfiction’s engagement with monstrosity (chapter one), parody (chapter two), popular historiography (chapter three), and models of authorial originality (chapter four). Throughout this analysis, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein remains a touchstone, serving as an ideal metaphor for the nature of contemporary remix culture.

O presente trabalho se propõe como uma análise detida da plêiade de textos que circularam nos periódicos acadêmicos O acayaba, Ensaios Literários, Ensaios Literários do Ateneu Paulistano e Revista Mensal do Ensaio Filosófico, todos publicados entre 1845-1855. A partir do viés da literatura, intentou-se iluminar o corpus em vias de se delinear o objeto: as discussões polêmicas acerca de propostas poéticas e políticas que se imiscuíram, àquela altura, às discussões de um projeto nacional. Evadindo os painés históricos intepretativos, preferiu-se uma abordagem mais aproximada dos textos, de modo a possibilitar a exploração da densidade de tais temas, discutindo assim questões pertinentes de filosofia da história, estética e retórica que despontam da argumentação presente no corpus. Espera-se que no processo, tenha-se contribuído ainda que minimamente para as discussões acerca do romantismo, evidenciando algumas das diversas tendências intelectuais defendidas por uma mesma geração romântica. Entre as linhas de força analisadas estão a permanência do conceito teísta de Providência Divina, no que tange a filosofia da história, assim como a recepção das modernas teses de extração iluminista (ou contra-iluminista); as interpretações sobre a história nacional, a construção da identidade e do cânone; as incorporações da estética romântica europeia, assim como à resistência a ela por via da longa duração da retórica grecolatina a propor certa desconfiança em relação à modernidade vindoura. Ao cabo, intentou-se demonstrar como fatores tais quais a lógica do mecenato imperial por um lado, a precariedade do sistema literário por outro e ainda, a especificidade da lógica comunitária dos românticos universitários acabaram por produzir um locus único e plural de reflexão no âmbito da história e da estética. / The present dissertation proposes an analysis of a myriad of texts that circulated in the academic journals O acayaba, Ensaios Literários, Ensaios Literários do Ateneu Paulistano and Revista Mensal do Ensaio Filosófico, all published between 1845-1855. From the bias of literature, weve tried to illuminate the corpus in the process of delineating the object: the controversial discussions about poetic and political proposals that at that time were involved in the discussions of a national project. Against historical interpretive panels, a closer approximation of texts was preferred, in order to explore the density of such themes, thus discussing pertinent questions of philosophy of history, aesthetics, and rhetoric emerging from the arguments in the corpus. We hope that in the process, it has contributed even minimally to the discussions about brazilian romanticism, highlighting some of the various intellectual tendencies advocated by the same romantic generation. Among the guidelines analyzed are the permanence of the theistic concept of Divine Providence, as regards the philosophy of history, as well as the reception of modern Enlightenment (or counterenlightenment) theses; interpretations on national history, the construction of identity and the canon; the incorporation of European Romantic aesthetics, as well as resistance to it through the long duration of Greco-Latin rhetoric, thous proposing certain mistrust on the future modernity. At last, weve tried to demonstrate how factors such as the logic of imperial patronage on the one hand, the precariousness of the literary system on the other, and also the specificity of the community logic of university students ended up producing a unique and plural locus of reflection in the scope history and aesthetics.

This thesis consists of two parts: a creative work and two critical essays on translingual writing. The creative component, Then the Cicadas Sang, is a novel set in 1940s Malta. It is a story about love and aspiration. As a teenage girl, Mari vouches she will do anything to leave the tiny island she lives on. Foreigners – the British who governed the island at the time – and books give her a glimpse of the world beyond her shores. But she craves for more, unaware of what she risks losing by chasing her dreams. The novel deals with how books shape our imagination, how the languages we speak give us access to different systems of conceptualizing the world and how we navigate the spaces in between. It does this through the protagonist, Mari, and the people who help shape who she is, in particular Mrs Applegate, a British evacuee who sought shelter in Gozo in the midst of the Blitz. But as much as it is a story of a girl turning into a woman, the novel is also the story of an island. It sits between Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Elena Ferrante’s The Neapolitan Series. The extract submitted is Book One in a series of two. The critical essays explore the poetics of multilingual writing. They analyse the linguistic, political and cultural stratifications in multilingual writing, with a focus on the perception and reception of Maltese literature written in English. I ask if a multilingual writer’s role can be akin to that of a cultural translator. They investigate whether, unlike the monolingual writer, a writer’s multilingual background gives him or her access to different systems of conceptualizing the surrounding environment and how this informs the creative process. This study informs my own process of writing Then the Cicadas Sang, with a particular regard to self-translation and how one language can carry another on the page. In this case the languages I am working with are English, Maltese and Italian.

Focusing on approaches to place in selected novels by J. M. Coetzee and V. S. Naipaul, this thesis explores how postcolonial literature can be read as contributing to the reimagining of decolonised, decentred or multi-centred geographies. I will examine the ways in which selected novels by Naipaul and Coetzee engage with the sense of displacement and marginalization generated by imperial mappings of the colonial space. My chosen texts contribute to the decentralizing tendencies of postcolonialism by deconstructing the tropes of boundaries from the perspective of those who have been marginalized on the basis of their race, gender or geographical origins. The work of Edward Said, bell hooks, Edward Soja, Gillian Rose and Homi Bhabha provide a means for me to explain how the displaced subjects relate to places in the postcolonial context. Accordingly, Coetzee's and Naipaul's visions of place and geography are examined in this study in relation to the situational complexity of their habitats. Naipaul's view of place in terms of the binary oppositions between the colonial and metropolitan places is discussed in relation to the sense of displacement that is generated by his colonial upbringing. On the other hand, Coetzee's view of place as the product of imperialist divisive discourses is also interpreted against the historical contest over land and belonging in South Africa. It is argued that both writers contribute to the decentralizing mission of postcolonialism by locating themselves in the margins and advocating sensitivity towards the tropes of boundaries that subject people to displacement and marginalization. Part I discusses A House for Mr Biswas, The Enigma of Arrival, Half a Life and Magic Seeds. I will explore how Naipaul's sense of marginality results in his view of the world in terms of a binarism between the centre and the margin. However, I will argue that among these novels, the last three acknowledge that the longing for homeliness is an unlikely quest for a displaced subject, and that the imperative of the postcolonial world requires the displaced to see the world as unhomely, changing and hybrid. Part II interprets Coetzee's experience of apartheid in South Africa as a legitimate reason for resisting the ways in which the dominant powers in the social and cultural spheres implement marginality. In Waiting for the Barbarians, and Life and Times of Michael K and Foe, Coetzee deconstructs boundaries and asserts the entitlement of the displaced and the marginalized to the land and its representation. The distinctive approaches taken by these two canonical writers remind us of the increasing necessity, yet the complexity, of moving towards a decentralised and dynamic view of the world.

Submitted by JAKELINE LONGO PORTO null (jakejove@hotmail.com) on 2017-03-29T22:11:03Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao_FINAL.pdf: 2782158 bytes, checksum: 59ea6c134551754608c86a7cc0336b73 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by LUIZA DE MENEZES ROMANETTO (luizamenezes@reitoria.unesp.br) on 2017-03-30T18:51:31Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 porto_kl_me_sjrp.pdf: 2782158 bytes, checksum: 59ea6c134551754608c86a7cc0336b73 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-30T18:51:31Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 porto_kl_me_sjrp.pdf: 2782158 bytes, checksum: 59ea6c134551754608c86a7cc0336b73 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-20 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Esta dissertação tem o objetivo não só de apresentar o editor, escritor e poeta Francisco de Paula Brito (1809-1861), mas também estudá-lo como um dos primeiros produtores de narrativa de ficção no Brasil, compreendendo a sua importância para as gerações futuras de escritores do século XIX. Inicialmente, a pesquisa debruçar-se-á sobre as três narrativas curtas escritas por Paula Brito e publicadas no Jornal do Commercio no final dos anos 1830: “Revelação póstuma”, publicada em nove de março de 1839; “Mãe Irmã - história contemporânea”, publicada em 10 de abril de 1839 e “O enjeitado”, publicada em 28 a 29 de maio de 1839. Em seguida, procurará traçar uma possível linhas de força temáticas da narrativa brasileira, aparentemente iniciadas em Paula Brito e continuada ao longo do XIX. Com isso, pretendemos indicar para uma reavaliação do pertencimento de Paula Brito ao cânone literário brasileiro. / This dissertation has the objective not only to present the editor, writer and poet Francisco de Paula Brito (1809-1861), but also to study him as one of the first fiction-narrative producers in Brazil, in order to understand his importance to the future generation of writers in the nineteen century. Initially, the research will be developed over three short narratives written by Paula Brito and published in Jornal do Commercio newspaper in the end of the 1830s: “Revelação póstuma”, published in March 9, 1839; “Mãe Irmã - história contemporânea”, published in April 10, 1839; and “O enjeitado”, published in May 28 and 29, 1839. Following this, the study will try to outline a possible line in the brazilian narrative, apparently initiated by Paula Brito and which was continued in the rest of the nineteen century. Finally, the research will organize a reassessment of Paula Brito belonging to the Brazilian literary canon.

This thesis considers the development of Evelyn Waugh's and Graham Greene’s Catholicism between 1928 and 1939. Focusing predominantly on Waugh’s and Greene’s novels, it investigates how their writings express Catholic ideas, as well how their faith informs their views of human nature, their political sympathies, and their criticisms of modern secular civilization. While it recognizes the important differences between Waugh’s and Greene’s thinking in this period (such as their diverging political sympathies and their uses of different forms and genres of writing), it also establishes some significant affiliations between their Catholic points of view. Both authors associate the increasingly secular condition of English society with themes of decay and disintegration, acknowledge the reality of Original Sin, and believe in a supernatural reality distinct from its earthly counterpart. The Introduction provides an overview of Greene and Waugh scholarship, noting that there is currently no critical study devoted to the topic of early affiliations between these authors’ Catholic principles. The first two chapters propose that the beginnings of Waugh’s and Greene’s Catholic perspectives can be detected in their early fiction. Chapter Three examines in relation to each other Waugh’s and Greene’s novels between 1930 and 1935. Chapter Four charts the development of their respective vantage-points in the period 1936-1938. The final chapter looks at the year 1939 and assesses the nature of these authors' Catholic views prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.

"The American Tradition of the Literary Interview 1840 - 1956: A Cultural History" is the first study to document the development of the literary interview in the United States. A handful of critics have discussed the literary interview and traced it back to various European cultural traditions; however, I argue that, like the interview, which the British journalist William Stead wrote "was a distinctly American invention," the literary interview was a particularly American form. Drawing on archival research and new readings of primary sources, this project examines the literary interview's systemic growth and formal characteristics between 1842 and 1956. I trace connections among the American press, culture, and literary marketplace to offer an as-yet unwritten history of the literary interview. During Charles Dickens's 1842 North American tour, the first literary interviews were published in written-up, or paragraph form and resembled written snapshots or sketches. As a result of the cult of domesticity and the popular scandals of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the literary interview developed into a slightly longer and more narrative form that focused on an author's surroundings and living quarters. With the rise of yellow journalism and muckraking reporting during the first decades of the twentieth century, the literary interview became a more investigative and intrusive form; yet at the same time, the first in-depth, literary conversations with American authors were published. During the interwar period, the second wave of "girl reporters" and lady interviews transformed the written-up literary interview into a more nuanced form that exhibited rhetorical and literary flourishes. With the development of the New Yorker profile and the Paris Review interview in the mid-twentieth century, the literary interview branched off into two distinct modes: the profile and the author Q & A. This history of the literary interview offers a model of reading mass media communications in terms of both content and form. In doing so, this project chges the critical frameworks that dismiss the literary interview as ancillary to literature and articulate the importance of interviews, communication, and conversation in American culture.

This thesis is a cultural tour of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. It is concerned with the way in which Europeans employed stories to claim land and, conversely, their fears that the land would claim them.The stories considered are taken from literature and folk legend. The concept of liminality is important to the work because the mountains are a threshold, a demarcation between the city and the bush. Allied with the notion of liminality in the mountains is that of the uncanny (as defined by Freud). The work is divided into four sections. The first section, A POCKET GUIDE, introduces the terrain to be traversed. Section 2, FOUND, centres around the notion of foundation. Section 3, PASSAGE, links LOST and FOUND. LOST is the converse of FOUND. It explores our fears that the land will consume us.This fear is often expressed in the notion that the bush, beneath a surface beauty, has a dark and dangerous aspect and that it will swallow up the unwary. This idea is evident in the notion of possession - that a certain place can take hold of a person and induce a prescribed response from them - and of haunting, in which a spirit is tied to a specific location. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)