Theoreticians of the early novel have canonized as realistic those fictions that portray the desirous individual in sustained tension with his or her social environment. Such fictions bring irreconcilable and subversive voices into conflict, and privilege a strongly linear, teleological plot. This critical focus has contributed to the dismissal of a substantial body of eighteenth-century British fiction which adopts alternative structures in order to express different ideological alignments. In particular, a study of pairs of works by authors who may in the first case be relative unknowns, but in the second have become more established and authoritative writers seeking to meet audience expectations while balancing or competing an oeuvre, reveals divergent responses to a climate of philosophical uncertainty, social flux, and changing notions of authorship. The later work of each pair--Samuel Richardson's sequel to Pamela, his Sir Charles Grandison following upon Clarissa, Henry Fielding's Amelia after Tom Jones, and Sarah Fielding's sequel, Volume the Last, to her Adventures of David Simple--reflects its context of successful author, established audience, and preceding text by reinscribing the isolated protagonist within a stable social circle modelled on the intimate conversational group. Thus these works share a use of the circle as formal image at several levels of structure, ranging from metaphors of clockworks and gravitational systems, to "conversation-pieces" as the fundamental units of plot, to an overall impulse towards consensus and cyclical stasis that replaces the momentum supplied by conflict in their predecessor texts. Two examples taken from pre-novelistic genres--William Congreve's The Double-Dealer as a comedy self-consciously in search of a new form that will adequately embody the emerging ideal of conversational relations, and John Bunyan's sequel to The Pilgrim's Progress as a feminized, communal, and static rewriting of the individual's struggle to win salvation in a hostile world--suggest the preoccupations informing the conservative fictions studied in the thesis. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Elizabeth Gaskell was a gifted storyteller. Her letters and her fiction attest to an imagination rooted in oral narrative, marked by the digressiveness and dispersiveness of living speech. She wrote her first novel, she said, as if she were "speaking to a friend over the fire on a winter's night," and the dynamic of telling and listening, the model of the oral narrative act, is paradigmatic of her own narrative. The incorporation of a listener's response into the telling of her story has both formal and semantic implications in Gaskell's fiction. It leads to what one critic has called that "congenial shapelessness of a voice expecting at any moment to be interrupted," and as such it can account, in part, for the shapelessness that has traditionally been deemed a formal weakness in Gaskell's art. As she tells her stories in anticipation of the active, often resistant, response of her listener, the stories take shape accordingly, and traditional norms of narrative with their notions of unity, shapeliness and authorial control must be reconsidered. Gaskell's approach stresses the dynamic of varying, often conflicting, voices in relationship with one another, suggesting her view of language and narrative as active agents in a process of exchange and contestation which calls for a redefinition of the nature of meaning in narrative. The shaping activity that occurs as voices come in contact with and question one another shows meaning to be produced through an open movement of relationship and response, not predetermined by finalized definitions; it is constituted through the transforming act of telling and listening. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Victorian women's silence has been the subject of investigation by many feminist critics, and most have understood it as a function of repression. More recently, however, feminists have begun to recognise more productive levels of silence. This thesis examines four Victorian novels that show that silence is not a stable social sign with a clear meaning but an aspect of the Victorian convention of femininity that can mean different things and be used in different ways. Chapter One looks at silence and choice in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, tracing the implications of choosing reserve. Chapter Two turns to a consideration of self-silencing and sanity in Charlotte Bronte's Villette, while Chapter Three looks at secrecy and survival in Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The thesis concludes with a reading of George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss in Chapter Four that concentrates on the risks of using silence as retreat into a fantasy space.

This dissertation is a study of cosmopolitanism in early nineteenth-century Britain, and it approaches cosmopolitanism as an alternative and often overlooked approach to the question of nation in the early nineteenth century. Building out of enlightenment political philosophies such as that of Kant, cosmopolitanism does not mean the absence of national attachment and national limitations but rather involves the co-existence of national demarcations and universal belonging, and in early nineteenth century Britain, it appears alongside romantic nationalism in the struggle to represent the nation. I am interested in how cosmopolitanism in this period offers a non-unified formulation of the nation that stands in contrast to more unified models such as Edmund Burke's which found nationality in, among other things, language, history, blood and geography. The dissertation traces this alternative formulation not only in representative fictions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century (e.g. Edgeworth's Irish tales, Byron's Childe Harold and Don Juan, Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer) but also in British political thought of the period (e.g. Smith's Wealth of Nations, Price's Discourse on the love of our country, and the discourse of the Edinburgh Review). Each chapter examines a different romantic inflection of cosmopolitan ideals and is intended to establish continuities between enlightenment philosophy and the idea of the nation as it unfolds within the British context. The question of balance between trans-national disinterest and national interest is a fundamental one for each of the writers studied in the dissertation, and it has also become paramount in our contemporary struggle to create alternative, non-unified ways of thinking about nationness. The dissertation thus intersects with present debate over the relationship between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, drawing on notions such as Bruce Robbin's "situatedness-in-displacement," Julia Kristeva's "nations without nationalism," Edward Said's "critical thinking," and James Clifford's "pilgrimage."

This dissertation seeks to appreciate the English Reformation figure Anne Locke as an important poet, one responsible for producing the first sonnet sequence to be composed in English. Locke's 1560 sequence, A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner, consists of five prefatory and six main-body sonnets keyed to the popular 51st Psalm; it is found at the back of a volume of Jean Calvin's sermons translated by Locke. This dissertation discusses Locke's use of the motifs of voice and community in the Meditation to trace the Calvinist spiritual journey from sin to grace, and also looks at the manipulation of these ideas by two later Early Modern women poets, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, and Aemilia Lanyer. Locke's strategy for opening a space for women to speak of faith at a time when the power of voice was traditionally denied to them involves the destruction the most obvious earthly marker of gender, the body, and emphasises the vital importance to the Christian of voice. Locke reminds readers that it is, ultimately, the (genderless) voice that will cry out to God for mercy, of which all sinners, men and women, are equally in need. It is voice that will trace the journey of the sinner to the community of the godly, those souls, unburdened by the earthly restrictions of gender, to whom God has granted salvation. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, also worked with the 51st Psalm in her project to finish and expand the work of her brother, Sir Philip Sidney. Pembroke, writing near the end of the 16th century for a private audience of readers, shows a more comfortable, assured sense of the presence of grace in the life of her narrator; community has already been gained, and voice now expresses the soul's challenge to help others to find it. Finally, Aemilia Lanyer, whose Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum appeared in 1610, displays the most overtly "feminist" agenda of the three writers. She appropriates a self-consciously female narrative voice to gather a community of godly women around her---women who also enjoy a large measure of earthly power---in order to re-examine the story of Christ's Passion from a female perspective. Lanyer, perhaps more concerned with addressing earthly inequalities than with gaining the kingdom, is perhaps the least successful of the three women examined here in her project. Together, the three provide a fascinating triptych of Early Modern women's writing.

My thesis explores the issue of personal identity in the literary career of Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743--1825), situating her within the context of contemporary debate over the nature of identity and the self, first initiated by John Locke in the second edition of An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1694), and his contention "that self is not determined by Identity...of Substance...but only by Identity of consciousness" (2.27.23). The term substance first appears in Aristotle's definition of man as a vital union of matter and substance, a definition later absorbed into the Christian view of man as a vital union of body and soul, or material and immaterial substance. Without denying the existence of substance, Locke considers it an inadequate foundation for a theory of personal identity. As he argues, substance is beyond the scope of human knowledge, and therefore cannot assure us of the continuity of the self. Only our knowledge of consciousness can give us confidence in the continuity of the self. Chapter one presents evidence of Barbauld's interest in the debate over personal identity, followed by a detailed account of Locke's theory of self-in-consciousness, and a discussion of its implications with respect to both class and gender. Chapter two traces the history of Barbauld's engagement in the debate over personal identity. As I argue, Barbauld gradually adopts Locke's position on identity, while still upholding the essential truth of the orthodox Christian view of the self. Chapters three and four investigate the way in which Barbauld's simultaneous endorsement of the theories of self-in-consciousness and self-as-substance informs both her political and feminist ideology. In chapters five, six, and seven, I examine how the complex legacy of Locke's theory of personal identity influences the progress of Barbauld's literary career, as she draws upon it to consolidate her position as a woman writer, and to develop her aesthetic theory.

This thesis examines the fluid relationship between linguistic control and female autonomy and power in four novels by Thomas Hardy. Chapter One attends to the way in which the constructive use of dialogue in Far From the Madding Crowd (1874) enables Bathsheba Everdene's integration into generative social, economic, and personal relationships. Chapter Two examines The Return of the Native (1878), focusing on gossip's role in Eustacia Vye's destruction, which is the consequence of her defiance of public discourse. Chapter Three explores A Laodicean (1881), centering on Hardy's depiction of Paula Power's control of language, which is facilitated by her access to property, wealth, and communication technologies. Chapter Four addresses Jude the Obscure (1895), particularly the portrayal of Sue Bridehead, whose demise results from her unorthodox challenge to the way patriarchal texts circumscribe human relationships and identity.

This dissertation is a study of the prose and poetry of John Milton (1608--1674). It considers how his poetic practice was shaped by the sustained attempt to argue for religious toleration. The first stage of the analysis examines, in Chapter 1, the theological basis for arguments justifying the use of religious coercion in seventeenth-century Britain. Chapter 2 then considers Milton's response to such arguments in his pre-Restoration prose. This first part of the argument clarifies one of the most urgent questions that constituted the horizon of expectations to which Milton's writing was addressed. The second stage considers, in Chapter 3, the debate over whether Milton authored the Ramist treatise De Doctrina Christiana, in order to understand how he attempts to move beyond the stylistic limitations of customary theological and theoretical discourse. Chapter 4 compares the apparently contrasting accounts of rational truth presented in Areopagitica and Artis Logicae Plenior Institutio in order to establish a precise account of the educative reading process to which Milton exhorts his readers. The third stage of the argument demonstrates how Paradise Lost addresses, by the most biblically consistent and subtle means, the root issues of human freedom and divine justice, as they relate ultimately to arguments regarding the use of state coercion in religious causes. The analysis considers Raphael's narration of the war in heaven (books 5 and 6), the account of the Fall and its consequences (books 9 and 10), and Michael's account of biblical history (books 11 and 12). The argument shows the poem's exceptional capacity to engage the issues of coercion, charity, and biblical truth by a necessarily indirect means that recapitulates within itself the whole of the biblical story. In effect, the epic poses for its English Protestant readers a necessary choice between either advocating religious toleration or abandoning their own sense of authentic Christian faith. The conclusion briefly considers how the preceding account of Paradise Lost leads also to a new understanding of Paradise Regained.

The Bible proved to be a rich resource for Charlotte Bronte; with the exception of The Professor, Bronte's novels are saturated with references to prophecy and apocalypse. These allusions are crucial underpinnings in her novels, for they give shape to character, theme, and plot, even as the significance of these allusions alters with Bronte's own darkening vision. The introductory chapter analyses the religious and cultural milieu out of which Bronte's novels flourished. The second chapter examines how the prophet is closely aligned to the "poet"--and consequently, both the novelist and the narrator of Jane Eyre. The third chapter examines how prophecy affects the narrative structure in Shirley. The final chapter of the thesis examines revelation in Villette and how it may reveal and conceal: this ambiguity suggests a shift in the prophet's role from divine oracle of God's word to the overwrought imagination susceptible to interpretive subjectivity.

Abstract not available.