There is no abstract available for this thesis.

This thesis employs critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1995) to unpick the discourses surrounding British widows of men who died as a result of the First World War. The war widows’ pension scheme, as implemented under the Royal Warrant of 1916, was the first (financially) non-contributory pension, and the first specifically directed towards women in Britain. Implemented against a backdrop of the first mass, industrialised war of the modern era, the discourses and ideologies underpinning it are firmly rooted in those of the previous century. At a time when the State was intervening in the life of its citizens in more extensive way than at any previous time, it also sought to distance itself from these citizens through the use of an impersonal style of communication. This was used to present war widows’ pension legislation that was framed around discourses of morality and nationalism that masks underlying parsimony and patriarchy. This thesis draws on a wide range of resources such as charitable records, media sources and Hansard reports, concentrating on a selection of 200 individual case files relating to claims for a war widow’s pension, held in the National Archive, Kew. Two case files are analysed in detail using discourse-historical analysis (Wodak, 2001) as a framework for a linguistic analysis. The two case files chosen represent widows whose experiences are typical of those found in the corpus. One widow is representative of the sizeable group of women who had their pensions stopped because of ‘improper’ behaviour, the correspondence in her file revealing how discourses of morality, social welfare and national identity are employed interdiscursively to deny her State funds. The second case study is more diachronic, showing how one widow, in common with thousands of others, was denied a pension on grounds on ineligibility. She employs discourses of social welfare and nationalism to support her claim over a period of nearly 40 years. Over the course of the 20th century, the relationship between the State and the public altered, and this case file offers an opportunity to explore this in some detail.

This study serves as an introduction to al-Āmidī's critical thought and to one version of a hitherto unpublished section of al-Muwāzana, Cambridge University Library Ms. Qq286 (which is reproduced in anno- tated form, Appendix, D). It also examines some of the main trends in the recent study and evaluation of 'Abbasid criticism,of which al- Muwāzana has, in the Arab world, become a focus. The Appendix (A-C) discusses editions and manuscript versions of the text, providing a reconstruction of the jumbled Ms. Qq286, and concludes that those portions of the work previously considered lost are most probably to be looked for in a different form - that of complementary rather than consecutive texts, fragments of one of which are already available in the footnotes to AZZĀM's standard edition of the Diwan of Abū Tammam; these are examined in some detail. Textual problems are also examined, in the light of related problems of interpretation, in Chapter I, in which the structure of the surviving portions of al-Muwāzana, which has often been considered haphazard, is shown to serve a specific didactic purpose consistent with the details of al-Āmidī's practical criticism. Chapter II_looks at this framework in greater detail, showing to what extent Āmidī is bound by inherited techniques, but also in what ways he succeeds in promoting a novel and rigorous definition of the scope of criticism. Chapter III continues Chapter II's scrutiny of the details of al-Āmidī's critical method, and explores the key element in al-Āmidī's critical thought, the notion of poetry as 'truth'; Chapter IV shows how he attempts to justify this notion in historical terms, and how, in so doing, he succeeds - where Ibn Ṭabāṭabā had earlier failed - in establishing poetic 'truth' as a general concept of some versatility. One of the concerns of Chapters II to IV is thus to reassess al-Āmidī's originality in the light of his transformation of earlier criticism, the nature of his debt to which- has often been misunderstood. The other is to reply to the question raised in the Introduction - what is the value of 'Abbasid criticism? can we afford to neglect it in favour of a direct approach to Arabic poetry? - by contrasting al-Āmidī's conception of the relationship between critic, reader and text with the concerns which dominate Arabic literary studies today. These are shown not to be without weaknesses and inconsistencies; the conclusion suggests that al-Āmidī's concern with poetic 'realism' - a contrast is implied with the current interest in the 'phantastic' and 'baroque' elements in 'Abbasid poetry - might provide fruitful ground for future literary research.

The central thesis of this work is twofold: (1) contrary to the images perpetuated in works of criticism, there exists no sustained misogyny in the text of exemplar epics by Ferdowsi and Homer, or antagonism toward women rooted in the poets' attitude, and (2) using the principle of androcentric (rather than gynocentric) feminist literary theory we have tried to prove the existence of a "systematic inconsistency" in the roles and images assigned to the women of The Shahnameh, the Iliad, and Odyssey. We have identified the presence of a double structure concerning the question of women. Instead of endlessly praising the female characters, or fully condemning the portrayal of such figures, we have instead tried to turn the issues around and examined opposed aspects in female roles and images. We have examined the conflict of opposites and the systematic inconsistency within each text in which a double structure splits the female image in two directions: one force is represented by exalted, praiseworthy, and positive images endowing women with powerful characteristics such as prowess, courage, wisdom, insight, fearlessness, and a host of other attributes. Yet within the same text, the same woman, through another force, is not only relegated to a subservient role, but also finds imposed upon her the condition of not being taken seriously, severe handicaps regarding her full integration in the social fabric of the story, and not being allowed to use her considerable abilities. Within this paradoxical double structure, it is not that one structure eventually cancels out the other, rather the coexistence of both structures in the same work results in the readers' suspension between the conclusions each of them separately urges. / The dichotomy in the characterization of women in epic literature is not limited to a single culture; a consistent thread runs through the universal inconsistency in the make-up of women in epic. The thread runs across the border between the East and the West, wherever that border may be drawn on the map geographically, historically, or culturally.

This thesis argues that as historians of English-Canadian poetry, A. J. M. Smith, John Sutherland, Northrop Frye, and Desmond Pacey explicitly promote the value of past conflict reconciled into present harmony. They do so by claiming that such reconciliation marks the maturity of English-Canadian culture. This thesis also argues, however, that the interactive progression of their histories implicitly undermines this value. It does so because each critic appreciates a different group of poets for realizing their shared cultural ideal, thereby establishing contradictory representations of what they all claim to be the culmination of English-Canadian literary history. The thesis concludes that while their lingering sense of present cultural maturity should now be fully renounced, the value these critics place on reconciliation is well worth preserving and transforming.

This thesis aims to present and understand various accounts composed by medieval writers against the Isma'ilis and to determine the substance of the arguments forged by each writer to counter the Isma'ilis. Such writings were accepted without question by earlier researchers, and although a revision has been undertaken in more recent studies, the specific nature and orientation of anti-Isma'ili polemics has not been adequately investigated. / Through a careful study of different arguments--arguments at times quite sophisticated and difficult to appreciate fully--, we try to show the evolution and development of the style of anti-Isma'ili polemics, the different temperaments of the polemicists studied, and some of the permanent and complimentary features within this tradition. / An additional question examined in this study is the extent to which social, cultural and political factors had an impact on the shaping of this tradition and the various arguments employed within it.

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pa.), 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-213).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia, Pa.), 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita. Description based on Print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 182-213).

Al-Sirr al-Maktūm is one of the most compelling theoretical and practical accounts of astral magic written in the post-classical period of Islamic thought. Of central concern to its reader is to understand why the great philosopher-theologian, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d.606/1210) should have written it. The occult practices described therein are attributed to the Sabians, a historical group who lived in Harrān in Upper Mesopotamia. Representing the last vestiges of Ancient Mesopotamian paganism during the early Islamic period, their religion involved the veneration of the seven planets, which they believed were ensouled celestial beings and the proximate causes of all sublunary change. By means of such astrolatry they were able, remotely, to change reality in ways which defied the customary pattern of causation in this world. The main focus of al-Rāzī‘s treatment of their practice is a long ritual during which the aspirant successively brings under his will each of the seven planets. On completion of the ritual, the aspirant would have transcended the limitations of his human existence and his soul would have attained complete perfection. This thesis will argue that for al-Rāzī, the Sabians constituted a heresiological category, representative of a soteriological system which dispensed with the need for the Islamic institution of prophethood. It relied instead on the individual‘s ability, by means of spiritual discipline and intellectual rigour, to attain noetic connection with the celestial souls. In so doing, the Sabian adept not only gains occult knowledge and power, but more importantly he realizes the ultimate aim of perfecting his soul. Al-Rāzī constructs this soteriology as a synthesis of cosmological and psychological doctrines gleaned from Avicenna, and Abū‘l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī. In this way, al-Rāzī hoped to state as succinctly as possible the intellectual challenges to which any systematic theological defence of the Islamic faith must answer if it is to triumph over rival systems of thought.

This thesis focuses on the 'challenge of the image' to self-perception and a central sense of selfhood. It suggests that, as a result of the trigger provided by this challenge, new intuitions of selfhood and new forms of representation have been developed in auto(bio)graphical writing. The dynamic reciprocity of challenge and response is studied in three strategically chosen authors, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Paul Valéry and Roland Barthes, whose works span over more than three centuries and who allow a complete cycle of ideas on the self and the possibilities of self-representation to be explored in the perspective of the generating mechanism identified. The increasing reflexivity of Western consciousness as exemplified by each of these authors, is seen to engender by this means new and increasingly subtle forms of self-representation in order to convey adequately a progressively complexified view of the subject or self. In following the emergence and development of auto(bio)graphy in this way, the thesis contributes to an ongoing diagnosis of the nature and origin of a contemporary crisis in auto(bio)graphy, a crisis in which the relation between selfhood and its representational forms and language has been placed under increasing scrutiny or suspicion. It is argued here that there can be no simple expulsion of the subject from the domain of auto(bio)graphy. The challenge of the image suggests, on the contrary, that it is precisely the sense of a central 'I', however elusive and irreducible to theory this may be, which ultimately still provides the impetus for new and innovative auto(bio)graphical production.