Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

Abstract not available.

Augusta Webster's (1837--1894) sonnet sequence Mother and Daughter (1895), twenty-seven sonnets spoken by a mother who is also a poet to her daughter and only child, combines the popular Victorian genre of motherhood poetry with the long-standing and highly codified tradition of the romantic sonnet sequence. Webster's fusion of these genres questions the primary assumption which underlies both traditions, that the poetic object, be it beloved or child, must be distanced from, "other" to, the poet himself or herself. Webster suggests a different, even radical, model of poetic creation and interaction between poet and object, as the daughter becomes an integral part of, and takes an active role in, the development of the mother-poet's psyche and the related writing of the sonnet sequence itself. The mother-daughter relationship which develops throughout the sequence is one of reciprocality and connectivity. Chapter 1 will provide background to the two genres under discussion, the familiar and often-explored sonnet sequence and the rarely-discussed topic of Victorian motherhood poetry. The second chapter introduces the intersubjectivity theory of feminist psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin as an entree into the relationship of mutuality, then explores the intersubjective nature of selected sonnets. Chapter 3 discusses the breakdown and re-establishment of the reciprocal relationship, while Chapter 4 examines the effects of this intersubjective relationship on the aging mother's poetic confidence and the linguistic maturation of the mother-daughter relationship.

A divide exists between those who view the Canterbury Tales as a series of self-contained texts and those who contend that the various characters' interactions affect each tale's direction. This paper takes the latter view, using the contemporary preaching attitudes of Chaucer's day to examine how the Pardoner's, Prioress's and Friar's respective levels of consideration for their situation and audience are directly related to their tales' success. While the Pardoner's self-absorption and over-dependence on his professional habits and the Prioress's favouring of sentimentality at the expense of engagement with her tale and audience result in less-than-popular narratives, the Friar's use of fraternal preaching techniques emphasising an adaptable, audience-centred style leads him to greater success with the pilgrims. Chaucer's advocacy of narrative flexibility may be part of his overall goal with the Canterbury Tales: to create a written text that replicates as much as possible the spontaneous nature of oral performance.

This project examines the Lais of Marie de France with specific focus on "Chevrefoil," "Laustic," "Milun," and "Eliduc." The view of the relationship between orality and textuality as a linear chronological development is called into question in the light of Marie's devotion to mesure. The association between the oral and written traditions of storytelling is shown to be based on mutual co-dependency instead of a hierarchy by which the written tradition is deemed a superior mode of communication. Mesure is crucial to the maintenance of balance in this relationship, and appears in further aspects of the Lais, including the language; the connections between writing, reading, and performance; and relationships between characters. To achieve the status of fine amur, the partners in a romantic relationship must possess mesure. Lovers must value each other as equals, or a hierarchy introduces demesure into the relationship. This project reveals Marie's dedication to the importance of sustaining mesure in the face of temptation to indulge in demesure.

This thesis studies the relationship between the treatment of Jewish characters by Christian authors in Middle English Crucifixion literature and the treatment of Jews in medieval Europe by members of surrounding Christian majority cultures. The common medieval Christian belief that all Jews, of all periods and places, were responsible for Jesus' death led to the related beliefs that there was a singular Jewish character; that it was racially determined; and that it was evil. The exaggerated role Jews play in Middle English versions of the Crucifixion, and the authors' various derogatory references to Jews in general, were designed in part to reconcile medieval Christians to the uncharitable treatment endured by Jews in their midst. Christian writers often attributed to Jews certain negative characteristics that determined their alienation both from God and from the rest of humanity. These characteristics were exemplified by unsuccessful figures from Hebrew scripture: sons of holy men who, far from fulfilling the promise of their fathers, failed to earn God's favour, and thus were excluded from election. Cain, for example, became a model of violence; Ishmael became a model of exile from the Holy Land; and Esau became a model of love of the world over the spirit. This thesis organizes its study of Christian portrayals of gospel and post-gospel Jews according to the precedents set by these three early models of a common Christian stereotype of Jews. Because these characters' failure is linked to the success of their younger siblings, this thesis also places their putative legacy to later Jews in the context of ultimogeniture, according to which, as many medieval Christians believed, God recalled his promise to the Jews and granted it instead to the new faith of Christianity. The texts studied herein portray Jews as members of a wayward faith, deprived of their ancient status on account of the Crucifixion.

Investigating the often paradoxical ramifications of the spinster's insistent embodiment in Victorian representations, "The Old Maid in the Garret: Representations of the Spinster in Victorian Culture" traces the ubiquitous but overlooked trope of the "old maid" in a set of discourses and fictions from the mid to late Victorian period. It explores the negative terms in which the spinster was figured (either as a grotesque body or as a homeless wanderer to be feared, ridiculed, and banished from sight) but it also asks how the figure nonetheless became a powerful force in the cultural imagination. The thesis argues that because the Victorian understanding of "woman" was so strongly associated with the qualities of fertility and domesticity, the celibate and "homeless" spinster absorbed such characteristics to become in effect a more powerful (if frightening) version of womanhood. Beginning with an analysis of Victorian culture's representation of the spinster as a grotesque body to be hidden from sight, the thesis shows, in a discussion of Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, H. Rider Haggard's She, and George Gissing's New Grub Street, how fiction troubles this notion of banishment. It then considers the anxieties raised in the public imagination by the spectre of multiplying spinsters, looking at the motif of self-replication in Margaret Oliphant's Hester, George Gissing's The Odd Women, and Israel Zangwill's The Old Maids' Club. Turning to how the spinster unsettled established notions of domestic space by seeming to be "at home" anywhere, the thesis studies the spinster's ability to infiltrate home spaces in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, Charlotte Bronte's Villetle, and Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White. Finally, it considers how the spinster's unease within the traditional Victorian marriage plot prompted authors to imagine forms of escape in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, Henry James's "The Third Person," and Charlotte O'Conor Eccles's The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore. What emerges is a portrait of a compelling but contradictory figure whose textual presence in the period threatened to undermine some of the basic codes through which Victorian culture oriented and defined itself.

This project examines the influence of the emblem on the literature of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. My dissertation builds on the insights of such scholars as Lorraine Janzen Kooistra and D.M.R. Bentley, both of whom have noted the indebtedness of the Rossettis to the English emblem tradition, but I posit a more central role for emblem strategies in the Pre-Raphaelite movement by expanding the scope of emblem studies to include both normative emblems (visual-verbal tripartite constructions) and emblematic discourse that employs a strictly verbal strategy of representation. I mark the trajectory of the emblem through the Pre-Raphaelite movement by focusing on five key points: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's short-lived illustrated magazine, The Germ; the poetry and devotional prose of Christina Rossetti ( Goblin Market and Other Poems, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems, Called to Be Saints, Time Flies); Gerard Manley Hopkins' onomatopoetic theory of language (as expressed in "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and elsewhere); Dante Gabriel Rossetti's movement from confident belief in the divine and the signifying power of the devotional emblem to religious and representational uncertainty (in works such as "My Sister's Sleep" and The House of Life); and Algernon Charles Swinburne's challenging of the emblem's representational limits (in Chastelard and "Laus Veneris," as well as in other works). Put simply, the Pre-Raphaelite movement's use of emblematic aesthetic strategies traces an arc from the orthodox and logocentric through the uncertain and eccentric to the unorthodox and subversive. The consistent incorporation of emblem structures into the very diverse literature of this group points to the movement's rootedness in older traditions, calling into question the critical tendency to view Pre-Raphaelite literature as anticipating the modern. The presence of emblems in this literature also testifies to the emblem's astonishing endurance, flexibility, and usefulness as a tool for both rhetorical and moral-aesthetic ends.

This project examines the impact of popular literacy on the representation of reading and writing in Victorian prose. Literacy increased dramatically in Victorian Britain, becoming nearly universal by the turn of the century, and major developments in education and publishing accompanied this growth. While critics have investigated extensively the reading habits of women (Flint 1993, Phegley 2004) and the working class (Vincent 1993, Brantlinger 1998, Rose 2001), my thesis argues that the rise of popular literacy caused a more wide-ranging reconceptualization of what was involved in the acts of reading and writing for literate Britons from across the social spectrum. This redefinition of literacy occurred inter-generically through the development of diverse conceptual models of reading and writing in Victorian prose. By examining the literacy models circulated in educational literature, periodicals and popular reading guides, and fiction, my thesis reveals literacy's association with control of the self and the social body and outlines the perceived impact of reading and writing on individual psychology. I trace the transformation of reading and writing instruction in elementary schools from a process intended to engender obedience and moral conformity to one intended to create a habit of reading. The models of reading as eating, reading as an addiction, and desultory reading circulated in periodicals and reading guides demonstrate the perceived dangers of this habit, once created. Critics and educators constructed counter-models of intensive, systematic reading to combat these dangers. Examining George Eliot's Romola and Daniel Deronda and George Gissing's New Grub Street, "Spellbound," and "Christopherson," I show how these authors reinterpreted popular models of literacy in their fiction, exploring the effects of reading and writing on psychology and gender identity. Through this analysis of literacy's representation in Victorian prose, my thesis reveals the complicated position of reading and writing in the nineteenth century.