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The role of the Jacobean romance mode has been undervalued and misunderstood, not least because of what it has been seen to symbolise politically, and perhaps also because it was seen as beginning to be associated with a female audience. I suggest that gender and sexuality were often represented in romance in a radical way which was frequently empowering for women. Among dramatists, Fletcher and his collaborators in particular were freed by their use of romance to experiment with representations of gender in a radical way. The thesis is divided into four sections, all of which address the way that gender and sexuality are represented in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon. The first section has a chapter on Fletcher's debt to Shakespeare in Bonduca, and another on the two romance plays on which Fletcher and Shakespeare collaborated - The Two Noble Kimmen, and the lost Cardenio. The second section discusses Fletcher's The Faithful Shepherdess, first giving the context of English Jacobean pastoral tragicomedy and explaining its special significance for women, and secondly comparing Fletcher's play with Lady Mary Wroth's Love's Victory, a rare example of a Jacobean play by a woman. Section three explores the debt to prose romance of four plays - Philaster, Valentinian, Love's Cure and The Island Princess - focusing on the possibility that Fletcher may have been influenced by French precieux ideas. The final section investigates the part that women played in masques in the second half of the Jacobean period, and the way that Fletcher and his collaborators use masques and masque-like elements in their plays to exploit the dramatic potential of the Jacobean female masquer's unusually public and self-affirming role. By exploring the impact of Jacobean feminocentric romance forms on the plays of Fletcher and his collaborators I offer a fuller understanding of the ways in which they regarded gender and sexuality, and contribute to the wider project of rediscovering a history of women in the Jacobean period.

This thesis traces the history of the presentation of art music performance on BBC television including concerts, operas and ballets and analyses the ways found to present them. The background to the initial programming policies on BBC Television is analysed with reference to the art music activities on BBC Radio before 1936. The novel methods of televising art music are described: there were no precedents for live multi-camera shooting. Until the creation of commercial television in 1955, BBC Television broadcast about two hours of art music performance each week. From 1955 to 1963 the output of art music performance halved and the influence of Lionel Salter, Head of Music Productions, BBC Television, is traced. The creation of BBC-2 led to a revival in art music programmes and the contribution of Humphrey Burton, Head of Music and Arts, BBC Television, to restoring the amount of art music performance is considered. Early scripts and archived programmes have enabled critical evaluation to be undertaken. This analysis has shown that the first producers of art music programmes regarded their main function as giving viewers the feeling that they were watching performances from the 'best seat in the house': the concept of the objective 'relay'. As musically trained producers emerged, there was a gradual change from the relay to that of involving the viewers as unseen participants in the performances. It is shown that art music performance programmes became the subjective interpretations of the producers involved. Salter said that only musically trained producers who could fluently read music would be capable of fully communicating its structure in television programmes. The truth behind this maxim is fully investigated and the conclusion drawn is that successful presentation of art music performance on television is easier for musically trained producers but a few others without musical qualifications have shown themselves capable of producing equally satisfactory and authoritative programmes.

The thesis introduction identifies the many theoretical approaches to myth, and reveals the need to find a new approach to the study of myth in the works and thought of C. S. Lewis. Most approaches to the study of myth are criticised by Lewis and his literary group of friends, known as the Inklings, as reductive. In contrast, Lewis proposed a more holistic, transcendent power of myth. The first chapter explores the specific importance of myth to Lewis' developing thought, from his early experiences of Norse myth to the development of his views in debate and through his involvement with the Inklings. Tensions and inconsistencies in Lewis' statements about myth are explored and the chapter culminates with Lewis' appreciation of myth in Christian faith, literature, and his realisation of myth as an object of contemplation. Chapter Two explores and contrasts the theories and approaches to myth of Ernst Cassirer with those of Lewis. Both thinkers are compared and areas of similarity and difference are identified, including their reactions to the problem of myth and Nazi ideology. Chapter Three applies the phenomenological traits, characteristics and principles of myth developed by Cassirer to Lewis' science fiction fantasy Perelandra. Mythical consciousness is evoked in this work through mythical images, the inner form of myth, and the type of worldview that threatens to engulf Ransom. We can observe the way that myth involves a sense of unification. Chapter Four identifies the symbolic form of myth in Till We Have Faces. The general characteristics of myth are explored and the inner form, or particular logic, of myth is revealed to actively form the mythical relations that dominate the lives of the characters. The function of myth as a form of thought is explored in the novel. Chapter Five delineates the symbolic form of myth within The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, with particular emphasis upon Lewis' handling of demonic and divine forces and the mythical concept of sacrifice and rebirth. In conclusion, a more holistic appreciation of myth in Lewis' works and thought is developed through the application of Cassirer's myth principles to Lewis' works. Apparently disparate aspects of myth are revealed to have a cohesive unity in mythical consciousness.

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On 2 July 2005, the Saturday before a summit of world leaders at Gleaneagles in Scotland, Live8 took place. Organised by Bob Geldof, the event brought together many high profile rock and pop performers to highlight the extreme famine conditions in Africa. Live8, however, was purportedly not in the business of promoting new albums, selling a range of merchandise or even raising charitable funds: indeed, tickets for the Live8 concerts were free. Rather, the event was intended to lead on to a rally in Edinburgh, forty miles from Gleneagles, calling on the summit attendees to cancel debt, double aid packages and remove trade barriers which hinder sustainable development on the African continent. As such, Live8 represents a strategic intent by rock and pop culture to ‘engineer’ a flow from the concert platform into the everyday. Conscious of the issues Live8 raises, this project looks at the different kinds of aesthetic event, from the contingent to the ‘pre-scripted’, which have over time become a feature of rock and pop culture. Through three distinctive case studies, whose subjects encompass both performers and their fan culture, concepts of narrative, spectacle and performance are discussed in order to understand, from a dramaturgical perspective, how rock and pop culture deals with representational schisms, particularly where the social world is implicated, and the role an aesthetic event (often a rock or pop concert) plays in the course of redress. Eschewing the limitations of musicology and media studies, which have often beset earlier investigations into rock and pop culture, this project’s overarching objective is to offer innovative thinking about the evolving state of the relationship it can, and does, facilitate between the ‘staged’ and the everyday.

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This thesis will examine theatrical changes which were taken place in Britain in the 1990s as an influence of Thatcherite capitalism. There are two bases in developing that subject. The first is that arts subsidy, namely, money, has been more responsible for the changes than directors and playwrights have. The second is that the changes were basically undesirable, because they resulted in the dominance of capitalist values in theatre, under which theatre companies inevitably compete with each other, and are, thereby, increasingly inclined towards safe, popular, commercial products. By contrast, alternative oppositional activities that can play a role in checking and balancing the dominant capitalist cultural values becoming marginalised. It can be, thus, said that this thesis will critically explore the undesirable legacy of Thatcherism on the theatre economics and management of the 1990s.To this end, it will examine several sub-subjects. Chapter I deals with the British politics and economics of the 1980s and 1990s as background for the changes which also took place in theatre during the 1980s and 1990s. Chapter II will explore the two different attitudes of the Arts Council which has been in charge of distributing money [arts subsidy] to theatre companies since its formation in 1946; one prior to Thatcher's government and the other during Thatcher's government of the 1980s. Chapter III will examine the general theatrical economics and management of the 1990s. Chapter IV will deal with money from the national lottery in order to see how much it has contributed to theatre companies in terms of theatre economy. Chapter V is a case study to illustrate how the West Yorkshire Playhouse as one of the leading regional theatre companies has been managerially affected by post-Thatcherite theatre economy. Chapter VI is another case study to illustrate how Red Ladder as one of the leading political theatre companies in the 1970s has been deradicalised by Thatcherite capitalism in the 1980s and post-Thatcherite theatre economy of the 1990s.This thesis, with its critical tone on the changes, will illustrate, implicitly or explicitly, ways by which the undesirable state of the British theatre in the 1990s may be rescued. At the same time, I hope this thesis to serve as a ground for debates for the betterment of the British theatre in the future.

The thesis enters several under-examined areas. First, improvisatory music will be considered as a human phenomenon in the widest sense (Chapter 1 ), and a phenomenon destined to suffer relative decline in the cultural environment of the modern West (Chapter 2). In consequence, the language in which improvisatory music is now discussed in the West will be shown to carry a negative charge (Chapter 3). Among various philosophies of music in the Western tradition, none appears to have foregrounded improvisatory music specifically. However Heidegger's philosophy, it will be suggested, harbours inner trends which favour the idea of music as a central component in philosophical discourse (Chapter 4) and may be used as a starting point for a re-emergent understanding of musical improvisation as a metaphysical principle (Chapter 5). Improvisation in music will be seen to be linked to the centrality of hope in human experience, and this will be exemplified in relation to certain cultures and twentieth-century composers (Chapter 6). Further to this connection between improvisation and hope, improvisation in a Christian liturgical context will be examined. There is a dearth of existing discussion, not only regarding improvisatory music in Christian liturgy, but liturgical spontaneity in general (Chapter 7).

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