This thesis explores cosmopolitan and humanist literary interventions by Palestinian, Israeli, Indian and Pakistani writers to the rise of ‘ethnically’ defined cultural and political narratives of community. It uses a comparative framework to look at contemporary authors such as Amitav Ghosh, Raja Shehadeh, Kamila Shamsie, Uzma Aslam Khan and David Grossman, who deconstruct the biologically defined border as a repressive literary, cultural and political metaphor in favour of more open-ended categories of identity and community. I argue that in deconstructing the epistemology of the exclusive boundary through cosmopolitan and humanist philosophies, these international writers demonstrate the impossibility of shedding all borders in their own work. Their ‘borderless’ aesthetic that constantly conjures the border is thus indicative of the interrelated nature of cosmopolitan and sectarian identities in a globalized modernity. Moreover, it is suggestive of the ambivalent relationship between politically-conscious postcolonial texts (which draw political lines) and the emerging field of World literature that is coming to be defined by its ability to appeal to the 'universal'.

Arabic literature in Israel has evaded critical attention, or has been treated as an uncomplicated part of Palestinian national culture, on a quest for unification and an identity that was devastated in 1948. This dissertation complicates that narrative through close readings of short stories by five Arab citizens of Israel—Imil Habibi, Muhammad ‘Ali Taha, Muhammad Naffa‘, Hanna Ibrahim, and Zaki Darwish—between 1967 and 1983. Focusing on the relationship between geography and fiction, I suggest that literary constructions of “place” and “space” by these authors reveal a range of cultural negotiations that break down entrenched dyads: Palestinian yet Israeli; Palestinian on the one hand, Israeli on the other; spared exile, but suffering occupation. Instead, these writers evoke the hybrid and ambivalent experiences produced in the paradoxical spaces of Israeli-Palestinian life. I develop an analytical framework that incorporates geographic and literary theory. I use the work of humanists such as Gaston Bachelard, Yi-Fu Tuan, and Edward Casey to suggest that literature mediates geography in a way that communicates belonging, alienation, or personal and collective meaning. The framework is bolstered with the work of postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha, along with historical and political sources, to capture the contextual resonance of the texts. After laying out these theoretical guidelines, I offer a historical account of Arabic literature in Israel and embark on four analytical chapters. Chapter Two explores Imil Habibi’s portrayals of anxiety around post-1967 Palestinian reunions. Chapter Three focuses on the themes of Muhammad ‘Ali Taha’s Palestinian collective identity in Israel. Chapter Four takes up the theme of “the land” in the works of Muhammad Naffa‘ and Hanna Ibrahim, in the context of 1970s land expropriations. Chapter Five explores a long story by Zaki Darwish and its depiction of the body’s phenomenological relation to the homeland. Rather than portraying counter-narratives that suggest a binary of “Israeli” and “Palestinian” always at odds, these authors portray the spaces and characters in between. They disclose the anxieties of finding a sense of place in the context of a dispersed Palestinian nation, geopolitical uncertainty, social marginalization within the state, and the subtle geographies of a historic homeland that both is—and is not—one’s own.

This thesis is primarily concerned with the literary aspects of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Its immediate focus rests on the evolution of the Islamic republican poetic trend, encompassing both the disillusioned and conformist voices that rose to prominence in the course of the 1979 Revolution and their on-going engagement with the ruling political power. In this vein, this thesis investigates the various cultural policies of the state, as well as select political transformations of the past three decades, all of which played a pivotal role in this literary evolution. The thesis shows how the official poets that emerged during the 1979 Revolution, and which proved significantly active throughout the immediate history subsequent to that event (war with Iraq, the death of Ayatollah Khomeini and the rise and fall of the reform movement), evolved over time and thereby either received political support for their commitment to the state ideology or became gradually excluded from official cultural institutions. Finally, this thesis reviews the manner in which state strategies have shaped an institutionalised form of poetry that is monitored and reinforced by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic and official cultural authorities. It demonstrates how an innate linking of the project of Islamic republican literature to underlying ideologically defined notions such as 'religious verse', 'legitimate poetry' and 'commitment' was and continues to be an intrinsic part of the literary foundations of the ideological apparatus of the Islamic Republic.

This thesis aims to engage with the poetry of Scotland and Greek-speaking Cyprus, and examine the relationship between poetry defined as high culture and articulations of national identity in the two places. Scotland and Cyprus share characteristics that make the establishment of a single, coherent national identity with the appearance of permanence challenging, including their relationships with culturally dominant neighbours, competition between local and official languages, and the insecurity of their status as nations. Both Scotland and Cyprus have historically had hybrid identities; in Scotland, British identity is made problematic by England's cultural dominance, while in Cyprus Greek-speakers have a conflicted relationship with Greece. This is made more complex by the fact that Scotland's political union with England may be ending, while Cyprus is divided in half as a result of tensions between Christian and Muslim populations and the unsubtle past involvement of Greece and Turkey in the island's affairs. This thesis aims to locate trends of national identity through the analysis of poetry and its reception in three distinct contexts. Part 1 analyses the evolution of Scottish and Greek-speaking Cypriot 'national character' through the poetry of national poets Robert Burns and Vasilis Michailidis, and the poets Walter Scott and Dimitris Lipertis. Part 2 explores the effects of modernity on the expression of national identities in literature through the lens of the Modernist movement, and how this was adopted and modified in Scotland and Cyprus. This is discussed with reference to three poets, Hugh MacDiarmid, Kostas Montis and Edwin Morgan, and their treatment of the national past and search for a national literary language. Finally, Part 3 analyses deliberate engagements of poets with national identity and issues of national importance, using Seamus Heaney's idea of 'adequate' poetry as a guide. Two functions of poetry are considered: the role it can play in transforming the landscape into the national homeland, and its potential to address communal trauma, and transform it into a unifying experience.

The Sermo antequam iret in exilium and the Sermo cum iret in exsilium are two homilies allegedly pronounced by John Chrysostom in Constantinople at the end of summer 403, some time between the verdict of the Synod of the Oak and the day he left the city for his first exile. The aim of the thesis is to demonstrate that a new critical edition of these texts is needed before any study of their literary and historical value can be conducted. Chapter one sketches the historical background to which the text of the homilies refers and a concise survey about previous scholarship on the homilies on the first exile, from the time of Montfaucon’s edition until our days. The problem of the authenticity occupies the last part of the chapter. Chapter two investigates the history of the texts and takes into account both the direct and indirect traditions. It discusses the existence of double recensions hitherto unknown and provides the prefatory material for the new critical edition of recensio α of Sermo antequam iret in exilium and of the Sermo cum iret in exsilium. Chapter three comprises the Greek editions of the two homilies, as well as a provisional edition of the Latin version of the Sermo antequam iret in exilium. Chapter four is divided into two parts, each presenting a philological commentary on the text of the new editions. Systematic analysis of all the most important variant readings is offered. The final chapter summarizes the new findings and assesses the validity of previous criteria used for discerning the authenticity of the homilies on the exile.

The subject of the present work is the provision of higher literate education in late Roman Syria (c. 350 - c. 450). The difference that Christianity made to literate education has always been in danger of being explained with the introduction and the development of a new kind of instruction provided in monasteries. A rigid dichotomy between secular schools and Christian monasteries, however, finds limited validation in our sources for literate education. While early Christian literature often presented monasteries as providers of education, documentary evidence offers a more blurred picture. On the one hand, studentsʼ papyri show the penetration of Christianity into schools, and, on the other, secular instructional texts have been found in the excavations of early monasteries in Egypt. This thesis presents a neglected corpus of Christian instructional texts that call into question an oppositional understanding of scholastic and monastic education in the Syrian region during late Antiquity. The corpus consists of the Syriac translations of six literary pieces by (or attributed to) Plutarch, Lucian, and Themistius that bring together features of rhetorical education with an interest in Christian asceticism (ch. 2). While the contents and the transmission of the Syriac translations reveal the link to Christianity and Christian ascetic practice (ch. 3), the textual form and the choice of the texts unearths the underlying connection to traditional literate education (ch. 4). These documents, which will be put in relation to instructional literature composed in Greek, Latin, and Syriac in the same period, challenge the existence of a neat line dividing scholastic and monastic education in the Syrian region during late Antiquity. A fresh analysis that is not constrained by a preconceived model of monastic instruction better accounts for the involvement of early Christian leaders in higher education and prompts a new investigation of their conduct on the social scene. Their agency now appears much closer to that of their non-Christian counterparts, sophists in primis, and raises the broader question of the extent to which they owed their considerable success to the implementation of strategies ultimately derived from the world of professional paideia.

Social theorists have long argued that literacy is one of the principal causes and hallmark features of complex society. However, the relationship between literacy and social complexity remains poorly understood because the relevant data have not been assembled in a way that would allow competing hypotheses to be adjudicated. The project set out in this thesis provides a novel account of the multiple origins of literate behaviour around the globe, the principal mechanisms of its cultural transmission, and its relationship with the cultural evolution of large-group human cooperation and complex forms of socio-political organisation. A multi-method large-scale cross-cultural approach provided the data necessary to achieve these objectives. Evidence from the societies within which literate behaviour first emerged, and from a representative sample of ethnographically-attested societies worldwide (n=74), indicates that literate behaviour emerged through the routinization of rituals and pre-literate sign systems, eventually spreading more widely through classical religions. Cross-cultural evidence also suggests that literacy assumed a wide variety of forms and socio-political functions, particularly in large, complex groups, extending evolved psychological mechanisms for cooperation, which include reciprocity, reputation formation and maintenance systems, social norms and norm enforcement systems, and group identification. Finally, the results of a cross-cultural historical survey of first-generation states (n=10) reveal that simple models assuming single cause-and-effect relationships between literacy and complex forms of socio-political organisation must be rejected. Instead, literacy and first-generation state-level polities appear to have interacted in a complex positive feedback loop. This thesis contributes to the wider goal of transforming social and cultural anthropology into a cumulative and rapid-discovery science.