This thesis examines the ways in which the new financial world of early eighteenth-century London was interpreted, understood and represented through visual forms. The focus of the thesis is on the years between circa 1689 and 1763; that is from the Nine Years War, when deficit finance was first established, until the end of the Seven Years War, by which point its existence was more broadly accepted. It argues that these financial innovations had a determining impact upon the production of visual imagery, especially that produced by the London print market, and that images themselves were instrumental in the debates generated by an increasingly speculative financial world. Following an introduction establishing the aims, methods and scope of the thesis, the chapters take the form of a series of thematic studies chosen to address key issues and images. Chapter one examines the depiction of the Royal Exchange and Exchange Alley in a range of polite topographical prints and graphic satires. This allows for an overview of desirable and disreputable representations of commercial conduct. Chapter two takes as its theme the early years of the Bank of England, East India Company and South Sea Company as principal government creditors. It looks at their rivalry for a position in public finance and the image each company promoted through the premises they built between 1725 and 1734. The third chapter considers the establishment of the national debt and its early management. Graphic satires feature prominently in effecting visual retribution on those suspected of financial misconduct. In Chapter four the state lottery is examined as a form of generating revenue directly from the public and considers the part played by graphic products in questioning this government-sanctioned speculation. The fifth chapter is concerned with the representation of gaming and examines the ways in which it might be adapted to signify both virtuous and inappropriate economic conduct. The concluding chapter focuses on the response of the print market and the press to the turnaround in fortunes in the Seven Years War and how they register an apparent acceptance of the new financial institutions and developments of the preceding half-century.

The thesis is a critical examination of Danto's philosophy of art. It begins with his article 'The Artworld' where he proposes a special is of artistic identification to distinguish artworks. Danto's idea of the artworld is discussed, a historical and contextual theory of art, which arose from his attempt to explain the difference between Warhol's Brillo Boxes sculpture and an indiscernible stack of everyday Brillo boxes. It is argued that Danto unsuccessfully attempts to shore up his artworld concept with the special is. The technique of comparing indiscernible counterparts, from Danto's book The Transfiguration of the Commonplace, is examined. It is argued that the technique is philosophically redundant, but it is a redundant premise which has been added to a valid inference (Danto's historical and contextual view of art: his artworld theory) therefore, this does not make the original inference invalid. Danto's treatment of metaphor, expression, and style is shown to result in four claims. First, artworks embody rhetorical ellipsis. Second, artworks share features of metaphor: they are intensional (with an s) in structure and cannot be paraphrased. Third, a work of art expresses what it is a metaphor for by the way it depicts its subject. Fourth, artworks embody style. The conclusion, has two parts. The first part gives a summary of the criticism of Danto's theory of art: (1) there are logical inconsistencies in his concept of the is of artistic identification and in his use of indiscernible counterparts, (2) his theory suffers by being over-inclusive and (3) he uses circular arguments. The second part is based on a response to the criticism: it provides a definition of art. This has three elements. First, an argument is proposed for a spectrum of artistic presence in which all human activity and artefacts can be placed. Second, there is an acceptance of Danto's view of art (or artistic presence) being both intentional (with a t) and intensional (with an s); however, by applying these concepts to a spectrum, the problem of over-inclusiveness is avoided. Finally, it is argued there can he no wholly non-circular account of art.

In this thesis I examine the development in the theatre outside London, known as the "repertory theatre movement". I concentrate on the first three theatres founded, the Gaiety in Manchester, the Citizens' in Glasgow, and the Liverpool Repertory Theatre, all of which came into prominence between 1907 and 1917, the ten years which span the life of the Gaiety Theatre. The roots of the movement are traced to Germany and its network of subsidised theatres, and to the Abbey in Dublin, which played a crucial role as the catalyst for the movement The British background to the movement is also explored. A discussion of the theatres' structure follows, with their establishment, organisation, finances, policy and the audience they attracted, surveyed. I then consider the repertoire of each theatre analysing which plays they performed, which new authors encouraged, and why the emphasis lay on a certain kind of drama. The backgrounds of the actors and actresses who joined the repertory theatres are discussed, as are their techniques, and how they adapted to the strictures of repertory. Similarly, the directors who undertook a huge workload were forced to find a new way of working which would ensure high artistic standards, while producing a large number of plays. I shall look at this development of a new stagecraft in a historical context and evaluate its strengths and weak-nesses.

This thesis tries to provide a historical examination of the Scottish National Players, from the first proposals in 1913 until the disbandment of the Scottish National Theatre Society in 1934. The SNP aimed to produce plays of Scottish life and character; to encourage the public's taste for good drama of any kind; and to found a National Theatre. The golden years of the Players were the early and mid twenties, but by the end of the decade their ideals were crumbling away and they faced increasing dissatisfaction from the public and the press. They did not successfully fulfil any of their stated aims, but their attempts were far from being worthless. The influence of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin upon the SNP is detailed in the first chapter, along with the Player's own statements that they set out to create a similar venture in Glasgow. The Players' debt to the Glasgow Repertory Theatre is discussed. In chapters two to five a detailed history of the Players has been given. This concentrates on the policies, organisation, achievements, people involved, and actual productions, rather than being a literary critique of the plays themselves. Chapter six discusses the main achievement of the Scottish National Players, that they provided a training for the theatre profession which could not at that time be obtained anywhere else in Scotland. The SNP's contribution to the setting up of the BBC in Scotland is also discussed.

This thesis addresses the textual bias inherent in the historiography by exploring the value of visual images as a source of evidence for cultural perceptions of the Gàidhealtachd. Visual images stood at the sharp end of the means by which stereotypes were forged and sustained. In part, this was a direct result of the special role afforded to the image in the cultural and intellectual climate of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment Europe. This thesis looks at the evolution of visual interest in the Highlands and Islands on two fronts, documentary and aesthetic, and pays particular attention to the way in which the two main functions of the image in society came to be intertwined. This thesis argues that the concept of antiquity was the single most powerful influence driving the visual representation of the Highlands and Islands during a long period from c. 1700 to around 1880, and indeed into the twentieth century. If something could be regarded as ancient, aboriginal, dead, or even dying, it acquired both documentary and aesthetic value. This applied to actual antiquities, to customs and manners perceived as indigenous and ‘traditional’ to the region, and, ultimately, even to the physical landscape. Successive chapters explore what might now be classified as the archaeological, ethnological and geological motives for visualising the Highlands and Islands, and the bias in favour of antiquity which resulted from the spread of intellectual influences into the fine arts. The shadow of time which hallmarked visual representations of the region resulted in a preservationist mentality which has had powerful repercussions down to the present day. The body of evidence considered – which embraces maps, plans, paintings, drawings, sketches and printed images by both professionals and amateurs – must be viewed as a rich and valuable companion to the written word.

In recent years, more and more Chinese films have been exported abroad. This thesis intends to explore the subtitling of Chinese cinema into English, with Zhang Yimou’s films as a case study. Zhang Yimou is arguably the most critically and internationally acclaimed Chinese filmmaker, who has experimented with a variety of genres of films. I argue that in the subtitling of his films, there is an obvious adoption of the domestication translation strategy that reduces or even omits Chinese cultural references. I try to discover what cultural categories or perspectives of China are prone to the domestication of translation and have formulated five categories: humour, politeness, dialect, history and songs and the Peking Opera. My methodology is that I compare the source Chinese dialogue lines with the existing English subtitles by providing literal translations of the source lines, and I will also give my alternative translations that tend to retain the source cultural references better. I also speculate that the domestication strategy is frequently employed by subtitlers possibly because the subtitlers assume the source cultural references are difficult for target language subtitle readers to comprehend, even if they are translated into a target language. However, subtitle readers are very likely to understand more than what the dialogue lines and the target language subtitles express, because films are multimodal entities and verbal information is not the only source of information for subtitle readers. The image and the sound are also significant sources of information for subtitle readers who are constantly involved in a dynamic film-watching experience. They are also expected to grasp visual and acoustic information. The complete omission or domestication of source cultural references might also affect their interpretation of the non-verbal cues. I also contemplate that the translation, which frequently domesticates the source culture carried out by a translator who is also a native speaker of the source language, is ‘submissive translation’.

The long century of western cinema has produced numerous depictions of invisible bodies – those bodies that function as any other, save for the distinctive feature of their invisibility. The invisible body challenges conventions of cinematic production, presentation and reception, suggesting an ‘extra-visual’ cinema. But, as well as this, the invisible body also challenges conceptions of the limits and categorisation of the human sensorium. In tracing a sensory history of invisible bodies, this thesis is concerned with how such depictions connect with and contribute to constructions of the senses in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This thesis thus makes an original contribution to knowledge by asking: What kind of history of the senses can be found in the onscreen invisible body? In doing so, this thesis engages a film theory of the senses that asks what the depiction of the invisible body – itself a delicate cultural construction that has no direct equivalent in nature – brings to a cultural understanding of the modern sensorium. Chapter One introduces the sensualities of the invisible body in Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924). Chapter Two connects the imagery of The Invisible Man cycle (1933–1951) with a tendency towards sensory reconfiguration. Chapter Three addresses a Cold War phase of invisible extraterrestrials in terms of technologised sensory extension. Chapter Four identifies the late twentieth-century onscreen invisible body as representative of a reconstituted social sensorium. Finally, Chapter Five analyses sequences from The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001–2003), interpreting invisible embodiment in relation to the disorientations of both pain and intersensoriality. Through my approach, I connect the multisensory with the multidisciplinary, identifying the unsettling character of the onscreen invisible body as a consequence of its taxonomical unsettling of sensory and media boundaries.

This dissertation provides a critical re-assessment of the oeuvre of Francis Picabia (1879-1953) and assesses the ways the artist worked to resist the accommodation and domestication of his work. It emphasizes the role of negation and refusal in his painting and poetry, and examines his role as Dadaist and polemicist. This dissertation argues that as artists struggled to render art meaningful and sustainable under the totalizing effects of capitalism and modernity in the first half of the twentieth century, Picabia sought to travesty rather than transcend modernity by enacting an extremely nihilistic form of self-criticism and institutional critique. Picabia’s constant change of style and medium, delight in contradiction, elusive social behavior, extreme egoism, and steadfast commitment to the destabilization of intentionality in his work sought to interrupt the colonizing processes of commodification and to tautologically address the paradoxical and contradictory character of securing meaning in a world without meaning. Divided into five chapters, beginning with Picabia’s affiliation with Puteaux Cubism in Paris in 1911 and ending with a discussion of the final works made before his death in 1953, this dissertation seeks to contextualize major moments of during his career when refusal and negation—even the possible dissolution of his own practice—became the focus of his artistic production. Drawing on the theories of the literary critic Peter Bürger and the Hegelian-Marxist art historian TJ Clark, this study works to come to terms with the strengths, limits, and unresolved ambiguities of Picabia’s willfully antagonistic and conflicted oeuvre and to underscore the critical pressure his work and actions placed on stable narratives of modernism and the conditions that regulate and make meaning available in modern art.

This thesis investigates the potential of aesthetics in the design of Human-Computer Interactions (HCI). In particular, it aims to provide a means by which aesthetics can be applied in photorealistic virtual reality (VR) to create ‘engaging' experiences. Indeed, the author of this thesis suggests that much can be gained from looking at the aesthetics of photorealistic VR content as opposed to the more traditional HCI approaches that have primarily focused on the performance and efficiency issues of the technology. The thesis is motivated by the very notion that the aesthetic potential of photorealistic VR content is, and continues to be, underestimated whilst the emphasis on the development of newer and more efficient visualisation technologies to create engaging VR experiences increases. Challenging this, the research is firmly based on the premise that the aesthetic content of photorealistic VR environments holds at least as many possibilities for the creation of more complete and ‘engaging' experiences. To explore this, the thesis describes the aesthetic-interaction as a new type of interaction that focuses primarily on how one aesthetically interacts with an interface (as opposed to how one cognitively interacts with interface metaphors to activate certain aspects of its functionality). By concentrating on the design and the aesthetic content of photorealistic VR, more so than the building and enhancing of its functional capabilities, the research aims to probe how the user might be sensually attracted and aroused into the sharing of information and hence the creation of new and ‘engaging' experiences. In particular, this thesis examines the role of narrative in VR and from this, moves to the visual-narrative which for centuries has employed the use of aesthetics to ‘engage' the spectator in its process of storytelling. Integrating traits of the VR medium and the visualnarrative, the author develops a visual-narrative structure which is used to elicit a number of design requirements specifically for photorealistic VR. From this, a visual-narrative model is developed, and in a second study, it is demonstrated that the photorealistic VR environments designed with the visual-narrative model can, indeed, create more ‘engaging' experiences. In summary, this research provides a means by which the aesthetics of photorealistic VR (or other HCI technologies) might be strategically patterned and applied to the creation of various different types of ‘engaging' experiences. By describing the aesthetic-interaction and how it can be articulated through a visual-narrative model, the research not only successfully highlights the experiential side of photorealistic VR, but also advances the new ‘design' drive of HCI.

This thesis offers a cultural history of the Scots Renascence, a revival of Scottish identity and culture between 1880 and 1914, and demonstrates how heavily Scottish cultural nationalism in this period drew from, and was defined by, fin-de-siècle Decadence. Few cultural historians have taken the notion of a Scots Renascence seriously and many literary critics have styled the period as low point in the health of Scottish culture – a narrative which is deeply flawed. Others have portrayed Decadence as antithetical to nationalism (and to Scotland itself). The thesis challenges these characterisations and argues that there was a revival of Scottish identity in the period which drew from, and contributed to, Decadent critiques of 'civilisation' and 'progress'. The thesis considers literature alongside visual art, which were so interdependent around the 1890s. It focuses on three main cultural groups in Scotland (the circle that surrounded Patrick Geddes, the Glasgow School and writers of the Scottish Romance Revival) but it speaks to an even wider cultural trend. Together, the various figures treated here formed a loose movement concerned with reviving Scottish identity by returning to the past and challenging notions of improvement, utilitarianism and stadialism. The first chapter considers the cultural and historical background to the Scots Renascence and reveals how the writings of the Scottish Romance Revival critiqued stadialist narratives in order to lay the ground for a more unified national self. The second chapter demonstrates how important japonisme and the Belgian cultural revival were to the Scots Renascence: Scottish cultural nationalists looked to Japan and Belgium, amongst other nations, to gain inspiration and form a particular counter- hegemony. The final three chapters of the thesis explore how a unifying myth of origin was developed through neo-Paganism, how connections to an ancestral self were activated through occultism, and how such ideas of mythic origin and continuation were disseminated to wide audiences through pageantry. In doing so, the thesis charts the origins, development and dissemination of the Scots Renascence, while situating it within its historical and international contexts.