This thesis is the first thorough investigation into the phenomenon known as the Burns Supper. This has grown spontaneously over the years from a nine man dinner at Burns Cottage, Alloway in July 1801 which marked the fifth anniversary of the death of Robert Burns, to over 3,500 dinners embracing more than nine million people across the world during the celebration of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth in 2009. The original event took the form of a convivial club dinner, typical of that period and using invented ritual paying homage to Freemasonry, key elements were grafted onto the running order which remain core today: notably a toast to Burns (‘the Immortal Memory’), poetically addressing (and eating) a haggis and performing Burns’s songs and poems including Auld Lang Syne. While the other contemporary societies and annual literary dinners have fallen into desuetude, the Burns Supper has exhibited longevity and a growth in scale annually that is exceptional. The success of the format is three-fold. First, the Burns Supper remains a social and convivial party; secondly, there is a greater degree of flexibility in how it can be arranged than is often recognised; and finally, the few mandatory elements are key to understanding Burns’s own imperative to be recognised as ‘Bard’ within a milieu which calls for participation. The original Burns Suppers recognised this and deliberately utilised Burns’s most performative verse to capture the spirit of his oeuvre and by incorporating that bardic quiddity, the Burns Supper two hundred years later still shares that fundamental experience which is essential to its immediacy and integrity as a vehicle for the appreciation of Robert Burns. By detailed study of the original minutes of the early suppers, combined, for the first time, with extensive newspaper reports, club archives and biographical sources, the expansion of participation in the Burns Supper from friends of the poet through to Scots at home or expatriate, to the wider global audience is tracked and analysed. As with all amateur (in both senses) movements, enthusiasm has at times exceeded critical judgement and the fear of change has been self-defeating. The simple paradox is that from the Second World War while the academic study of Burns was in steep decline, the number of people attending Burns Suppers grew consistently. By a mutual recognition that the Burns Supper, like Burns’s poetry, is not in the ownership of one nationality, political party or gender, the Burns Supper remains the largest literary festival in the world.

This PhD thesis consists of two major sections. The critical commentary, Authenticity and alterity: evoking the fourteenth century in fiction, reflects upon issues of authenticity and alterity in historical fiction. The historical novel, The Nature of Things, through its structure, themes, style and language, aims to deliver an authentic and naturalistic portrait of life in the fourteenth century. The commentary and novel are supplemented by a bibliography, and three appendices: a synopsis of the novel, a list of the characters, and a summary of a review of historical novels undertaken alongside the writing, which sought to discover how other novelists addressed the issues of authenticity and alterity. The critical commentary considers what makes good historical fiction, specifically how to bring a sense of authenticity and the role of ‘alterity’. It first addresses the alleged ‘problems’ of historical fiction claimed by nineteenth-century author Henry James and others: the impossibility of authenticity, its innate falsehood, and its failure to portray the past’s strangeness. It then explains the process of writing The Nature of Things: its concept and themes, structure and characters, narrative metaphors, language and style, its quest for authenticity and ‘naturalism’. Then it looks at authenticity in historical fiction and how it can be achieved: through narrative form, recorded history, social context, physical details, and the historical thought-world, including religion and superstition. It goes on to consider the need for, and use of, ‘alterity’ (strangeness) as a means of achieving authenticity, looking at such concepts as magic, spells, the supernatural and monsters. Finally, it looks at the authenticity of language in historical fiction, the relationship between thoughts and words, and the problems of both anachronisms and archaic language. Throughout the commentary, examples are drawn from both The Nature of Things and ther historical novels. Concluding remarks are given at the end. The novel, The Nature of Things, spans the fourteenth century. It is structured in seven parts, each of which is narrated by one of seven different voices. The titles of the parts allude to the four biblical apocalyptic horsemen plus three invented ‘horsemen’ – Poverty, Famine, War, Plague, Death, Dissent, Despair. The titles allude to the disasters that befell the fourteenth century, which form the backdrop for the narrators' stories, but are also metaphors for the narrators’ emotional sensibilities. People's response to disaster is one of the novel’s themes, but so is hope and continuity, expressed in a garden metaphor that is given physical shape in a fictional thirteenth-century gardening book, The Nature of Growing Things.

This thesis contextualises the life and work of John Josias Conybeare (1779-1824), one of the first to hold the Rawlinson chair of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, and considers his contribution to the development of Old English studies as a discipline. I argue that he has been unduly marginalised as a result of posthumous criticism that has failed to acknowledge the extent of his contribution to Old English scholarship. Part I of the thesis considers this issue from the perspective of John Josias himself, setting him in the context of the period in which he lived and the longer continuum of Old English studies as a whole. It also reconstructs what is known of his associates and friends, illustrating that he occupied a central position among the literati of his day alongside figures such as Thomas Gaisford (1779-1855), Joseph Hunter (1783-1861), Robert Southey (1774-1843), and Sharon Turner (1768-1847). Part II focuses on Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry (1826), the scholar’s most well-known and significant contribution to Old English studies, which was published posthumously by John Josias’ brother, William Daniel (1787-1857), and widow, Mary (1790-1848). This section traces the composition of the book from its first conception through to its final publication and critical reception, using previously unpublished correspondence to disambiguate the contribution of the author from that of his editors. This is followed by an examination of John Josias’ ability as an early editor of Old English, which critically evaluates some of his transcriptions, translations, and interpretations as they appeared in Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, with particular attention to his work on Widsith and the Exeter Book. Part III contains transcripts of unpublished correspondence and other documents that provide details about John Josias’ life and, in particular, about the preparation and posthumous publication of his Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry. This thesis, which brings together genealogical, scholarly, and archival materials, constitutes the first comprehensive study of his life and work. My reassessment of his scholarship concludes that John Josias in fact made a substantial and influential contribution to the discipline, deserving of greater recognition today.

This thesis is a study of the literary representation of St Margaret of Scotland in England and Scotland from the eleventh to the fifteenth century. Drawing both on existing developments made towards the understanding of the historical Margaret - and other medieval queens - and on advances in the wider theoretical field of queenship studies and feminist scholarship, it demonstrates the usefulness of reading the textual representation of Margaret as a reflection of contemporary ideas about queens and queenship in England and Scotland across the five centuries it covers. It identifies two key strands in the literary representation of Margaret - Margaret as dynastic mother and Margaret as ideal queen - and reveals how these were used both individually and together on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border. This thesis demonstrates both that Margaret is something of a lightning-rod for ideas of good queenship and Scottish independent sovereignty, and that these ideas exist in symbiosis with her sanctity. This thesis ends with a consideration of how my literary analysis of the textual representation of Margaret might be used as a case-study to further understanding of the literary representations of other medieval queens.

This thesis identifies and discusses historical and literary sources describing four species in the process of reintroduction: lynx (Lynx lynx), large whale (esp. Eubalena glacialis), beaver (Castor fiber) and crane (Grus grus). The scope includes medieval and early modern texts in English, Latin, and Welsh written in Britain before the species went extinct. The aims for each species are: (i) to reconstruct the medieval cultural memory; (ii) to contribute a cohesive extinction narrative; and (iii) to catalogue and provide an eco-sensitive reading of the main historical and literary references. Each chapter focuses on a different species: 1. The chapter on lynxes examines some new early references to the lynx and argues that the species became extinct in south Britain c.900 AD. Some hard-to-reconcile seventeenth century Scottish accounts are also explored. 2. The chapter on whales attributes the beginning of whale hunting to the ninth century in Britain, corresponding with the fish event horizon; but suggests a professional whaling industry only existed from the late medieval period. 3. The chapter on beavers identifies extinction dates based on the increasingly confused literary references to the beaver after c.1300 in south Britain and after c.1600 in Scotland, and the increase in fur importation. 4. The chapter on cranes emphasises the mixed perception of the crane throughout the medieval and early modern period. Cranes were simultaneously depicted as courtly falconers’ birds, greedy gluttons, and vigilant soldiers. More generally, the thesis considers the levels of reliability between eyewitness accounts and animal metaphors. It examines the process of ‘redelimitation’ which is triggered by population decline, whereby nomenclature and concepts attached to one species become transferred to another. Finally, it emphasises geographical determinism: species generally become extinct in south Britain centuries before Scotland.