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Pakistani female writers in English continue to highlight the struggles of women within patriarchal Pakistani society. The emphasis of my research project has been to explore and analyse the struggle and resistance of female figures against patriarchal structures as presented through the fiction of my chosen female writers. I have analysed the works of Pakistani Anglophone women writers, Bapsi Sidhwa and Qaisra Shahraz. The thesis concludes with the analysis of a novel by a contemporary Urdu Pakistani female writer, Umera Ahmad. Analysing an Urdu feminist writing along with feminist writing in English has allowed my thesis a broader scope as Urdu feminist writings are an indispensible part of the Pakistani literary canvas in general and feminist literary canvas in particular. Through sexual awakening, sexual victimisation (rape, forced marriage) and sexual discrimination Sidhwa, Shahraz and Ahmad’s women learn of the gendered oppression that works through their bodies. Grappling with a range of victimisations, the female figures, from across the chosen works, expose how female sexuality and bodies are defined, controlled and exploited by men under the guise of socio-cultural and religious traditions. My research explores both the violent and subtle ways in which patriarchy represses female sexuality to control and restrict women in Pakistani society. A further underlying motive of my research has been to stress the importance of writing in allowing the female figures a ‘voice’ to aid their struggle against patriarchal structures. I believe feminist writings, specifically by female authors, both in English and Urdu, are a much needed contribution to the already existing Pakistani literary canon. Therefore, the works of chosen female writers are critically examined in order to understand their role and importance towards addressing, exploring and devising solutions, through a literary medium, to the issues women face in patriarchal society.

This thesis reports on a Critical Stylistic analysis of representations of men in a corpus of women’s magazines, with the aid of corpus linguistic methods. Focusing on four ‘textualconceptual’ (Jeffries, forthcoming) functions of text; Naming and Describing, Equating and Contrasting, Representing Processes/Events/States, and Assuming and Implying, it shows how the texts construct ideologies of masculinity that constitute the magazines’ performances of masculinity for a female audience. I identify five central ideologies of masculinity, and gender more broadly, that occur across all four of the tools: • Men are either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ • Men are driven by their carnal instincts • Men are naturally aggressive • Men and women are essentially different • Heterosexuality is normative These unifying themes are shown to be consistent with the forms of masculinity associated with the New Lad figure, linked to representations of masculinity in the ‘lads’ mags’ of the men’s magazine market. Alongside these unifying themes, I also show how different kinds of masculine identity are emphasised depending on the kind of text they appear in, and in which genre of women’s magazine they feature. These differing representations are interpreted in terms of the flexibility of gender performance. This thesis argues that Butler’s theory of performativity can be applied to texts such as women’s magazines in two ways: women’s magazines form part of the “rigid, regulatory frame” (Butler, 1990: 33) which determines what constitutes acceptable performances of gender for society, and that they are also in themselves performances of gender. They are also “a set of repeated acts [...] that congeal over time to produce the appearance of substance of a natural sort of being” (Butler, 1990: 33). The linguistic images of men inscribed in the pages of women’s magazines are repetitions that have become part of the naturalized, accepted performances of masculinity. The ideologies of masculinity discussed here are potentially harmful from a feminist perspective, because if men are consistently shown to be aggressive or sexually driven, women may come to expect men to behave in this way.

With iconic characters like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, and Iron Man representing the wider culture’s understanding of comics, popular perceptions of the medium are that comics are a male-centric medium focused on male experience and readers. As the medium and the dominant superhero genre has gained attention, focus and research has been placed on the medium and how these narratives deal with representation. With the perception and stereotypes of comic readers and comic narratives as predominantly male, the question of female representation, especially within the dominant superhero genre, is a topic that has garnered attention. In my thesis, I look at the history, sources, and perpetuation of gendered performances within superhero comics. By looking at the field of comics, the perceived dominant reading position, and the constrained meaning of texts, I show that the act of creating, reading, and talking about comics are parts of a logonomic system. This system functions to deliver an expected and constrained representation and meaning about female characters and female experience. In superhero comics, female characters are constrained to performances of the monster or angel. Through the way their powers, costumes, and identities are narratively constructed, female characters are forced to be either submissive and objectified angels who conform to patriarchal power structures, or dangerous and monstrous women who need to be punished and normalized. Superhero comics work to interpolate the perceived dominant reading position, deliver pleasure, assuages fear, and transmits an expected meaning of male/female relationships and performances.

This thesis explores the relationship between the avant-garde and humour during two critical historical periods: the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the early years of the Cuban Revolution (1959-1961). It focuses on those authors and magazines which persisted with the avant-garde approach despite the highly politicized climate. Some of them combined political compromise with the avant-garde. Others prioritised the avant-garde solely. The main object of study is comics oriented to an adult audience published in periodicals, clandestine magazines and, especially, the so called revista de trincheras during the Spanish Civil War. The medium, graphic narrative, helped to overcome literacy problems, while humour served as a communicative bridge to better spread the intended messages. In Cuba, the first two years of the Revolution were an ongoing process of defining a new political, cultural and social system. Graphic humour played a significant role in that task, further developing an already very rich national tradition. In that process of consolidation, the experimental humour magazine El Pitirre, very much under the umbrella of Lunes de Revolucion, approached humour as a liminal space, a space of conflict and instability with a universal drive, from existentialism to criticism of Imperialism, formally renovating graphic humour in Cuba by using a minimal but expressive line.

This thesis argues for, and conducts close reading on, lesbian pulp fiction published in the United States between 1950 and 1965. Though a thorough investigation of a lesbian textual community centred on the lesbian periodical, The Ladder (1956-1952), this thesis forms a lens through which to closely read lesbian pulp fiction novels. This thesis maintains that members of this textual community were invested in literary discussions, as evinced through the publication of book reviews. Moreover, the lesbian textual community of The Ladder actively participated in literary discussions through the ‘Readers Respond’ column. Spring Fire (1952) by Vin Packer and The Beebo Brinker Chronicles (1957 to 1962) by Ann Bannon are investigated for implicit and explicit criticisms of 1950s sexual politics and the politics surrounding lesbian representation in popular media. For the members of The Ladder’s lesbian textual community, pulp novels belonging to the ‘Golden Age of Paperbacks’ were more than cheaply produced reading materials.

This thesis explores the topic of eschatological violence in the Pentecostal tradition through an intertextual literary analysis of Ezekiel 36:16—39:29 and Revelation 19:11—21 and 20:7—10 by investigating primarily how the intentional literary placement of the ‘Two Sticks’ oracle (Ezek 37:15—28) between the ‘Dry Bones’ vision (Ezek 37:1—14) and the ‘Gog of Magog’ war (Ezek 38:1—39:29) informs the reader’s theological understanding of the message of Ezekiel 36:16—39:29 as a whole. Secondarily, this thesis considers how the allusion to Ezek 38—39 in Rev 19:11—21 and 20:7—10 enhances the reader’s theological understanding of Ezek 36:16—39:29, yielding an intertextual reading that challenges the way these texts have long been understood in popular Pentecostal contexts. By reviewing historical Pentecostal interpretations of these texts, specifically considering how dispensationalism has influenced Pentecostal eschatology and ensuing textual interpretations, this thesis offers a fresh perspective that aligns with the eschatology of early Pentecostals and contemporary Pentecostal scholars—both of whom generally depart from dispensationalism. This intertextual literary analysis builds a case for envisioning a hopeful and proleptic eschatology that promotes peace and reconciliation, potentially transforming Pentecostal ethics, politics and mission.

'Half' is a dual narrative following the stories of sisters Sadie and Hannah on a less than harmonious trip round the Western States of America, and Olive Oatman, a fourteen-year-old girl captured by Native Americans in 1851. Olive’s account of servitude and acculturation with the Mohave Indians is in fact the fictionalisation of a memoir, told through a journal Sadie acquires. While the modern narrative in 'Half' is also based extensively on biographical content, the resulting novel is most definitely fiction. The accompanying research explores the point at which memoir and fiction intersect, asking if there is ever absolute truth or absolute fiction when utilising one’s own experiences as a framework for a narrative. Using evidence from historians it examines the extent to which the key texts discussed in the Thesis, classified as Memoir or Fiction, can be seen to occupy the middle ground between both tropes. It also looks at how the novel 'Half' incorporates a complex range of personal experience and imaginative explorations through its key themes of otherness, sisterly relationships and the role of fathers – and how the two narrative strands dovetail in both obvious and unpredictable ways to express the dark subtext of the novel.

This thesis makes the claim that there is an important correlation between the poetic and the ethical in the work of Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous and Paul Celan. Taking its cue from Derrida’s 1988 ‘Che cos’è la poesia?’, it proposes that what he calls the ‘poematic’ entails an ethical experience. It seeks to show that the underlying link between the poetic and the ethical as it emerges in Derrida’s text calls for a reconsideration of the relation between the literary and the ethical. Rather than merely describe ethical situations or prescribe ethical behaviour, the poetic involves an ethical experience of the arrival or ‘invention’ (from the Latin invenire: to come upon) of the other. Focusing on Derrida’s notions of responsibility and hospitality in turn, it argues that the interruption at the heart of Derrida’s ethical event is what characterises poetic force. Chapter 1 presents a reading of Derrida’s notion of the poetic as an instance of ethical responsibility. It begins with a discussion of Derrida’s understanding of responsibility that underlines the importance of the interrelation between the secret, the call and the response. It subsequently argues that the poetic dictate, like responsibility, also involves an interruptive call or apostrophe that demands a response. Referring closely to the biblical narrative of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac as well as Derrida’s notions of the ‘double yes’ and the countersignature, it finally considers the ethics of poetic response. Chapter 2 claims that the force of Hélène Cixous’s work is intricately bound to the Derridean ethical imperative of responsibility as explored in Chapter 1. It begins by showing the parallels between Cixous’s ‘coming to writing’ and the Derridean notion of the poetic dictate. It maintains that the complex question of genre in Cixous’s work is related to her writing practice as an instance of submitting to the call of the other. Finally, it argues that the ethical import of her work is to be found in what Derrida has described in terms of a monstrous force. Turning its attention primarily to Derrida’s seminars around the subject of hospitality, Chapter 3 begins by focusing on the inherent violence in hospitality through an analysis of the etymological root of the word ‘hospitality’ and Derrida’s neologism ‘hostipitality’. It then addresses Derrida’s aphoristic claim that an ‘act of hospitality can only be poetic’. Relating this assertion to his understanding of invention as the instance of the coming of the other, it argues that the poetic is ethical at its core because it invents the impossible. Finally, drawing out the implications of Derridean hospitality for a reading of Sophocles’ play ‘Antigone’, it demonstrates that the eponymous character enacts the poetic experience at the centre of the discussion. In an extended analysis of the notion poetic hospitality, Chapter 4 takes the concept of the uncanny in Paul Celan’s ‘Der Meridian’ speech as its foremost concern. It makes the claim that the ethical force in Celan’s oeuvre lies in its power to overcome the uncanny automaticity of art. It then turns to ‘Die Niemandsrose’ to explore the uncanny in relation to what Celan calls the ‘groundlessness’ of the poem. Finally, it suggests that the uncanny in Celan’s oeuvre can be seen as the ethical counterpart to the aesthetic of the Romantic sublime that is arguably no longer possible today.