This thesis closes an existing gap within the field of Victorian poetry scholarship, as the relationship between Pre-Raphaelite and working-class poets has yet to be explored in depth by critics, in part because they superficially appear to be disparate. I argue that a contiguous tradition exists between the two groups which reveals connections through; shared political agendas, the use of the past to change tastes and ideas in the present, connections between imagery and form, and the use of contemporary events to modify public perceptions of their poetry. This focus is of significance to critics of the Victorian period because it is not necessary to prove that an individual poet or group has an influence over another. As a result, this thesis does not principally concern itself with the power relationships which are of interest to a New Historicist critic; rather it employs elements of Cultural Neo-Formalist criticism and Cultural Materialism. What emerges is an expanded notion of what constitutes Victorian high culture, as well as a more nuanced picture of social stratification.

This thesis examines the changing relationship between key elements of the Aristotelian, Newtonian and holistic scientific paradigms and contemporary detective fiction. The work of scholars including N. Katherine Hayles, Martha A. Turner has applied Thomas S. Kuhn’s notion of scientific paradigms to literary works, especially those of the Victorian period. There seemed to be an absence, however, of research of a similar academic standard exploring the relationship between scientific worldviews and detective fiction. Extending their scholarship, this thesis seeks to open up debate in what was perceived to be an under-represented area of literary study. The thesis begins by identifying the main precepts of the three paradigms. It then offers a chronological overview of the developing relationship between these precepts and detective fiction from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four (1890) to P.D.James’s The Black Tower (1975). The present state of this interaction is assessed through a detailed analysis of representative examples of the detective fiction of Reginald Hill, Barbara Nadel, and Quintin Jardine written between 1980 and 2010. The thesis concludes that by presenting the interrelatedness characteristic of the holistic paradigm in a positive light, the work of Hill, Nadel and Jardine may facilitate a paradigm shift away from the dominant Newtonian paradigm towards a more holistic worldview. Further, contemporary detective fiction may have an important role to play in acclimatising its readership to a more inclusive worldview. This research identifies several areas for future study. It would be interesting to extend this work to take account of detective fiction from other cultures. It would also be fascinating to investigate the relationship between structure (of both the narrative and the plot) and scientific pattern in order to assess just how far scientific concepts and detective fiction are interconnected.

The incidence of plagiarism in higher education has increased over the decades as assessment strategies widened and moved away from pure examinations (Ober, Simon, Scott and Elson, 2013). This has repercussions especially in nursing, where nurses are required to be honest and have professional integrity. This study examines senior nurses’ perception of plagiarism and its impact on professionalism and patient care. Plagiarism is associated in the minds of most nurses with the demands of academia, rather than their professional practice. This study has shown that far from plagiarism being restricted to cutting and pasting text into an assignment from the Internet without referencing, it is in fact intentional and may involve the falsification and copyright of assignments, practice documents and competencies and observation charts in the professional context. The implications of this are serious, leading to unprofessional behaviour that could potentially lead to putting the patient at risk. This two stage qualitative constructivist enquiry was carried out using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Sixty eight participants (nurses band 7 and above) completed the questionnaires, the findings of which were used to inform the semi-structured interviews with nine individuals representative of each of the professional groups of nurses who completed the questionnaire. The respondents strongly felt that it was unprofessional to plagiarise and bring the profession into disrepute. However, most nurses could not see past the academic-practice divide, believing that plagiarism was restricted to universities. There was a divided opinion as to whether plagiarism in practice was a matter that should be referred to the Nursing and Midwifery (NMC) Fitness to Practise Panel and whether an individual involved could be deemed an unsafe practitioner. Opinions were influenced by the extent of plagiarism involved and a lack of understanding of the professional and ethical implications. This study has shown that there is a wide academic–practice divide, which needs to be addressed both in pre-registration through study skills and the use of OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Examination) in assessment and post registration training. Nurses need to understand that what they learn in the classroom is directly related to what they do in practice and that plagiarism can compromise patient safety. To plagiarise an essay is unethical and unprofessional; to falsify results on an observation chart or copy the notes written by the nurse on the previous shift is potentially dangerous and could cause harm to a patient contravening the principles of beneficence and non-maleficence.

While the concept of the fictional character has been widely discussed at an interdisciplinary level, a foundational theory of character creation in Creative Writing is yet to follow. As a result, Creative Writing students refer to post-construction analysis in Literary Theory, or even the formulaic advice often suggested by popular writing manuals. Aiming to fill this gap, and at the same time reconcile the chasm between Literary Theory and Creative Writing, my thesis shall initiate a paradigm of character creation, by combining creativity with craftsmanship. More specifically, my approach consists of two interrelated stages: Conceptualisation entails the conception of the character by means of authorial perception, imagination and judgement, which precedes her textual birth; and Exposition, which pertains to the conveyance of such a priori knowledge on paper. My research is conducted through both synthesis and critical analysis. I will be presenting, analysing and thus substantiating my own method of work and at the same time I will examine existing theories I wish to encompass or challenge. My sources are interdisciplinary: Literary Theory and Criticism, Cognitive Psychology, Theory of Mind, Theory of Person and Linguistics are some of them. Examples from Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm (1994), J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) and Sarah Waters’ Fingersmith (2002) will be used to support my hypotheses. I will not be presuming upon the novelists’ original intentions, but rather testing my own method against their texts.

Recent research on cultural citizenship focuses on issues of identity and belonging in multicultural societies and examines the political, economic, and cultural aspects of community membership in local, national, and transnational groups. Postcolonial research into colonial and neocolonial representations of individual and national cultural identities offers a means of interrogating hegemonic discursive practices of Orientalism, neocolonialism and globalization as they relate to the representation of cultural citizenship. This dissertation positions the representation of Indian cultural identities in the films of Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, and Gurinder Chadha as practices of cultural citizenship that attempt to reposition the Indian as a local identity in three Western multicultural societies: Canada, the US and the UK. It draws on postcolonial, gender, and literary theory to textually analyze the discourses underlying the filmic representations of marginalized identities by incorporating the theories of Said, Spivak, Mohanty, and Bhabha into a socio-cultural analysis of Indian identity construction. The study utilizes the Lacanian theory of the mirror stage within the canonical writings of postcolonial theorists like hooks, Said, Fanon, and Bhabha, all of whom use Lacan’s work to describe the splitting of the subject from the Other in order to illustrate the production of the derogatory figure of the Indian as inscribed in Orientalist, and Western/ Eurocentric discourses. This figure is precisely that produced in and consumed through Bollywood films. Chapter one offers an analysis of the Lacanian subject formation as a moment in which the spectator of these films views the cinematic representation of the imago of Indian cultural identity—which in these films can be read as sociocultural constructions of local non-alien figures with community memberships in the adopted homelands—as practices of cultural citizenship acquisition affecting both the alienation of the characters and the spectators. My second chapter, by revising the feminist perspectives of Spivak and Mohanty, strategically locates the subject position of these diasporic filmmakers as intellectuals to relate the representation of Indian cultural identity as a cultural practice within the praxis of Western film. In doing so, it aims to unearth the Indian woman in the West as the cousin of the subaltern woman, positioning her vis-à-vis a Western and local identity within a multicultural society. In my exploration of the filmmakers’ practices of cultural citizenship I relate their community membership to the concept of Dharma as a culturally grounded feminist and postcolonial writing back to the subordinate representation of female Indians in their multiple locations. In the third chapter I offer that cultural citizenship as a practice of representation of visible minorities constructed by these filmmakers offers a necessary splintering of the dominant national identities of their multicultural societies that illuminates the hybridity of cultural identities and the plurality of national identities. The filmmakers achieve this revision by positioning the Indian as local of, rather than Other to, multicultural society. The discussion of Canadian multiculturalism in this chapter illustrates that these filmmakers’ representations of plurality in their construction of national identities, splinters the representation of white monocultural national identities prevalent in Western multicultural nations. My thesis contributes to the fields of postcolonial, literary, and cultural theory in the following ways: a) I add to the discussion of Lacan’s subject formation, and the mirroring of the Other and the alienation of the immigrant, by examining the imago as a reflection of identity which can offer spectators a moment of belonging within an adopted homeland as a cultural citizenship practice; b) I add to the debate on cultural citizenship by relating the historic concept of Dharma to my discussion of the intellectual production of female identities and explicate how its counter-narrative challenges to the gender roles of Indian men and women. Ultimately I conclude that the representation of Indian cultural identity by these filmmakers and the representation of the imago as external spectral image of the Indian, immigrant, or visible Other, discloses a discursive strategy of social cohesion in its challenging representation of plural national identities which are local, multiracial, and multicultural.

The investigation proposed in this study is based on the consideration that the nature of "text" is currently undergoing a change whereby verbal components are increasingly being accompanied by visual components, and the two modes of expression co-exist side by side in the same texts. The Internet is symptomatic of this change, with its multi-modal texts, where words, pictures, and sometimes even sounds, interact with one another. One of the main issues that this thesis aims to address is that although the relationship between the verbal and the visual is not an entirely new area of study, what characterises traditional approaches is the fact that the two components have fundamentally been considered as separate entities, while the combination of words and pictures has generally been regarded as having the function of aiding comprehension. This thesis is based on the main hypothesis that the combination of verbal and visual components is a true interaction which creates a type of 'language' that is more than a simple sum of the two codes. This type of verbo-visual interaction characterises media as old as film and comics, both of which came into existence around a century ago. However, while film studies has become an established discipline, comics have never enjoyed much scholarly attention, their expressive potentials having gone largely overlooked, and the publications that deal with them having being essentially socio-historical accounts. This thesis aims to investigate the complex and sophisticated type of interaction between verbal and visual elements that takes place in comics, and suggests that a close scrutiny of this medium enables the researcher to understand better the way in which the verbal/visual interaction works. In doing so, it recognises the necessity for linguistics to expand the notion of 'language' beyond the traditional verbal boundaries and to incorporate other types of codes which exhibit 'language-like' properties. The theoretical discussion is guided by an eclectic approach as it draws from the fields of semiotics, text-linguistics and stylistics. Accordingly, rather than developing one single main analytical model, this study proposes smaller frameworks, one in each of the areas of study drawn from. Finally, the thesis also suggests ways of applying the theoretical finding for pedagogical purposes.

This thesis explores the early development of the British boy detective in ‘penny dreadfuls’ and story papers from 1865-1940 and considers how the construction of this figure addresses contemporary social anxieties surrounding boyhood and performs an ideological function for boy readers. Chapter 1 focuses on how the representation of the boy detective in the ‘penny-dreadful’ The Boy Detective (1865-6) responds to anxieties about juvenile delinquency, particularly the perceived corrupting influence of ‘penny dreadfuls’ upon boy readers. Chapter 2 examines the first appearances of the adult professional detective’s boy assistant in the Harmsworths’ boys’ story papers of the 1890s and early twentieth century. Here, the representation of the detective’s assistant is linked to the emergence of anxieties surrounding adolescence. Chapter 3 explores the centralisation of the professional boy detective, as either assistant or independent investigator, in story-paper narratives in the first decade of the twentieth century. These texts are considered in relation to anxieties about the impending threat of war and boys’ future role in the defence of a declining British Empire. Chapter 4 explores the increasing restrictions placed upon the professional boy detective in the post-1910 story-paper narratives in which he is largely confined to the assistant role. I make connections between this subsidiary position and the supporting defence roles to which real-life boys were confined in preparation for and during the First World War. Chapter 5 focuses upon the fictional boy detective’s relocation from a professional, adult arena to an amateur, child-centric environment in schoolboy detective narratives. This transition is considered in relation to childhood’s increasing distinction from adulthood in the early twentieth century. Overall, the thesis considers the boy detective as a dual figure, acting simultaneously as a threat in need of containment and a boyhood role model and thus utilised as both an expression of and antidote to the contemporary adult anxieties about boyhood.

This thesis explores forms of fragmentation that characterize black male subjectivity in Richard Wright’s fiction and considers their relationship to the demise of the social anchors and referents which are supposed to allow black men to develop as coherent and whole. It argues that the physical and psychic disfigurement and political and social marginality to which these men are consigned are a direct result of a humanist worldview imposed on them by the two main entities that define them as marginal, namely, white society and black community. To address this relationship, the thesis deploys a poststructuralist approach to question the two societies’ humanist grounding of subjectivity in terms of its conformity to the social whole and its attendant stress on homogeneity and sameness. Wary of this humanist and Enlightenment positioning of the subject as a conscious and thinking individual who is at home with the social totality, the thesis illustrates that the experience of splitting and disjuncture undergone by black men is a corollary of societal modes of subjection that disavow difference and heterogeneity. Probing black male identity from this perspective reveals as much about its decentered nature as it does about the two societies’ humanist view of identity as a closure determined by the ostensibly stable categories of race and community. The formation of black male identity as fractured thus helps map out the instability and anxiety at the heart of collective identities, showing that both white and black societies deny black manhood in the name of preserving their own racial fixity and cultural purity. It exposes the mythical and ideological character of the two societies’ humanist pretentions of safeguarding the values of freedom, equality and the right to agency and shows how such high moral values are politically mobilized in order to maintain racially-sanctioned forms of identity and banish black men as different and inferior.

This thesis proposes a new reading of Tennessee Williams which enables his work to be seen as a cohesive dramaturgy which challenges realist and liberal notions of dramatic space, identity, and time. It examines the biographical and historical origins of ‘plastic theatre’, and the aesthetic and philosophical implications of this crucial term. This thesis analyses the development and hardening of Williams’ reputation during the 1940s and 1950s as a realist (or ‘failed’ realist) playwright through an examination of contemporary reviews and the work of literary critics such as Raymond Williams and Christopher Bigsby. The thesis argues that the critical reception of Williams during these decades was inflected by biographical readings which pathologised Williams and his work from the perspective of ‘straight’ realism. It considers more recent critical re-­‐evaluations of Williams’ work: including those of David Savran, Annette Saddik and Linda Dorff. These re-­‐evaluations, and Williams’ work as a whole, are seen in the cultural, political and historical contexts of the 1950s and 1960s, which saw the development of the notion that the ‘personal is political’ and a major shift in the ‘structure of feeling’. The thesis goes on to develop a new theoretical perspective on Williams’ work which draws on the philosophical work of G.W.R. Hegel’s views on contradiction and his analysis of the master/slave relationship, W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of veiling and Malcolm Bull’s theories of hiddenness. This new perspective is employed in extended close readings of early successful plays (The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire) as well as the more problematic later plays (Camino Real, The-­‐Two Character Play, The Remarkable-­‐Rooming House of Mme Le Monde, I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow and In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel). The final chapter makes use of Gérard Genette’s theories of narratology to explore the plasticity of time in Something Cloudy, Something Clear and Clothes for a Summer Hotel.

The following study is an examination of the contribution of the Germanic place-names of southern Scotland to the onomasticon and lexicon of Britain generally and Scotland specifically. By building a corpus of the Germanic place-names so far identified in the south of Scotland, and interrogating this data in the light of recent onomastic scholarship, a wealth of material has been uncovered, which clearly establishes the importance of Scottish place-name data to the fields of British onomastics and historical lexicography. Over the last hundred years, English place-name scholars have demonstrated that English place-names are a valuable resource for evidence relating to early Germanic lexis in the British Isles. However, comparative material from Scotland has seldom been taken into account, and the present study aims to redress this imbalance by focusing primarily on Scottish data. The thesis is divided into two main sections, the first of which considers the contribution of Scottish place-names to the onomasticon by presenting an analysis of seventy-two elements that are not represented in the corpus of English place-names. The second section investigates place-name elements which are unattested in the literary corpus, and thus assesses the contribution of Scottish place-names to the lexicon. The definitions of many elements have been revised, and in some cases a consideration of the onomastic evidence has resulted in a reinterpretation of lexical usage. This thesis is also the first study to focus attention on qualifying elements rather than generics, and the first to collate the historical evidence for over five hundred Scottish place-name elements. As shown by this study, the Germanic toponymicon of southern Scotland deserves to take its place amongst the national resources for Scottish onomastics and historical lexicography.