This thesis, Amateur Cinema: History, Theory, and Genre (1930-1980), draws largely on primary material from the Scottish Screen Archive and related museum sources. The project establishes a critical dialogue between university-based Film Studies and the archive sector, via a series of case studies of influential groups, individuals, and movements. Prefaced by a chapter entitled 'Theorising Amateur Film: Limitations and Possibilities' detailing the domination of amateur cinema studies by discussion of the 'home mode', I suggest that work to date has obscured an understanding of films made by cine-clubs within the highly organised film culture of the British amateur cine movement. The main body of the thesis consists of four chapters exploring the most popular generic practices of 'institutionalised' amateur filmmakers, focusing on: art cinema, the 'film play', community filmmaking, and the amateur heritage picture. I argue that these production strands were formed by discourses circulating within amateur film journals, 'how to do it' manuals and amateur film festivals. Amateur cinema was viewed throughout as a parallel cine movement existing alongside professional practices, enjoying an ambivalent relationship to inherited professional standards. The final chapter, 'Amateur Film Re-Located', proposed a fresh theorisation of 'local' amateur production within a national film culture, marked by distinctly cosmopolitan connections.

The aim of this study is to illustrate the ways in which the practice and logic of sacrifice in dystopian narratives is anti-utopian. There is a dearth of research on the dystopian fiction, very little which investigates ethical issues and none which consider sacrificial ethics. In the first half of the thesis, the concept of dystopia is delineated against definitions of utopia, concrete utopia and utopian literature. In the second theoretical chapter, major and minor theories of sacrifice are examined for their normative bias in order to question their function in practice. Two important literary examples are read in light of a cross section of sacrifice and utopia: the influential story of Isaac's near sacrifice by Abraham in Genesis 22, and Ursule Molinaro's The New Moon with the Old Moon in her Arms, a literary depiction of the ancient Greek sacrificial ritual of the 'pharmakos'. The works chosen are canonical examples of the genre and in each a different aspect of sacrifice is foregrounded. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the structure of sacrifice and the rigid hierarchy it imposes engenders perpetual violence. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, women's sacrifice of reproductive freedom renders them commodities which cannot sustain friendships. In Octavia Butler's Kindred, the scapegoating of women slaves prevents vertical relationships as a result of the severing of mothers from their offspring. In the final chapter, Ursule Le Guin's 'The Ones who Walk Away from Ornelas' and Lois Lowry's The Giver foreground the cost of utopia based on a sacrificial ethics and problematises the relationship between self and community. The questions of genre, gender, and ethics intersect at the anti-utopian function sacrifice performs in the totalitarian societies foregrounded in the various manifestations of dystopian fictional worlds.

This PhD consists of a novel, Ramshackle, and a book of lyrical essays, microbursts and topologies. Anne Carson talks about Joan of Arc’s answers at her trials, sentences spoken such as ‘The light comes in the name of the voice’, which Carson describes as ‘a sentence that stops itself. Its components are simple yet it stays foreign, we cannot own it.’ (Carson 2008) This Creative Writing PhD thesis is a journey of four and a half years. The first element, Ramshackle, a novel, is Roe Davis’ narrative of the first days of life after her father’s disappearance, and was written during the first year of the PhD. microbursts & topologies follows as a collection of conjectured, composited and imagined pieces on landscapes, memory, creativity and loss. These pieces might be defined as prose poems, essays, stories and memoir, or simply as lyrical essays. As these essays crossover and move between forms, as they dissolve boundaries, they are one and other, neither and multiple. This thesis places two distinct primary creative texts beside each other like pictures in a gallery. The plain and simple pressed up against the unfathomable. The writing of this thesis raised questions about how we, as makers, apply our research to creative works, and also about how creative works convey ideas, knowledge, and insights. Additionally, the crossover form of the lyrical essays encourages the reading of primary texts without mediation, introduction or explanation, and illuminates different reading practices and ways of acquiring knowledge from creative works. In this thesis process and genealogy are palimpsested, obscured and made into landscapes and by reading you make them your own.

This thesis has two aims. First, it is a study of the idea of allegory and some of its literary manifestations within the context of late modernity. It attempts to disentangle and critically evaluate the multitude of theories and definitions that have been mobilised around this problematic term. Through an analysis of these theories, this study attempts to establish a critical use of allegory that preserves the insight of these varying notions of allegory by advancing the following twofold hypothesis. The first side of this hypothesis posits allegory as a distinct generic trope in which characters are engaged in a quest or a journey that involves the recognition and interpretation of metaphors and metonyms, with an aim to arrive at an "interpretative utopia" in which signifier and signified coincide. This is a definition that Deborah Madsen constructs and that this thesis embraces but revises. The second side of the hypothesis proposes that in the allegories of late modernity the recognition and interpretation thematised are historically variable and must be understood in relation to specific historical contexts. This assumption informs the examination and deployment of, amongst others, Fredric Jameson’s ideas of the national allegory and the postmodern allegory; Walter Benjamin’s theorisation of allegory, melancholia and the dialectical image; Paul de Man’s study of the relation between allegory, irony and subjectivity; and Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy of ethics and its relation to allegory. The second aim of the thesis is to put these critical insights to work in a dialectical relationship with the fiction of Gabriel García Márquez, Angela Carter, and J.M. Coetzee. All the novels chosen thematise the failure of a utopian coincidence of signifier and signified, sign and meaning, a failure which conditions the understanding of capitalist modernity. The consequences of that failure are dramatised differently, in accordance with the specific experience of modernity in each case. In the context of the uneven development of Latin America, the continental allegories of García Márquez deal with the themes of melancholy and power, the accumulation of allegorical fragments and the potentiality for dialectical images. In the postmodernist allegories of Angela Carter, the failure of interpretation reflects a larger cultural dominant of commodification and fetishisation of the signifier. The postcolonial allegories of J.M. Coetzee deal with the cognitive failures of an identity thinking which underlies the Manichean allegory of coloniser and colonised, a failure that results in ethical melancholia. Overall, while positing their common use of generic allegory to deal with these crises of recognition and interpretation, the thesis emphasises the differences rather than the similarities of these writers. This convergence in one area but divergence in others throw a questioning light on the discussion of Franco Moretti’s idea of conducting a study in "world literature" via the use of "distant reading". Through examining Moretti’s method, the thesis shows that allegory is a dynamic problematic rather than a fixed conceptual term.

French and English literature in the eighteenth century are generally held to have a symbiotic relationship and the links between the two sentimental traditions, in particular, have been well documented by scholars. However the connections between the sentimental and the libertine discourse have tended to be obliterated. The main assumption underlying this project is the existence of an intimate interplay between sentimentalism and libertinism. Its main aim is to trace the strong attraction existing between the two and to question the genre and national dimensions which have been perpetuated by previous critical discourses through close textual analyses of mid-century French and English novels (Sterne's A Sentimental Journey and Crebillon's Les Egarements du Coeur et de I 'esprit and Les Heureux Orphelins, Haywood's The Fortunate Foundlings, Riccoboni's Lettres de Milady Juliette Catesby, Burney's Evelina, and Cleland's Fanny Hill). The focus will be on the moment when the libertine is tempted to behave sentimentally or when the sentimental (wo)man is tempted to act as a libertine. The relationships between these core texts being very rich, they will be approached from different perspectives in each of the issue-based chapters which will centre on questions of language, non-linguistic communication, sociability, epistolarity and difference.

This thesis situates the writings of Roland Barthes in the immediate postwar period. Whilst Barthes's thought has generally been appreciated for its theoretical innovations, this study identifies the historical and cultural influences behind his theories. His first permanent job in 1960, at the age of forty-five, ended a decade of career and financial uncertainties, during which he had been, above all, a journalist. His most famous book, Mythologies, consists of articles which were originally part of a monthly column appearing in the left-wing journal Les Lettres nouvelles between 1954 and 1956; this column helped to inflect the journal's attitude towards events such as decolonization. At the same time, he was active in the popular theatre movement, writing for Theatre populaire and defending Brechtian theatre. Barthes was also a pioneer of analytical tools in the social sciences. An avid reader of Michelet's attempts to 'resurrect' those who had been excluded by traditional historical narratives, Barthes valued the new history-writing of the Annales. He suggested a historical materialist analysis which, underlining the voluntarist nature of history, tried to resolve two historiographical dilemmas. Firstly, how could historical representation incorporate both continuity and change? Secondly, could a scientific, objective description of reality be reconciled with its partisan, subjective explanation? Undermining his earlier voluntarist view of history, the first dilemma was resolved by semiology: change and continuity were reconciled by showing forms functioning in a system. In the second the committed sociologist and critic could use the 'dialectique d'amour' to denounce and explain the alienation caused by bourgeois myths. However, whilst developing his semiological analysis, Barthes also concluded that a representation of both subjective and objective reality led to the exclusion of the committed critic. Finally, this thesis will suggest how Barthes's experiences and theoretical developments can be linked to his political views in this immediate postwar period.

This study explores the ways in which "social art cinema" has been constructed as a form of national cinema in the context of the 1990s. It discusses how particular institutional issues of the period affected signification revolving around the genre and, consequently, how that affected the concept of national cinema. This research draws upon a range of agendas relating to financial and distribution structures, promotional activities and multi-media consumption that were involved in encouraging the proliferation of social art cinema. This study contends that the success of social art cinema as a generic style was a key factor in constructing an idea of British cinema as a cultural entity. By examining how the institutional elements created this idea, I discuss how social art cinema was positioned as a national cinema in the market place through such elements. The primary objective of this study is therefore to make a contribution towards the growing body of scholarly work that considers the role played by the idea of national cinema in the very commercial environment of the contemporary film business where expressions of national specificity can often seen indistinct. The study also presents evidence for the need to consider contextual aspects when discussing the idea of national cinema. Thus, by examining the commercial aspects of national cinema, I demonstrate that national cinema should not only be defined by accounts of socio-political engagement, but should encompass institutional agendas as well.

This thesis presents the work of Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse as responses to romantic problematic obtained first and foremost from the legacy of Immanuel Kant’s critical philosophy, and, secondly, from the first significant American realisation of this inheritance in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The importance of this romantic reading is that it escapes the usual interpretations of Marcuse and Brown in terms of Marxism and Psychoanalysis, instead tracing the significance of their thought to an earlier philosophical foundation in Europe and America. Kant and Emerson remain touchstones throughout; and it is through them that, in Chapter 1, I have determined what I shall be calling romanticism in an American context, reading Emerson’s essay ‘Experience’ (1844) as an exemplary occasion. In Chapter 2, two of the major works of Marcuse and Brown, Eros and Civilization (1956) and Life Against Death (1959) are examined philosophically in terms of their dialectical rethinking of narcissism, showing how they begin to respond to the romantic question set out in Chapter 1. In Chapter 3, I ex-amine the use of myth and aesthetics, paying particular attention to the integrity of the failings of Marcuse’s aesthetic theory, which stem from its romantic origins in Kant and Schiller. Chapter 4 is a reading of Brown’s Love’s Body (1966), presented against Marcuse’s criticisms (1967), in which I establish the importance of symbolism and originality for Brown, tracing them again to themes present in Kant and Emerson. Chapter 5 interprets Brown’s Closing Time (1973) through an extensive reading of that book’s primary source, the proto-romantic Giambattista Vico’s New Science (1744). The Conclusion locates Brown and Marcuse within the myth and symbol tradition of American Studies, showing how they re-vision America as a romantic ideal.

This thesis in concerned with literary stylistics and the interpretation of literary texts in an EFL context. It has the ultimate pedagogical objective of helping non-native students of English to become sensative to stylistic features and functions and later to perform stylistic analysis and stylistic interpretation of texts. For its significance in stylistics, and as the concentration is on literary composition, the element of 'literariness' is investigated first. This results from the interaction of the stylistic patterning of language and the stylistic functions created at different levels. To show where stylistics stands among literary studies, and to set the scene for the whole thesis, four main approaches to literary texts, i.e. traditional literary criticism, practical criticism, the New Criticism, and formalism, are drawn against it. It is argued that stylistics is the more appropriate approach to the interpretation and appreciation of literary texts especially for non-native students/readers. Within this discipline, there are three major trends: literary stylistics, linguistic stylistics, and Stanley Fish's affective stylistics. The first one is considered superior to the other two for the comprehensiveness of its analytical methodology of short texts in particular, and for its undertaking of interpretation as the ultimate objective of analysis. To substantiate that in practical terms, and at the same time to demonstrate to readers and students how stylistic analysis can be performed, a model of literary stylistic analysis is suggested. It is based on the consideration of the stylistically significant features of the structure of the layout (including clause and sentence structure, paragraphing and cohesion) and of lexis. It is the stylistic effects and functions produced by these features rather than the description of them which is more important. Mere description of language and style is not important in itself; instead, the primary task is to provide a descriptive account of our intuitions concerning the effects and functions produced on us by the text. This supplies a secure basis for interpreation of texts and for teaching interpretation. Two twentieth century short stories The sisters, by James Joyce, and Enough, by Samuel Beckett are analysed separately to demonstrate how this model works and to show readers and students the way(s) of applying and performing it. Joyce and Beckett are well-known writers both here and abroad; their writings are included in university curricula. A stylistic study of two of their texts can be of help to the understanding of some aspects of their style. On the other hand, these two texts stand in contrast to one another in regard to their language organisation and mode of narrative discourse. Where the latter is deviant, the former is quite conventional. This is argued to be useful to the pedagogy of teaching stylistics. Literary stylistics is described as the most convenient approach for non-native students of English literary composition. It is available to them, student-oriented and, therefore, initially more advantageous than an 'intentionalist approach', a 'historical/social and biographical approach', or 'culture-specific approaches'. An articulation is provided of the aims and intentions of teaching literary stylistics to foreign students. The final and most important argument is for student-centred classroom pedagogical procedures. These include forms of linguistically systematic 'rewriting' which are used as a means to two ends: to sensitise students to language; and to demonstrate stylistic features and functions. Once they have achieved these objectives, they are deemed to have exhausted their usefulness. Fuller literary and contextual analysis can, then, be performed.

Writing the Self: Case Studies in Phenomenology and Fiction explores the way in which the notions of self, being and consciousness find expression in works of literary fiction and philosophical texts. It raises the question of whether there are paradigmatic features that are distinctive to philosophy and imaginative literature in their engagement with ontology. Whilst discussing various works of imaginative literature and philosophy, this thesis concentrates on aspects of Husserlian phenomenology and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1962) from the philosophical tradition and focuses on three selected works of post-1900 literary fiction: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902), Virginia Woolfs The Waves (1931), and Saul Bellow's Dangling Man (1944). In an essay on "Literary Attestation in Philosophy", Robert Bernasconi asks, "Literary texts have a certain autonomy, but what happens to them when they are submitted to philosophically inspired readings?"(Bernasconi in Woods 1990: 24). This thesis argues that literary texts need not be "submitted" to philosophically inspired readings. Bernasconi makes an error by using the word "submitted". The texts themselves are not written with a view to supporting the philosophical claims made in a philosophical treatise. This is how both philosophy and literature retain their autonomy. This thesis will demonstrate how autonomy functions differently from insularity purporting that such a distinction is often overlooked. What is not being investigated in this thesis is whether or not philosophy can be used to prove fiction as an application of philosophical ideas. Rather, what is intended is to read them both as different enterprises but at the same time together. Coming together is not to be understood in the same way as dissolving the differences that exist between the two. Nor are the two fields to be understood as mutually dependant. Literature does not derive its conception of "literature" in opposition to the conception of philosophy nor vice-versa. Chapter I of this thesis is a discussion of the theoretical foundation upon which the remainder of this thesis will rest. Through the discussion of selected works of philosophy and literary fiction, this chapter will lay down the theoretical parameters of the issues under examination in the chapters that follow. In chapter II Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) is studied in conjunction with Heideggerean and phenomenological thought. Chapter III takes as its point of departure the question of essence and existence in The Waves (1922) in order to examine the exploration of the Heideggerean notions of the ontic and the ontological. Chapter IV focuses on Bellow's Dangling Man (1944) and examines the way in which the protagonist's struggle in it is explored as a battle between the particular and the universal, and consequently as a strife between notions of essence and existence and ontic and ontological. The conclusion to this thesis endeavours to provide a premise within which ontology and hermeneutics may be understood in imaginative literature and philosophical writing. The intention is never to prove that a work of fiction is phenomenological or Heideggerean but rather to highlight the treatment of Being, Consciousness and the Self in literary fiction and philosophical enquiry. This thesis aims to understand the manner in which the concepts of the ontic and the ontological are expressed in literary fiction and philosophical texts, and does so by raising the question of whether in fact the literary enterprise as opposed to the philosophical one is more adept at expressing either of the two concepts. Based upon such an examination, this thesis, strives to examine whether or not philosophy and literary fiction exist as two separate enterprises by traversing both the similarities and discrepancies that exist in the two fields.