In the field of Creative Writing, much is written about narrative form and narrative voice. Narrator and narrative voice have always been important to me, and they were essential to the creation of my own novel, Over the Kite Path. It is my intention that this thesis (incorporating the novel itself, and the supporting dissertation) captures the creative process in a way that will be useful to other practitioners and writing scholars, by articulating complex and often abstract concepts in an accurate and unique way. The success of my novel was largely dependent on the success of my handling of its narrator and narrative voice, and my ability to create the illusion that my narrator was real. But how could this be measured, and – ultimately – how did extensive research and close analysis of my working practice contribute to this? While writing my novel, I researched many topics (including historical research, research on other practitioners in the field, and also the consideration of some of the philosophical and psychological aspects of my creativity), with a particular focus on the development of narrator and narrative voice. Within this context, I considered the novel’s place within the fields of literature and creative writing and compared my work – and my working practice – with other authors, in order to help me understand and analyse how my narrative voice had developed. As a result of this analysis and research, my novel has an original and convincing narrator. Whilst I am aware that the narrator can never be ‘real’, I am also comfortable with creating and maintaining the illusion of the narrator’s ‘reality’ for the reader. In addition, I have demonstrated the importance of this illusion to the writer during the creative process. Via a deeply analytical account my own experience while writing this novel, I have documented how my own creative work was enhanced by my research, and I believe I have provided new approaches and theories on the creative – and often existential - qualities of the writing process. It is my hope that these new approaches and theories make an original contribution to the field of Creative Writing, and will enhance the way in which the craft of writing is considered in the future by practitioners, critical theorists, and literary scholars alike.

This study examines the claims for a privileged status for the language of science fiction. The analysis of a series of invented languages, including 'nadsat', 'newspeak' and 'Babel-17', establishes that beneath these constructions lie deep-seated misconceptions about how language works. It is shown that the various theories of language, implicitly or explicitly expressed by writers and critics concerned with invented languages and neologism in science fiction, embody a mistaken view about the relation between language and the imagination. Chapter two demonstrates, with particular reference to the treatment of time and mind, that the themes on which science fiction most likes to dwell, reflect very closely the concerns of philosophy, and as such, are particularly amenable to the analytical methods of linguistic philosophy. This approach shows that what science fiction 'imagines' often turns out to be a product of the deceptive qualities of the grammar of language itself. The paradoxes of a pseudo-philosophical nature, in which science fiction invariably finds itself entangled, are particularly well exemplified in the work of Philip K. Dick. Chapter Three suggests that by exploiting the logically impossible, by making a virtue of the tricks and conventions which have become science fiction's stigmata (time-travel, telepathy, etc.), Dick indicates a means of overcoming the genre's current problems concerning form and seriousness. In conclusion it is demonstrated through the work of J. G. Ballard, that any attempt to throw off science fiction's 'pulp' conventions is likely to lead the genre further into the literary wilderness.

Over the last decade, research in characterisation has proliferated in (cognitive) stylistics, with investigations exploring the different avenues concerning the conceptualisation and presentation of fictional characters. There is a wealth of theoretical work on the definition of character, yet a weakness lies in the lack of unification of this information into a systematic method of analysis that can holistically represent characters as the unique individuals they are. This thesis sets to fill this hiatus by developing an adaptable, strategic method of analysis to comprehensively represent characters. Beneath fictional characters’ familiar and recognisable exteriors, is an interconnected network of linguistic strategies that encode their identities and situate them in the storyworld. To successfully account for this, I argue that a working knowledge of the different levels involved in communicating character—from the atomistic textual level to macro storyworld level—as well as the reader’s perceptual and cognitive capacities is required. To grasp these different facets, I dovetail their key components in conjunction with reader response data to develop a Character Tracking Model (CTM). Drawing on corpus stylistic techniques, the CTM is designed to render the storyworld spatiotemporally and mentally track characters throughout the narrative, allowing it to reveal the fundamental elements that are the impetus behind character portrayal. To demonstrate the CTM’s potential and flexibility, it is deployed in an analysis of Gavin Extence’s novel The Universe Versus Alex Woods wherein the protagonist experiences an epileptic seizure. I highlight the subtle linguistic patterns and textual cues that communicate the character’s highly subjective seizure experience. I further use the case study to signal how cognitive stylistics can productively be used as a rich resource for exploring the experiences of epileptic seizures; something which has not yet been addressed by cognitive stylistics or in epilepsy research, but has the potential for positive impact in the public health sector. Overall, this thesis presents an integrative application of cognitive stylistics, examining both character and reader to propose a universal way of approaching characters.

Since the publication of Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America in 1972, drag performance has been an object of fascination for many French and Anglo-American queer and feminist theorists. Employing an intersectional, transfeminist approach, I explore central preoccupations traversing diverse theories of drag, focusing particularly on three issues: the relationship between drag and performativity, the assumption that a drag performer’s gender differs from the gender they perform on stage, and the positioning of drag as necessarily either subversive or reactionary. Analysing the flaws and benefits of these conceptual trends as they appear in a representative selection of French and Anglo-American queer and feminist theoretical texts, I challenge the perception of drag as subverting or upholding the status quo, suggesting that this understanding creates reductive generalisations and cannot account for the diversity and complexity of many current drag scenes. Further, I contest the definitional focus on a presumed opposition between the gender of the performer and the gender they perform on stage. Although a performer’s gender can shape their experience and understanding of drag performance, the focus on this presumed opposition erases certain performers’ identities and distracts from what is actually happening on stage. While my first two chapters concentrate on selected queer and feminist theorizations of drag performance, my final chapter considers the relationship between Butlerian gender parody, intramural parody, and extramural satire in Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, and Monique Wittig’s Le Corps lesbien. Here, I develop the frame of ‘textual drag’ to describe the interactions of these forms of parody and satire in these texts, while highlighting their authors’ interrogations of norms of gender performance, gender identity, and embodiment. I then conclude by demonstrating how existing insights into drag performance can be combined with my own findings to create a particularizing, transfeminist approach to drag.

It has been observed that ‘the literary influences on Beckett have been far more important than has been acknowledged, and more important indeed, than the philosophical influences’ (Smith 2002: 3). The truth of this statement is evidenced by the description that scholars have given of Samuel Beckett’s relationship to seventeenth century French classicism. To date, critical interest has been limited for the most part to the figure of the philosopher René Descartes on the (fragile) grounds that Beckett was exclusively concerned with the Cartesian imperative of clarity and order, the fundamental dualism between body and mind, and Nominalism. Together with the assumption that Beckett’s vision was essentially Cartesian, his literary filiation with Pascal was suggested by critics, but only in terms of Beckett’s formal approach to the theatre. In his short article on En attendant Godot in 1953, the playwright Jean Anouilh was among the first reviewers to suggest that Beckett’s drama synthesizes the encounter between ‘classicism’ and a ‘modern’ form of art. It is well known that Beckett retained a lifelong admiration for Pascal – indeed, Pascal was one of his ‘old chestnuts’ (Knowlson 1997: 653). Little attention has been paid, however, to the originality of Pascal’s thought, the specific nature of his prose, and the impact these might have had upon Beckett’s mature work, especially the trilogy and the subsequent short prose. Yet, in the literary and philosophical context of post-war France, Beckett’s filiation with Pascal, their corresponding preoccupations, were evident to his contemporaries, who identified Pascal as an underlying presence in his works.

This thesis explores one aspect of the ‘inward turn’ that is a significant feature of English poetry in the later eighteenth century. It claims that a representative group of poets construct an authorial ‘self’ in which the personal pronoun ‘I’ becomes an authoritative guarantor of social and moral judgements. It suggests that this move was a response to Lockeian ideas of personal identity and economic individualism which were subsequently refined and developed by theoreticians such as David Hume and Adam Smith such that the ‘self’ was conceived not merely as the site of the sensorium but also the site of moral judgement. It identifies Thomas Gray as the initiator of this development, arguing that his earlier poems, and particularly his Elegy, were revolutionary in their attempts to accommodate Locke’s ideas as a means of combating both the fissiparous nature of the literary market place and the hegemonic practices of the aristocratic class. The reception of the Elegy led Gray to believe he had failed, but his construction of the ‘swain’s’ dual identity who both judges and is judged was to resonate in the persona of Goldsmith’s narrator of The Deserted Village. Goldsmith’s essentially conservative outlook meant that this poem was fractured and it was not until Cowper’s The Task that a fully coherent realisation of Gray’s poetics was achieved. The thesis finally considers Ann Yearsley’s work, arguing that her construction of a ‘self’ as narrator and social judge was fraught with difficulty both because of her position as a female labouring-class poet, and because of the repressive response to the French Revolution. The concluding chapter draws together the implications of the preceding chapters.

Empire Day: a novel and critical commentary consists of my novel, Empire Day, and a critical commentary discussing the process of writing it, and the problems of form and theme with which the narrative engaged. The novel documents the military service of conscripts fighting in an unnamed, undefined colonial conflict on the eve of independence. The novel is split into two narrative strands, one presented from the perspective of Martin Welles, a war poet, and the other from the perspective of Amanda Budden, a university friend of Martin’s who has given up on her own writing. Against a backdrop of violence, they struggle to find a moral standpoint that corresponds to their status as invaders, while at the same time they uncomfortably avoid trauma from their past. The commentary addresses the issues of style, theme, character, setting and method. It surveys the war literature which provides context and conversation for Empire Day. The commentary includes entries from a journal maintained during the writing of the novel, which record events in the development of the fiction.

Approaching Grail narratives as a distinct subgenre of medieval romance, this thesis compares five Old French and Middle English Grail texts: Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval (c.1190), the Didot-Perceval (c.1200), Perlesvaus (early thirteenth century), the Vulgate Cycle Queste del Saint Graal (c.1225) and Thomas Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal (1469). Through detailed analysis of the ways these texts explore three primary areas of Christian experience – sight, space and time – this thesis illuminates both concepts shared across these Grail narratives, and characteristics that distinguish them from each other. The comparative analysis of this thesis shows how the Grail romances operate according to a distinct form of logic that furthers their interests in spiritual instruction. This thesis opens with an introduction to the five texts under consideration and an overview of previous scholarship on the Grail narratives. The introduction also discusses some of the conventional features of Arthurian romance and foregrounds the ways in which the Grail romances disrupt and distort these familiar expectations. Chapter One, ‘Hermeneutic Progression: Sight, Knowledge, and Perception’, explores the ways in which the Grail narratives utilise medieval optical theories to highlight hermeneutic contrasts between normative Arthurian aventures and Grail aventures. The knights’ failures in perception in the latter are marked by a geographical disorientation. Chapter Two, ‘Spatial Perception: The Topography of the Grail Quest’, argues that once the knights embark upon the quest of the Holy Grail, they enter a separate temporal framework in which their physical progression is dictated by their spiritual improvement. Chapter Three, ‘Temporal Transformations: Grail Time’, suggests that in the Grail narratives, concepts of time are transformed to allow readers and Grail knights to travel between the Arthurian present and the biblical past. It is through interpreting and understanding the relationship between past and present that the significance of the Grail aventures emerges. The conclusion to this thesis explores contemporary medieval ideas of demonstrative and dialectic argumentation to suggest that the Grail romances function as a visual form of demonstrative argumentation. This thesis argues that this logic distinguishes the Grail narratives from more secular Arthurian romances and enables both Grail knights and readers to develop their appreciation and understanding of the Grail miracles themselves.

This project contains the novel 'Life! Death! Prizes!' which was published by Bloomsbury in the UK in April 2012 and in the USA in September 2012. 'Life! Death! Prizes!' was later translated into German as Wir Kommen Schon Klar and published by Berlin Verlag in 2013. The novel was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and The Guardian Not The Booker Prize. The commentary which accompanies the novel explores the starting points for the book, which were my dissatisfaction with my work as a television storyliner on Emmerdale and my discovery of the world of story contained within ‘real life’ magazines such as Chat, Bella, Pick It Up, Love It, Take A Break etc. In the commentary I will explore the narrative strategies used to build an accessible literary novel that borrows from the structure of a ‘real life’ magazine story while observing closely the society we are living in. A novel that explores the nature of the contemporary family and what it is to be a young man trying to build a life in 21st century Britain. In the first chapter I look at how my ostensibly realist and voice-driven novel uses the folk tale Hansel and Gretel and techniques borrowed from ancient Greek drama, as well as exploiting the possibilities and challenges offered by the use of both generic instability and unreliable narration. The second chapter investigates more explicitly the politics of the novel. In this chapter I seek to address how the police, education, local government workers, the law and social services are represented in popular culture and how far these representations are supported, critiqued or challenged by the unreliable narration in 'Life! Death! Prizes!' In both chapters I will assess the current landscape of contemporary fiction and describe where my novel fits within it.

This research aims to shed fresh light on our understanding of how (im)politeness manifests itself as a discursive phenomenon by examining invitations and gift-giving (henceforth I&G) in pre-modern Chinese. To this end, a corpus of I&Gs from Feng Menglong’s (1574-1646) trilogy of vernacular stories was analysed using a pragmaphilological approach that emphasizes the contextual analysis of texts. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data show that the interactional elaboration and selection of the strategies of pre-offers, head acts, modifications and responses were highly context-dependent. Hence, the present study provides empirical evidence that I&Gs are far more complex than previously assumed and extends our understanding of them beyond the contemporary limit. In line with the discursive or post-modern approach to (im)politeness, I argue that it is essentially the interactants’ contextualized evaluations of the I&Gs that determined whether an offer counted as polite or impolite behaviour. By challenging the conceptual bias of the modern approach to (im)politeness towards speech production, its assumed link between indirectness and politeness and the empirical applicability of positive and negative politeness distinction and also the overemphasis in Chinese politeness scholarship on modesty and rituality, this research contributes to the possibility of developing alternative (im)politeness theories by explicating how I&Gs in Chinese, which have long been stereotyped as interactionally elaborate and intrinsically polite, were judged by participants in relation to (im)politeness.