This thesis examines nineteenth-century receptions of ancient Rome, with a specific focus on how those receptions were deployed to create useable models of masculinity. I suggest that Rome represents a contested space in the Victorian cultural imagination, with an array of possible scripts and narratives that could be harnessed to articulate masculine ideals, or to vilify perceived deviance from those ideals. Thus, this thesis presents a model of nineteenth-century manliness wherein masculine dominance is derived from the perceived authority to assign meaning to Rome as an image, and to determine its usage either as a badge of merit or a condemnation of certain gendered traits. After establishing in the opening chapter the centrality of Latin and a classical education to elite male identities at both individual and collective levels, the remainder of this thesis charts the place and function of the Roman parallel in the construction of several key ‘styles’ of nineteenth-century masculinity, from the man of letters and the industrialist, to the New Imperialist and the dandy. In this way I account for the multifarious and often contradictory treatments of the Roman example in Victorian literature where, for instance, the same Roman parallel was used to capture the martial virtue of Wellington as was used to condemn the deviance and degeneracy of Oscar Wilde. Understood through the lens of masculine identity, Victorian receptions of Rome become more comprehensible: Rome is contested because masculinity is contested; there are many competing visions of Rome because there are many competing styles of masculinity. Far from attempting to artificially homogenize or to impose a singular narrative of Victorian reception, the aim of this thesis is to explore its complexity and to explain its central conflict as a struggle over the codification of manliness whereby the cultural authority to assign meaning to the Roman age is equivalent to and indicative of the power to speak authoritatively about masculinity in the present.

This thesis demonstrates a new methodology for the linguistic analysis of literature drawing on the data within The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (2009). Developing ideas laid out by Carol McGuirk in her book Robert Burns and the Sentimental Era (1985), this study offers a novel approach to the cultural connections present in the sentimental literature of the eighteenth century, with specific reference to Robert Burns. In doing so, it responds to the need to “stop reading Burns through glossaries and start reading him through dictionaries, thesauruses and histories”, as called for by Murray Pittock (2012). Beginning by situating the methodology in linguistic theory, this thesis goes on firstly to illustrate the ways in which such an approach can be deployed to assess existing literary critical ideas. The first chapter does this testing by examining McGuirk’s book, while simultaneously grounding the study in the necessary contextual background. Secondly, this study investigates, in detail, two aspects of Burns’s sentimental persona construction. Beginning with his open letter ‘The Address of the Scotch Distillers’ and its sentimental use of the language of the Enlightenment, and moving on to one of Burns’s personas in his letters to George Thomson, this section illustrates the importance of persona construction in Burns’s sentimental ethos. Finally, a comprehensive, evidence-based, comparison of linguistic trends examines the extent to which similar sentimental language is used by Burns and Henry Mackenzie, Laurence Sterne, William Shenstone and Samuel Richardson. This thesis shows how this new methodology is a valuable new tool for those involved in literary scholarship. For the first time in any comprehensive way the Historical Thesaurus can be harnessed to make new arguments in literary criticism.

A PhD by publication comprising two of my books, My Elvis Blackout and Neverland, accompanied by a reflective and critical exegesis, which examines notions of truth, fiction and celebrity in the composite novel through a broadly analytical and practice-based methodology. The exegesis begins by exploring the links between the methodology of the fine artist and the new creative writer. It then demonstrates that My Elvis Blackout and Neverland represent an original contribution to knowledge in the way that they explore and develop literary form (the ‘composite’ novel), and, in their exploration of celebrity, myth-making and fictional hagiography, and that the two books function as performative critiques which probe the boundaries between fiction and the fabricated reality of celebrity culture. My exegesis analyses Linda Boldrini’s term ‘heterobiography’ (2012) with particular reference to Michael Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy The Kid (1981), which as a bricolage relies upon the reader’s pre-conceived recognition of the historicity of its protagonist and continually tests the boundaries between fact and fiction. In this section of the exegesis, I propose that what sets My Elvis Blackout and Neverland apart from Billy The Kid is that whilst Ondaatje’s book certainly does exploit the confusions between fact, fiction, autobiography and history, it remains firmly set within the timeframe that its historical protagonist inhabits. My Elvis Blackout and Neverland remain grounded within their readers’ expectations of American settings contemporary to their nominative protagonists, but both books also feature dilations in both historical and geographical setting. Through analysis I have come to perceive ‘the celebrity persona’ as an identikit image assembled by thousands of witnesses. A photo fit photomontage tiered with impressions of subjective provenance, each layered transparency filtered through the fears and desires of fans and critics. Whereas other historiographic metafictions use historical figures as singular characters, My Elvis Blackout and Neverland can be seen to be utilising an ‘identikit’ concept to present their respective protagonists as manyheaded Hydras, or multiple probability ‘versions’ from parallel universes. By a conflation of terms, Hutcheon’s ‘historiographic metafiction’ (1988) and Boldrini’s ‘heterobiography’ (2012), My Elvis Blackout and Neverland are in fact historiobiographic metafictions. The exegesis concludes by establishing my own works’ live impact on the overarching celebrity metanarratives, and their inevitable organic status.

The thesis explores the boundaries of sensation fiction with particular emphasis on masculine discourse as evidenced in these and their performance of ideological work. In its contemporary emphasis on the 1860s the study focuses on sensation novels in their initial published form as serials in family magazines and masculine discourse in paratexts surrounding instalments. Although masculinity is only one perspective in magazines there is sufficient cumulative evidence of a strong masculinist orientation in editorial selection of paratexts which I argue may affect the reading of instalments of sensation fiction. Critical reviews of these novels, the cultural anxieties and ideological fears they provoked are discussed in the following chapter. These critical reviews were a persistent feature of the periodical press and this is worth mentioning because they form a powerful, reactionary and persuasive viewpoint in the masculine boundaries of sensation fiction. Turning to modern criticism the thesis examines the neglect and omission of Edmund Yates, a sensation author who was very much part of the mid-nineteenth century literary scene. Through its emphasis on masculinities the thesis attempts to offer critical insights into the vexed and contentious question of how far sensation fiction is subversive and how far it is successfully and deliberately contained. In its assessment of Edmund Yates the study attempts to show that narrative structures which seem to support the containment of subversive trends in sensation fiction can be used to support dissident readings of a modern canon of sensation.

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This thesis explores how gender and sexuality are conceptualised in human spaceflight. The culture of outer space has received relatively little critical attention, and even less on the subjects of gender and sexuality. In this thesis I aim to expand upon this limited field and to investigate how the cultural dimensions of outer space can be used to productive critical ends. The history of gender in human spaceflight is a troubled one. For decades, women were systematically excluded from most spaceflight endeavours. I argue that in addition to this, more insidious forms of exclusion have continued despite increasing representation of women in the global astronaut corps. Representations of gender in space culture are drawn from a long history of traditional conceptualisation of masculine and feminine bodies, particularly in spatial theory. Additionally, using the particular spatiality of extra-terrestrial spaces, I argue that traditional notions of gendered bodies and spaces can be uniquely destabilised by human spaceflight experience. The gendering of outer space is often entangled with sexual culture in space discourse,as discussions of women in space are often conflated with discussions of sexuality, reproduction, and human futures in space. I analyse these ideological connections alongside feminist and queer theory to argue that while space culture is primarily heteronormative, it also holds great potential for destabilising narratives of heteronormativity. Discussions of the future, in particular, often revolve around heteronormative ideas of family and procreation, however the temporality of space culture is not as straightforward as these narratives would suggest. It is my contention that the critical potential of outer space both necessitates and facilitates a radical shift in understandings of spatiality and temporality. Ultimately, I argue that the extremity associated with extra-terrestrial exploration can inform broader theoretical discussions of gender, sexuality, cultural space, time and the future.

Theý principal focus of the thesis is Anthony Burgess, a prolific novelist whose first and enduring creative passion was music in general and composition in particular. Burgess criticism is limited and largely out-of-date, showing little recognition of the aural or musical elements in his fiction, and virtually no specialist commentary on the music and its relationships with the literature. The main aim of the thesis, therefore, is to demonstrate the variety and strength of the widespread musical elements in Burgess's literature, including the importance he attaches to the sonic basis of language, and to show that these are supported by the musical sensibility and technical competence evident in his. compositions. It is suggested that in the inevitable reassessmenot f his work following his death in 1993, the effects of his musicianship on his literary work should play a greater part than hitherto, and the thesis makes a contribution to this reassessmenbt oth through its original critical commentaries on his music and through the music-orientated discussion of his literature. After an introduction and literature review, the first chapter examines three examples of Burgess's little-known music. All are associated with verbal texts, though the range is otherwise wide, and through them it is possible to draw conclusions about the competence of his handling of musical language and structure. The second and third chapters examine the more familiar work of Burgess the acclaimed author, but from the unfamiliar viewpoint of its musical content, including not only surface references but also hidden allusions and technical puzzles aimed at the musician reader. Two instances of music serving as a structural template for literature are analysed in detail, and attention is also drawn to Burgess's awareness of musical elements in the content and language of the, work of some. of his predecessors. The final core-chapter,e xamines the fusion of Burgess's literary and,m usical skills in the context of his music and words for stage and radio. What emerges is the clear intermeshing of his parallel careers;, and the production within his distinctive literary output of work which, due to the radical extent of its musicalisation, has to be viewed as musically-aware literature for specialised readers, at times evincing, it is proposed, a logic which springs primarily from music.

Poetry translation evaluation from ancient Chinese to English has been subjective in China. This is caused by the indefinable and intangible notion of ‘poetic spirit’, which is often used in influential translators’ criteria, and by the lack of a systematic investigation of translation evaluation. The problem of subjective criteria has remained unresolved for nearly a century. In order to improve the subjective criteria of poetry translation evaluation, this thesis is an attempt to make objective evaluations of the English translations of an ancient Chinese poem using stylistic theories. To make an objective criticism, it is necessary to offer evidence which is based on systematic and reliable criteria and replicable evaluation procedures. By applying stylistic theories to both the source text and the target texts, it is possible to make a judgement based on the stylistic features found in the texts themselves. Thus, objective evaluation of poetry translation from ancient Chinese to English can be made. This research is qualitative with the data consisting of one ancient Chinese poem as the source text and six English translations as the target texts. It carries out stylistic analyses on the data with two approaches based on the cognitive stylistic concept of figure and ground and the linguistic stylistic theory of foregrounding. The target texts are judged by the evidence of locative relations and foregrounding features. This research also explores and proposes a practical framework for poetry translation. The research findings suggest how to make objective poetry translation evaluations and improve translation techniques. They also point out the need to integrate stylistics with translation evaluation to make improvements in the field.

Oswald’s Book of Hours and Englaland (OBOH&E — Smokestack Books, 2013 & 2015 respectively) are distinctive works in the context of modern and contemporary English language poetry. Although there are affinities between OBOH&E and several modern and contemporary works, OBOH&E’s visionary engagement with concepts of England and English identity, their epic expression and novel post-pastoral dimension combine to make them unique. The works’ address to England and the English emerges from an ecologically committed, broadly socialist position informed by Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, Benedict Anderson’s concept of the nation as ‘imagined community’ and Patrick Kavanagh’s assertion of the primacy of the ‘parochial’, coalescing into a literary-political position defined by my coinage utopian yeoman-anarchism. The epic dimension of OBOH&E is demonstrated in an exposition based on the theoretical writings of Rudyard Kipling, Ezra Pound and M.M. Bakhtin. OBOH&E’s characteristic dialogical method — defined by the synchronic and synoptic temporal aspect of the works and their deployments of heteroglossia, polyphony and xenoglossia — leads to a characterisation of the books as novelistic ‘modern epics’. Finally, in an analysis informed by Terry Gifford’s influential taxonomy, OBOH&E is identified as a distinctive subgenre of the post-pastoral (another coinage) — the guerrillapastoral. The guerrilla-pastoral arises from the transgressive rural praxis of the author and is reflected and expressed via his personae, narrators and protagonists as they assert their rights in the land, in conflict with representatives of the power that seeks to restrict and deny them.