This thesis documents a research and art project that explores the creative value of using constraints in film. The starting point is the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle (Oulipo), the Potential Workshop of Literature, whose members explore the Potential of Literature by writing with constraints, and the films of the early twentieth century avant-garde, which demonstrate the promise of experimentalism in cinema. From these points of inspiration, the idea of using constraints to explore the potential of a field is transferred to film. As the practice of filmmaking with constraints is yet to be fully formalised and currently lacks substantial academic recognition, this thesis presents a theorisation of constraint filmmaking as a creative practice that cuts across cinematic genres and already established areas of filmmaking practice – those of short, feature, and documentary film. The cinematic work emerging from the Ouvroir de Videographie Potentielle (Ouvipo), the Potential Workshop of Video, and the movement of Dogme 95, are shown to be influential in the theorisation of constraint filmmaking practice, and several other examples of constraint films across cinema will be addressed to show how the use of constraints can enhance a filmmaker’s creativity. The thesis is accompanied by three constraint films: Project Cube, A Day in your Life, and Tales and Tellers, which were made in adherence to the stages of the constraint filmmaking process. Project Cube is an exploration of mathematically inspired constraints and is grounded in the idea of permutation. Twelve shots are used to create several different films, with their order being determined by the rolling of dice. A Day in Your Life focuses on the interplay between linguistic constraints and their visual counterparts, reality and fiction, and past and present. Tales and Tellers is a project that shows the power of images, as fairy tales from participants are illustrated in moving images, using constraints to create these pictures. These short films demonstrate both my theorisation of constraint filmmaking as a practice that can be adopted by other artists also, and my journey from Potential Literature to Potential Film.

A World of Their Own? The Novel and the Total Institution is an exploration of the sociological concept of the Total Institution with particular reference to its relationship with English literature, followed by the presentation of Chasing Elena, an original novel. The term ‘Total Institution’, attributed to Erving Goffman (1961) encapsulates an environment in which a large number of individuals participate in an enclosed and formally administered way of life. Chapter 1 of the critical text defines the Total Institution and sets the scene for Chapter 2, which examines selected literary texts that feature life in all-encompassing institutions and considers Goffman’s ‘moral career of the inmate’ in terms of the experiences of the fictional characters. Chapter 3 is a literature review reflecting upon Goffman’s work. It expands the model and metaphor of the Total Institution and includes my original interpretation of the concept called here the ‘New Total Institution’. Chapter 4 offers a close reading of contemporary literary texts in which this new interpretation is examined for strength and sustainability when applied to a belief system, a social structure and an isolated physical environment respectively. Chapter 5 considers the relevance of the (New) Total Institution, initially, in terms of the family. It then highlights specific groups of people who live in constrained and constraining circumstances: those affected by domestic abuse, and displaced persons such as refugees. Chapter 6 turns to the relationship between the (New) Total Institution and the novel, looking at the choices and experiences of the writer and the reader. It goes on to describe the ways in which the (New) Total Institution has informed the writing of Chasing Elena. Finally, this novel is presented in its entirety.

This thesis documents the development of nineteen student-teachers in becoming teachers of Maltese literature, initiated in a methodology study-unit over one academic year. Drawing on reader-response theories, and coupled with insights from reflective practice and assessment for learning, this study traces trajectories taken by student-teachers as they gradually move from a text- or subject-bound culture towards a more student- or response-centred approach. Methodologically, this thesis is an action-research project embracing a bricolage stance. The main analysis draws on the lecturer-researcher’s and the student-teachers’ experiences in a dialogical way. A number of reflective tasks were employed to make explicit the meandering thought processes that were taking place and shape during the duration of the study-unit. Different topics essential to any prospective teacher of literature were also critically examined. These issues were realised during a six-week block teaching practice, with some of the experiences collected in an ad hoc portfolio. Towards the end, six perspectives are analysed to illustrate broad themes and significant vignettes of what this transition entails. While mainly respecting traditional academic format, parts of the thesis are written in non-canonical genres, thus expressing an essentially exploratory, experimental approach.

Taking as a starting point an interpretation of the television medium as an Ideological State Apparatus, in my thesis I examine how gender roles and sexual dissidence are constructed in Spanish and Catalan television series. I focus on a corpus of narrative materials through a perspective informed by theories elaborated by Anglo-Saxon scholars in gender studies and studies of sexual dissidence. In my first chapter, which focuses on the construction of gender roles in Catalan soap operas, I apply the analytical paradigms that Anglo-Saxon feminist scholars have elaborated for the content of soap operas and the viewing practices of their audiences to a corpus of material which has rarely been analysed through this perspective. In the second chapter, which focuses on the construction of sexual dissidence in Spanish and Catalan television series, I aim to challenge ‘essentialist’ paradigms which have so far dominated the examination of the construction of sexual dissidence in television series. Moreover, I query the pedagogical aspirations of public-funded television and the contradictions often involved in the application of this remit. My theoretical base encompasses the work of scholars as diverse as Christine Geraghty and Alberto Mira. Studies by Ricardo Llamas, Charlotte Brundson, and Dorothy Hobson, in particular, help me to articulate my comparative analysis of television content in Spanish and Catalan contexts. In conclusion, the aim of my thesis is to address the role performed by television in the construction of meanings which surround gender issues and sexual dissidence. This is a timely exercise because gender studies and studies of sexual dissidence are fairly recent fields in Spanish and Catalan academia and television has been largely disregarded, especially as far as the analysis of characters and storylines is concerned. My thesis aims to be a contribution to these fields in the Spanish and Catalan contexts.

This dissertation examines the concept of artistic genius and its workings as a functional ‘charter myth’, helping to inscribe, enhance and perpetuate discriminative practices against women within the field of literature in general and novel writing in particular. As an active agent as well as symbolic representation of some core patriarchal values such as the innate supremacy and thus justified dominance of men, the concept of genius operates in the following manner: Firstly, through its multiple mythical elements such as the untruth of its affirmations surrounding creativity combined with a paradoxical ability to nevertheless produce evidence for its seeming accuracy; its inherent narrative structure featuring a prescribed genius hero and tale and the latter’s powerful mythical allure, all of which help to push the prominence of genius despite its continued academic deconstruction. Secondly, through the subtle yet powerful gendering of the protagonist and plot pattern it provides, containing a clear blue-print for a hero with a male body complemented or opposed by a subordinate, non-genius female. This gendered mythical pattern directly affects women writers in a variety of manners. On the one hand, it assists the lastingly biased reception of women authors, pre-imposing genius-inscribed beliefs of female inferiority onto literary judgments, thus cyclically perpetuating that belief. On the other – and most importantly for this thesis – the myth of genius also has an inward bearing on many female writers, impeding their creative process and development especially through the myth’s complex interaction with self-confidence as one of the core features necessary for a successful completion of literary projects such as novels.

This thesis contributes a sociological perspective on the practice of feminist zine production and distribution in the UK. Feminist zines facilitate the development of ‘feminist zine subculture’, a trans-local subcultural space that centres on a relatively collectivised adherence to DIY feminist subjectivity. The main objective of the work is to show how this subculture is characterised by its own aesthetics, geographical organisation, internal politics and wider subcultural affiliations. Through the utilisation of an Integrated Textual Analysis (ITA) of 74 ‘feminist zines’, interviews with 29 zine creators, and on-site observations of zinefests, this work argues for a revised perspective on the study of subculture. Feminist zine creators’ recognition of the limited ways in which feminist history has been documented, and their investment in DIY lifestyles, motivates their involvement in the subculture. However, participants also embody ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ subjectivities within this space, meaning that many experience a form of ‘peripheral participation’, caused by their geographical location or the extent to which they subscribe to the dominant values of DIY subculture. This thesis situates the spatial negotiations, embodied subjectivities, and cultural production practices of the participants within a broader understanding of subculture as the product of multiple ‘fields of reference’. Utilising an adaptation of Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’, ‘habitus’ and ‘capital’, this work develops ‘subcultural cartography’; a method of data presentation that shows how feminist zine subculture is internally characterised, and how this characterisation is influenced by a variety of different cultural fields. Ultimately, this work argues for a more nuanced perspective on how structural inequalities and hierarchies manifest within subcultures themselves.

This research uses literary resources as evidence against the argument that names are potentially semantically meaningless entities. A secondary goal is to highlight and discuss the value of onomastics from both a literary and linguistic perspective. The thesis proposes a methodology for the assessment of literary sources based on genre, arguing that names, and genre in turn, may be defined through their respective engagement with thematic considerations, providing a relevant critical structure by which to assess the application or construction of names within fiction. The proposed methodology is first used to assess the placenames within dystopian literature, taking Orwell’s 1984 (1949), Huxley’s Brave New World (1931), and Zamyatin’s We (1924) as exemplar texts for the genre. The emblematic themes identified within the onymic patterns (propaganda, classification and regulation) all share a common thematic root: power and control. In order to assess the validity of this approach, the fictional worlds depicted in a selection of other dystopic texts are also examined. A special study is made of terrapsychology and fictional ontology, as well as of three distinct subgenres of the gothic. Case studies of the latter are each focused around a different ontological mode (fictional, part-fictional, and non-fictional placenames), covering the fantastic world of Peake’s Gormenghast setting (two texts published in 1946 and 1950), Lovecraft’s variant New England county (six texts, 1922 to 1936), and the representative contemporary setting of Brook’s World War Z (2006), respectively.

The Haitian Revolution (1 791-1804) reshaped the debates about slavery and freedom in Europe, accelerated the abolitionist movement, precipitated rebellions in neighbouring territories, and intensified both repression and antislavery sentiment. Its long-term effects remain visible in the many representations, recuperations, and invocations of the Revolution as an exemplar of black agency. At the same time, the violence of the conflict led to portrayals of Haiti as unregenerate and primitive, a prey to 'voodoo' and lawlessness. Hence the recuperation of Haiti's political and cultural history, in which the establishment of the first postcolonial nation must be accounted for as a momentous event despite its ostensible failure, contests the tradition of imperial denigration. The thesis addresses how the Haitian Revolution followed by the establishment of a Black Republic, provided inspiration for writers, artists and intellectuals throughout the Atlantic Diaspora in diverse cultural and intellectual locations from the 1920s onwards. If public knowledge about Haitian history has for some time now been limited in Europe and North America, the Revolution has been a potent factor in black memory and it remains an inspiration to Carib beans, Africans, African Americans, and Latin Americans, as well as to radical intellectuals and artists worldwide. The thesis studies the writings generated by the Revolution in the works of Aime Cesaire, C. L. R. James, Rene Depestre, Langston Hughes, Edouard Glissant, Alejo Carpentier, Derek Walcott, and Madison Smartt Bell, spanning French, English, and Spanish, and including poetry, drama, history, biography, fiction, and opera; while in the visual arts it considers the paintings of Kimathi Donkor and commemorative postage stamps. My discussion addresses both critical understandings and fictional reinventions of the Revolution's achievement and tragic reversals. I examine the ideologies informing the analyses, and the aesthetics of the imaginative writings, where a political stance in some cases served to promote innovation and experimental style and in others was a constraint.

This thesis explores the work of two contemporary women poets, one American, the other Canadian, looking particularly at questions of subjectivity and embodiment in relation to place and to history. Their work is considered in the contexts of American modernist poetry, for instance that of Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams and Charles Olson, and in the light of critical theorists such as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Michel Foucault, Luce Irigaray and Helene Cixous. Modernist concerns with the materiality of the text, both as product of a capitalist economy and as visual object, are considered alongside postmodern aspects of language as processional and reflexive. The early work of each writer is discussed separately in Chapters One and Two, with selected later work in more direct comparison in Chapters Three and Four.

The aim of this thesis is twofold: to present a translation into Portuguese of Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling informed by a consideration of textual, contextual and extratextual parameters; and to treat some key issues In Translation Theory and practice which have arisen out of the process of translating the text. The thesis is divided into two parts: Part One, the Introduction; and Part Two, the Translation. In Chapter One of Part One, the evolution of the reception of Kipling's oeuvre is summarised. His work became controversial, with a discrepancy between critical reservation and public acclaim. Against this background, the writings intended primarily for children form an exception. Critical response to this category, although restricted, has generally supported the favourable view of the public. Among the works most highly praised has been Just So Stories. This favourable, although scarce, attention suggests that a detailed critical examination of the text is essential to a full understanding of Kipling's work. Consequently, Just So Stories is considered in terms of its origins, critical reception, style, literary affiliations and possible sources. General points are illustrated by case studies drawn from the text. In Chapter Two, the complex factors which determine what works are translated are summarised. In contemporary Portugal, children's literature publishing is flourishing, and Kipling is represented almost exclusively as a children's author. So, a balanced view of his work is inaccessible to the Portuguese reader. Even within the field of children'S literature, Kipling is not faithfully represented. The only published translation of Just So Stories into Portuguese is an unacknowledged adaptation of a French translation, itself an incomplete version of the original English text. This Portuguese version raises wide issues about the function and role of the translator, which are discussed in detail, with reference to the work of leading theorists of translation theory. In Chapter Three, in order to deal with the factors relevant to the translation of Just So Stories, a distinction is drawn between problems resulting from culture-specific differences and problems resulting from differences in the structures of the two languages. The problems are identified and analysed, and specific case studies drawn from the translation are adduced in illustration of the solutions adopted. As a result of the task of translating Just So Stories and of the study of Translation Theory texts, a view of translation as an approximation and of the translator as a visible interpreter has been reached. Part Two of this thesis consists of the translation of the twelve stories published in 1902, and of the two extra stories published later, 'The Tabu Tale' and 'Ham and the Porcupine'. Notes are kept to a minimum and are only intended to supplement the discussion of translation problems carried out in Chapter Three.