Moving on from Jackson's belief in fantasy as the literature of subversion, this thesis argues that by filtering Todorov's concept of the fantastic through a contemporary theoretical understanding of transgression, the stasis which has resulted from the obsessive desire to pin down a single definition of literary fantasy can be transformed into a dynamic and interactive narrative process. This dynamism then provides a particularly useful strategy for the fictional exploration of the problematic positionality of women within patriarchal society. The Introduction sets out and contextualises this theoretical framework, the particular significance of transgression to socio-political marginalisation being illustrated by reference to the work of post-Bakhtinian theorists such as Stallybrass and White. The importance of the precarious threshold positionality offered by the adoption of fantastic hesitancy on the part of the woman writer is also introduced. The three main textual sections each focuses upon four novels by contemporary women writers, taking as their themes women and the domestic, women and nightmare and women who are "larger than life" respectively. In each case the intervention of the fantastic is seen to be inseparable from the problematic relationship between prohibition and transgression, a relationship largely set up and explored through a preoccupation with enclosure. Throughout there is a presiding concern with the importance of paradox and ambivalence as a radical literary and political strategy. To this end the concluding section sets this thesis within a feminist fantasy framework, arguing that the problematic dynamism of the fantastic offers far more transformative possibilities than the "closed-system" of the feminist utopia. The originality of this thesis resides in the fact that it adds two further dimensions to existing perspectives on the fantastic. By fully integrating the concept of transgression as a narrative positionality as well as a category of content, it aims to extricate fantasy criticism from the bounds of genre theory. In addition, by combining this with a variety of feminist theoretical perspectives and by taking as its focus contemporary women's fiction, this thesis provides something still not otherwise available: a full-length feminist reading of the application of the fantastic to contemporary women's fiction.

The thesis posits that the radical transformation in Carol Shields's writing during the 1980s, moving from rather conservative realist fiction to postmodernist metafiction, was influenced by practices and theories which reject 'totalising' concepts of the self, of language and of empirical reality, instead favouring models of thought that point up the cultural constructedness of all three.

My aim in this thesis is to examine Louis Zukofsky's poetry in relation to his stated objectivist principles using those principles and Zukofsky's unpublished statements as a test for his theory and practice. The first chapter introduces Zukofsky's poetic principles and examines the relationship between his work and Ezra Pound's Imagism. My aim here is to put the origins of Zukofsky's principles into an appropriate context, disputing the idea of the `objectivist' as a temporarily revivified Imagist. Chapter II examines Zukofsky's earliest verse, both umpublished juvenilia and the few early poems retained for publication. These poems all predate the `objectivist' statements and a comparison is made between these poems which anticipate the poet's later technique and those which do not. The chapter culminates in a study of `Poem beginning `The'' as the first identifiably objectivist work. Chapter III is concerned with Zukofsky as editor and critic since it was in this dual role that he first expressed his poetic theory. The principles of this theory are examined in detail here and the relationship between Zukofsky's poetry and criticism closely defined. The fourth chapter examines Zukofsky's shorter poems in the light of the critical framework provided by the `objectivist principles'. Individual poems are closely examined to reveal the `mechanism' of `objectivist' poetry and to facilitate a reading of Zukofsky's long poem `A'. Chapters V and VI are concerned with the two halves of `A'. Attention is given to the poem's detailed composition and to its overall structure and movement. This analysis is guided by the overriding question of the application of `objectivist princples' to a long rather than a short poem. The final chapter reviews Zukofsky's sustained critical idiom in both poetry and prose criticism and concludes that this idiom provides a flexible but principled and consistent framework for his life's work.

This thesis re-evaluates the work of the poet Anne Sexton (1928-1974), concentrating, in particular, on the indeterminacies, contradictions and aporia which it finds to be characteristic of her ostensibly frank and self-revelatory writing. The study is based on a close textual analysis of Sexton's writing, is informed by oststructuralist theories, and is sustained by an examination and discussion of archive collections of her previously unpublished papers. In seeking an understanding of Sexton's poetics, the thesis identifies and interrogates the strategies of denial and obfuscation apparent in her own explication of her work - principally, by scrutiny of the unpublished, and previously unresearched, drafts of a series of lectures which she delivered in 1972. Chapters One and Two consider the origins of 'confessional' or - Sexton's preferred term - 'personal' poetry and reassess her place within contemporary poetry. They suggest that Sexton's writing is engaged in a process of negotiation and contestation, both with the boundaries and expectations of confessionalism, and with the strictures of T. S. Eliot's theory of 'impersonality'. In support of these arguments, Chapter Two offer a reading of Sexton's little-known poem, 'Hurry Up Please It's Time', alongside its intertext, Eliot's The Waste Land. Chapter Three reassesses received views of the supposedly beneficial interrelationship between confessional speaker and reader. It examines Sexton's appropriation of dramatic masks and personae and her use of metaphors of striptease and prostitution, and suggests that these are employed simultaneously to appease and to repel an intrusive audience. Similarly, Chapters Four and Five trace Sexton's problematisation of two previously-accepted tenets of confessional poetry: its status as autobiography and its truthfulness, drawing attention to the techniques employed in order to give the impression of both. Chapter Six considers Sexton's problematic engagement with a language which is not malleable, transparent, and referential but, rather, is experienced as uncooperative and occlusive. Finally, the thesis recuperates Sexton from the common charge of narcissism, arguing that it is the writing, rather than the poet, which is self-reflexive and self-conscious. In this respect, it concludes that her work - perhaps unexpectedly - anticipates many of the tendencies of postmodernist writing.

This thesis explores whether plot and story damage a literary writer’s attempt to describe ‘reality’. It is in two parts: a critical analysis followed by a complete novel. The first third of the thesis is an essay which, after distinguishing between story and plot, responds to writer critics who see plot as damaging to a writer’s attempt to describe ‘the real’. This section looks at fiction by Jane Austen, Henry James, Jeffrey Eugenides, Julian Barnes, Tom McCarthy and Zadie Smith, against a critical background of James Wood, Roland Barthes, David Shields and others including Viktor Shklovsky and Iris Murdoch. It then examines my own novel which makes up the second part of the thesis and looks at whether my advocacy of plot has compromised my literary ambitions, and to what extent my advocacy of plot prioritises the commercial over the artistic. The discussion is set against the extra context of my eight years working as a commissioning editor of literary fiction. It is also set against the process of being edited by a publisher who brought to bear commercial imperatives as well as artistic ones on the redrafting process. The second part of the thesis is the novel, My Biggest Lie, due for publication in April 2014.

This thesis, ‘Broadcasting Modernity’ is an account of sound technology, namely wireless, as a feature of early twentieth century literature. If modernism is a historical-specific movement, and language a repository of time, then the advent of radio broadcasting cannot be ignored - a medium which inscribed itself into the pages of books. The present study is original, in that it establishes radio as a portal through which to regard the wider cultural mentality, cross-cutting, or ‘crashing’ the written word, and thus producing the effect of two wires instantly reacting to one another. Therefore, just as radio may be accessed through literature, certain texts between 1900-1945 may be reinterpreted acoustically. To qualify this argument, a select group of writers are discussed individually, and at length – figures who allowed radio to affect their creative output, at various levels, in a period of rapid technological change.

This thesis is a comparative study of three overtly unrelated authors. Thomas Mann, Kafka and Cernuda, setting them in a European context of a 'crisis of faith' where doubt in the existence of an ordered universe ultimately governed by God is becoming widespread. Rather than a philosophical or theological study, however, this thesis concentrates on the way that this loss of faith finds its expression in literature. After a brief introduction, setting the context, the focus is first of all on the way that faith in God (or some kind of Absolute) and order generally becomes lost, and the consequences of that loss in individual lives. Not surprisingly, this loss of order is grounds for despair, but what then manifests itself is a desire to find order once again. It is this desire for order which then provides the focus for the whole of the rest of the thesis. There is a desire both for absolute order and for order in the material world. Chapter two concentrates on the quest for absolute order, which would give genuine ontological security and a sense that there is ultimate meaning and purpose in the cosmos. This quest does however fail, but there are other quests for order, in both 'love' and erotic impulses and in art. The problems however continue, for 'love' is dominated by a sexuality which causes more chaos than it does order, and at its best is only transient. Similarly, art, while at times positive, at least temporarily, can divorce the artist from life and can bring him into contact with a darker, more 'chaotic' side of existence. There is also the desire to write literary works themselves, but this has problems of its own: the fluid nature of meaning and the fate of literature once it has left the control of the writer.

This study aims to establish the identity of the Saudi novel, which has been hitherto neglected by scholars whether Saudi or non-Saudi; to consider the emergence and development of tho Saudi novel during the past sIxty years (1930-90) and the reasons for these; to investigate the peculiarities of the Saudi novel as well as the influence on it of the International novel, and the novel in other Arabic-speaking countries; to examine the factors that have led to the growth of the novel as a literary form in Saudi Arabia since the fifties; and appraise the 'artistic" development that has taken place In the novel itself, and in individual novelists since that time.

This thesis is a response to the critics of the pioneering novelist Edgar Mittelholzer whose second novel was instrumental in paving the way for other Caribbean novelists during the 1950s. Critics of Mittelholzer have accused him of fascism, racism, an unhealthy interest in sexually sensationalist topics and death. He has until the recent centenary of his birth been marginalised and understudied. The first chapter of this thesis outlines the areas of study that have thus far been focused on and explores the underlying methods and theoretical framework of this thesis. The second chapter focuses on the author’s background, career and contribution to the Caribbean. The third explores the genesis of Mittelholzer’s creativity with a view to revealing how intertextuality is key to an understanding of his novels. It also discusses his creative use of the Middle Eastern notion of the Jinnee. The fourth chapter offers a critical analysis of The Life and Death of Sylvia and demonstrates how Mittelholzer employed the themes of sex, race and death. The fifth Chapter establishes that the texts of Yogi Ramacharaka were his primary source of inspiration and that Mittelholzer’s novels can be best understood in terms of the Oriental Occultist’s teachings. The sixth chapter explores Mittelholzer’s racial identity and finds that his mixed ancestry was a key source of creative inspiration. The final chapter concludes that further research is needed into his work and that an exploration of the intertextual references serves to clarify the author’s objectives.

This thesis explores representations of gender violence in the works of Dacia Maraini, tracing a pathway from early novels in which her protagonists suffer predominantly non-physical oppression, to later works which foreground victims of more extreme bodily violence. Taking a chronological approach, it contextualises her work and situates individual texts in their broader cultural framework, highlighting the changes and continuities that these differing backgrounds have provoked. Maraini’s unique position as both author and social commentator is similarly established, with the interplay of her narrative and feminist commitment emerging as a central concern. Fundamental to the thesis is the figure of the female victim, through whom motifs that are recurrent in Maraini’s oeuvre are identified and analysed. The thesis proposes two main lines of argument. Firstly, that there is a change in the way in which Maraini represents gender violence: from signifying one manifestation of women’s overall oppression under patriarchy, it becomes the dominant theme in a number of texts, presented as a specific phenomenon to be understood and exposed. Secondly, that whilst in many of her early texts her protagonists develop strategies for resisting their abusive situations, Maraini’s later female victims demonstrate little agency and, moreover, appear to submit to the violence they undergo.