This thesis examines the depiction of the country estate in English women’s poetry, 1650-1750. The poems discussed belong to the country house genre, work with or adapt its conventions and tropes, or belong to what may be categorised as sub-genres of the country house poem. The country house estate was the power base of the early modern world, authorizing social status, validating political power and providing an economic dominance for the ruling elite. This thesis argues that the depiction of the country estate was especially pertinent for a range of female poets. Despite the suggestive scholarship on landscape and place and the emerging field of early modern women’s literary studies and an extensive body of critical work on the country house poem, there have been to date no substantial accounts of the role of the country estate in women’s verse of this period. In response, this thesis has three main aims. Firstly, to map out the contours of women’s country house poetry – taking full account of the chronological scope, thematic and formal diversity of the texts, and the social and geographic range of the poets using the genre. Secondly, to interrogate the formal and thematic characteristics of women’s country house poetry, looking at the appropriation and adaptation of the genre. Thirdly, to situate the selected poetry both within and against the extensive and formally published male-authored canon and the more general literary and historical contexts of the early modern period. Across these related strands of discussion, the study has two important implications for our understanding of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century poetry: it adds to our knowledge of women’s poetic practices of the period and extends and complicates our understanding of the country house genre. Each chapter highlights a particular engagement with the genre responding to a complex of historical contexts, literary trends and personal circumstance. Chapter one will explore the contexts which prompt the emergence of the country house poem and the shape and detail of the genre, 1600–1650. It also examines where the specific gendered contexts of women’s writing practices are relevant to the selection of texts. Chapter two focuses on the thematic and formal interplay in Katherine Austen’s manuscript miscellany ‘Book M’ and role the country house genre plays in exploring and negotiating women’s relationship to property. Chapter three shares many of the same historical and literary contexts but from a different religio-political standpoint and focuses on Lucy Hutchinson’s manuscript collection ‘Elegies’. Chapter four examines the appropriation and re-positioning of the country house genre in the poetry of Anne Finch and Jane Barker, arguing that as the post- Restoration period began, the motivation to explore the country house as a symbol of legitimate political power, a location and symbol of retirement and retreat and the site of financial and cultural investment did not wane, but was reworked by Finch and Barker to explore their political sympathies for the Stuart monarchy. Chapter five explores the use of the country house genre by poets associated with Whig political sympathies: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Anne Ingram. Largely unaffected by socio-economic or political marginalisation, both Montagu and Ingram enter into a public, and politically inflected, debate on the importance of taste. Chapter six explores two writers, Mary Leapor and Mary Chandler, who belong to an emerging body of writers of mercantile or labouring class. The discussion will focus on Leapor’s ‘Crumble-Hall’ and Chandler’s A Description of Bath and the contexts of consumerism and tourism to which both poems respond.

This thesis examines the influence of Christian interpretative frameworks on three New Woman novels: Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm (1883), Amy Levy's Reuben Sachs (1888) and Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins (1893). It shows how Christian narratives were used to plot women's civic and sexual emancipation in the decade leading up to the naming of the 'New Woman' in the literary marketplace of the mid-1890s. This thesis arises out of an interest in women's theology and how this intersects with new feminist forms of women's fiction. It argues that, by the end of the nineteenth century, a theological apparatus enabled women novelists to plot female subjectivity outside of a Christian devotional context. Christian themes, such as self-sacrifice, conversion and prophecy, provided New Woman authors with a shared framework within which to nuance their ideological differences. Chapter one considers faith, doubt and the Woman Question in Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm. This chapter shows how she used the high form of spiritual biography to plot women's civic and sexual struggle. Chapter two considers how the Christian structures of late-nineteenth century feminist thinking and Jewish conversion intersect in Amy Levy's Reuben Sachs. This chapter focuses on an original account of the Jewish heroine's reading of Swinburne's Poems and Ballads at the centre of Levy's novel as a scene of sexual and cultural revelation. Chapter three examines Christian tropes in sex education debates of the mid-1890s and how these are plotted in Sarah Grand's The Heavenly Twins. This chapter is concerned with the religious contours of social purity campaigning and how they impact on questions of literary form. The thesis concludes by considering more widely the effect of a fragmentation of Christian culture on fictional representation of women's social and intellectual transition in the final years of the century.

The primary aim of this thesis is to bring Allan Ramsay (1684-1748) and James Thomson (1700-1748) into close critical contact for the first time and, in so doing, deconstruct the paradigm of opposition which has previously attached to these two contemporaries. The thesis posits that the separation of Ramsay and Thomson has been effected, retrospectively, by the twentieth-century Scottish critical tradition. The narrow, cultural essentialism exhibited by this body of scholarship has been effectively challenged in recent decades by the work of Gerard Carruthers, and revisionary ‘Four Nations’ approaches to late eighteenth-century British literature have done much to reinstate the importance of what were previously viewed as marginal or peripheral literary locations. Ramsay and Thomson, however, have never been fully united in literary and cultural terms. This thesis demonstrates that Ramsay and Thomson shared, not only a chronological context, but also a creative context informed by a reciprocal engagement with the work of the other and posits that the relationship between these two lowland Scottish writers can be conceived of in terms of a sustained mutual gaze. James Thomson remains entrenched within an English literary canon, despite the efforts of Mary Jane Scott to reclaim him for his native country. Conversely, Allan Ramsay remains firmly rooted in his native Scottish soil as the father of the vernacular revival and the epitome of literary and cultural resistance to a supposed English cultural hegemony in the wake of the 1707 Act of Union between Scotland and England. It is true that Ramsay’s and Thomson’s creative trajectories exemplify the literary choices and cultural paths available to a Scottish writer in the years immediately following the Union of Parliaments, but to set them in creative opposition as a result of these choices is a critical commonplace which this thesis challenges. Thomson spent the greater part of his literary career in and around London, whilst Ramsay remained in Edinburgh until his death; clearly the corpora of these two writers were conditioned by the locations of their production. Hence, the thematic structure of this thesis relies on the notion of location, both physical and literary. The first two chapters of this thesis, ‘Edinburgh’ and ‘London’, illustrate the urban contexts of both writers; in so doing they suggest that a mutual gaze was sustained, not only between Ramsay and Thomson, but that a similarly reciprocal relationship and network of influence existed between the literary and cultural centres of Edinburgh and London. The third chapter of this thesis, ‘Nation’, traces the fluid and nuanced literary responses to the concept of nation in a period when national and literary boundaries were in a state of flux. The fourth and final chapter of this thesis, ‘Land’, explores the shifting aesthetic landscape of the period and, with an emphasis on mode and genre, demonstrates Ramsay’s and Thomson’s original contribution to an emerging British poetic, elucidated by an extended analysis of their poetry of place.

This work considers Karl Rahner’s theology of the person as hearer through a critical engagement with Julia Kristeva’s post-structuralist notion of the speaking subject. This offers an experimental exploration of contemporary theological understanding of subjectivity, with specific reference to ideas of relationality, and with a particular interest in the possibility of dialogue with post-structuralist ideas. From separate disciplines, with different tools and to different effects, Rahner and Kristeva reject the modernist cast of the human self. They demonstrate a common desire to explore subjectivity as a notion that has been problematised. In examining the person as hearer and the speaking subject together we discover a surprising number of areas of coherence as well as those of fundamental divergence. To this end we consider our theorisits’ pre-supposed arenas for human subjectivity, their epistemologies, and the importance each gives to language and otherness. We also examine how they relate intra- and inter-relationality. For Kristeva this involves a consideration of notions of the M/Other, the semiotic and the stranger in society. With Rahner we consider the social Trinity, the self-alienation of symbolism and the concept of neighbour-love. We suggest here that Rahner both pre-empts aspects of current theological interest in subjectivity and provides important resources that are especially useful in relating theology to post-structuralist notions.

This thesis is comprised of two components: a creative work of fiction and a critical analysis of the fiction through a discussion of craft and creative influence. The creative section, the novel The Gospel of Something or Other, is a formally experimental work that explores authenticity - of both narrative and voice - authorial identity, the performativity of grief and sincerity, and the aesthetic function of narratalogical failure. The critical section of the thesis, Critical Mass, analyses the work of David Foster Wallace and James Wood in relation to the aforementioned fiction, discussing aspects of craft most relevant to the novel: the function of comedy and the function of manipulation. The critical piece investigates the extent to which influence can be identified in the creative process and the unstable relationship between critical interpretation and authorial intent.

Wallace Stevens was profoundly affected by Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God and his poetry reflects an ongoing struggle to understand what it means to be a poet in an age of disbelief. Although Steven’s early poetry suggests that this loss of belief created a sense of crisis in the poet, his later work indicates a full acceptance, even an embracing, of this loss, recognising it as the inspiration for poesis. The thesis considers Stevens alongside of such thinkers as Nietzsche and (the later) Heidegger and shows how the poet came to regard the shaking of the metaphysical foundations as a gift offering the possibility for poetry.

This essay begins by claiming that much conventional usage of fictional literature as historical evidence is inadequate. Rejecting any view of literature as passive 'reflector' of reality, it suggests that literature should be seen as an active cultural product. To develop this idea, several areas of cultural and literary theory are addressed: literature is seen as functioning within the overall context of written and spoken language: as part of an ideological system continuously concerned with its own production and reproduction. The example of mid-Victorian Britain is used to illustrate this assertion. The place of reading and writing within sections of this society are examined. They are seen to be the context of a literary culture based around the periodical press: fictions are examined as part of that literary culture. Fictional literature is thus seen as a connected part of a system whose functioning was to produce and reproduce the culture and ideology of the time, and specifically with the ideological compromise between traditional aristocratic/gentry and middle class cultures which occurred at that time. The final chapter summarises the essay itself and comments on recent literature in the field of Victorian history. It demonstrates the need for a history of ideological change which examines, as here, the mechanisms producing that change, claiming that such study would not only inform history, but would be of much use in understanding current major social problems. The final claim illustrates the originality of an investigation whose approach both to cultural theory and to cultural history is, while comparable with much current work in the field of cultural studies, of itself unique in both subject-matter and emphasis.

This thesis considers the works of six major literary figures in the context of their engagement with the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum. These writers are, in order of analysis, Edwin Morgan, J.K. Rowling, Liz Lochhead, Alasdair Gray, Kathleen Jamie, and John Burnside. Each has produced a significant literary oeuvre which is examined here in relation to each other's work and to the Referendum debate. The multifaceted relationship between literature and politics is investigated through the lens of the Referendum, utilising these six figures as interrelated case studies. Chapter One explores Edwin Morgan and J.K. Rowling in relation to each other and the concept of nationalism as manifested in the Referendum period. Chapter Two focuses on postcolonialism and the work of Alasdair Gray and Liz Lochhead in that same context. The third and final chapter is concerned with Kathleen Jamie's and John Burnside's preoccupation with ecopoetics, and how that concern overlapped with Referendum discourse. This thesis provides new readings of these six writers in the context of the Referendum. It sets out to establish that, while their published literary works are often connected to the spectrum of stances these writers took regarding the Referendum, these works need to be considered with respect to the nuanced attention all six had previously given to key themes of the Referendum debate in the decades leading up to that political moment.

This thesis is written to promote and pursue an understanding of lesbian fandom and its function on the Internet. It will demonstrate how a particular television text Xena: Warrior Princess (X: WP) and a dedicated online fandom „xenasubtexttalk‟ (XSTT) of diverse lesbian fan membership gained empowerment and agency through their fan practices. Since the screening of the television fantasy series X: WP (1995-2001), there has been a marked increase in academic enquiry into lesbian fan culture on the Internet. This thesis contributes to the lesbian spectatorship of fandom with a specific interest in online fandom. This research suggests there are many readings of X: WP and the dedicated websites set up to discuss the series have increased during and post the series broadcast period. This study explores the contradictions, the gaps, and the differences between fan responses to the series, especially the lesbian discourse and fan fiction that developed during and after the television series ended. This investigation suggests that fan scholarship can obtain a new insight into lesbian Internet fan practices as a virtual space producing new lesbian fan online identities and discourses that challenge traditional forms of lesbian fandom. It does this by presenting three distinct, significant and interrelated layers of lesbian online textual engagement. While interrelated, these layers are separate and important as they each reveal new lesbian online fan performances of identity that challenge traditional performances of reading and writing habits of lesbian fans.

This thesis examines the performance history of Shakespeare focusing on those productions performed as a period analogue of the nineteen-thirties. It engages with the material in two ways. It first attempts to locate influences that have led to the development of this style of performance, finding correlations with both theatrical and televisual drama. It then examines the productions as performed, focusing on the construction of scenography and actor performances. Throughout the analysis, this thesis engages with shifts in the representation of the historical past on both stage and screen.