The thesis demonstrates the extent to which the sixteenth-century allegorical epic poem, The Faerie Queene, engages with early modern theories of salvation. Much has been written about Spenser’s consideration of theological ideas in Book I and this has prompted scholars to speculate about the poet’s own doctrinal inclinations. However, little has been written about the ways in which the remaining books in the poem also explore Christian ideas of atonement, grace and damnation. This study advances Spenserian scholarship by stressing the soteriological dimension of books II, III, IV and VI. It considers how the poem’s doctrinal ambiguity would have meant that Spenser’s readers would have been able to interpret the poem in terms of the different schools of thought on the conditionality, or otherwise, of election and reprobation. As the thesis suggests, these particular books were alive to the doctrinal disagreements of the period, and explore the complex theological positions and divisions that existed at the time. By shedding light on the religious tenor of these remaining books, the study has implications for our sense of how the poem would have prompted sixteenth century readers to reflect on the means of their own salvation.

Desire and pursuit of the whole is the theme which animates all Rose Macaulay s fiction. Her literature-rich childhood nourished both an interest in mysticism and an ambition to write poems. It is in her verse that we first see emerging her careful symbolism of quest, her obsession with pilgrims who seek the elusive goal of insight perfectly achieved. The fascination is evident in her six earliest, image-studded novels in each of which she traces a protagonist s development from innocence to maturity. The multiple symbolisms of mysticism, Platonism, Hermeticism and Christianity are juggled to produce a complex iconographical subtext to the stories of growth towards perception. While Rose Macaulay s novels of the First World War period change sharply in tone, veering towards a new mood of pragmatism, the theme of the pursuit of the whole remains clear. Now, however characters are shown realising that the "whole" is an unrealisable dream which they must, in the interests of good sense, decline to chase. They must limit their quests to the practically achievable. Satire lightens her most well-known fiction of the inter-war years, allowing her to complicate her work with the new elements of ambiguity and irony. Still convinced that the individual s impulse to search for wholeness is essential, she now combines here conviction with a satirical perception that the quest is pointless. Her field widens in these intricate, paradoxical novels and it becomes evident that her interest in the personal "pursuits of the whole" of her characters is paralleled by her anxious interest in the quest of the post-war world itself for civilisation.

The creative dark is a term by Doris Lessing to describe the process of writing. It is used here also to describe writing about subjects that are commonly held to be unknowable: namely, writing fiction about the Holocaust, trauma and autism. Yesterday’s Shadow is a novel, which explores a link between autism and the Holocaust. Bruno Bettelheim, a psychologist, was interred in Dachau and Buchenwald in 1938 – 1939. His observations on human behaviour in the camp led him to hypothesise that autistic children were like the Musselmänner in the camps, they had withdrawn from the world through lack of hope. Bettelheim furthermore claimed that autistic children had no hope because the parents did not love them. This came to be known as the ‘refrigerator mother’ hypothesis. The novel considers the differences between the developmental disorder of autism and autistic-like withdrawal, which may happen as a result of trauma. Several issues arose during the writing of the novel and these are addressed in the commentary. The first of these is memory, in particular how trauma is remembered. Following a brief outline of psychological research in this area, there is a discussion of how memory and trauma are treated in Yesterday’s Shadow and in the discredited memoir by Binjamin Wilkomirski, Fragments. The second factor concerns women’s experience of the Holocaust and whether there is a case for stating that women’s experiences were different from those of men. This is discussed in relation to Yesterday’s Shadow and Lovely Green Eyes, a novel by Arnošt Lustig. Finally, there is an exploration of how the Holocaust is represented and the ethical issues surrounding this. One significant theme is a need for historical accuracy when writing about the Holocaust. A recent children’s novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, by John Boyne is discussed in this light.

This thesis is a study of the Glasgow novel from its beginnings in the early nineteenth century till the present day. After a brief look at the issues raised by Scottish industrial fiction in general we go on to approach the Glasgow genre in the light of the themes and groupings it has thrown up, and in doing so a chronological history emerges indirectly. We find no all embracing theory, but a number of significant points are raised. Foremost stands a continuing split between a vision of the city as an industrial centre and, conversely, as a centre of culture. Chapter One shows the novelist's view of materialism and ambition in the Victorian city and how this changes as we enter the twentieth century. The next Chapter examines the Glasgow examples of kailyard fiction. Chapter Three then traces the increasing awareness of lower life in the novel and the technical approaches it involves, and the next Chapter looks in detail at an offshoot of this - the gang novel. Chapter Five, on politics, gives the lie to the myth of Red Clyde si d e, and confirms the split approach to the city. Chapter Six views the Glasgow novel through its. apprehension of religion and its replacement as the genre ages by an interest in the individual, Chapter Seven looks at the many different manifestations of pride associated with the city, while Eight and Nine deal with the peculiar contributions of respectively women and children, Chapter Ten shows how the city's past has evoked various responses - some superficial others strongly felt - and Chapters Eleven and Twelve give a detailed look at the two most important writers to have worked on the city. Finally the Glasgow genre is set in context - against the wider background of both Scottish and English regional fiction.

The investigation of Fitzgerald's equivocal success, of the decisive change in Britain's recent cultural perspective, involves raising questions around canon-formation, the consolidation of a national identity, strategies of writing, and the politics of reading. I have found it necessary to examine aspects of theme, form, genre and context in Fitzgerald's writing, focusing successively on convention and subversion in her work. This 'doubleness' has generated the two-part structure of the present thesis, the first book-length study of Fitzgerald's work. Part One examines the canonical literariness of Fitzgerald's novels through studying literary conventions and thematic preoccupations. It aims to elucidate Fitzgerald's fiction through the tradition of liberal humanism. The canon of English literature is more than a settled corpus, it involves a set of prescribed criteria which, I argue, is the cornerstone of Fitzgerald's literary success as a novelist, biographer, and literary critic. Contemporary British fiction has undergone a focal sea-change seen in its preoccupation with linguistic experimentation, typographical innovation, and topical engagement with current issues. Fitzgerald's fiction is out of step with current critical paradigms, and thus tends to get caught between the canonical and the contemporary. Part Two explores the impact of postmodern approaches on Fitzgerald's fiction, and examines the ways in which age, race, gender, identity and the nation have impinged on her writing. The scope of this study, therefore, comprises gender, writing, and the culture industry. In view of the scarcity of criticism on Fitzgerald's work, and apart from the more obvious critical concerns regarding authorship and periodisation, this thesis draws on a variety of critical perspectives in order to achieve a historical and contextual understanding of Fitzgerald's fiction and literary career in relation to contemporary British fiction.

In the light of Bakhtinian theories, this research focuses on Ulysses as a postcolonial modernist text, in which Joyce appropriates modernist aesthetic strategies to serve the purpose of narrating the nation. Bakhtin is helpful here, not only because his theories serve especially well to explain the meeting and intersection of social, political, and cultural forces in periods of transition, but also because his attempt to establish a “historical poetics” helps both to explore discourse as social/individual ideology constituting the text and to interpret the dialogue interaction between sociohistorical forces and textual representation. As Bakhtin seeks to think through the issue of alterity and accentuates the all-importance of dialogue construction, his thought is useful for interpretation of Joyce-s endeavour to turn the hostility of binary opposition into polyphonic orchestration of heteroglossia. Mediating between such binary oppositions as Self and Other, private and public, inside and outside, the Joycean text demonstrates the importance of engagement with the past to transform its nightmarish impact into creative power for the composition of a postcolonial history; the significance of incorporating and negotiating dichotomies in a triangular structure and recognizing their coexistence for the constitution of a postcolonial subjectivity; and the consequence of integrating nationalist projects and cosmopolitan dimensions for the construction of a postcolonial nation. While Bakhtin sheds light on Joyce, Joyce complements what Bakhtin leaves unsaid, enlarging the scope and implication of Bakhtinian theories. The dialogue between the Irish author and the Russian thinker results in mutual enlightenment. The introductory chapter surveys the relationship between Joyce, Bakhtin, and postcolonial modernism, concentrating on the applicability of Bakhtinian concepts to the Joycean text. From the notion of the chronotope, the first chapter examines Stephen’s ambivalent attitude toward history, and focuses on his transformation of the past in the present time-space for the construction of a divergent and ongoing postcolonial future. The next chapter explores Bloom’s relation to colonial Irish society and inquiries into his shaping of an architectonic self, which results from the reaccentuation of public discourse and the mediation between individualism and collectivism. In the light of dialogism and grotesque realism, the third chapter deals with Molly’s dialogue answers to Bloom’s proposal of liberation, and investigates how her androgynously grotesque body transmits the external body, through her sexual body, into the textual body which is “Penelope.” The concluding chapter focuses on the interillumination of Joyce and Bakhtin: while Bakhtin helps refigure a postcolonial modernist Joyce, Joyce triangulates the binary structure of dialogue, underscoring the significance of trialogue as potential technique for postcolonial construction.

The thesis discusses the subject of time as dealt with in the writings of Edwin Muir, exploring the ways in which his poetry, novels, and critical writings articulate a range of perspectives regarding the nature of time and its relation to human experience. Following the adaptation of ideas through Muir’s career, a trajectory is traced from his early writings in which time is seen as a destructive power antithetical to life through to the celebration of mortality in his late writings. Integral to this development was his persistent interrogation of the relationship between time and eternity. Identifying the important role of Muir’s autobiographical method, this thesis begins by exploring his desire to obtain an objective view of human life by establishing a critical distance in his writings between the subject being presented and the imagination that presents it. To this end, his creative writings often incorporate myths, biblical allegories, heraldic symbolism, and surreal abstractions to present archetypal or timeless events and situations. In doing so, Muir is seen drawing on an array of literary and philosophical influences, many of which relate to his adolescence and formative adulthood in Glasgow. His rural childhood in Orkney and his early contact with Presbyterian and Evangelical Christianity made a lasting impression on his imagination with the resultant preoccupation with Eden and the Fall being dominant features of his poetry. Often dealt with in an abstract way in his poetry, Eden is frequently associated with his childhood on Wyre in his autobiographical writings, with the Fall, in Muir’s theorizing, forming the moment at which time becomes of relevance to humanity. Critically under-appreciated as ephemera and juvenilia, Muir’s earliest prose and poetry in The New Age magazine between 1913 and 1923 convey a strong sense of his desire to engage with the popular debates of the day regarding contemporary literary and social matters. For this reason, a significant amount of space has been given in this thesis to allow these writings to be re-evaluated; not just as portents of his later work, but also as important contributions to the vibrant journal and magazine culture of the period. Offering substantive detail to sketch the relevant biographical context, the essays, critical monographs and volumes of poetry are discussed chronologically and with reference to each other to allow the development of Muir’s ideas to be seen as an organic evolution rather than as a series of philosophical epiphanies. However, the significance of Muir’s reconciliation to Christianity in 1939 is highlighted as the single most important creative breakthrough of his mature adulthood. The extensive range of Muir’s critiques of Scottish and European culture, and his essays on the relationship between literature and society more generally, underline his position as a modernist writer immersed in the affairs of his time. Through detailing Muir’s creative and philosophical struggles with himself and modernity (which he felt he had fallen into through a time-accident) he is seen repeatedly reaffirming his commitment to exploring the nature of time and its meaning for human society.

This thesis is divided into three parts – Word, Body and Transubstantiation. Collectively these are the central motifs of Catholicism’s Eucharist. According to Scripture, Christ is the word made flesh. The Eucharist recalls his words and actions at the Last Supper when he shares bread and wine with his disciples and tells them that they are his body and blood. In the Catholic faith partaking of wine and bread during the communion of mass is believed to be a partaking of the real presence of Christ. By consuming the body (bread) and blood (wine) of Christ, the participating community symbolise their collective belonging in and to Christ. The Catholic Eucharist consequently explodes difference in a utopic leap of faith whereby transubstantiation conflates and reconciles language and physical being, sub specie eternitatis. Whilst it is a religious formation, a relationship between word and body and their overlap also maps into preoccupations in recent philosophical and cultural theory which bear on Seamus Heaney’s poetry. Rather than converging word and body through a utopic leap of faith (transubstantiation), poststructuralism (following Saussure) posits an irreconcilable interstice between signifier and signified and (in the language of Derrida) infinitely defers meaning. Psychoanalysis (following Lacan) suggests desire is a consequence of the space between signifier and signified. Anthropological and sociological body theories (following Foucault) propose a disparity between corporeality and discursive constructions of bodies. Questions of a persistent gap in secular philosophy are therefore opposed to a sacred structure (converging word and body in a utopic leap of faith) that is most clearly marked and symbolised in the Catholic Eucharist. By appropriating this religious structure and these cultural theories, an ongoing secularisation of belonging in Heaney’s poetry emerges.

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.

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.