Valerius Maximus situates his ninth and final book (henceforth referred as V9) in clear contrast to the rest of his output by adopting an apotreptic approach and focusing entirely on 'vitia'. This makes a break from the dispersive manner in which 'vitia' had hitherto been treated by different authors across a myriad of works, nor was V9’s structure replicated in the same manner by any other Roman author since V. Worthy of note is also how V treats his subject exclusively in a single book, creating 'intensity' as a technique 'per se' to shock the reader into making them fully aware – beyond all reasonable doubt – how pernicious and dangerous 'vitia' are. At the heart of V9 is the ubiquity of vice that transcends ethnicity. In fact V brings domestic and external 'exempla' closer, vice is inherent in life itself; the characters inhabiting both the domestic and external sections are not opposites, but are presented as culpable of the same vices (although sometimes certain 'exempla' are graded worse than others).

This thesis examines female political imprisonment during the early part of Spain’s Franco regime through the life narratives by Carlota O’Neill, Tomasa Cuevas, Juana Doña, and Soledad Real published during the transition. It proposes the foregrounding notion of the ‘No/Body’ to describe the literary, social, and historical eradication and exemplification of the female prisoner as deviant. Using critical theories of genre, gender and sexuality, sociology and philosophy, and human geography, it discusses the concepts of subject, abject, spatiality, habitus, and the mirror to analyse the intersecting, influential factors in the (re)production of dominant discourses within Francoist and post-Francoist society that are interrogated throughout the corpus. In coining the concept of the ‘No/Body’ as a methodological approach, a narrative form, and a socio-political subject position, this thesis repositions the marginal and the (in)visible as an essential aspect of female carcerality. Read through this concept, the narratives begin to dismantle and rewrite dominant narratives of gender and genre for the female prisoner in such a way that the texts foreground the ‘No/Body’. This thesis thus presents the narrative corpus of lost testimonies as a form of radical textual and political practice within contemporary Spanish historiography.

Dada is often dismissed as an anti-art movement that engaged with a limited and merely destructive theoretical impetus. French Existentialism is often condemned for its perceived quietist implications. However, closer analysis reveals a preoccupation with philosophy in the former and with art in the latter. Neither was nonsensical or meaningless, but both reveal a rich individualist ethics aimed at the amelioration of the individual and society. It is through their combined analysis that we can view and productively utilise their alignment. Offering new critical aesthetic and philosophical approaches to Dada as a quintessential part of the European Avant-Garde, this thesis performs a reassessment of the movement as a form of (proto-)Existentialist philosophy. The thesis represents the first major comparative study of Dada and Existentialism, contributing a new perspective on Dada as a movement, a historical legacy, and a philosophical field of study. The five chapters analyse a range of Dada work through a lens of Existentialist literary and theoretical works across the themes of choice, alienation, responsibility, freedom and truth. These themes contribute to the overarching claim of the thesis that Dada and Existentialism both advocate the creation of a self that aims for authenticity through ambiguity.

The thesis is divided into two main parts. The first part deals with the theatre in general, the second with the Comedie-Francaise in particular. The first chapters explain the reasons for the immense popularity of the theatre in Paris during the years of occupation, how the theatre was organised and how racial policies and material difficulties affected productions. Relations between the theatre and the press are examined in some detail as are those plays which either supported the ideals of the ''Revolution Nationale" or attacked them; reference is also made to the important part that the theatre played in prisoner-of- war camps, the effect that censorship had on certain plays, and how popular Joan of Arc was with both the Germans and the French as a theatrical heroine. The second part opens with a brief history of the Comedie-Francaise during other wars, an explanation of the role that the public expected of their national theatre up to the time of invasion, details of changes in the theatre's repertoire as a result of the declaration of war and an examination of the attitudes of two administrators, Copeau and Vaudoyer, to the invaders. The following chapters deal with the more important productions which were put on at the theatre during the occupation, and in Particular with plays by Montherlant, Cocteau and Claudel. The conclusions drawn are that although the theatre was important to Parisians during the years 1940 - 1944, there is no real case to be made for a theatre of resistance or collaboration, and that the Comedie-Francaise was not significantly affected by the German invasion.

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This thesis positions itself between two general approaches to Shelley, that of appreciating his poetics, on the one hand, and that of valuing his philosophical vision, on the other. Duffy has noted that “Shelley’s epistemological and political maturity is no longer in any serious doubt”, and he goes on to demonstrate that Shelley’s radical tendencies remained undiminished throughout his lifetime. My findings support Duffy’s contention, and broaden it to include not only Shelley’s writings but the actions of his life. At the same time, O’Neill has highlighted the importance of exploring Shelley’s poetry for “its imaginative effect as much as its ideological or philosophical coherence”, and that approach will be utilized here as well. My hypothesis is that Shelley’s early fiction, in particular his two early novels, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, possess value and deserve attention, and can shed light on his poetics as well as his politics. Moreover, conducting my research has revealed issues of sexism, gender, class and feminism, all of which will be explored. The thesis consists of four main chapters, and four lyric interludes. Chapter one deals with the novels themselves, including their association with the Gothic genre, and offers specific details concerning the delineation and focus of the thesis. Chapter two examines the novels in light of Laon and Cythna or The Revolt of Islam, raising issues of domestic happiness and familial relationships. This lengthy poem, which is frequently neglected in close readings of Shelley, occupies a starring role here. Chapter three continues the examination of the novels as pertains The Cenci, in addition to grappling with matters raised in chapters one and two in a more general context. Finally, chapter four scrutinizes Prometheus Unbound in terms of the Gothic or Romance novels and suggests a new possible interpretation. Interspersed between and complementary to the main chapters is a series of chronologically arranged lyric interludes. This organizational structure, similar to Molière’s use of interludes in The Hypochondriac (Le Malade imaginaire), was adopted because these poems are shorter and can stand apart from one another, and it was deemed more appropriate to incorporate them with flexibility into the main argument, like a moon orbiting its planet, rather than grouping them together as a single unit.

James Joyce remains a logocentric figure, a position confirmed in his perceived relation to Dante within a patriarchal canonical lineage and its philosophical implications. Joyce also occupies this position within the writing and thought of Jacques Derrida, for whom his work then represents both the logos and its own deconstruction. In contrast, this thesis proposes that Joyce in fact is not a logocentric author, and that his writing is explicitly directed towards a deconstruction of the idea of the logos. This claim is advanced through the suggestion that there is in Joyce a deconstruction rather than a validation of the phonocentric linguistic theory and practice of Dante, and concomitantly of a patriarchal Joyce construed through that Dante. In this interrogation of the Dantean logos by Joyce’s writing the thesis then reads the Derridean view on Joyce and examines its investments, proposing that in it there are wider implications for a critical reading of Derrida’s work and for an understanding of his grammatology. It does so in three imagined papers on Joyce and Dante, an insert, a lecture and an essay. They constitute phantom artefacts in which to read deconstructively, and to read deconstruction, by unbinding Derrida’s Joyce. The first chapter is an imagined insert from Joyce and Dante into Of Grammatology and its first chapter, ‘The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’. In the folds of the insert it is proposed that Derrida cleaves to the idea of the book and is bound to it in Joyce. This binding initiates a retrospective reading of ‘The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing’ and of the wider grammatological opening; its implications are unfolded in the insert. By then unbinding the thread of a logocentric Dante in Joyce, the insert unbinds Joyce from the Derridean idea of the book and furthermore suggests that Joyce, read in the deconstruction of Dante, represents the closure of the book as imagined in that essay. Building upon the proposal of a Joycean closure of the book as unfolded in chapter one, the second chapter advances and outlines the shape of that closure in an imagined lecture by Joyce. The chapter follows the displaced letter a in Ulysses as it interrogates mimesis, tracing the development of a subject in différance. The lecture performs that deconstruction of mimesis and, in doing so, announces not the apotheosis but the death of the realist novel in Ulysses. The final chapter draws together the conclusions of the previous two chapters in an imagined essay that arche-writes ‘Two Words for Joyce’ as an example of its own thesis. It does so in a previously untraced Dantean connection, through a conversation between Joyce and Beckett on Dante that finds its way into Finnegans Wake and is archived in the two words Derrida extracts as the spur for his essay. The imagined essay brings together Derrida, Beckett and Joyce in Dante as a concatenation of pairs within the pair of essays; it also shadows another pair, the Derridean Joyce and his other from whom the imagined essay comes. It both performs a deconstructive reading of Derrida in ‘Two Words for Joyce’ and then, through that reading, more widely affirms a Derridean grammatology. The argument of the thesis as it has advanced through the three chapters is here brought to a conclusion, suggesting that in Joyce’s writing it can be proposed that the relationship of deconstructive reading to its own practice is mediated through literature; it also proposes what might be a relationship between deconstructive reading and literature beyond those consequences.

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.

The aim of the thesis has been to offer a comparative analysis of discourses within English and French travel writing in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in order to develop a more nuanced understanding of how the East was represented in this type of literature than that offered by Edward Said in his book Orientalism. The thesis considers the degree to which the latent racism and imperialism of western attitudes was universally expressed in this type of writing. While dates have been set for this study, the main reason for this has been to limit the vast body of archive material potentially relevant to its theoretical base. On occasion it has been necessary to step outside these dates in order to examine earlier eighteenth-century work or point out the relevance of this type of study to more recent western approaches to the East. The thesis shows a decline in the nineteenth century in popular belief in a fiction of the Orient as an imagined site of luxury and sensual indulgence, as travel writing countered this image with reports of real countries and peoples. The place of the aesthetic in French writing is considered here, as it offers a challenge to the more political perspective offered by Said. The thesis concludes by suggesting that there were other discourses in travel literature in this period which lie outside specifically racist and imperialist constructs, and therefore deepens and broadens the investigations undertaken by Said with reference to British and French travel writing of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

This thesis investigates the construction of identity in relation to an other. It considers three writers who, working at moments when the nature of selfhood was an urgent issue, conduct profound and original enquiries into the question of self- construction, and seeks both to reassess their contributions to this debate, and, in bringing their preoccupations and methods to bear upon each other, to open up new ways of approaching and reading their work. Considering a range of socio-cultural and religious forms of otherness -- the cannibal, the witch, the Jew, the aristocrat, the woman, the divine -- it embraces material from a number of important modem critical fields, and suggests how these topics might be combined to offer a coherent statement about the enduring issue of s elf- fashioning. The thesis seeks to map out a trajectory of decreasing investment in external communities, and an increasing perception of the self as a source and agent in the construction of identity. Looking in turn at the work of Montaigne, Proust and Woolf, it argues that where the Essais construct complex orders which appropriate the other to reinforce the identity of the self, Proust and Woolf increasingly, although gradually, and by no means always successfully, attempt to negotiate a less precisely- engaged relationship between other and self, and to assign the other a less constitutive role in the realization and expression of identity. The thesis also considers more briefly contexts in which this trajectory is reversed. To the extent that they examine modernist subjectivity, Proust and Woolf articulate an anxiety about the separation of self and world which leads to an attempted recuperation of the integrated orders depicted by Montaigne.