The nineteenth and early twentieth century habit of comparing Dickens and Thackeray sprang from the existence within the early and mid-Victorian consciousness of certain diametrically opposed ideas: empiricism and intuitive Carlylean spirituality; yearning Romantic subjectivism and a belief in objective authoritarianism and duty; and, in 11terature, realism and the idealism of romance. Reacting against the excesses of the immediate past, the men of the 1830’s and 40’s were yet unable to ignore the impressions left by these. In particular, they were affected by the scepticism of the empiricists, and this produced in their minds a tension between faith and doubt, which, when suppressed by those unwilling to face their own divided nature, found an outlet in externalised comparisons such as that between Dickens and Thackeray. In criticism of Dickens in the 30’s and 40's, he was separately admired as optimist and attacked as pessimist, but only in the early 50's was the dichotomy of hope and scepticism openly stated, in the shape of his antagonism with Thackeray. In the late 40's, the latter’s stylistic purity had seemed more objective than the self-indulgent mannerisms attributed to Dickens, but later, when the centre of contrast shifted to a distinction between optimism and cynicism, the balance inclined in Dicken’s favour, though the darker vision of his rival, mirroring the repressed fears of the age, could never be ignored. Many of the other strands of comparison - the ascription to Thackeray of restless self-consciousness and to Dickens of objectivity; the contrast between the real and the ideal instituted byDavid Hasson - related back to this focal point of hope and doubt, which continued to lie at the heart of the opposition in the 70's and 80's and even in criticism of the 1900's. From the 80's onwards, however, interest in the traditional comparison was declining. The polarity of Dickensian heart and Thackerayan head reflected an important aspect of nineteenth century experience, but it was often a distorted reflection, since the ideas of Victorianism were being used by writers lees conscious of the problems of the time than men such as Carlyle who had created the Victorian ethos. Concepts of optimism, objectivity and realism were more naively and rigidly applied than by the minds (themselves often naive and inconsistent) which had originally formulated them.

The dissertation considers the English morality plays as explorations of inner conflict. The pre-Reformation moralities use personification-allegory as a means of analysing the conflict which takes place within the soul of man between his attachment to this world and his other-worldly aspirations. The social ethic of Reformation theology, however, introduces a new interest in social relationships. The moralities of the post-Reformation period retain allegory to analyse the inner process which lead to ethical choice,but they also incorporate literal dramatis personae in order to express social themes, and the proportion of personification-allegory correspondingly decreases. The early popular Elizabethan "tragedies” are predominantly literal, but they tend to retain personified abstractions as a means of expressing inner conflict. It is suggested that in the transition from this hybrid form to purely literal tragedy, the allegorical technique of the earlier plays is absorbed rather than discarded, that the deliberative soliloquies of later tragic heroes are a development of the analysis of inner conflict leading to ethical choice which is central in the morality tradition.

This thesis consists of two parts: a creative work and a reflective essay. The creative work is a novel entitled Hartsend. In a village in Central Scotland, the characters assemble at the funeral of Mrs Crossthwaite, a domineering woman whose middle aged daughter Lesley must now make her own choices. Four people in particular, teenagers Harriet and Ryan, and middle aged friends Duncan and Lesley attempt to cope with their private pain and the damage done to them in the past, in order to make sense of their lives. Is forgiveness necessary, or even possible? Meanwhile, out of everyone’s sight, another kind of damage is taking place which will affect the entire village. The reflective essay examines first the origins of the novel, those external events which over a number of years preoccupied me and the personal circumstances which intensified my concern. It then considers the factors involved in its writing. These include: the difficulties involved in becoming a writer, the depiction of a paedophile, an exploration of the key concept of ‘Noticing’, the use of the Enneagram in developing characters, the Mindmap as a tool for plotting the novel, the usefulness of experts and the place and purpose of writing in an aleatory world. Examples from several writers including Nadine Gordimer, Carol Shields, Raymond Chandler, Margaret Atwood and William Trevor, whose words have contributed to my ideas about writing and whose work has modified my writing style, substantiate this analysis.

My thesis examines the ways in which the critical structure of modern Irish Bildungsroman deconstructs and re-examines ‘residues of past trauma’ in the form of socio-cultural, psychological, personal and notably political artefacts present in the nation’s unfortunate engagement with the State’s politics of formation. The result is a resistant and radical form which challenges the classical and modern specificity of the genre by introducing a non-conformist, post-Joycean protagonist, whose antithetical perception of history and socio-cultural norms contradicts the conservative efforts of the post-independence Irish State. To examine such a resistant critical structure, this thesis focuses on Roddy Doyle’s A Star Called Henry (1999), Dermot Bolger’s The Woman’s Daughter (1987), William Trevor’s The Story of Lucy Gault (2002), Seamus Deane’s Reading In The Dark (1996), Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy (1992), Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996), Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls (1960) and A Pagan Place (1970), Nuala O’Faolain’s Are You Somebody? (1996), Francis Stuart’s Black List, Section H (1971), Flann O’Brien’s The Hard Life (1961), and John McGahern’s The Dark (1965). The selected novels provide an invaluable insight into the nation’s perception of sensitive concepts such as modernism and modern Irish identity, and how the confluence of these two produced a critical dialectical discourse which chronicles the formation of a non-conformist, ahistorical modern protagonist. To achieve a historical relevance, this thesis starts by examining Doyle’s fictionalization of 1916 Easter Rising and the chaotic 1920s; Bolger’s exploration of a repressive, inward-looking post-independence Irish society in the 1930s and the 1940s; Trevor’s engagement with a socio-political divide that further split the nation; Deane’s autogenous reading of an internal neocolonial ‘Othering’ during the ‘emergency’; McCabe’s illustration of the State’s architecture of oppression, and societal introversion from the early 1940s to the 1960s; Edna O’Brien’s and Nuala O’Faolain’s exemplary illustration of women’s blighted sexual Bildung in the 1940s, 50s and 60s; and finally examining a radical, ‘chronocentric’ depiction of a socio-political divide fictionalized by Stuart and McGahern, which emerged during the early days of the State and continued to dominate the nation well into the 1960s and the early 1970s. By examining psycho-social, sexual and political traumata reflected in the modern Irish Bildungsroman, this thesis provides a dialectical reading of the gap that appeared between the revolutionary ethos of independent Irish identity formation, rooted in the principles of 1916 Rising and the 1920s, and that which appeared in the form of a tolerant republicanism in the 1980s. To study this socio-historical gap, I examine the nation’s criticism of the State’s politics and structure of formation, manifested in narratives of individual and national formation. The modern Irish Bildungsroman, I argue, appropriates the traditional features of the genre, for instance, chronicling the individual’s psychosocial formation and the potential to re-engage with their society, and produces a critical matrix for a dialectical discourse which enables the nation to voice their concerns vis-à-vis a politically dichotomous post-independence Irish society, a repressed history, and at the same time to externalize their perception of modern Irish formation, being founded on an anti-colonial, non-conservative and politically aware consciousness. The result, which I call the ‘Meta-National Narrative of Formation,’ is a historically resistant and socio-politically conscious narrative which finds independence in rejection, imposition, and deformation, namely, by defying the State’s architecture of formation as well as their nativist, retrograde visions of Irish identity.

For many critics, Hamlet’s famous dictum that ‘The time is out of joint’ is to be read as a social comment on Shakespeare’s own historical moment (Hamlet, 1.5.189). Generally thought to have been written around the same period as Hamlet, Julius Caesar contains a similar statement—‘it is a strange-disposèd time,’ Cicero remarks early on in the play (1.3.33). In 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, James Shapiro suggests that, far from being coincidental, this recurring untimeliness in fact pervades the plays Shakespeare wrote at the turn of the seventeenth century—and most notably Henry V, Julius Caesar and Hamlet. For Shapiro, the many anachronisms that can be found in those plays point to a shared, objective core of historical reality (‘Shakespeare came of age when time itself was out of joint,’ the critic argues). The idea that the ultimate meaning of Shakespeare’s dramas is inextricably bound up with the late Elizabethan (or early Jacobean) moment of their production is a central tenet of historicist criticism. Largely due to the hegemonic status of new historicism in the field of Shakespeare studies in the last thirty years or so, this mode of criticism has become, to a great extent, normative. The present work takes issue with the systematic approach that consists in viewing Shakespeare’s plays as mere reflections of an overarching, ‘objective’ historical reality. Specifically, the thesis challenges the default historicist framework in which many of Shakespeare’s plays have been embedded. Thus, Julius Caesar, Hamlet and Henry V are here looked at with a large emphasis on the present of interpretation (as opposed to the authorial moment). A key thread of the thesis is the sense that the meaning of these plays is directly determined by the criticism. In other words, their meaning is essentially constructed in the present—a fundamentally unfixed and ever-moving category. Accordingly, alleged anachronisms are here viewed as by-products of this subjective present. Rather than expressing the objective historical ‘real’ of the dramas, such anachronisms are considered to testify to the intrusion of the viewer within the literary scene. This implies that the dramas are always already infected not so much by their author’s historical moment but by the eye of the critic itself. At the heart of the thesis is the sense that Shakespearean drama can be viewed through the grid of an aesthetics of untimeliness, which manifests itself in various ways. The coexistence of multiple presents of interpretation within the hermeneutic field of the plays is one of the ways in which such an aesthetics can be experienced. For instance, the colossal criticism of Hamlet guarantees that no one historical elucidation of the play can prevail. Alternatively, the diegetic content of the plays can also be used to support the idea of an untimely aesthetics. On many occasions, Shakespeare’s dramas comment on the inherent disjunction that alienates them from the historical past which they (supposedly) purport to stage—this is generally done through the medium of key metadramatic characters like the Chorus in Henry V. In either case, complete historical presence is negated. Thus, the thesis posits the impossibility of presence—or untimeliness—as a valid aesthetic category in view of Shakespeare’s dramas. Each individual chapter illustrates how the dramas can be said to aestheticise the intrinsically differential quality of literature. Ultimately, the thesis also emphasises how différance, to use Jacques Derrida’s celebrated coinage, lies at the heart not only of literature but of all forms of staged entertainment.

This thesis examines the actor-clown Will Kemp and his working relationship with Shakespeare. In particular, the thesis explores the theatrical and literary influence Kemp had on his roles for Shakespeare. In the chapters which follow, I investigate the traces of Kemp in some of the early editions of the plays in which he first appeared, before looking at more solid evidence of his continuing rapport with Shakespeare in the two plays which name Kemp in a role. In each case the focus is on the first entry of his clown figure in the plays examined and the interplay of performance and authorial script. The study reveals Kemp not only as an agent of performance for Shakespeare, but also as a catalyst of textual and eventually thematic change in the composition of his plays. Their professional association thus maps the cultural shift identified by a number of critics from a players’ to an authors’ theatre in the late sixteenth century. Over the last three decades, there have been two major revisionist theories about how Shakespeare wrote and disseminated his dramatic works and which acknowledge the dynamic and pragmatic processes leading to the eventual posthumous publication of the First Folio in 1623. One is the hypothesis, embedded most tangibly in The Oxford Shakespeare (1986), that the dramatist revised and reworked his plays primarily for performance. In the second, related but distinct theory laid out in Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist (2003), Lukas Erne argued that Shakespeare also reworked certain plays specifically for publication. Both theories uphold the notion of authorial revision and both raise questions about how we are to understand the creative and commercial processes which lie behind the surface of Shakespeare’s printed plays. Neither of these overarching theories, however, perhaps pays sufficient attention to the daily realities of the Elizabethan stage, or to the relationship between the plays and the actors who performed them. In the thesis, I contend that Shakespeare’s plays emerged from a vibrant and collaborative theatrical context, articulated in the extant early printed editions, captured in their myriad textual variances and proved in a multitude of details. By scrutinizing these details, I argue, it is possible to see how the conditions of performance made for a dispersal of authorship in playwriting. Actors were not merely the vehicles for the play-texts they performed, but also a root source of written variation. Kemp’s presence undermines the simple binary view of Shakespeare as a theatrical or literary author around which most revisionary scholarship still tends to revolve and points, rather, to far more fluid processes of composition and adaptation in the plays on which he worked with Shakespeare. Indeed, in the stage direction ‘Enter Will Kemp’, where writing meets performance, a whole world of possible change to Shakespeare’s protean art is thus opened up.

This thesis examines David Hartley’s Observations on Man (1749) and elucidates how Hartley’s mechanical approach to mind, his conception of emotion, and the religious status he awards the body were newly relevant after 1791. In this way it identifies a ‘Hartlean culture’ within the Romantic period and seeks to explore how such an intellectual climate influenced the radical writers William Blake (1757–1827) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797). Blake and Wollstonecraft were acquainted with the famous bookseller Joseph Johnson, who republished Observations on Man in various forms and versions between 1775 and 1801. They also had an association with Johnson’s circle; the Hartlean concepts found throughout their work evidence Hartley’s latent popularity within intellectual culture, as well as the writers’ engagement with contemporary philosophical ideas. I propose that the renewed curiosity in Hartley during the 1790s reveals a specific religious and revolutionary culture wherein non-conformist views about Christianity and new ideas about the body, emotion and women flourished. Such a cultural moment renders Hartley a particularly important figure for debate since he integrated progressive values about equality and faith alongside advancing understanding of anatomy and mind. Hartley identified how God and happiness could be found physically within each person. He did this by combining a complex theory of vibrations and theory of association, where the body and mind functioned mechanically through a person’s feelings of pleasure and pain. These feelings manifested as physical vibrations and eventually led every person to desire goodness until finally, they can become ‘Godlike’ themselves. Hartley’s amalgamation of Christian and new theoretical concepts appealed to Blake and Wollstonecraft, and was much unlike the approach of Joseph Priestley who abridged Observations in 1775 to promote a wholly ‘scientific’ text. In this way, we can see resonances between Hartley, Blake and Wollstonecraft, even if they existed in different cultural contexts. In rethinking Blake and Wollstonecraft through Hartley, I offer new insights into their feminism. In particular I attend to how Hartlean culture enabled these writers to re-imagine gender and emotion: Wollstonecraft reinstates the female experience back into Hartlean concepts in order to promote women’s emotional potential and what she understands as the special power of the female-female bond. Blake responds to both Wollstonecraft and Hartley with his elevation of the feminine, one that envisions new potential for both sexes, emotionally and spiritually. In both cases, the writers share a fascination for the image of the female saviour, and they use terminology and concepts found in Hartley’s work to communicate their views. In being attentive to the shared vocabulary and ideas of these three writers’ works, this thesis highlights the importance of David Hartley and Hartlean culture for the field of Romantic Studies. It also illuminates Observations on Man as a vital contribution to the intellectual context of the 1790s.

The 19th and early 20th centuries witnessed large-scale migration from Asia to various parts of the world, including the Caribbean, through the indentured labour system. My research will analyse representations of indentured labour and Asian diasporic presence in Caribbean literature. Firstly, focussing on 19th century journals, diaries, and other texts from the archive, I will analyse how Indian and Chinese subjects are represented. Following this, a similar analysis will address 19th-century literary representations of Asian subjects. Thirdly and in response to these foregoing analyses, this thesis will be concerned with how 20th-century authors renew and rejuvenate representations of indentured labourers and their descendants. The theme that runs through the thesis is death in its literal and symbolic sense. Throughout this thesis, I will pay close attention to the migrant's relation to the voyage, the sea (kala pani), and arrival in the Caribbean, tracing how these become symbolically important. The thesis will be concerned at each stage with tracing migrant transnational experience and identity; as such, the focus for some subjects is their identification with or relation to the creolisation process. Questions of gender and sexuality will also be important categories for analysis, as will religious beliefs, socio-cultural practices, and the use of vernacular forms. The structuring of narrative time and form within each work will be examined with the aim of revealing the ideological underpinning behind the texts and enabling a comparison. Some authors, such as Cristina García, examine Britain's global imperial presence and explore interdependencies and relations among various colonial structures and locations. In this respect, the connection between the indenture system and opium production, distribution, and consumption is analysed with regard to its affect on the representation of both Indian and Chinese subjects as well as the wider implications for Empire. Therefore, the representation of how events and agendas in Asia impact upon migration and the Caribbean experience will figure in my analysis of the subject as a contested site of multiple colonial histories and trans-local affiliations.

This thesis aims to examine the idea of nature in the works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth from the perspective of ecotheology. Its intention is not to identify their works with ecotheology, but it will be suggested how Coleridge’s search for the unity of the universe and Wordsworth’s yearning for dwelling relate to recent developments in ecotheological theory. Ecotheology can thus help us understand their ideas on nature. There is a historical and disciplinary gap between the works of the Romantic Period and ecotheology, and, in Romantic criticism, the idea of nature is often misunderstood as a mere projection of the mind. Moreover, Coleridge’s poetry has been the subject of an unjustified ideological criticism that has misrepresented its theological viewpoints, and Wordsworth has also been read in terms of a secular narrative about nature and consciousness. However, both Coleridge and Wordsworth to some extent perceive nature as an environmental landscape, and therefore nature can be understood as an independent reality as well as a creation of the mind. They develop ideas of God in their literary works in a way that needs to be understood not in a secular way, but in a religious sense. Just as ecotheology attempts to articulate the value of the non-human natural world, so Coleridge’s notion of unity and Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling affirm similar values throughout their works. Focusing in Chapter 1 on the writings of a number of twentieth-century theologians, including Jűrgen Moltmann and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, I will outline the development of key ideas in ecotheology in terms of three main elements, the interrelatedness of the universe, the independent sacred value of nature, and a cosmic eschatology, which will be used as a conceptual framework for exploring the works of Coleridge and Wordsworth. Chapter 2 will show that Coleridge’s lifelong search for the unity of the universe reveals the interrelatedness of the universe, and the sacredness of nature as an independent value. Chapter 3 will see that Wordsworth’s idea of dwelling also implies these two elements. Chapter 4 will show that their eschatological visions are associated with a cosmic eschatology, of which the non-human natural world constitutes a crucial part.

It has long been recognised that chastity is a problem in Book III of The Faerie Queene. The problem arises in part because the poem does not clearly define chastity but instead ambiguously praises it both as virginity and marital love. Behind the poem, too, lies the problem of Elizabeth with her Protestant virginity sometimes represented in Britomart,sometimes in Belphoebe, but also dangerously Catholic in its iconography. Indeed, wherever we turn in The Faerie Queene there are tangles of meaning. The contention of this thesis is that these problems are not merely surface writings, but stem from the Protestant breach with the Church Fathers and the long history of virginity. That history, I suggest in the main body of the thesis, has been broadly ignored by the critics who, by failing to grasp its theological complexity and development, have failed to produce an adequate platform from which to read the Protestant reformers and The Faerie Queene. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The Introduction examines recent critical discussions of virginity in Spenser, the Middle Ages and patristics, thus working backwards historically to the patristic writings themselves where I offer, in Part I, a detailed examination of the growth of the theological significance of virginity. Part II then looks at the reformers’ attacks on virginity, Luther and Erasmus especially, before turning to a discussion of the troubled meanings of virginity and chastity in Spenser’s epic poem.