This thesis explores the interpenetrations of aesthetic and socio-political issues in three modernist novels by John Dos Passos, Jean Rhys, and Samuel Beckett. It aims to argue for the importance of theory and the retrieval of voices of dissent in contemporary modernist studies. Theodor Adorno’s aesthetic theory, Raymond William’s cultural critique, and the contemporary conceptualizations of Jacques Rancière, Isobel Armstrong, and Jean-Michel Rabaté are applied to the primary texts in an attempt to uncover dissenting qualities at both a textual and contextual level. In this process, the thesis also addresses the ways in which each text and author can be seen to challenge the socio-literary landscape of their time. One of the premises upon which this study has been predicated is that the particularities of modernist form can be reconsidered and reappraised with the help provided by theorists who remind us of the political import and even the radicalism of literary aesthetics. Numerous texts could be refreshingly reassessed in contemporary modernist studies, if approached from reconciliatory angles that acknowledge the value of contradiction as an intrinsic feature of critique in the process of reevaluating the socio-political relevance of modernist aesthetics. In particular, the retrieval of voices of dissent against the social, economic, and political contexts of modernist narratives is indispensable to the attempt to envisage and nurture a socially responsive and responsible modernist studies in the twenty-first century. In the three chapters of this dissertation, Manhattan Transfer, Voyage in the Dark, and Murphy are seen to critique the status quo within modern capitalist metropolises and give dissent a variety of voices. The overarching aim of this thesis is to account for the elements that compose this variety. At the same time, all three of the case-studies have been approached from analytical perspectives that recognize and emphasize not only the necessity, but also the radical limitations and failures of dissent. These limitations and failures are often seen to be enciphered in the interpenetrations between the texts’ aesthetics and socio-politics, as well as conditioned by the textual and semantic effects of contradiction. Within a newly envisaged, socially responsive and responsible modernist aesthetic, the radicalism of critique can be illuminated by the radicalism of aesthetic frameworks. It is my hope that the analyses undertaken in this thesis, along with the aesthetic and critical theories that have assisted them, can be seen to partake of such contemporary concerns.

This research is a study of the notion of hospitality in the novels of Sir Walter Scott from a postcolonial perspective. Through the analysis of various acts of hospitality in the Waverley Novels, this thesis intends to examine how the notion of hospitality is represented as one of the most significant, ancient Scottish traditions defended and performed by people who have less power in society, but is abused by those (often the ruling class) who intend to use it as a mechanism to increase their existing power. Therefore, through the analysis of power relations between various host and guest characters, this thesis attempts to demonstrate the ways in which those groups who are under the rule of hegemonic power are constructed as the subaltern, a postcolonial term derived from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci’s usage in the Prison Notebooks. However, in contrast to the accepted view of subaltern muteness and passivity, this thesis argues that in his novels, Scott not only represents subalterns as individuals but also gives them agency to initiate action in engaging or resisting colonizing power. The subaltern groups of particular interest to this investigation include the Jacobites, the Covenanters, the Scottish Highlanders, socially-underprivileged classes, and the Orientals. This thesis ultimately seeks to demonstrate that, because of their serious concern over the underprivileged, subdued, or alienated identities in history, the Waverley Novels render Scott in this dimension a postcolonial novelist.

In this thesis, I discuss how three poets with a connection to Wales, Gwyneth Lewis (born 1959), Pascale Petit (born 1953) and Deryn Rees-Jones (born 1968), develop their poetic practice beyond ordinary notions of home and belonging. Drawing on Wendy Wheeler's New Modernity? Change in Science, Literature and Politics, this project is described as a poetics of 'ecology,' using the broader meaning of the term, which refers not only to the study of plants and animals, but also to institutions and people in relation to their sense of place. I argue that Lewis, Petit and Rees-Jones promote an awareness of ecology or interconnectedness and they achieve this project by going beyond personal or individual concerns in a kind of poetic exile. This poetic exile entails the rejection of a 'whole' and 'bounded' selfhood and the acceptance of otherness or difference in one's own identity means that the boundaries between the self and other disintegrate or blur. I proceed in the general introduction to the thesis to consider the problems of modernity as described by Wheeler and I use her model to identify the melancholy modernity of R.S. Thomas; Dylan Thomas' poetic mourning; and the preoccupation with maternity in Gillian Clarke's poetry. Wheeler suggests that such phases emerge from anxiety about lost teleologies or insecurity of the ontological self, and ecology is the acceptance that human beings are never hermetically sealed, secure units. In the body of the thesis, I explore how Lewis, Petit and Rees-Jones exile themselves from ordinary selfhood to discover ecology with others. The chapter devoted to Le,vis discusses her commitment to decreation, a project that unravels the dominance of the centre over the margin through poems praising angels of the minor, the diminutive and the bathetic. The next chapter considers Petit's exile to Latin America and I argue that by interrogating the strangeness in other cultures, she forces Westem culture to recognise its own strangeness unravelling the clear distinction between 'civilised' and 'barbaric' cultures. Rees-Jones similarly focuses on the strangeness of the human self in her representation of liminal, marginal subjects, such as the clone passing for human. I conclude that the angel, Latin America and the clone are all poetic tropes by which these poets dissolve the oppositional binary of self versus other.

This thesis attempts to trace the development of two kinds of humorous sensibility in the fiction of the period 1800-1850, and to analyse the tensions between them. Humour as inherited from the eighteenth century contained diverse and sometimes contradictory elements which were strongly developed in the Romantic period, so nineteenth century humour could recommend an ideal individual morality, express social optimism, and hold out the hope of social reconciliation; yet at the same time it could subversively celebrate individual autonomy at the expense of social and moral concerns, and transform reality through ironic perspectives or grotesque forms. Edgeworth used the humorous character for didactic social purposes in her Irish novels; Scott, however, made his humorous characters the main imaginative embodiments of the social themes of his Scottish novels, maintaining a balance between didactic function and individual idiosyncrasy, a balance sustained by Galt in his novels about local history. But sceptical tendencies appeared: Austen warned that the humorous character was a threat to social order; Peacock's humorous characters were finally overwhelmed by a rancorous satirical spirit; and in Don Ju an, Byron used a version of Romantic Irony to undermine moral assertion. Romantic theories of humour were untouched by any taint of scepticism; such theories stressed the moral function of the humorous sensibility, seeing it as a genial and reconciling force based on love for mankind (the subversive power of the grotesque mode was viewed with suspicion); and Sartor Resartus embodied the highest moral and metaphysical possibilities of the humorous imagination. Beyond this, however, Thackeray's development of ironical perspectives further undermiined humour's positive and optimistic tendencies; and in Dickens's early novels there is a profound tension between the moral and social tendencies of the humour, and the increasingly anarchic, grotesque directions it takes. Eliot rejected the egotistical, ironic . and grotesque possibilities of humour, instead seeing moral improvement and social reconciliation as a matter of coming to terms with unattractive reality.

This thesis is a study of the Gothic fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould (1834- 1924), with particular attention given to Baring-Gould’s roles as squire and parson. I have chosen to analyze two of Baring-Gould’s Gothic works, the novel Mehalah (1880) and the novella Margery of Quether (1884), both which allow a particularly profitable examination of the influence of Baring-Gould’s roles on his fiction. In studying these texts I apply my theory of Gothic fiction as a particularly modern genre built upon a "Gothic threshold," a meeting point of extreme opposites which ambivalently contrasts and merges the categories of the modern and the medieval. In the first chapter I describe how Baring-Gould’s unique Hegelian-influenced Tractarian philosophy influenced his creation of the dialectical setting of Mehalah. I argue that because of this influence Mehalah should be recognized as a significant contribution to the literature of the Oxford Movement. In the second chapter I argue that Mehalah’s historical setting in the time of the French Revolution and the influence of Wuthering Heights reinforce Mehalah’s use of the “Gothic threshold” structure and contribute to its theme of ambivalent progress. In the third chapter I discuss the influence of Baring-Gould’s sermon-writing on Mehalah and consider connections between Baring-Gould’s role as parson and the novel’s botched marriage theme. In the final chapter I discuss Margery of Quether as an innovation in the Gothic and vampire tradition as perhaps the only Gothic work that directly dramatizes the Land Law debate and presents that debate as a "Gothic" contest. I argue that Margery channels Baring-Gould’s tensions as a landowner. In the conclusion I argue that Mehalah and Margery display Baring-Gould’s technique of constructing miniature Gothic battles that relate to larger confrontations, and that the ultimate terror presented in these works is the conclusion of the battle between ancient and modern forces.

'Dissembling', derived from courtiers' practice of sprezzatura. has the rhetorical ability to present one ostensible meaning/intention while simultaneously harbouring another meaning/intention. In this thesis, I suggest that three Elizabethan, writers - Lyly, Greene, and Shakespeare have selected this deceptive act as a means to amplify their writing. Lyly exerts the art of dissembling with the intention of enriching his writing verbally. The art enables him to write fiction of love, while he presents his works as either didactic treatises or encomiastic writings. As far as Greene's art of dissembling is concerned, it is a class-conscious one. In his courtly love romances, Greene explores both strengths and weaknesses of women as a way of reflecting his interest in both of the two different social positions of courtiers and shepherds. In his social pamphlets where he depicts middle-class traders in the framework of the prodigal son story, Greene attempts to marry the uneducated with the learned. Greene's tries at theatrical devices with the intention of lifting the boundary between reality and illusion in his plays help Shakespeare to gain an insight into the attainment of dramatic moments in his plays. Shakespeare, by dint of his art of dissembling, takes to multiplying the dissembling of the courtly and the lowly, the elite and the non-elite, reality and illusion which Greene has achieved throughout his career. In Shakespeare's good hands, Greene's art of dissembling is enriched by a movement towards 'bafflement' in both poetic and dramatic terms. An exploration of the way in which the art of dissembling is handed down from Lyly through Greene to Shakespeare encourages us to reconsider a connection between courtly culture and popular culture, the significance of Greene on the Elizabethan literary scene, a most neglected of the major Elizabethan writers, and the relationship of Shakespeare to Greene.

This thesis analyses the representations of North America in English travel narratives between the years 1607-1660. Texts in both print and manuscript format are examined to discover how authors described the geography, climate, landscape, flora and fauna of America, as well as the settlements established there by the English. The thesis is mostly concerned with literature concerning Virginia and New England, although the settlements of Newfoundland, Maine and Maryland are also briefly mentioned. The first chapter describes the methodology of the thesis and locates its place alongside the existing literature. A chapter explaining the pre-history of English involvement in North America in the reign of Elizabeth I follows. Chapter Three describes the connection between printing and adventuring on which the thesis is predicted, explaining how the authors’ intentions and experiences affected their portrayal of the New World. The ways in which authors understood the geography and climate of America are explored in Chapter Four, including the influence of European thinking and the writers’ experiences in America itself. The landscape, including rivers, mountains and forests are examined next in chapter five, with a special focus on the Englishmen’s subduing of the landscape and their reactions to its potential. Chapters Six and Seven deal with the flora and fauna of the New World, tracing how the settlers’ initial high hopes of using the diversity of wildlife they encountered gave way to the realisation that familiar crops and animals imported from Europe would prove more useful than those found locally, with a few notable exceptions, such as tobacco. Chapters Eight and Nine analyse the changing representations of the English settlements themselves, by comparing the English experiences in Virginia and those of New England. Again, initial hopes give way to an acceptance of a less idealistic vision for the plantations. Chapter Ten brings the focus of the thesis back to England, asking how printed information about the New World was transmitted around the country by various practitioners of the printing trade, and who was able to digest this information. The representation of America, not only in travel narratives, but also in other forms of literature such as ballads, poetry and plays, are reviewed more broadly in chapter eleven, and an attempt is made to define the responses of individual and collective readers to the news from the New World that they gathered. In its conclusion, the thesis explores the influence of this literature on the new scientific thinking and on England’s relationship with her colonies.

This thesis focuses on the images of Oman in British travel writing from 1800 to 1970. In texts that vary from travel accounts to sailors’ memoirs, complete travelogues, autobiographies, and letters, it looks at British representations of Oman as a place, people, and culture. It argues that these writings are heterogeneous and discontinuous throughout the periods under consideration. Offering diverse voices from British travellers, this thesis challenges Edward Said’s project in Orientalism (1978) which looks to Western discourse on the Middle East homogenisingly as Eurocentric and hostile. Chapter one explores and discusses the current Orientalist debate suggesting alternatives to the dilemma of Orientalism and providing a framework for the arguments in the ensuing chapters. Chapter two outlines the historical Omani-British relations, and examines the travel accounts and memoirs written by several British merchants and sailors who stopped in Muscat and other Omani coastal cities during their route from Britain to India and vice versa in the nineteenth century. Chapter three is concerned with the works of travellers who penetrated the Interior of Oman. James Wellsted’s Travels in Arabia (1838), Samuel Miles’ The Countries and Tribes of the Persian Gulf (1919) and other uncollected travel accounts, and Bertram Thomas’s Alarms and Excursions (1932) are investigated in this chapter. Chapter four considers the travellers who explored Dhofar in the southern Oman and the Ruba Al-Khali or the Empty Quarter. Precisely, it is devoted to Bertram Thomas’s Arabia Felix (1932) and Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands (1959). Chapter five looks at the last generation of British travellers who were in Oman from 1950 to 1970 employed either by oil companies or the Sultan Said bin Taimur. It explores Edward Henderson’s Arabian Destiny (1988), David Gwynne-James’s Letters from Oman (2001), and Ian Skeet’s Muscat and Oman (1974). This thesis concludes with final remarks on British travel writing on Oman and recommendations for future studies related to the subject. The gap of knowledge that this thesis undertakes to fill is that most of the texts under discussion have not been studied in any context.

This thesis examines Blake's posthumous reception, focusing particularly on the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s as decades in which Blake's reputation was both consolidated as a poet and artist, and invigorated as a radical sympathizer. As Blake's texts and life were being formed and re-formed in physically and conceptually elaborate books, such as Alexander Gilchrist's The Life of William Blake and Algernon Charles Swinburne's William Blake: a critical essay, significant and innovative appropriations of Blake's poetry and illustrations were made in Republican and freethinking periodicals and pamphlets. This thesis recovers some of that material. Retrieving the influence of such "low culture" ephemera on the "high" culture of Pre-Raphaelite creativity allows the Victorian Blake to emerge as a multi-faceted, contradictory production: both secular iconoclast and mystical visionary, blasphemous sibyl and poet of social justice. Nineteenth-century readings and reproductions of Blake are a chronicle of freethought and freeform. The multiplicity of Blake in this period, in both reproduction and interpretation, enables a questioning of books and periodicals as mediums of representation. Blake's reproduction in the nineteenth century coincides with, and yet confounds, Foucauldian configurations of nineteenth-century representation. Although Blake is depicted as a lone, isolated individual - often labouring under the insane tag - this does not simply signify an epistemological nadir of vacuous, disconnected individualism, such as Foucault identifies. On the contrary, this thesis seeks to prove that the enthusiasm for Blake in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s is facilitated by a deep connectivity of medium and message, and between different mediums and different messages. The political stance of Secularism meets the cultural concerns of Aestheticism, both reproducing Blake through technology that improvises upon and rejuvenates Blake's own unique craft.

A particular kind of voice recurs in fin-de-siècle British literature. It is a voice without a human body, a voice whose source is either invisible or non-human. This study explores the historical factors underlying the literary representation of such a voice. Chapter 1 examines Arthur Symons' phrase, 'the disembodied voice of a human soul,' and sets up the context for the subsequent discussion by teasing out the four major implications of the fin-de-siècle disembodied voice: the socio-political, the aesthetico-linguistic, the techno-scientific, and the sexual-somatic. Chapter 2 first outlines the modern origin of the disembodied voice in the Gothic-Romantic culture of the late eighteenth century, where the frequent description of the disembodied voice is linked to the rise of the nostalgia for premodernity; the chapter then analyzes the disembodied voice in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness both in terms of Gothic culture and of the fin-de-siècle situation. The Romantic aesthetico-linguistic prioritization of the aural-oral, which we call 'melocentricism,' the fin-de-siècle consumerism and colonialism, and the then influential scientific concept of ether receive scrutiny. Chapter 3 addresses Oscar Wilde's Salome. Apart from the factors that this play shares with Conrad's novella, the disembodied voice in Salome secretly expresses a longing for the homosexual-cum-communal. Chapter 4 explores the fin-de-siècle imperial and homosexual implications, and the 'melocentric' pre-history, of the phonographic voice in Bram Stoker's Dracula. Chapter 5 teases out the hidden political dimension of the technological voice, phonographic and wireless, in Kipling's Kim and '"Wireless".' Chapter 6 compares the fin-de-siècle voice with an instance of the early twentieth-century, the wireless voice in D. H. Lawrence's Ladv Chatterley's Lover, a voice now involved in the global network of broadcasting. It is concluded that the disembodied voice is inseparable from important aspects of fin-de-siècle British culture as well as the question of modernity.