This thesis explores the relationship between evolutionary theory and the weird tale in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through readings of works by two of the writers most closely associated with the form, Arthur Machen (1863-1947) and H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), it argues that the weird tale engages consciously, even obsessively, with evolutionary theory and with its implications for the nature and status of the "human". The introduction first explores the designation "weird tale", arguing that it is perhaps less useful as a genre classification than as a moment in the reception of an idea, one in which the possible necessity of recalibrating our concept of the real is raised. In the aftermath of evolutionary theory, such a moment gave rise to anxieties around the nature and future of the "human" that took their life from its distant past. It goes on to discuss some of the studies which have considered these anxieties in relation to the Victorian novel and the late-nineteenth-century Gothic, and to argue that a similar full-length study of the weird work of Machen and Lovecraft is overdue. The first chapter considers the figure of the pre-human survival in Machen's tale of lost races and pre-Christian religions, arguing that the figure of the fairy as pre-Celtic survival served as a focal point both for the anxieties surrounding humanity's animal origins and for an unacknowledged attraction to the primitive Other. The second chapter discusses the pervasiveness of degeneration theory at the fin de siècle, and the ways in which works by both Machen and Lovecraft make use of it to depict the backsliding of both the individual human subject and of wider society, raising the suggestion that the degenerate is always already present within the contemporary human. In the third chapter, portrayals by both authors of hybridity come under consideration. The chapter places these tales in their historical context, with reference to the cultural anxieties surrounding the decline of empire, the rise of anti-immigration sentiment in the United States, and the emergence of the eugenics movement, and argues that these fears become tied to notions about the fitness or otherwise to survive of a "human" associated with Anglo-Saxon whiteness. The fourth and final chapter discusses Lovecraft's portrayals of highly-advanced extraterrestrial civilisations, arguing that these stories partake of a Utopian impulse that nonetheless expresses itself via contemporary racist discourses, and that they both maintain the notion of a horrific primitive Other within the human and attempt to open up the possibility of a transhuman or posthuman future. The thesis concludes by considering these works in relation to the cyborg theory of Donna Haraway, suggesting that their portrayal of the necessity of inhabiting flux offers a new and less straightforwardly horrific way of thinking about human identity.

Walter Benjamin’s suggestion that great literary works not only add to canonical literature but also ‘dissolve’ genres may not seem apt in an examination of crime fiction, a genre noted for its rigidity and structured form. Though much of this mass-marketed, populist fiction cannot be perceived as great literature, nonetheless, some do work to dissolve genres, to re-shape them to different ends. This is especially true of Welsh crime fiction written in English. This thesis posits that there is a wealth of undiscovered Welsh crime fiction written in English and that those neglected works are necessary to the study of both crime fiction and Welsh writing in English. Central to this argument is my assertion that Welsh crime fiction (as it will henceforth be referred as) is a separate genre that contains its own specific tropes and paradigms, markers that are indicative of a certain Welsh cultural identity. As this study also acts as a survey of a previously unexamined area, of necessity, the works under question are the product of a extensive period: from the late-nineteenth century to the present day. While the chapters are arranged thematically, I have also tried to keep a sense of a chronological order with a sense of authors writing against or responding too previous generations of crime writers. In this manner, a tradition can be seen to be forming, one which re-imagines Welsh identity over this protracted period. As this literature springs from a nation that has frequently been defined as ‘other’, the Introduction starts with an examination of the so-called Blue Books and how they came to define the Welsh character for those outside Wales. Following this, Chapter I discusses how English crime writers absorbed these discourses and played out their ensuing anxieties in their work. Chapter II then explores an emergent Welsh crime fiction, one which both mimics and subverts anglocentric paradigms. This subversion is also played out in socialist crime fiction, the focus of Chapter III. Interestingly, these re-workings and re-imaginings of anglocentric norms are dealt with in different ways by male and female authors so Chapters IV and V will deal with male and female appropriations of genre respectively. This thesis concludes by asserting that Welsh identity is influential in forming a new genre, one that takes a rigid and hierarchical structure and adapts it to its own ends.

In this thesis, I trace the representation of different forms of female cultural, economic and political activism in a selection of novels by the South African novelist, J. M.Coetzee, and the Palestinian novelist, Jabra Ibrahim Jabra. Using Edward Said’s contrapuntal theory as a critical method, the thesis investigates the interaction between politics and literature, focusing particularly on the representation of women, in South Africa and Palestine, which are both viewed as territories under apartheid. It analyses the differences and the similarities in the ways the notions of female nationalism and identity are represented in the selected novels, identifying a shared humanist perspective on female resistance, expressed by all three authors. Such a humanist-oriented, contrapuntal perspective is sustained by a secular understanding and a hybrid interpretation of different socio-cultural groups, which question established norms and traditions, expanding the boundaries of established cultural identity to emphasize acceptance of diversity, nonviolence, and co-existence. The three authors demonstrate that political polarization perpetuates antagonism and violence, while political-cultural dialogue helps to shift the focus onto possible paths of mutual understanding and cooperation. In this way, female resistance in the chosen novels symbolizes a humanist effort not only to redefine exclusive and hierarchical cultural notions of nationalism, authenticity and identity, but also to build inclusive socio-cultural orders free of gender bias.

This project asks what a fanvid (vid) is, and by extension, what vids are to television. Vids are derived from television and film sources but they are themselves neither television episodes nor films. These works approximate the music video in appearance and duration, but are non-commercial fan works which construct creative and critical analyses of existing media. Vids remake narratives for a deeply attentive fan audience who watch with a deep knowledge of the source text, or with familiarity of the codes and conventions of the vid form. This thesis is concerned with vids of live-action narrative fiction and covers technological changes from broadcast television, to VCR and the rise of home video, to digital viewership. The chapters focus on different aspects of the vid form in relation to current issues in television studies, with some recourse to the growing field of fandom studies to provide appropriate subcultural context. The first case study chapter addresses contrasting theoretical understandings of collections and archives to contextualise the kinds of archival work done by vidders as a form of historiography. Vids are created from personal archives of film, television and other media sources; vids bear traces of their archival origins, and their creation is the performance of the vidder’s knowledge of their own archive. This chapter includes vids from the VCR era, and has a particular focus on Star Trek. The next chapter addresses multifandom vids – a vid genre that draws together video clips from several sources to compare and contrast norms of representation – alongside critical work on found footage films, to analyse the visual pleasures of vids and their relationship with audience fascinations (of erotics, of spectacle, etc.). The final chapter is an intensive case study of a trilogy of Battlestar Galactica vids, to analyse both the vid’s relationship with adaptation and genre, and the central role of songs in vids. While vids rely heavily on their soundtrack to structure meaning within the work, they are not abstract illustrations of songs. Instead, the clichés and idioms of the chosen song’s instrumentation are vital in completing the vid’s reinterpretation of its source text. Television studies is an appropriate disciplinary frame for studying the vid, as it offers ways of thinking about audiences, sequential narratives and the textuality of video forms. The creators and audiences of vids are highly competent in the deep reading and careful viewing of both mainstream and cult television and film, and keep archives of media which they reframe and re-present.

In the summer of 1873 two editors began to publish two distinct groups of explicitly radical working class local newspapers. Their common objective was to establish a national system of local labour newspapers to challenge the growing dominance of the 'commercial' press. Despite many differences of style, forcat and language - one of Morgan's papers was written entirely in Welsh - these two groups of newspapers attempted to attract a similar type of unionised working class reader, and in many important respects they also propounded a very similar philosophy of labour. The thesis outlines the development of these newspapers and traces the activities of their young and energetic editors. It suggests an explanation of their limited initial successes as journalist agitators and of their subsequent demise in the months and years following 1875, and locates their newspapers within the wider context of radical and Liberal journalism in the period 1843 to 1891. Four major issues are discussed, the first being the place of the Owen and the Morgan papers in the context of mid to late Nineteenth Century local journalism. The second issue concerns the sociology of the papers' potential readership, whilst the third relates to the financing of the two editors' respective newspaper ventures. Finally, the concept of 'labour journalism' as a distinct form of journalism in this period is examined. Both editors sought to serve the trade unionist and radical-Liberal movements, but both also guarded jealously their editorial independence from either trade union leaders or Liberal politicians. In so doing they not only recorded and interpreted events during a turbulent period of labour unrest, but they also provided many diverse groups of semi- and unskilled workers living between North Staffordshire and South Wales with a valuable means of communication and organisation.

This project contains six chapters, and looks carefully at the original generic forms and cultural environment of publication. This first part will include the general introduction to the shaping and the mapping of knowledge of China in the pre-Romantic period. Daniel Defoe’s The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), as a widely-read, popular romance, would serve as an important text that provides a peep into contemporary British and China from an economic and materialistic perspective. French texts of Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws (1748) and Voltaire’s An Essay on Universal History, the Manners, and Spirit of Nations (1756) would also be included and carefully examined. Although these two works were not written in English, still both held strong presences in the circle of British intellectuals at that time. And although both works were based on the Jesuits’ accounts, they ended up yielding rather different results, providing almost opposite contemporary opinions about China. In Montesquieu’s idea, China, as an absolute despotic country that produces nothing but economic and social stagnation whereas in Voltaire’s depiction, China is guided and governed by high moral and philosophical standards. Both writers’ works showcase an unsettling debate on how China is and should be portrayed in the mid-eighteenth century. This would provide a special foreground that nurtures the later discussions on China, such as the idea of political economy in Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776) and the general public’s ambivalent sentiments towards China, which would lay a strong foundation for the development of this research project. The second chapter takes on Oliver Goldsmith’s The Citizen of the World (1762) and his other essays and periodical articles to explore how Goldsmith, while echoing back to the aforementioned two writers, takes good advantage of the satirical form of a Chinese philosopher-travellers’ account, not to work as a mechanism of producing sheer alienation and foreignness, but to provide his social observation, in order to assess both domestic and exotic cultures from a parodist’s point of view. Although Goldsmith has constantly been accused of plagiarising European works, and although he did not offer an effective solution to the conflicting nature of Chinese vogue in his contemporary Europe, he was one of the most influential figures in his time who actually dove into the popular cultural phenomenon, suggesting the possible marriage and amiable relationship between the domestic and the foreign cultures with a slight amount of disbelief, concern, and sarcasm. Chapter three deals with Lord Macartney’s Embassy to China between 1792 and 1794, and looks closely at the travel narratives both by embassy members and by Lord Macartney himself. Several visual representations of China would be examined in this chapter, including some of the most well-known works by caricaturists such as James Gillray and George Cruikshank before and after the embassy. William Alexander, the embassy’s draughtsman, also brought home numerous first-hand portrayals of China, allowing the British public to see the non-distorted images of China. Despite the unsuccessful diplomatic journey, the Embassy returned to Britain with some immediate and direct accounts of Chinese society that were not from a Jesuit source, which defined how common English public comprehended and perceived China from then on. Whether Lord Macartney performed the ritual of “kowtow” ignited a heated series of deliberations about China: if it is a country of absolute despotism or of enlightened despotism? And if China has been stagnant in terms of technology, economy, and culture? Would China be able to open up for foreign trades and diplomacy? These debates strongly shaped the subsequent discussions of China in England in the nineteenth century. Chapter four scrutinises several Charles Lamb’s Elia essays (1823, 1833) and his correspondences with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and with Thomas Manning who was a leading Sinologist and later a member of Amherst Embassy. Coleridge’s fragmental masterpiece “Kubla Khan” is also included to illuminate the phenomenon of popular oriental fantasy, while the correspondences from Manning and Coleridge are incorporated to examine Lamb’s major source of creative ideas. Particularly, Lamb’s most celebrated essay “Old China” would serve as a perfect example to further dive into not only the writer’s personal obsessive attachment to chinaware but also the remarkable reflection on how the vogue of chinoiserie and the oriental luxuries helped form the concept of “taste” and gave rise to the new consumer ethics of the middle class in Britain. This would also position the consumption of chinoiserie in the luxury debate in the eighteenth century, and how this phenomenon gradually died away in the nineteenth century. Chapter five approaches Thomas De Quincey’s most famous yet notorious work, Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1822, 1856) and political essays in relation to Anglo-Chinese diplomacy. Influenced by the emergence of racial theories and the trend of switched focus from China to India and the South Sea, De Quincey’s ideas of China reflected the new-found colonist supremacy of Britain, and how the military intervention should be carried out in order to, eventually, disenchant the old charm of China that was thoroughly built up by and within the European imagination. The stagnation in politics, economy and society of China was gradually and then generally accepted in the first half of the nineteenth century, and De Quincey’s proposal that Britain should wage wars against China can also be seen as a violent means for Britain to actively take on the role of global power and colonial country that seeks overseas expansion, as well as a means for China to transform. The last chapter will conclude that “Chinese Orientalism” is not a by-product of “Romantic Orientalism”; rather, “Chinese Orientalism” should be viewed and understood as a series of images of China that have been romanticised by European imagination—whether they are positive or negative—and they peaked during the mid-eighteenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries. “Chinese Orientalism” is, again, not a simplistic idea, but a complex, triangular relationship with politics, commerce, and culture between England and China. This shift in the balance of opinions was accompanied by a change in emphasis and approach in European construct of China, from an Enlightened preoccupation with and admiration of the political, cultural and philosophical supremacy of China, to a Romantic engagement bifurcated between intimate consumers’ attachment to the chinoiserie and oriental luxuries, and then to a racialised “Other” and a stagnant and tiresome country of despotic polity that was in a desperate need for British rationalism and military intervention as a means to revive. With the aim of opening testing and giving great contextual specificity to China within larger discourses and representations of the East, this thesis tracks this process of transformation and the balance of opinions. And it is my hope that this study will in some measure contribute to the heightening of this interest, especially at the time when Europe and China are bound not only culturally but also politically and financially.

This thesis is the first extensive consideration of the life and work of Fionn Mac Colla (1906-1975). In particular, it considers the influence of Gaelic language, culture and nationalism on Mac Colla’s corpus. Until now, critical reception of Mac Colla’s writing has been dominated by the legacy of the latter stages of his career, meaning that he has been seen solely as an embittered and polemical writer, motivated only by an angry reaction to what he saw as the negative impact of Scotland’s Reformation. This study argues that such criticism fails to acknowledge that Mac Colla’s creative output was, in fact, far more wide-reaching and complex. The thesis first considers Mac Colla’s genealogy and biography – placing his novels within their cultural and political context – in order to establish the first comprehensive portrait of the man and his work, and to establish the relevance of his writing to a modern readership. Attention is then turned to The Albannach (1932) in the conviction that this is a major work in the canon of modern Scottish literature and deserves extensive reassessment with regard to its political and Gaelic cultural contexts. This study then focuses on the work that Mac Colla contributed to the periodical The Free Man. This impassioned and polemical writing has neither been fully researched nor explored and its analysis makes a significant new contribution to our understanding of Mac Colla’s achievement. Lastly, the examination of And the Cock Crew (1945) highlights the peak and the turning point of his legacy in critical terms. This study contends that Mac Colla’s representation of the relationship between Scottish nationalism and Gaelic culture from the Highland Clearances to the 1930s was both politically and culturally radical. It is concluded that his writing, when examined in this context, proves him to be a novelist whose early work offers more sophistication than has hitherto been explored, and ultimately extends his reputation far beyond that of a promising writer of unfulfilled early potential.

This thesis, which examines episodes from Middle English Magdalene hagiography, argues that Magdalene is represented there as a counter-heroine. It concentrates on the vita in Mirk’s Festial (ca. 1380s); the 1438 Gilte Legende; and Bokenham’s Legendys of Hooly Wummen (completed by 1447). The study contends that Magdalene challenges a variety of hegemonic and patriarchal structures, though her unruliness is typically suppressed by the hagiographers. Chapter one provides context and outlines key terms which run throughout the thesis:subversion, containment and consolidation. The first part foregrounds the thesis’s argument and methodology; the second part introduces the Mary Magdalene cultural narrative; the third situates the thesis in terms of work in related fields. The second chapter interrogates the earliest chronological unit in Magdalene’s medieval biography: the account of her sin and repentance. It argues that Magdalene’s penance represents a moment of containment in the legend. The chapter suggests that the texts, when read as a group, depict Magdalene as choosing to surrender her social, sexual and economic freedoms. At a moment marked by anxieties about changing social roles, the hagiographies endorse a conservative model of social order. Chapter three examines the episodes depicting the Resurrection and Magdalene’s preaching activities in Marseilles. This chapter argues that although Peter’s spiritual authority is emphasized in the post-Resurrection narrative, the subversive potential found in earlier representations of Magdalene’s first witness is never fully erased. It argues, further, that representations of Magdalene preaching allow for readings which align the texts with more heterodox discourses about, for instance, women priests. Chapter four focuses on the scenes describing Magdalene’s years in the wilderness and nightly visitations to a wealthy prince and princess. Whereas chapters two and three argue that the protagonist challenges hegemonic structures in the fields of sexual politics and theology, this chapter argues that the avaricious prince scene presents Magdalene in her littleknown role as a figure of social criticism. The conclusion reiterates the central argument: that medieval hagiography represents Magdalene as an unruly female figure, but that her counter-heroism is frequently contained by structures of her narrative.

This thesis re-examines selected short stories of Irish writer Mary Lavin, placing a particular focus on fiction she published from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Drawing on extensive archival research into Lavin's unpublished correspondence, it uncovers how the transatlantic aspects of Lavin's biography intersect with key elements of the social and cultural history of mid-twentieth-century Ireland. It also provides vital new evidence to scholars through its explicit use of correspondence between Lavin's father, Tom Lavin, and his employers, the Bird family. The thesis shows how a mixture of autobiographical experience, social and political context and an emphathetic awareness of the significance of various cultural inheritances, inflects Lavin's realist style. Analysing important stories across the main span of her writing, the thesis contends that Lavin is a major figure, with a unique perspective on her times. Despite valuable early literary studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and some increasing attention during the 1990s, we have only recently begun to see a more sustained resurgence of interest in Lavin's fiction. While such a shift is welcome, this thesis argues that a perceived lack of complexity in Lavin's fiction still remains and needs to be challenged in order to reveal the true value of her oeuvre. The thesis offers a new analysis of Lavin's writing that tracks major themes, appraises her use of the novella form, and recognises the richness and significance of her contribution to the Irish literary canon. In taking a fresh look at Lavin's work, it thus prepares readers for a fuller understanding of the intricacies of her art.

My thesis examines how the form of the novel is transformed in the postcolonial/neo-imperial context of the 20th century Expanded Caribbean. I focus on works written in Spanish, English and French and thus privilege a regional approach over a linguistic one. While the fragmentation of the region has been furthered historically through the educational system, neo-imperialism, economics and global politics, the region is united by the common experience of colonialism, of plantation slavery and/or the encomienda system, and of anti-imperial resistance. By focusing on the form of the novel that has originated in Europe, I set out to examine the impact of geo-politics and economics on aesthetics. Furthermore, Carlos Fuentes, Wilson Harris and Patrick Chamoiseau can arguably be seen as representative for the academic fields of Latin Americanism, Postcolonial Studies and Francophone Literature respectively, given their canonical status within them. One of the aims of this thesis is to examine how the novels from the Expanded Caribbean speak back to certain developments within the 'central' academies over the last few decades and what the canonization of certain writers to the exclusion of others, and the promotion of certain ways of reading texts, tell us about the latter. For this reason, most of the novels examined in this thesis have been published during the last quarter of the century that, on the political, economic and social level, has witnessed dramatic global changes that have had a devastating impact on the achievements of the 'boom' period of the sixties.