This study argues that contemporary literature archives and articulates its wider visual environment. It develops an interdisciplinary methodology, making a case for visuality as something that can be read. This study rethinks how we approach literary criticism: it asks that a reader bring awareness of a wider visual culture and an understanding of how images work to the text. Close reading reveals how description, far from being ornamental to narrative, drives much of the thematic or theoretical content of a given novel. These texts do not simply replicate their wider image environment; they engage with it on a critical level. A visual approach can illuminate literary concerns and techniques. But, equally, the novel form has a lot to tell us about the structures and issues attendant on the image. The first chapter considers how Teju Cole’s prose emulates certain visual forms, particularly photography. For this author, writing and reading have an inherent affinity with visualization. And his work has much to tell us about the ethical and historical issues that attach to particular techniques and targets of visual representation. The second chapter reads character description in Ali Smith’s fiction from the perspective of visual portraiture. It shows how description stages conversations to do with gender and identity, and with the limitations of narrow categorization in both respects. Smith’s novels then propose certain strategies as correctives to the dangers associated with a highly visual cultural environment. The final chapter focuses on how Helen Oyeyemi’s work exposes race’s uneasy relationship with vision and visual representation. Like Cole and Smith, for Oyeyemi the novel is a valuable and flexible space within which to explore the possibilities and limitations of the visual field as an area for expression, for representation, and for the unfolding of identity.

Drawing on Bakhtin’s theory of the literary artistic chronotope and the interdisciplinary spatiotemporal theories of geocriticism, this study identifies three particular modes of the fantasy spatiotemporality presented in modern children’s fantasy works. They are the epic chronotope, the “fantastic” time-travel chronotope and the heterotopian chronotope. Each fantasy chronotope is examined in the specific but interrelated textual contexts of selected children’s fantasy works in relation to the three main research questions: (i) How is the fantasy chronotope embodied and strategically deployed in the focused children’s fantasy works? (ii) What ideas and values are conveyed by its syntagmatic interplay with other chronotopes that characterise the textual quotidian world? (iii) How do characters, through their spatiotemporal practices, negotiate with the divergent chronotopic values that converge and wrestle in the textual universes? This study builds on existing works in relation to chronotopic considerations and develops the understanding of the fantasy chronotope in these particular ways: a) It moves the study of the fantasy chronotope from generalities to specific instances, so that the inner diversity of the fantasy spatiotemporal arrangements can be perceived and explored. b) It examines the syntagmatic spatiotemporal relations constructed between the fantasy and the “real” in individual children’s fantasy works and their connotations. In so doing, it reveals how each of the identified fantasy chronotopes can be strategically deployed in fantasy cartographies to convey meanings and values. c) This study also delves into the spatiotemporal embedding of human actions that is distinctively shown in fantasy chronotopes. This is done by reading characters’ spatiotemporal practices in and their negotiations with the projected fantasy worlds. d) Taking Bakhtin’s literary artistic chronotope as the link, my reading of the fantasy chronotopes also demonstrates an interpenetrative and reciprocal relation between fantasy spatiotemporal imaginations and the theoretical interpretations of space and time in geocriticism.

This thesis conducts a Critical Stylistic Analysis of Sherko Bekas’ The Small Mirrors, with the help of metaphor analysis. Five textual conceptual functions (Jeffries, 2010): Naming and Describing; Equating and Contrasting; Representing Processes/Events/States of being; Assuming and Implying and Prioritizing are used to analyse the poems. I also analyse the connotations of metaphor. These functions and metaphor analysis show how the texts construct the speaker and the fictional world in Bekas’ The Small Mirrors and the ideologies behind such constructions. The ranges of ideation – ideology in Bekas’ poetry identified by these tools are: 1. Suffering and survival are inexorable 2. Martyrdom is positive 3. Valuing one’s nation and identity is positive 4. The speaker and the people lack control over the situation My thesis aims to create a version of the Critical Stylistic model that helps me to show the depiction of the speaker and the fictional world in The Small Mirrors. I argue that Critical Stylistics is applicable to the Kurdish poetry, but it needs modifications and that the tools might work in hierarchical ranks meaning that some tools are given primary focus over others because of the difference between English and Kurdish. I use Jeffries’ (2010) Critical Stylistics and add any required modification for the textual conceptual functions to get a complete model for the analysis of The Small Mirrors. The model can show how the speaker and the fictional world are constructed which I aim to reveal. The textual conceptual functions construct a coherent perspective of the reality of the fictional world in Bekas’ poetry. The linguistic images of the fictional world of Bekas’ poetry are repetitions that become part of the naturalised ideologies of the writer.

This PhD by Publication comprises two of my novels, 22 Britannia Road and Spilt Milk, accompanied by a reflective and critical exegesis which investigates the process and context of writing my internationally published historical fiction novel Spilt Milk. Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s theoretical approaches to memory and narrative as a means to consider the borderlines between lived life and fiction, I consider the ways in which historical fiction can represent versions of real life which contain human truths and emotions. With this in mind, I argue that my novel writing (and reading) practice stem from the shared potential in what I term ‘creative memory.’ This site of potentiality is where worldliness and collaborative knowledge between writer and reader in response to the text exists, illustrating my own belief in the imagination as a place of creative communality. In examining this, I establish my own contribution to the ways in which memory and the imagination impact on the practice of creative writing, and reading fiction. Reflecting on my creative practices offers original and wider ways of understanding how literature represents, or even is, ‘real life,’ and thus has an important role in our lives today.

This thesis interrogates the relationship between the material conditions of Virginia Woolf’s writing practices and her work as a printer and publisher at the Hogarth Press. While the role played by the Press in the intellectual and literary innovations of modernism has been well-documented, less attention has been paid to its influence upon Woolf’s own literary experimentalism. By examining its effect on the material and visual aspects of her compositional processes, from the manuscript drafts to the physical construction of her printed works, this thesis explores how her involvement in the crafting of her publications (including practices of writing, editing, printing and binding) enabled her to situate her fictions alongside the visual and material innovations of modernism. Underpinned by an engagement with Bloomsbury epistemology and aesthetics, it aims to contribute to understandings of Woolf’s textual practices in the context of early twentieth-century visual and material cultures. The thesis examines several of Woolf’s texts printed between 1917, the year the Hogarth Press was established, and 1931, the year in which The Waves, often considered her most experimental work, was published. By drawing on the field of print culture and the materialist turn in Woolf scholarship, it, firstly, considers Woolf’s early short stories and how these enable her to challenge the distinction between visual and verbal forms of representation. Chapter two examines the extent to which her short stories, as well as her embodied experience of printing them, shaped the form of Jacob’s Room. The manuscript version of Mrs Dalloway is the focus of chapter three, and it suggests that the novel can be considered a palimpsest in the way that earlier versions of text reverberate in the published edition. This chapter also offers new ways of thinking about Woolf’s conceptualisation of textuality as fluid rather than fixed. Woolf’s use of colour in her writing is given particular attention in the final two chapters of the thesis. Chapters on To the Lighthouse and The Waves reveal how these visual signifiers enable her to weave a feminist-materialist discourse into the textures of her work. In establishing a connection between Woolf’s literary concerns with materiality and her feminist politics, this thesis argues that her use of objects, colours and forms work to reinsert the forgotten histories of women in the pages of her published texts.

This thesis examines the proliferation of ageing characters to be found in twentieth and twenty-first-century Welsh fiction in English and argues that older people have a special significance in this body of literature. The study employs a mixed methodology, combining close comparative analysis of fictional texts with theoretical perspectives taken from cultural and literary theory, philosophy, sociology, psychoanalysis, and postcolonial studies. The introduction situates my work alongside the fields of literary gerontology and Welsh writing in English, giving focus to strands of research which have synergies with this thesis. Chapter 2 examines the influence of stereotypes of ageing on older characterisations in Anglophone Welsh fiction and argues that writers undermine and complicate these stereotypes. Representations of gossips, burdens, those with dementia, wise older people, inspirational grandmothers, older men and grandfathers, and unmarried women are analysed. Chapter 3 focuses on renderings of older subjectivity, considering protagonists’ experiences of physical ageing, alongside tensions between the changing older body and a more constant self within, and texts which represent changes in experiences of time and memory. Writers are argued to give voice to the frail and the marginalised and to reveal the influence of socioeconomic and cultural factors on experiences of ageing. Chapter 4 asserts that intergenerational relationships involving older characters tend to symbolise societal change and to reflect class and linguistic divisions between generations. Ageing characters, particularly older women, are shown to become links to the past and to act as remembrancers of local and national histories. They also signify a conception of Welsh identity grounded in speaking Welsh, devotion to Nonconformist worship, and a stoic determination to survive. These characters often perform the role of storyteller, passing on suppressed knowledge and traditional values. It is argued that, despite their regard for the past, the novels and short stories discussed avoid the dangers of nostalgia through the ambivalence of younger characters to the identities they are bequeathed, the self-reflexivity of several texts, and older characters who are grounded in the present and concerned about the future.

Drawing upon academic and critical literature, the introduction to this exegesis considers how J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1954) became the ‘norm’ in modern second-world fantasy. Just as Tolkien’s ‘high fantasy’ mediated the fantasies of the sociohistorical periods that preceded it (James, 2012), so subsequent fantasy authors and sub-genres have inherited from and had to react against ‘high fantasy’ in order to discover their own definitions and distinct voices, styles and relevance. Thus, the introduction argues, in order to define and demonstrate the distinct nature of second-world ‘metaphysical fantasy’, of which Empire of the Saviours (2011) is a defining novel, this exegesis is required to show how the second-world ‘epic fantasy’ of the 1980s and 90s inherited from and reacted against ‘high fantasy’, and how ‘metaphysical fantasy’ in turned inherited from and reacted against the ‘epic fantasy’ sub-genre. There is also a discussion of how competing sub-genre definitions within academia and the publishing industry have complicated the debate. The first chapter considers the sociohistorical context of the development of the various sub-genres of fantasy literature, moving from the ‘high fantasy’ of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, through the nature-based fantasy of the 1960s, to the ‘swords and planets’ sci-fi crossover sub-genre of the 1970s, to the ‘epic fantasy’ of the 1980s and 90s, to the ‘urban fantasy’, ‘flintlock fantasy’, ‘steampunk’ and ‘comedic fantasy’ of the new millennium, to the ‘dark fantasy’ and ‘metaphysical fantasy’ (the latter established by my various novels) of the mid to late 2000s, to the ‘grimdark fantasy’ and ‘dystopian YA’ of the 2010s. The chapter shows how each sub-genre is informed by and reacts to its own sociohistorical moment and that each sub-genre in large part derives its distinctiveness from that unique moment. The second chapter considers how second-world ‘metaphysical fantasy’ in large part derives its definition and particular motifs from a ‘Millennial’ sociohistorical moment. The chapter then analyses how ‘metaphysical fantasy’ is distinctly informed by, reacts to and differs from the preceding sub-genre of second-world ‘epic fantasy’. Finally, the chapter considers how subsequent second-world ‘grimdark fantasy’ is informed by, reacts to and differs from ‘metaphysical fantasy’. The third chapter sets out how my novel Empire of the Saviours further exemplifies ‘metaphysical fantasy’ and has served to establish the sub-genre as a distinct and valuable contribution to the wider genre of fantasy. Drawing upon Empire of the Saviours, the chapter identifies further literary features and themes (other than those detailed in the second chapter) that are unique to the ‘metaphysical fantasy’ sub-genre.

This thesis posits that in the twenty-first century we are witnessing a literary turn comprised of a collective authorial attempt to work through and come to terms with the apocalyptic spirit of the contemporary world. The novels explored in this thesis, which are paradigmatic of this wider literary movement, reflect upon the cultural anxieties of contemporary life from what is being referred to here as a post-traumatological location of imaginative retrospect. This discussion reveals that contemporary apocalyptic fiction is for the most part motivated not by a sense of post-catastrophic mourning, as was the case with the wave of literature to have arisen in response to the events of 9/11 at the turn of the millennium, but by a speculative condition of post-traumatic recovery, borne out of recent apocalyptic fears and concerns. Apocalyptic fiction responds to collective anxieties concerning the future of the present world. From its distinct temporal location of retrospect, the apocalyptic novel can provide insights surrounding not only the conditions of contemporary crisis, but more importantly, provoke ways and means by which we might confront the narrative of apocalypse that appears to exemplify the early decades of the twenty-first century. Guided by both anxiety and hope, the post-traumatological novel looks back to the present from a time and place in which our concerns about the future have been realised. By imagining the world as if it has come to an end, or is in the process of ending, these novels actively address the anxieties of the twenty-first century from spaces of aftermath.

This thesis examines the spelling practices and letter-writing conventions to be found in the letters and papers of the Paston family and their circle during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hitherto, most scholarly attention has been on the fifteenth-century material found in Paston archives, with comparatively little research undertaken on the extensive later materials. This thesis is intended as a partial attempt to address this lacuna, drawing on new approaches to the study of early modern English letters. It draws upon a new comprehensive diplomatic transcription of the materials, consisting of approximately 500 documents containing 200,000 words. Building on an earlier pilot study (Weir 2009), the thesis falls into three main chapters, each addressing the collection from a distinct perspective, framed by a contextualising introduction (chapter 1) and a conclusion summarising the findings of the thesis and offering suggestions for future work (chapter 5). Chapter 2 begins with a key question: (1) How did letter-writing conventions of address and subscription alter and develop - if at all - through the Early Modern period, and are these changes reflected in the Paston family correspondence? The thesis demonstrates how the letters preserved in London, British Library, Additional MSS 27447, 27448 and 36988 displayed adherence to formulaic usages, even though, across the 150 years of their construction, there is a notable shift towards shorter constructions. Further research questions linked to these issues involved in address and subscription engage with the material culture of the correspondence: (2) What materials are used for the letters in question? (3) How do writers relate text to space? (4) How were the letters delivered to their recipients, and how and for what reasons were they preserved? Across the collection of letters, there was a clear development in the material culture of letter-writing, most notably through the development of the postal networks in the period, even though letter-writing tools remained relatively unchanged for centuries. Chapter 3 examines spelling practices in the letters. It addresses the following research questions: (1) How standardised were the Paston letters? (2) To what extent do spelling practices differ between male and female letter- writers? (3) Where such practices vary within an individual’s lifetime is it possible to identify the social factors which contributed to that change? (4) To what extent – and if so why -- do these habits vary between generations of the same family? In order to answer these questions, the spelling habits of Robert Paston and his family were examined, along with a number of letters by identifiable female letter-writers. The thesis demonstrates that the letters in the collection displayed a move towards more standardised spellings, but that the use of personal spelling systems and non-standard variants was still very much in evidence. Chapter 4 focuses on further pragmatic features characteristic of Early Modern English correspondence, with a special focus on the function of punctuation. Research questions addressed include: (1) If punctuation is used at all, in what context is it deployed? (2) How – if at all -- does the use of punctuation vary between male and female correspondents? In addition, this chapter will look at communicative acts within the letters including politeness, terms of address, and the use of formulaic constructions, leading to a further question: (3) To what extent do more general pragmatic features vary across the generations and genders of letter-writers? The thesis finds that punctuation practices of female writers vary considerably, even within the output of single individuals, but also that such variation and unconventional usage was not restricted to them. However, during the period covered by the archive there is a clear progression from the use of virgules and limited punctuation through to the deployment of punctuation broadly recognisable to present-day readers.

This exegesis is a critical and reflexive commentary on my first novel (Taft, A.J. (2011) Our Father, Who Art Out There ... Somewhere, Caffeine Nights: Kent) and my struggle to fit my writing to pre-existing or newly-emerging genres. At the time Our Father was published (September 2011) a new publishing category was seeking to establish itself in the marketplace. Chick Noir first emerged as a feminist reinvention of the traditionally male noir genre with stories centred around a criminal story question. However, following the phenomenal commercial success of chick noir books like Before I Sleep (Watson, S.J. 2011), Gone Girl (Flynn, Gillian, 2012), and Girl On The Train (Hawkins, Paula, 2015) our understanding of what constitutes a chick noir text has changed. This exegesis examines my attempts to contextualise Our Father within the framework of Chick Noir, both as it existed in 2011 and as it has developed since. It has led to me looking at other possible categories for my writing including Feminist Crime Fiction and Feminist Noir.