This thesis describes Eliot and Flaubert’s shared fascination for the figure of the ascetic saint, with special attention given to The Waste Land and La Tentation de saint Antoine. I examine how the structure, style and themes of these two works in particular show the authors updating into a modernist context the model of the trial they inherit from saintly literature. I explore in detail the varied connotations that the saint attracts, structuring my analysis on the basis of dialectical tensions which allow me to trace the relation of the saint’s experience to the theory and praxis of the two authors: the contrasting forms of discourse within each text, scientific and religious thought as distinct but potentially complicit approaches to knowledge, or the contrapuntal relationship of desert and city, allow me to illustrate the texts’ enactment of a central paradox of the ascetic’s via negativa – where the comprehensive vantage point to which they aspire is only achieved through loss. I give extensive attention to the techniques and structure of each work, in which I elaborate the operative significance of the saint’s emblematic status. My analysis culminates in a reading of the Tentation and The Waste Land that stresses their relation to an ascetic paradigm, which not only inheres through the recurrence of various motifs in the work of Eliot and Flaubert but is characteristic of modernism more generally. On the one hand expanding on undeveloped hints in Eliot criticism, regarding both the influence of Flaubert and The Waste Land’s relation to the saint’s trial, whilst on the other allowing Flaubert’s Tentation to benefit from the greater critical scrutiny given to its more canonical counterpart, the thesis enhances our understanding of both the individual authors and the broader intellectual climate to which they belong.

With diversity as an overarching theme, women writers' responses to the cultural feminisation and developing social climate of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain are explored through analyses of their poems on sensibility, community, and abolition. To determine a focus for expressive criticism and recover Romantic women writers from the social and historical contexts that have previously succeeded in highlighting male literary achievements, women's poetry is considered a distinct contribution to Romanticism. This dissertation analyses poems written by Joanna Baillie, Anna Barbauld, Harriet and Maria Falconar, Frances Greensted, Frances Greville, Elizabeth Hands, Eliza Knipe, Isabella Lickbarrow, Hannah More, Amelia Opie, Priscilla Pointon, Mary Robinson, Mary Scott, Helen Maria Williams, Ann Yearsley, and Mary Julia Young. Although literature brought together the public and private spheres, sensibility mediated between the two and served as a social currency for women. The various applications of sensibility are apparent in its dual-gendered nature, its link with reason, and the significance of economic language. A new genre of the "Address to Sensibility" was prominent in the period and followed a loose formula which defined sensibility, traced its personal impact, and determined a link between the Romantic culture and heightened emotion. Through explorations of poems on intellectual coteries, patronage, creative influence, Reviews, and literary critique, it is evident that women poets' affiliations with the literary community were marked by a discomfort based on their literary associations, the anxiety about their public reception, and the social differences in the literary community. However, the development of social, intellectual, literary, and critical communities alleviated this discomfort and contributed to women's participation in literary culture. In addition, women poets expressed sensibility and used images of community in diverse ways in their works against slavery and the trade. Abolitionist poetry acts as a case study of the particular motifs, highlighted throughout, such as the amalgamation of masculine and feminine, the political and economic applications of sensibility, the association of feeling with reason and community, and the assertion of individuality amidst commonality. Women poets' petitions to alleviate the sufferings of slaves paralleled arguments for the improvement of British society to benefit women. The poems discussed signify the complexity of the issues of sensibility, community, and diversity.

This thesis explores childhood as theme and perspective in the Argentine cuentista and poet Silvina Ocampo (1903-1993) and traces this thematic and vital link to the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizamik (1936-1972). The study looks at childhood not only in relation to their literary texts but also in the writers' construction of self-identity within their socio-literary context, and at the role played by visual art in their aesthetic. Chapter 1 contrasts Silvina with her elder sister Victoria Ocampo through their differing literary appropriation of a shared childhood. It distinguishes Ocampo from Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges in terms of her fictional logic and her treatment of games, drawing comparisons instead with Julio Cortdzar. Chapter 2 undertakes close reading of various Ocampo texts, including some for children, in order to explore her vision of childhood through nostalgia, adult-child power relationships, aging and rejuvenation, and moments of initiation or imitation. Chapter 3 turns to Pizarnik and the myth of the child-poet. It analyses her child personae through Andre Breton's Surrealism, Jean Cocteau and Octavio Paz, through her borrowings from Alice in Wonderland and Nadja, and through her obsession with madness, death, orphanhood, violation and transgression. Chapter 4 is comparative. It outlines the context in which Ocampo and Pizamik's passionate friendship developed, and considers Pizamik's essay on Elpecado mortal. It then explores their broad mutual literary and thematic affinities. My conclusion is that Ocampo's works achieve equilibrium between childhood and age, whereas Pizarnik's much-discussed poetic crisis of exile from language itself parallels her deep sense of anxiety at being exiled from the world of childhood. This thesis contributes to the study of Argentine literature by drawing revealing comparisons between two key writers through their shared obsession with childhood, arguing that an understanding of their attitudes to childhood is fundamental to appreciating fully their work. I refer to unpublished letters of Ocampo, material from private interviews, photographs and relevant paintings by Leonor Fini, Alicia Carletti and others.

This thesis offers a thematic comparison of the ways in which fallen women are depicted by two writers: D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and Jorge Amado (1912- ). The comparison highlights the contrasts and similarities between two cultures and how they are reflected in literature. The focus of the thesis is on an examination of unconventional female characters and it illuminates more generally the ways in which literary creativity is shaped by the interaction between writers and their social milieus. The theme of the fallen woman provokes discussion of changing patterns of sexuality in two different societies, in two different periods of their historical development. It also involves the question of the social, political and cultural background of both England and Brazil, where these images of the fallen women were fabricated. The thesis argues that both Lawrence and Amado share tremendous sympathy for these women. The thesis is divided into eight chapters. Chapters Two through Six are divided into two parts. The analysis in Part One involves a number of Lawrence's novels: The White Peacock, Sons and Lovers, The Lost Girl, Aaron's Rod, Mr. Noon, `Sun', and three versions of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Part Two looks at the fallen woman in Amado's writing from 1934 to 1977, and the discussion focuses on Jubiabä, Terras do sem fim, Gabriela, cravo e canela, Dona Flor e seus dois maridos, Tereza Batista cansada de guerra and Tieta do Agreste. Female desire and its fulfilment in an unconventional way has been a central question in all these novels. Without a moral judgement, both Lawrence and Amado depict the female characters who are triumphant lovers, redeemed from the sense of sin or guilt by their passion. The depiction of these women highlights the class and gender differences. Both writers show how patriarchy plays a dominant role in keeping female sexuality under control in both English and Brazilian societies.

The thesis aims to explore the issue of representation and its limits in the works of Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvin. It focuses on the authors' treatments of the relationships between representational practices and the constraining limits of the human condition in perceiving reality. The introduction aims to discuss the methodology of the thesis and the theoretical positions of contemporary theorists regarding these relationships in order to contextualise and place the thesis in perspective. The conflictual tension between representation and the human condition will then be organised around five major themes, i. e. language, cognition, hermeneutics, spatial forms, and games, each of which will be a focal point of a chapter. While the first two chapters set out to describe how language and cognition prevent humans from attaining the real in its absolute state, the next three chapters will mainly discuss the implications and consequences of the unattainable real and human inadequacies. Each of these five chapters, in its different yet interconnected direction, features an extensive discussion of the issue of representational limits and a comparative analysis of what the authors manage to do in face of the issue. A final conclusion will summarise the similarities and differences in the ways both authors deal with the critical interactions between representation and the limits of the human condition.

Although historians have acknowledged the importance of gender as a factor in the social and political life of post-revolutionary France, and bibliographical studies have revealed that vast quantities of memoirs were composed during the half century after the outbreak of the Revolution, the lives of women between the late 1790s and the 1830s, and the works in which they wrote about their lives and about the age in which they lived, have hitherto attracted relatively little attention from literary critics and historians. Previous research, moreover, has concentrated on women as writers of poetry and fiction, on the portrayal of women in novels, and on their position in society as it was defined by legislators, doctors, philosophers and the authors of manuals on female education and conduct. As a result, the diversity of women's writing and the complexity of their lives as historical subjects during this period have often been obscured. It is this diversity and complexity which are revealed by studying memoirs. This thesis examines women's memoirs from both a literary and a historical perspective, focusing on the relationship between gender, genre and historical circumstances. It argues that women wrote memoirs and wrote them in the way they did because of the political and social conditions of the age in which they lived. A short introduction outlines the reasons why the memoirs written by women in the first decades of the nineteenth century have been neglected: the preoccupation of literary scholars with memoirs of the ancien regime; the memoir's apparent lack of depth compared to 'true' or 'literary' autobiography; the weakness of most women's memoirs as sources of information on political and military affairs for the Revolution and Empire; and the narrow focus of recent women-centred histories. The rest of the thesis is an attempt to fill in some of these gaps.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between Elizabeth Gaskell and Romanticism, as shown in her shorter works. This investigation will be conducted in three principal ways: a consideration of Romanticism as a cultural phenomenon; a discussion of the cultural environment in which Gaskell was nurtured; and a critical appraisal of a selection of her shorter works. The first chapter is a consideration and discussion of Romanticism as a cultural shift which manifested itself through the closing decades of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth century. Aspects of this cultural shift considered include literature, music and the visual arts. The second chapter focuses on biographical considerations with particular reference to Elizabeth Gaskell's family circumstances and the kind of education to which she had access. The remaining chapters offer a detailed discussion of a representative selection of her shorter works. These texts have been chosen to reveal her early collaboration with her husband William Gaskell; her knowledge of Romantic poets; and ways in which she developed as a writer. This development shows an engagement with an increasingly wide range of Romantic poets and a willingness on her part to engage with the darker side of Romanticism, especially through the use of Gothic techniques. The focus is on Gaskell's shorter works because these texts have received far less critical attention than her full-length novels and because of her contribution to the rise of the modem short story, as a genre distinct from the novel.

“Bare-Faced Cheek: Authenticity, Femininity and Cosmetics in English Romantic-Era Print Culture” examines the rhetoric that surrounded women’s use of cosmetics in Romantic-era England through the focus of prevailing notions of authenticity and a Romantic valorisation of nature over artifice. The rhetoric that surrounded women’s use of cosmetics in Romantic-era England was as contentious as it was dichotic when the moralising dogma of literature of conduct came to clash with the commercial agenda of advertising rhetoric and notions of beauty, taste and women’s proper place in the social order became subjects of deliberation and debate. The significance of cosmetics in the Romantic era shifted from that of courtly display and fashionable visibility to that of tasteful moderation and restrained decorum. This, in turn, elicited a furious anti-cosmetic backlash that spoke of women’s use of cosmetics in terms of vanity, duplicity and fraudulence. The increasing medicalisation of the female body and the dissemination of that knowledge through a burgeoning print trade meant that such accusations could be accompanied by dire warnings of the deleterious nature of many lead, mercury and arsenical-based preparations that were being prepared, manufactured and promoted by a coterie of hucksters, quacks and charlatans. However, the very burgeoning print culture that gave voice to such allegations and cautions also provided a sounding-board for other voices such as the newly emerging sub-genre of the beauty manual that presented cosmetics as benign, effectual and the sign of a healthy regard for the beauty bestowed upon humanity by God. Furthermore, the rise of periodical publications designed particularly with a female readership in mind provided a forum for discussion of matters cosmetical and regular features within such publications promoted the cosmetic benefits of skincare and the effectual preservation of beauty. Advertisers also made good use of such publications as places to promote their goods as anodynely effective and discretely undetectable: an effective weapon against the ravages of time and the vagaries of nature. Cosmetics under such auspices became not only admissible but laudable, a service to both society and domestic harmony through their mollifying ability to beautify the female face. Paradoxically then, the key to using cosmetics successfully within Romantic-era England was to learn the art of appearing authentic, natural and untouched by the dubiety of feminine ‘arts’. In a print culture conflicted over the permissibility of cosmetics within the secretive realm of the female toilette the figure of the cosmetically enhanced female was thus, one that came to be used figuratively by female novelists of the time to raise questions about: the validity of authenticity within the lives of contemporary women; the contingent nature of femininity in a society that increasingly sought to confine women within an idealised cultural script; the crushing intensity of a powerful social scrutiny; and the hegemonically disruptive potential of elective female transgression. Hence, cosmetic artifice within the works of the women authors I investigate becomes a metaphor for the over-arching artifice inherent within the social construction of Romantic-era woman. Moreover, the self-control required for her to assimilate herself as naturally virtuous, diffident and unworldly points to the cosmetic artistry required to make her naturally beautiful.

This thesis provides an analysis of the works of Gabriel García Márquez and Wilson Harris in the cross-cultural context of the Americas, emphasizing the importance of myth as well as history in their attempts to explore the hybridity of post-colonial identity. García Márquez' phrase “la soledad compartida" is interpreted as the process of a spiritual Journey in which both writers articulate the quest to reintegrate the fractured American psyche. Historical and political contexts are provided to focus the nature of fragmentation, and insights from the new physics to re-iterate the presence of the 'real world' which continues to inform both writers in their experiments with linguistic and literary conventions. Realism is seen as insufficient for defining the reality of the Americas and a framework of magical realism is offered as a more appropriate context in which to approach both writers. My methodology is cross-cultural and interdisciplinary, referring to a variety of Latin American and Caribbean writers, and drawing on history, myth, psychology, and physics, as well as debates about post-colonialism and postmodernism, to support my argument that Harris and García Márquez present a vision of the world in which there is creative hope for the future.

This thesis explores Vercors's writings, with particular reference to his moral and political attitudes, from 1942 to the present. It includes his clandestine wartime publications, the subsequent development of his theory of human 'rebellion', with its strong ethical connotations, and the various polemical and fictional texts in which, in the post-war period, he expresses support for communist aims and for progressive causes such as anticolonialism. Vercors's chairmanship of the CNE in the mid-1950's is examined through his memoirs as well as through his articles and speeches of the time. After the author's overt withdrawal from fellow-travelling in 1957, his more selective political commitment is traced through the remaining years of the Algerian conflict, while the memoirs and other works of reflection that have appeared in the latter part of his career recapitulate the overall development of his political attitudes and reveal certain changes of view. Vercors's more general theory of human value has, on the other hand, remained constant, and he offers it as a starting- point for better understanding between men of all nations and ideologies. The analysis follows this broad chronological pattern, first in relation to the moral elements, then the political; but there is frequent cross- reference between the two aspects, in keeping with the author's own emphasis on their close interconnection in his outlook. The extent of his combined fictional and non-fictional output is such that three successive chapters are devoted to the exploration of his moral attitudes, then three, similarly, to the political responses. There is also reference, where appropriate, to critical commentary on Vercors's work and to other background sources; and the appendices contain Vercors's direct response to specific questions put to him during the preparation of the present study. This thesis is intended to contribute to the field of modern French studies through its comprehensive coverage of Vercors's writing in two major areas of commitment.