Thesis (Ph.D.)--Michigan State University. English, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 10, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 194-203). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 274-287). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 274-287). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (MEd)--University of Melbourne, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, 2010. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 66-70)

This thesis explores the idiosyncrasies of the nineteenth-century property market and the significance of rented spaces in the literary imagination, focusing on Charles Dickens's fiction and journalism. The traditional understanding of the Victorian home has been challenged in recent criticism that points to the permeability of the public and private spheres, complicates the ways in which gender mapped onto these spheres, and highlights the difference between home and house, freehold and leasehold. This thesis contributes to the discussion by showing that domestic space was a more fractured concept than the middle-class ideal suggests. Versions of 'home' could be found in a multitude of unlikely and unstable places: in inns, hotels, lodging-houses, boarding-houses, and private houses subdivided into apartments for income. Drawing particular attention to London, I reveal tenancy - the commodification of space - to be a governing force in everyday life in the period. The vast majority of the population had an immediate economic relationship with the rooms and houses they inhabited, and this basic fact had various social, psychological and imaginative corollaries. Dickens may have been read as an overwhelming proponent of domestic ideology, but as this thesis argues, rented spaces had an enduring hold upon him. Most significantly, for Dickens, to write about tenancy meant to write about writing. His tenancy narratives touch upon questions of genre, style, character, authorial self-consciousness and the literary marketplace - especially his dialogue with the writers working around him. I explain that the emerging prominence of rented spaces gave Dickens and his circle new narrative opportunities, offering them a tool with which to study the boundaries of different genres. Space, then, does not simply provide a backdrop for incident in the novel, but plays a direct part in determining which incidents take place. Accordingly, the chapters in this thesis are principally divided by genre. The introduction lays out the historical, theoretical and geographical coordinates of the argument. The first chapter identifies some of the key features of Dickens's emerging urban style, situates his early work within an influential farce tradition, and brings the figure of the landlady to life. The second discusses spatial metaphors in the Bildungsroman; it ends with an argument about the 1851 window-tax repeal and its implications for literary lodging-houses. Chapter 3 considers the sudden growth of the hospitality industry during the Great Exhibition and its corresponding narratives, from comedy to sensation fiction. This is followed by a short interlude on seaside lodgings, where Dickens and his contemporaries modernised the pastoral for the nineteenth century. After charting contemporary debates surrounding 'low' lodging-houses, Chapter 4 demonstrates how these writers used rented spaces to make major contributions to the rise of the detective story. The fifth chapter, on living alone and living together, is largely dedicated to the multi-authored Christmas numbers of Household Words and All the Year Round; these witty collections suggest that the dynamics of the lodging-house reflect the politics of Dickens's immediate circle. Finally, a coda contemplates the legacy of Dickens's tenancy narratives in the late nineteenth century and beyond.

Orientador: Helio Rebello Cardoso Junior / Banca: Lourdes Madalena Gazarini Conde Feitosa / Banca: Claudio Denipoti / Banca: Ivan Esperança Rocha / Banca: Milton Carlos Costa / Resumo: O século XIX foi caracterizado pela historiografia ocidental como um momento de elaboração e definição de importantes conceitos científicos, pela busca por avanço tecnológico, assim como pelo crescimento literário e cultural. A retomada e a utilização de elementos da cultura greco-romana têm sido presença constante na formação e utilização desses conceitos. Alguns trabalhos populares vitorianos sugeriam que os romanos clássicos deixaram para os ingleses uma civilização que se dirigiu quase que diretamente para o estado moderno inglês. Partindo desse pressuposto, o objetivo deste trabalho é analisar como os vitorianos interpretaram a sexualidade romana, bem como, a conduziram no que diz respeito à construção de uma moral sexual no período, através da leitura das obras de Ovídio, poeta latino do século I d.C. que teve muita repercussão em seu momento histórico. Dentre suas obras, a Ars Amatoria se destaca, por pregar a ideia de que o prazer sexual entre homens e mulheres, para ser plenamente satisfatório, deveria ser mútuo, e a relação, livre e espontânea por ambas as partes. No entanto, Ovídio foi uma referência não assumida entre os vitorianos, justamente pelo fato de o século XIX estar marcado por uma necessidade de controle da conduta sexual. Esse controle insere-se no contexto de uma nação que vive um momento de mudanças devido à crescente industrialização e logo ao descontrole populacional desencadeado por fatores sociais, econômicos e imperialistas. A literatura vitoriana se caracteriza em parte pela produção de romances e biografias moralizantes, fato este que excluiria Ovídio do modelo de um herói que deveria ser exaltado. / Abstract: The nineteenth century was characterized by Western historiography as a period of working up and definition of important scientific concepts, by search for technological advancement, as well as by literary and cultural growth. The recovery and the use of greek and roman culture elements have been constantly present in the formation and use of these concepts. Some popular Victorian works suggested that the Classic Romans left to the British a civilization which turned almost directly to the modern English state. Based on this purpose, this work aims to analyze how the Victorians interpreted the Roman sexuality, and how they led it concerning to the construction of a sexual morality in that period. For this, we resort to reading Ovid‟s works, Latin poet of the first century AD which had repercussions in his historical moment. Among his works, Ars Amatoria is detached, for preaching the idea that sexual pleasure for men and women, to be fully satisfactory, should be mutual, and the relationship, free and voluntary by both parties. However, Ovid was a reference not assumed among the Victorians, precisely because the nineteenth century is marked by a need to control sexual behavior. This control is inside the context of a nation that is experiencing a period of change due to increasing industrialization and soon to lack of controll of population triggered by social, economic and imperialist factors. The Victorian literature is characterized in part by the production of moralizing novels and biographies, a fact that excluded Ovid as a model of a hero which should be exalted. / Doutor

Orientador: Maria da Graças Gomes Villa da Silva / Banca: Alcides Cardoso dos Santos / Banca: Nelson Viana / Resumo: Thomas Hardy é um autor cuja produção se assenta no período que compreende o final do século XIX e o começo do século XX, momento que marca não apenas o fim de uma era histórica e o recomeço de novos tempos, mas caracteriza também uma ocasião de mudança na concepção literária. No caso inglês, aquele período apontava para um declínio da literatura vitoriana - com seus temas baseados na moral austera da época, ancorada na figura íntegra da rainha Vitória - e revelava os primeiros indícios de uma tendência literária voltada para o retrato do homem cindido, imerso no processo de crise existencial e destituído de muitas de suas antigas certezas. Este trabalho apresenta uma análise do romance Tess of the d‟Urbervilles com vistas a flagrar, segundo o ponto de vista de Thomas Hardy, a crise de valores que se estabelece, quando o modo de produção capitalista avança sobre as antigas instituições feudais na Inglaterra daquele tempo e deflagra um processo de reconsideração dos papéis dos indivíduos na sociedade. O estopim desta efervescência foram os desdobramentos da Revolução Industrial e as inovações nos campos científico e cultural que convulsionaram os padrões de comportamento e colocaram em questionamento a própria conduta humana. Com ironia, a sociedade vitoriana é criticada e, seus costumes, em grande monta, são apresentados como hipócritas no romance de Hardy, que tem um desfecho fatalista e parece retratar a visão desencantada do homem daquele momento sobre o destino de sua própria espécie no mundo em ascendente ebulição. Publicado pela primeira vez em 1891 e concebido sob a forma realista, interessa à pesquisa o romance Tess of the d‟Urbervilles justamente pelo seu caráter duplo: pertence ao cânone da literatura vitoriana e, ao mesmo tempo, antecipa a temática modernista do colapso da solidez humana. Para apontar esta crise, adotamos... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Thomas Hardy‟s works are set in a time comprehending the end of nineteenth century and the beginning of twentieth century, a period that not only highlights the end of a historical era and the beginning of a new time, but also characterizes an occasion of change in literary conception. That period in England was representative of the decay of Victorian literature - with moral-based themes inspired in Queen Victoria‟s integrity - and it showed up the first signs of a literary tendency of revealing the image of the divided man, sunk into the process of existential crisis and void of many of his previous certainties. This study presents an examination on Tess of the d‟Urbervilles in order to depict, according to Thomas Hardy‟s point of view, the crisis of values installed in the social order, when capitalism advances over the old feudal institutions in England at that time and sets forth a process of reconsideration of the roles of the individuals in society. The starting point of all this effervescence was the Industrial Revolution and its implications that brought innovation to scientific and cultural realms, disrupting old standards of behaviour and putting human conduct in check. The Victorian society is criticized with irony and many of its habits are taken as hypocrisies in Hardy‟s novel, which ends fatalistically, seeming to portrait man‟s disappointed view about his own destiny in the disturbed world in that time. Tess of the d‟Urbervilles, written under the realist form, was published for the first time in 1891 and it is important to this research because of its double character: it belongs to the canon of Victorian literature and, at the same time, anticipates the modernist theme of the collapse of human solidity. To point out this crisis, we take Raymond Williams‟s position that considers Hardy not simply a regionalist writer exclusively worried with... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre

The Laird rams, built from 1862-1865, reflected concepts of naval power in transition from the broadside of multiple guns, to the rotating turret with only a few very heavy pieces of ordnance. These two ironclads were experiments built around the two new offensive concepts for armoured warships at that time: the ram and the turret. These sister armourclads were a collection of innovative designs and compromises packed into smaller spaces. A result of the design leap forward was they suffered from too much, too soon, in too limited a hull area. The turret ships were designed and built rapidly for a Confederate Navy desperate for effective warships. As a result of this urgency, the pair of twin turreted armoured rams began as experimental warships and continued in that mode for the next thirty five years. They were armoured ships built in secrecy, then floated on the Mersey under the gaze of international scrutiny and suddenly purchased by Britain to avoid a war with the United States. Once purchased, they were largely forgotten. Historians rarely mention these two sister ironclads and if mentioned at all, they are given short shrift. Built with funds obtained in part through the Confederate Erlanger loan, these ironclads were constructed at Lairds shipyard in Birkenhead and represented an advanced concept of ironclad construction through new proposals involving turrets, the ram, heavy guns and tripod masts on an armoured ship, as advocated by Captain Cowper Coles, R.N. They proved too much of a leap in one design but when their roles caught up to the revised designs, the ships were modified to meet new requirements. After several mission and design changes they then performed to standard. This belated success occurred when the concept of the ideal armoured warship was in flux throughout the middle Victorian years.

Participants in the critical enterprise of “Law and Literature” tend to center their arguments on the question of literature’s utility to the study and practice of law. I focus instead on the reciprocal corollary: how can an understanding of law influence a critical reading of literature? Taking cues from discussions in Renaissance studies of law and literature and drawing on my own legal training, I assert that transatlantic literary studies provides both a conceptual framework for positing a reciprocal relationship between law and literature and, in nineteenth century Scottish and American depictions of property and criminal law, a crucial test case for this exploration by uncovering new “legal fictions” within these texts. I begin my first chapter by situating my work within recent critical work in Law and Literature. While most scholarship in the “law in literature” subcategory since James Boyd White’s influential 1973 text The Legal Imagination has focused on how (and if) literary studies can help current and future legal practitioners through what Maria Aristodemou calls “instrumental” and “humanistic” mechanisms, recent work, particularly by a dedicated group of interdisciplinary scholars in Renaissance studies, has focused on the law’s benefit to literary studies in this field. I explore the critical mechanisms employed by these scholars as well as by scholars in nineteenth century literary studies such as Ian Ward. I then turn to transatlantic literary studies, arguing that the approaches outlined by Susan Manning, Joselyn Almeida, and others provide a framework that can give nineteenth-century literary studies a similar framework to that proposed by Aristodemou: an “instrumental” method of giving greater precision to discussions of how historical institutions and hierarchies are depicted in nineteenth century literature, and a “humanistic” method of extending beyond historicist approaches to see beyond the often artificial demarcations of literary period and genre by finding commonalities that transcend disciplinary and historical borders. I conclude this introduction by identifying the legal and literary parameters of my project in the legal-political tensions of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Scotland and America. My second chapter focuses on property law and the question of inheritance, reading Walter Scott’s Rob Roy and The Bride of Lammermoor alongside Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables to demonstrate how the narratives play with two dueling theories of inheritance law – meritocratic and feudal – and how those dueling legal theories impact the events of the tales themselves. After outlining tensions between older but still prevalent ideas of feudal succession and newer but admittedly flawed in execution notions of meritocratic land transfer, I explore how Scott’s and Hawthorne’s narratives demonstrate the inability of their characters to reconcile these notions. Both Rob Roy and The House of the Seven Gables seem to demonstrate the triumph of deserving but legally alienated protagonists over their titled foes; both novels, however, end with the reconciliation of all parties through ostensibly love-based weddings that perform the legal function of uniting competing land claims, thus providing a suspiciously easy resolution to the legal conflict at the heart of both stories. While reconciliation makes the legal controversies at the heart of these stories ultimately irrelevant, the legal nihilism of The Bride of Lammermoor takes the opposite tactic, demonstrating both the individual shortcomings of the Ashton and Ravenswood families and the systemic failure of Scottish property law’s feudalism to achieve equitable outcomes. I next turn to the question of insanity in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and James Hogg’s “Strange Letter of a Lunatic,” arguing that both narratives complicate the legal definition of insanity by showing gaps between the legislative formulation and actual application to their fictional defendants. After developing the different viewpoints towards criminal culpability articulated by the American (but based on English law) and Scottish versions of the insanity defense, I turn first to Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe’s narrator, I argue, deliberately develops a narrative that takes him outside the protections of the insanity defense, insisting on his own culpability despite – or perhaps because of – the implications for his own punishment. Meanwhile, Hogg’s narrative, both in its original draft form for Blackwood’s and its published version in Fraser’s, paints a different picture of a narrator who avoids criminal punishment but finds himself confined in asylum custody. These two areas of inheritance and insanity collide in my exploration of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Frank Norris’s McTeague, where I illustrate the relationship between the urban demographics and zoning laws of both the real and fictional versions of London and San Francisco and the title characters’ mentally ill but probably not legally insane murderers. After demonstrating Stevenson’s and Norris’s link between psychology and the complex amalgamations of their fictional cityscapes, I demonstrate how these cityscapes also allow them to sidestep rather than embrace mental illness as an excuse for their murderous protagonists’ crimes, indicting the institutions at the center of their texts as equally divided and flawed.

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