Collage Grrrls represents the first sustained attempt to define, historicise and analyse the contentious genre of ‘anti-chick lit’. In this thesis, I argue that anti-chick lit – while critically neglected – represents a key development in women’s writing from the 1990s onwards; alighting on the girl and the grrrl as figures of contradiction and transitional possibility, anti-chick fictions generate spaces in which the darker aspects of female experience – from mental illness, self-harming and unwanted pregnancies, to sexual excess and consumerism – can be creatively (re)imagined. In this way, Collage Grrrls makes a timely intervention into debates about feminine identity and feminism in popular culture. At the heart of these debates, however, exists a fraught paradox that Collage Grrrls will interrogate: at the same time as celebrating a female subject that is ‘untamed, ungroomed and unglossed’, does anti-chick lit’s alignment with the mass- market appeal of chick lit mean that the subject is simultaneously re-tamed, re-groomed and re-glossed in order to preserve her appeal – paradoxically – to a mass audience? I identify Emma Forrest, an Anglo-American author and journalist, as a representative for the genre. Along with Forrest’s novels Namedropper (1998), Thin Skin (2002) and Cherries in the Snow (2005), I will also include detailed reference to Stephanie Kuehnert’s I wanna be your Joey Ramone (2008) and Kristin Hersh’s Rat Girl (2010). Collage Grrrl’s scope of literary genres includes Young Adult fiction and memoir, with each key work presenting an unapologetic portrait of female pathology. The discussion will address the impact of third wave and postfeminism, and the cultural shifts in mainstream representations of gender, specifically in light of the fluxional identity politics of the 90s and their effect on young women. The politics and practices of this era paved the way for movements such as riot grrrl, with the grrrl becoming a notable figure for challenging normative meanings of femininity. By examining authors and works on which there is little critical material, Collage Grrrls aims to do the same, seeking out authors and texts that have yet to be recuperated to academic discourse.

This thesis introduces and examines a variety of post-Wende lesbian prose texts by German authors. These works are investigated both as immediate narratives and as loci of dynamic contemporary social and cultural change. Situated at the interface between queer and feminist studies, this thesis takes its historical context from the second Frauenbewegung and the German lesbian movement, incorporating existing feminist scholarship within these fields. In addition, its literary context uncovers predecessors to the works analysed, with the aim of questioning the conceptual continuum of German-language lesbian writing. The approach adopted throughout the study is strongly thematic, with the textual spectrum sub-divided into the representation of an allegorical life-cycle. The themes of 'coming out' as a lesbian within heterosexual society, heterosocial obstacles to gynocentric relationships, the significance of lesbian pornography, and the problems of death and bereavement combine to form the principal focus. Issues of identity construction, the homosexual alterity and the literary manipulation of space all play crucial roles within this investigation. Equally, the manner in which each author comments upon contemporary German society is revealed through analysis of her approaches to these thematics. The conclusions drawn from this research point to a dislocation which is shown to have occurred insofar as recourse to Sapphic traditionalism and homosexual antiquity may no longer be seen to be as prevalent in some lesbian works. Whereas German lesbian authors of the 1970s and 1980s manipulated homosexual mythology and appropriated the works of classical lesbian icons, some post-Wende writers are now turning instead to the work of their peers. A rupture is, in fact, seen to have occurred between the traditional, and more contemporary canons. Paradoxically, a renewal of authorial interest in otherwise customary literary inquiries such as marginalisation, female silencing and fidelity is also identified, with potential explanations for the persistent significance of such themes being offered. Similarly, a continuing impulse on the part of some 1990s lesbian authors to challenge the paradigm of heterosexual convention is highlighted. The 1990s social focus of this challenge, however, is new inasmuch as the texts are seen to be orientated not against a dominant male culture, but rather to be in specific opposition to heterocentrism. Finally, the works of two specific authors have been identified as potentially rich sources of further academic enquiry. These writers have been shown to embody the principles of 1990s German lesbian writing, in terms of their bold depictions of sexuality, playful subversion and pervasive sense of gynocentric sorority.

This study examines Lawrence's views of nature and their relations to perspectives drawn from Oriental traditions and philosophies. Many of Lawrence's non-Christian perspectives concerning the universe and man's relationship with nature bear strong affinities with Eastern thought systems, particularly his understanding of such fundamental matters as the enigma of nature, nature's duality and oneness, the mutual identity between man and nature, issues of god and evolution, mind and body, life and death, and sexuality, and concerns with intuition, spontaneity and primitivism. Lawrence met with hostility and prejudice from the literary world partly because some of his viewpoints were misread and misunderstood. However, they can be to a large degree explained and justified by traditional Oriental thought. In Lawrence's understanding of man's integrity and "living wholeness", we have his "indecent" proposition of sexuality, his "strange" assertion of blood consciousness and stress upon the solar plexus, his rejection of mind and intellect, and his preference for desire over ideology, and for primitivism over industrial materialism. These are views parallel to those of Taoism, though they also have their traces in the Western scientific readings which Lawrence was familiar with. Lawrence's transcendental attitude towards nature accounts for his extraordinary sensitivity to the natural world, and for his radical criticism of modern civilizations, sciences and the mechanical life, particularly in terms of financial motivation. The study of Lawrence's philosophy of nature suggests that Lawrence is an outstanding example of twentieth-century Romanticism. Furthermore, in Lawrence and in his work, we see a prominent figure in the development of a new environmental consciousness in literature.

This thesis examines the relationship between fictional depictions of rape and legal and social realities between 1700 and 1765, and argues that these contexts are essential to reconstruct contemporary understandings of rape in this period. Rape was presented differently in legislation, legal texts, trials and literature, reflecting the varied ideas of what constituted a rape. The research begins by asking why the statutory definition of rape was inconsistent with legal practice, and how clear the legal conventions of rape were in contemporary society. This leads to a series of case studies investigating why Alexander Pope, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett and Samuel Richardson were interested in rape, how their depictions of rape relate to legal realities and were informed by their own legal knowledge, and what form of interpretation the authors invite. The geographical focus on London is occasioned by the selection of trials, largely heard at the Old Bailey, and texts published in London, but acknowledges the wider national readership for the texts and trials, which were often reported in the press and/or published. The historical parameters reflect the decline in standardized legal education and increased reliance on legal texts from 1700, and the lack of a significant contemporary legal treatise to guide interpretations of statutory and common law until the publication of William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769). This study contributes to existing scholarship on rape in the eighteenth century. Criticism in this area has begun to adopt an interdisciplinary approach to this subject. This thesis combines legal and non-legal sources to inform its analysis, suggesting that critical approaches need to use a wider range of sources to reconstruct the context in which contemporary portrayals of rape were situated. Part two of this thesis offers new readings of canonical works, showing how Pope, Defoe, Richardson, Smollett and Fielding engaged with wider contextual legal discourse in their works, and explores their reasons for doing so. These case studies assert the importance of legal and social contexts, offer new ways of interpreting rape in literature, and show that literary authors negotiated and presented ideas of rape in a variety of ways in their texts, influencing public perceptions of the nature and illegality of such acts.

As the Holocaust passes out of living memory, this thesis re-evaluates the potential of commemorative landscapes to engender meaningful and textualised encounters with a past which, all too often, seems distant and untouchable. As the concentration camps and mass graves that shape our experiential access to this past are integrated into tourist itineraries, associated discourse is increasingly delimited by a pervasive sense of memorial fatigue which is itself compounded by the notion that the experiences of the Holocaust are beyond representation; that they deny, evade or transcend communication and comprehension. Harnessing recent developments across memory studies, cultural geography and ecocritical literary theory, this thesis contends that memory is always in production and never produced; always a journey and never a destination. In refusing the notion of an ineffable past, I turn to the texts and topographies that structure contemporary encounters with the Holocaust and consider their potential to create an ethically grounded and reflexive past-present engagement. Topographies of Suffering explores three case studies: the Buchenwald Concentration Camp Memorial, Weimar, Germany; the mass grave at Babi Yar, Kiev, Ukraine; and the razed village of Lidice, Czech Republic. These landscapes are revealed as evolving palimpsests; multi-layered, multi-dimensional and texturised spaces always subject to ongoing processes of mediation and remediation. I examine memory’s locatedness in landscape alongside the ways it may travel according to diverse literary and spatial de-territorializations. The thesis overall brings three disparate sites together as places in which the past can be encounterable, immersive and affective. In doing so, it looks to a future in which the others of the past can be faced, and in which the alibi of ineffability can be consigned to history

This thesis explores the ways in which seventeenth-century nonconformist writers used the Puritan model of spiritual autobiography to record their individual forms of dissent. Spiritual autobiography is read against the political and religious turmoil that existed in England in the aftermath of the Civil Wars and during the subsequent Restoration. Through a study of four dissenting writers I show how a genre seen usually as a record of spiritual crisis and ultimate reconciliation, was also used as a way of communicating gendered, psychological, domestic, and religious dissent by writers from the extreme margins of society. The argument differs from other studies of spiritual autobiography in that I situate the genre beyond the strict confines of soteriology and adopt an interdisciplinary approach that deploys literary, historical, and theoretical readings. I draw upon the theories of Jean-François Lyotard in order to illustrate a mood analogous to postmodernism apparent in the nonconformist psyche as well as to contextualise the wider dissent shown to exist in the seventeenth century. By applying Lyotard’s concepts of Svelteness, competing Phrase Regimens, and the Differend to spiritual autobiographies by John Bunyan, Agnes Beaumont, Laurence Clarkson, and Richard Norwood this study raises questions with regard to assumptions associated with the genre, the context in which they were written, and so presents new readings of often marginal texts.

This thesis investigates the life and work of six eighteenth-century writers, two male and four female. It explores their experience of depression through their letters and other autobiographical material, and examines the ways in which they represent melancholy in their poetry and prose. The subject of Chapter Two is Thomas Gray, whose real life persona as the lonely intellectual is also identifiable in his poetry. The Scottish poet Robert Fergusson is studied in Chapter Three. Fergusson’s lively and vigorous mind was shattered in the months leading up to his death, during which time some of his writing became darkly nihilistic. Chapter Four looks at Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, a lifelong depressive who often wrote about her feelings of despair in her poetry. Chapter Five explores Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She was a courageous and controversial figure, but despite her resilience, on occasion in her letters she reveals her vulnerability and susceptibility to low spirits, a mood which is sometimes expressed in her creative writing. Sarah Scott, whose life and work have not yet been considered in relation to the subject of melancholy, is examined in Chapter Six. Her novel includes several low-spirited and depressed female characters who are continually seeking asylum from a hostile world. Chapter Seven analyses Charlotte Smith, a mother of twelve children whose unhappy marriage ended in separation. Smith wrote extensively about her depression in her letters, prefaces, poetry and novels. This study shows that the women in particular use their writing on melancholy and depression to express their discontent with the confined way in which they are often expected to live out their lives.

This thesis examines epic impressions between two disparate literary genres, the classical Homeric epic and the science fiction novel, Frank Herbert's Dune in particular. This is done by applying Jung's archetypes and his notion of the collective unconscious to both literary works. This thesis argues that, through intertextual dialogue, continuities can be seen to exist between the Homeric epic and Dune and other science fiction texts of a similar nature. Chapter one examines epic impressions through a study of the classical heroic superhuman. This superhuman, his birth, divine attributes and heroic adventures shall be isolated and applied to both the classical hero and the hero of Herbert's narrative. Chapter two will examine the relationship between prescience ("hyperawareness") and the divine oracle of the classical epic. Chapter three will examine the archetype of the "Terrible Mother" and the masculine fear of feminine powers that works to keep the feminine subordinate. / English Studies / M.A. (English)

Quando nos debruçamos sobre as letras de samba e tango compostas entre 1917 e 1945, notamos a reiterada presença nos sambas do personagem chamado malandro e outros de seu universo. No caso do tango, testemunhamos a do denominado compadrito e outros relacionados a ele nos tangos. Essa presença se relaciona a uma contradição constitutiva, já que esses gêneros musicais, muitas vezes relacionados à representação do nacional, propagavam um modo de vida marginal, fora do apregoado como ideal de cidadão pelos respectivos Estados nacionais. É nosso objetivo nesta tese analisar como, nas composições nas quais aparece esse tipo de personagem, emergem embates, nas diferentes formas da heterogeneidade discursiva, entre vozes que identificamos, de um lado, como filiadas com a perspectiva marginal e, de outro, com posicionamentos relacionados às ações disciplinadoras dos Estados nacionais. Trabalharemos com composições elaboradas no período de 1917-1945, momento privilegiado de discussões de cunho nacionalista, quando o samba e o tango foram, por diferentes motivos e em distintas medidas, sendo associados a questões identitárias. Os referenciais teóricos que norteiam nossa pesquisa se relacionam especialmente aos estudos discursivos e enunciativos; porém, tendo em vista o caráter interdisciplinar de nosso trabalho, também lançaremos mão de conceitos relacionados aos estudos históricos, sociológicos, musicológicos e das ciências da comunicação. / When we dedicate our attention to the samba and tango lyrics produced between the years 1917 and 1945, we notice in them the persistent presence of the character known as malandro (smooth operator), and others belonging to his universe, as well as of the character known as compadrito, and others related to him in the tango songs. Such presences are related to a constitutive contradiction, for those musical genres which were constantly related to a national representation produced a propaganda of a marginal way of life, that is, the one of the outcast opposite to the ideal of citizen such as defended by national States. In this thesis, we take the compositions in which those characters are presented, and aim to analyze the way how clashes are established in the different manners of discursive heterogeneity. We identify voices sided with the marginal perspective, and we also identify other voices, on the other side, whose position stands for the one defended by the disciplining perspective of the national States. In such a frame, we work with lyrics composed in the period from 1917 to 1945, given that is a privileged moment for discussions from a nationalist perspective. Due to several reasons and different measures, that was the period when the samba and the tango were associated to identity matters. The theoretical references heading this research are mainly related to the enunciation and discourse studies; however, once we aim at maintaining the interdisciplinary aspect of our study, we also make use of conceptions related to the historical and sociological studies, as the ones belonging to the fields of musicology and communications

Como um mesmo crítico, a partir de sua perspectiva, leu Graciliano Ramos e, depois, Guimarães Rosa? Essa foi a pergunta primordial que motivou todo o andamento da pesquisa. A ela se seguiram outras: quais dificuldades impunham o trânsito entre leituras dos dois escritores brasileiros que talvez sejam os mais complexos prosadores do século XX? Quais os procedimentos de leitura crítica adotados? Quais transformações são perceptíveis na sucessão do ofício da crítica literária? Quais diálogos (declarados, velados, acidentais), para concordância ou discordância de pontos de vista, foram estabelecidos entre as leituras de diferentes críticos? Englobando dificuldades, procedimentos, transformações e diálogos, essas indagações dizem respeito a dois problemas centrais que podemos especificar como tensão entre a escrita dos escritores e a leitura dos críticos e tensão metodológica entre os críticos. Sendo assim, partindo da crítica de rodapé nos anos 1940, selecionamos oito críticos para tratar de tais indagações e problemas: Sérgio Milliet, Alvaro Lins, Franklin de Oliveira, Wilson Martins, Antonio Candido, Alfredo Bosi, Luiz Costa Lima e Adélia Meneses. O estudo comparativo, com foco em oito críticos e dois escritores, permitiu desenvolver abordagens, capítulo a capítulo, com um triplo interesse, ou seja, investigar três problemas principais: condições de recepção, leituras da crítica, questões de método. / How did the same critic read first Graciliano Ramos and then Guimarães Rosa from the same perspective? It was the main question which motivated throughout the course this research. It was followed by others: what were the difficulties imposed by the transit among the readings of the two Brazilian authors who may be the most complex prose writers of the twentieth century? What were the critical reading procedures adopted? What changes are noticed in succession of the literary criticism\'s craft? What dialogues (declared, veiled, accidental), agreeing of conflicting points of view have been established among the readings of different critics? Encompassing difficulties, procedures, changes and dialogues, these questions relate to two central problems that we can specify as \"tension between the writings of the writers and the reading of the critics\" and \"methodological tension\" among critics. Thus, starting from the newspaper criticism of the 1940s, we have selected eight critics for researching these questions and problems: Sergio Milliet, Alvaro Lins, Oliveira Franklin, Wilson Martins, Antonio Candido, Alfredo Bosi, Luiz Costa Lima and Adelia Meneses. The comparative study, focusing on eight critics and two writers, allowed the development of approaches, chapter by chapter, with a triple interest, that is, investigate three main problems: conditions of reception, readings of the criticism, questions of method.