During the first half of the `long' eighteenth century the English were, as a nation, vehemently anti-Catholic, yet the art that was most admired, collected and talked about, was Catholic in origin and subject matter (pictures showing the intercession of saints or the figure of God, for example). Such art might have been rejected by English collectors, certainly idolatry was chief among the heresies ascribed to the Papists, but the belief in the supremacy of Italian art was long-standing and tenacious in pan-European culture. The thesis demonstrates that rather than rejecting it, elaborate strategies were developed which allowed the cultural and social value of ownership and knowledge of this canonical art to accrue, whilst managing its potentially troubling content. For example, the royal ownership of the Raphael Cartoons (c. 1514) was a matter of increasing national pride during this period, which is surprising at first sight, given their provenance and their celebration of the apostolic succession of the Papacy from SS Peter and Paul. These meanings were not expunged from the Cartoons by English commentators, instead means were found to transpose them into a Protestant register and to maintain Raphael's reputation as the great universal artist. Each chapter of the thesis offers a different mode of address to the central theme, exploring, for example, the encounters grand tourists had with canonical art in Catholic churches in Rome and the ways in which the Catholic meanings of pictures were managed in a collection. In another chapter I explore how art was used and discussed within the Church of England. It has become clear that the Catholic associations of art did present a historically-significant political challenge to English connoisseurs and that, for example, new histories and theories of art, modified from their continental models, were developed to facilitate its acceptance. In addition, by paying careful attention to the ways in which issues of class, nationhood and culture were managed in relation to this problem, insights into the complex nature of anti-Catholicism in England have been gained.

It is the purpose of this thesis to examine and compare three Restoration and eighteenth century adaptations of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure: William Davenant's The Law Against Lovers, acted in 1662; Charles Gildon's Measure for Measure: or, Beauty the Best Advocate, acted in 1700; and John Philip Kemble's Shakspeare's Measure for Measure, acted in 1794. The plays are discussed with regard to their divergence from Shakespeare's play. In addition, they are examined from the standpoint of their ability to reflect the theatrical practices, audience preferences, and social conditions of the time in which they were performed.

This thesis considers the interrelation between gender, national identity and elite family life in Scotland between 1740 and 1790. Family group portraits painted by Scottish artists of Scottish families are examined and contrasted with English counterparts to demonstrate the evolving nature of Scottish identity as performed in the domestic sphere in the period under consideration. The principal primary sources used are family portraits, alongside letters and other archival material and contemporaneous printed texts. In the first section (chapters 1-3) the centrality of dynasty as an on-going elite concern will be established and the role that portraiture played in establishing, asserting and maintaining dynastic claims and elite status are revealed. As is shown, this concern was shared by aristocrats, gentry, the merchant and intellectual elite. The idea is introduced that the 'family group portrait' does not necessarily simply exist in one frame but may be depicted across several canvases, nevertheless conceived as a coherent whole, and shows that they were intended to interact with the building in which they were hung. The notion that conversation pieces, notable for their informal presentation of family relations, represented a shift in attitude to the importance of lineage and primogeniture will be questioned. A close reading of these portraits shows that old concerns of propriety, gendered roles and dynastic concerns remain central to the conversation piece. In the second section (chapters 4-6), the focus will move from the family as a whole to particular familial relations; nuptial, maternal and paternal. In each case, the correlation between these domestic relationships and the political affairs of Scotland, be that the Jacobite cause or Enlightenment, will be revealed. The chapter on motherhood will highlight that, while patrons commissioned portraits of sentimental motherhood, old concerns of lineage were deeply embedded within these. The matter of fatherhood is one that had been, until recently, rather overlooked by scholars and the chapter dedicated to it in this thesis highlights the centrality of paternity to elite Scottish masculinity. This thesis will demonstrate the centrality of gender to the depiction of elite family life and examine the peculiarly Scottish nature of these pictorial performances. In so doing the thesis offers a contribution to the history of gender and family life in Scotland.

Feeling Subjects investigates sensibility in relation to the production of subjectivity in the later eighteenth century. It creates a model of sensibility as a discursive space bringing together literary, philosophical, and medical understandings of feeling. It argues that sensibility’s discursive space produces experiential subjects in an ongoing, dynamic project of negotiating between the internalization of public experiences and the projection of private feelings and thoughts. It invokes the three-dimensional image of the Möbius strip to envision inner/private and external/public expressions of feeling as inseparable, yet distinct elements that help to produce the feeling subject. This model of sensibility represents a new theory of subjectivity in the later eighteenth-century where the literary subject and the social community that surrounds him or her are both co-constitutive and co-destructive and where the traditional binaries are challenged in a model that sees every character as simultaneously a public and private subject. The aim of the project is to show that the legacies of rational men and emotional women which have occupied scholars of the eighteenth century for much of the last fifty years suggest a much more cohesive understanding of gender and its connection to subjectivity than is revealed in much of the fiction of sensibility in the period. Feeling Subjects offers a theory of sensibility that is not inherently gendered, and that focuses on how individuals experience themselves in relation to the world around them while simultaneously generating that world. The project is divided into two halves which enact the Möbius model of private and public feeling. The first half focuses on the personally and socially productive potential of sensibility in The Adventures of David Simple, The History of Ophelia, The Vicar of Wakefield, and The Fool of Quality. The second half examines the increasingly negative expression of sensibility in A Simple Story, Secresy, The Natural Daughter, and Zofloya. Throughout Feeling Subjects, sensibility is not just a word denoting the expression of feeling, but a discursive space through which to experience the tensions and interrelations between public and private thought and feeling in theories of socialization in the later eighteenth-century novel. / English

"Rural Sports: The Poetry of Fishing, Fowling, and Hunting, 1650-1800" traces the evolution of poetry on the field sports over a 150-year span, with a view toward considering these poems in the first instance as sporting texts. This thesis analyzes sportsmen's attitudes toward their activities, noting the larger social implications of their sporting performances. The thesis also seeks to classify and understand the poems as distinct literary sub-genres. Current sociological insights into angling and hunting help to illustrate the poems' resemblances to one another, particularly Hobson Bryan's concept of "recreational specialization" and Norbert Elias's concept of "tension equilibrium." In providing a systematic survey of the rural sports poetry, this thesis argues that during successive stages of the period, poetry on certain sports came into vogue and then receded from fashion. This followed from historical and political developments but also from literary ones. The poetry on fishing after Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler (1653) maintained a dialogue between pastoral and georgic elements, as the two modes offered scope for the experience of angling. In the eighteenth century, the writers of hunting verse balanced a passion for sport with social and political awareness; hence, they tended to employ the techniques of the prospect view and topographical poetry, intermixing descriptive elements with didactic ones in the georgic mould. As the century progressed, hunting and shooting were either reproved in an increasing number of sentimental poems representing hunters as uncaring and pitiless toward animals or they were celebrated for their gentlemanly values and virtues in the manner of William Somervile's influential poem The Chace (1735) and George Markland's Pteryplegia (1727).

"Rural Sports: The Poetry of Fishing, Fowling, and Hunting, 1650-1800" traces the evolution of poetry on the field sports over a 150-year span, with a view toward considering these poems in the first instance as sporting texts. This thesis analyzes sportsmen's attitudes toward their activities, noting the larger social implications of their sporting performances. The thesis also seeks to classify and understand the poems as distinct literary sub-genres. Current sociological insights into angling and hunting help to illustrate the poems' resemblances to one another, particularly Hobson Bryan's concept of "recreational specialization" and Norbert Elias's concept of "tension equilibrium." In providing a systematic survey of the rural sports poetry, this thesis argues that during successive stages of the period, poetry on certain sports came into vogue and then receded from fashion. This followed from historical and political developments but also from literary ones. The poetry on fishing after Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler (1653) maintained a dialogue between pastoral and georgic elements, as the two modes offered scope for the experience of angling. In the eighteenth century, the writers of hunting verse balanced a passion for sport with social and political awareness; hence, they tended to employ the techniques of the prospect view and topographical poetry, intermixing descriptive elements with didactic ones in the georgic mould. As the century progressed, hunting and shooting were either reproved in an increasing number of sentimental poems representing hunters as uncaring and pitiless toward animals or they were celebrated for their gentlemanly values and virtues in the manner of William Somervile's influential poem The Chace (1735) and George Markland's Pteryplegia (1727).

This dissertation recasts how historians and scholars have come to understand bound labor in eighteenth-century Virginia. Servants—including indentured servants, customary servants, convicts, Virginia-born servants, and apprentices—remained a part of Virginia’s work force throughout the eighteenth century. Servants were a people between and navigated the worlds of freedom and unfreedom on a daily basis, working alongside slaves, negotiating with their masters, and attempting to make sense of their place in Virginia society as an alternative source of bound labor. Some historians, however, dismiss servants, claiming that by the end of the seventeenth century they had all but disappeared and that a general solidarity existed between all whites by the early eighteenth century. Other scholars acknowledge the presence of servants after the turn of the century, but rarely discuss their significance outside of economic analyses or migration studies. Throughout the eighteenth century Virginia masters failed to find common cause with this white labor force—despite its largely European origins and temporary bondage—and servants were constantly ensnared in the power relationships dictated by race, gender, and labor in colonial Virginia. The presence of servants throughout the eighteenth century suggests a need to reconsider colonial society not only across the lines of color but also along the lines of condition.

Comfort—with its various connotations of physical ease, wealth, independence, and service—is an important concept to Jane Austen, who uses comfort in her novels to both affirm and challenge accepted women’s roles and status in her culture. In the late eighteenth century, new ideas of physical comfort emerged out of luxury along with a growing middle class, to become something both English people and foreigners identified with English culture. The perceived ability of the English to comfort well gave them a reason for national pride during a time of great anxieties about France’s cultural and military might, and Austen participates in her culture’s struggle to define itself against France. Austen’s “comfort” is the term she frequently associates with women, home, and Englishness in her works. Austen’s depiction of female protagonists engaged in the work of comforting solaces modern readers, who often long for the comfort, good manners, and leisure presented in the novels. Surveys of two sample groups, 139 members of the Jane Austen Society of North America and 40 members of the online Republic of Pemberley, elicit data confirming how current readers of Austen turn to her works for comfort during times of stress or depression. Although some readers describe using Austen’s novels as a form of escapism, others view their reading as instructive for dealing with human failings, for gaining perspective on personal difficulties, and for stimulating their intellects. Austen’s fiction grapples with disturbing possibilities, such as the liminal position of powerless single women at the mercy of the marriage market and fickle family wishes, as much as it provides comforting answers. Comforts (decent housing, love in marriage, social interaction) are such a powerful draw in Austen’s works because women’s discomfort is so visible, and for many, so likely. Thus, Austen’s comfort challenges as much as it reassures her audience.

Shipwrecks have a way of catching the imagination of both professionals and the general public. During the fall of 2004 a shipwreck was discovered in Delaware Bay near Lewes, Delaware. This vessel, believed to be British, was lost during the second half of the eighteenth century. Preliminary examination of the wreck site suggested that it was a merchant ship bound for the colonies. While wrecks dating to this period representing various countries have been found, no British merchant vessels bound for the colonies have been examined archaeologically. This project provided the opportunity to investigate a ship and its cargo in light of the historical events of the period. Analysis of artifacts recovered from the site provided important glimpses of colonial American consumer practices in the period leading up to the American Revolution. In light of the general colonial displeasure over increased Parliamentary restrictions, colonists adjusted their buying habits. Study of the artifact assemblage suggests British merchants were attempting to substitute non-British manufactured goods for some objects. This study also indicated that colonists were perhaps not idealistic in practice when it came to denying themselves consumer goods. Further excavation of this vessel, and the study of other inbound merchantmen, should help confirm the conclusions regarding British policy and its effect on pre-revolutionary consumer practices. Based upon evidence derived from a handful of artifacts, this study tentatively identified the vessel as the ship Severn, lost in 1774 off the coast of Delaware.

This thesis discusses the funerary monuments of Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquis of Rockingham (1730-1782) and William Weddell (1736-1792). It investigates how each man’s political, social, cultural and collecting activities constructed their self-identities. Then, it discusses the construction and formal characteristics of their funerary monuments. Finally, it analyzes how the monuments reflect these identities and evaluates the relative efficacy of the practice. / text