This thesis explores how late-Ming writers interpreted the expression “beauty is ill-fated” (hongyan boming) and how male and female writers constructed and accepted the image of the ephemeral beauty (hongyan) differently. I argue that late-Ming male literati destigmatized and immortalized hongyan, but their interpretations of hongyan reinforced male fantasies about women, and served the status quo of the patriarchal family structure as well as the established literary conventions of the time. Female writers, conversely, often rejected the image and idea of hongyan and even managed to assert female subjectivity in order to reinterpret the male-constructed hongyan. However, ultimately, female writers of the period could not escape from the containment of these patriarchal literary conventions. Even for those female writers who have preserved their voices in their writings, women’s self-expressions have always been undergoing a seemingly infinite process of reinterpretations and reconstructions by male literati.

This dissertation examines the innovative subjectivity of feminine voices constructed in poetry by three women writers from seventeenth- and early nineteenth-century China: Li Yin, Wang Duanshu, and Wang Duan. Drawing primarily on their individual collections, I argue that the writers fashion poetic selves that deviate from literati representations of feminine subjectivity through the writers' intertextual dialogues with mainstream literary and cultural traditions and also their poetic exchanges with contemporary women writers. I explore specific methods employed by the three writers to create distinctive voices of their own and specify modes that distinguish the alternative feminine voices in their writings, contextualizing my reading of poems from their collected works and of mise-en-scenes in the case of exchange poetry. My close reading of the three late imperial Chinese writers' poetry reveals that subject positions in their collected works, different from those of feminine voices constructed in literati poetry, are the result of the gendered writing self seeking voices to express lived experiences, deeply felt emotions, desires, anxieties, and pleasures. These positions in turn allow the writing self to have serious intellectual exchanges with their contemporary writers, create self-definitions beyond the normative roles as prescribed by the Confucian gender system and the literati poetic tradition, and realize personal transformation in poetry.

The Company Man argues that corporate ways of organising communities permeated British imperial culture. My point of departure is the obsession shared between Anglo-Indian writers and imperial policymakers with the threat of unmanageable agency, the employee who will not follow orders. By taking up Giambattista Vico's claim that human subjects and human institutions condition each other reciprocally, I argue that Anglo-Indian literature is properly understood as one of a series of disciplinary apparatuses which were developed in response to that persistent logistical problem: how best to convince plenipotentiary agents to work in the interest of a mercantile employer, the East India Company. The Company Man reconsiders the way we think and write about Victorian imperial culture by taking this institutional approach. For one thing, the dominant position of the Company highlights the limitation of our continuing dependence on the nation as a critical hermeneutic. Additionally, I show how the prevalence of ideas like duty, service, and sacrifice in colonial literature is more than simply the natural output of a nation looking to sacralise everyday practice in the wake of their famous "Victorian loss of faith." Rather, I place these ideas among a structure of feeling, which I call aristocratic virtue, that was developed by imperial policymakers looking to militate against the threat of rogue agents. The subject material under consideration includes novels, short stories, poems, essays, memoirs, personal correspondence, and parliamentary speeches. These texts span a century but are clustered around four nodal points, which illustrate moments of innovation in the technologies of regulation and control. My opening chapter examines how the idea of an overseas empire first acquired virtue in the minds of the British public. The second explores how the Company grafted this virtue onto its corporate structure in its training colleges and competition exams. The third shows how Anglo-Indian literature continued to disseminate the rhetoric of self-sacrifice and noble suffering long after the Company ceded control to the Crown. The final chapter shows how this corporate culture reflects in that most canonical of imperial novels, Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901).

This dissertation focuses on British imperial violence in India and Ireland just after the First World War. It compares incidents of violence in each place to argue that British violent repression was an essential component of the imperial system. It also analyzes the public reaction to these events to show new, sharp divisions in British politics that had significant implications for the fate of Ireland, then waging a war for independence. Specifically, this dissertation compares, by way of case studies, the “Amritsar Massacre” of April 13, 1919 and the administration of martial law in Punjab, to the ways in which Crown Forces exacted reprisals against unarmed civilians during the Irish war for independence, including the incident of November 21, 1920, commonly referred to as “Bloody Sunday,” when British ex-military officers opened fire on a crowd watching an Irish football match. The authorities in Punjab and Ireland committed reprehensible acts that resulted in official government inquiries. The Hunter Committee, as the inquiring body into the Punjab incidents is known, condemned the shooting at Amritsar. The Government of India forced the officer responsible, General Dyer, to retire. The British reaction to this was sharply divided between Conservatives and Irish Unionists who championed Dyer and Liberals, Indian and Irish nationalists who felt the government had been too lenient on the man. Similarly, countless voices decried the excesses of imperialism and the use of reprisals against the Irish Republican Army (IRA), but for varied reasons. The public reaction to these Irish and Indian developments, along with British policy, transpired in the context of a “crisis of empire.” Britain was beset by unrest not only in Ireland and India, but also in Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine. Colonial nationalists radicalized by the war and Wilsonian notions of self-determination demanded self-government while Britain fought fiscal insolvency, domestic unrest, Bolshevism and Pan-Islamism. In this global context, concessions to moderate nationalists would have to be made and coercion used only as a last resort. In this sense the imperial system was changing, and the old guard stood determined to fight it. / text

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The Company Man argues that corporate ways of organising communities permeated British imperial culture. My point of departure is the obsession shared between Anglo-Indian writers and imperial policymakers with the threat of unmanageable agency, the employee who will not follow orders. By taking up Giambattista Vico's claim that human subjects and human institutions condition each other reciprocally, I argue that Anglo-Indian literature is properly understood as one of a series of disciplinary apparatuses which were developed in response to that persistent logistical problem: how best to convince plenipotentiary agents to work in the interest of a mercantile employer, the East India Company. The Company Man reconsiders the way we think and write about Victorian imperial culture by taking this institutional approach. For one thing, the dominant position of the Company highlights the limitation of our continuing dependence on the nation as a critical hermeneutic. Additionally, I show how the prevalence of ideas like duty, service, and sacrifice in colonial literature is more than simply the natural output of a nation looking to sacralise everyday practice in the wake of their famous "Victorian loss of faith." Rather, I place these ideas among a structure of feeling, which I call aristocratic virtue, that was developed by imperial policymakers looking to militate against the threat of rogue agents. The subject material under consideration includes novels, short stories, poems, essays, memoirs, personal correspondence, and parliamentary speeches. These texts span a century but are clustered around four nodal points, which illustrate moments of innovation in the technologies of regulation and control. My opening chapter examines how the idea of an overseas empire first acquired virtue in the minds of the British public. The second explores how the Company grafted this virtue onto its corporate structure in its training colleges and competition exams. The third shows how Anglo-Indian literature continued to disseminate the rhetoric of self-sacrifice and noble suffering long after the Company ceded control to the Crown. The final chapter shows how this corporate culture reflects in that most canonical of imperial novels, Rudyard Kipling's Kim (1901).

It is a long-established view that Roman coins were used as a means to convey messages. The obverse (“heads”) of Roman imperial coins always bore the image of the emperor, but the reverse (“tails”) was not standardized as modern coinage is today. Coin reverses commonly had the image of a deity, usually an abstract concept such as “Health”, “Courage”, but they might also advertise the completion of a major new construction project (the Colosseum, a new aqueduct), or desired behaviour, such as “fertility” (ie, have more children) or “loyalty of the army”. Coins were used by many Romans, but especially to pay the army, and for that reason coin reverses are a useful way to trace propaganda during civil and foreign conflicts. The 3rd century AD was a challenging period for the Romans, with almost continuous warfare and over 50 emperors and pretenders between 235 and 285. The frequent appearance of the god Sol (the Sun) on coin reverses in this period is a marked departure from the standard range of religious motifs and attests a major shift away from Jupiter. This thesis will investigate coins as an index of change by exploring where and how frequently the image of Sol was used on coins in the half-century prior to the establishment of a lavish temple to Sol in Rome around AD 273-275.

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 41).

Thesis (M.A.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, IL, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaf 41).

Thesis--Geneva, 1928. / Includes bibliographical references. "Bibliographie": p. [135]-137.