La création des banques de données littéraires ces dernières décennies a permis d’insérer les méthodes quantitatives dans l’étude de la production, de la réception, du fait et de la vie littéraires. Notre thèse se penche sur l’un de ces corpus numérisés, dans le cadre des littératures francophones subsahariennes. Ainsi, sur la base d’une approche bibliométrique, il est question de quantifier cette production littéraire à partir des données fournies par la banque de données littératures africaines francophones (LITAF), essentiellement axée sur la production littéraire de langue française liée à l’Afrique subsaharienne. Par opposition aux nombreux travaux qui ont été menés sur l’histoire des littératures francophones subsahariennes, ce travail s’axe sur la recherche quantitative dans ce domaine. L’exploitation de cette banque de données, s’est faite à partir d’une prise de mesure dont le but a été de retracer l’évolution quantitative des différentes variables de cette production littéraire, en interrogeant et en mettant en évidence, l’ensemble des facteurs historiques qui ont pesé sur les fluctuations de production au cours des différentes périodes. Les quantifications établies, se sont faites sur la base d’une segmentation des notices, qui a pris en compte des critères tels que: la période, le genre ou la catégorie littéraire, la réception critique des œuvres et auteurs, les pays et les éditeurs. Par ailleurs, l’analyse des indices signalétiques des documents, a permis de saisir et examiner l’évolution des types d’imprimés, des supports de diffusion, du phénomène de réception et de mettre en lumière les mutations éditoriales propres à cette littérature. En soumettant l’ensemble de ces quantifications bibliométriques à des analyses interdisciplinaires, on a pu construire une histoire littéraire quantitative et dégager grâce à elle, les facteurs qui ont conditionné aussi bien la production que la réception de cette littérature depuis son avènement jusque dans les années 2000 / Setting up literary data banks in recent decades has made it possible to include quantitative methods in the study of literary production, reception, fact and life. Our thesis examines one of these digitized corpora, within the framework of Francophone sub-Saharan literatures. Thus, on the basis of a bibliometric approach, we intended to quantify this literary production based on data provided by the African Francophone literature database (LITAF), mainly focused on French-language literary production in sub-Saharian Africa. Unlike so many studies that have been conducted on the history of French-speaking sub-Saharan literatures, this work focuses on quantitative research in this area. The exploitation of this databank, has been made through a measurement whose aim was to trace the quantitative evolution of the different variables of this literary production. It has been made by questioning and highlighting, the historical factors that had an impact on the fluctuations of the production over the different periods. The established quantifications have been made by dividing the records into sections, which took into account criteria such as : the period, the genre or the literary category, the critics of works and the authors, the countries and the publishers. Moreover, the analysis of the descriptive signs of the documents made it possible to grasp and examine the evolution of the types of printed matters, of the media of diffusion, of the phenomenon of reception and to highlight the editorial mutations specific to this literature. By submitting all these bibliometric quantifications to interdisciplinary analyses, we have been able to construct a quantitative literary history and to identify through it the factors that have conditioned the production as well as the reception of this literature from its advent to the 2000s

Este trabalho procura explorar o ponto de vista de Aquino Corrêa, que pressupõe a adoção de um comportamento crítico diante do poema, assentado na análise da forma e do conteúdo, admitindo a existência de uma norma de uso da língua na modalidade literária capaz de expressar na obra a distinção dessas duas entidades: a forma e a matéria ou fundo. A perspectiva adotada para a realização deste estudo foi a de análise do discurso crítico com que Aquino Corrêa analisa estas duas entidades para determinar a função das obras, no interior do sistema literário de onde elas emergiram. Alicerçados na sua biobibliografia elegemos os pontos fundamentais que sustentam o estilo particular do escritor e os critérios que o mesmo defende para conceber o texto elevado à categoria de literário mediante o tratamento dispensado à forma e ao conteúdo. O princípio teórico fundamental desta tese assenta-se na concepção da natureza universal do texto literário constituído como expressão de um conteúdo que ganha uma forma determinada tanto no processo de escrita quanto de análise do texto, implicando em procedimentos essenciais à realização da crítica literária, a qual visualiza a obra configurada no desabrochamento simultâneo de uma estrutura e de um pensamento, no amálgama solidário de uma forma e de uma experiência individual. Nesta relação, distinguemse a literatura enquanto arte criativa e os estudos literários como um enfoque especializado do texto que possibilita à crítica traduzir a experiência criativa da literatura através de procedimentos específicos que a subsidiam e a legitimam.Neste prisma em que o texto é analisado nas suas categorias estruturais e nas relações de significação com o autor, a língua literária subordina-se a determinadas normas lingüísticas que funcionam como reguladoras dos procedimentos tanto de elaboração como de avaliação crítica do texto, promovendo a depuração dos excessos tanto da linguagem revolucionária dos modernistas quanto dos resíduos lusófilos dos tradicionalistas (LEITE, 2006: 31). / This work looks for to explore point of view of the Aquino Corrêa that ahead estimates the adoption of a critical behavior of the poem seated in the analysis of the form and the content, admitting the existence of a norm of use of the language in the literary modality capable to express in the workmanship the distinction of these two entities: the form and the contents or the deep substance.The perspective adopted for the accomplishment of this study was of analysis of the critical speech with that Aquino Corrêa analyzes these two entities to determine the function of the workmanships in the interior of the literary system of where they had emerged. The basis of our argument is in his biobibliography we choose the basic points that support the particular style of the writer and the criteria that the same defends to conceive the high text to the literary category by means of the treatment excused to the form and the content.The theoretical basic principle of this thesis is based in the conception of the universal nature of the literary text consisting in the place where the content in such a way gains definitive form for the process of writing how much of analysis of the text implying in essential procedures to the literary accomplishment of the critical one, which analyzes the workmanship configured in the simultaneous unclasping of a structure and a thought, in the solidary amalgam of a form and an individual experience. In this relation they distinguish it literature while creative art and the literary studies as one specialized approach from the text that it makes possible to the critical one to translate creative of literature the experience through specific procedures that subsidize it and they legitimize it. In this prism where the text is analyzed in its structural categories and the relations of means with the author, the literary language subordinates it definitive linguistics norms that they function in such a way as regulating of the procedures of elaboration as of critical evaluation of the text, promoting the purification of the excesses in such a way of the revolutionary language of the modern movement how much of the lusófilos residues of the traditionalists (LEITE, 2006:31).

This thesis explores the writing life of the Northumbrian labouring-class poet Robert Story (1795-1860) who, during the political turmoil of the 1830s, achieved national celebrity for writing a series of songs and poems for Peel’s Conservative party. In his unpublished autobiography (c.1853) he alludes to building an archive of his work. Drawing on these manuscripts, all of which have until now remained hidden, and his published writing, this thesis investigates the relationship between Story’s apparent political conservatism and his progressive and experimental approach to writing. The study is organised into three main parts. The first forms a study of Story’s biographical manuscripts, using his accounts of reading to raise the wider complex theoretical questions that inform the thesis. It goes beyond Story’s connection with the pastoral tradition and hypothesises that Story’s writing was always rhetorical. Tracing Story’s circle of ‘brother’ poets, part two locates him in a distinctly labouring-class canon, imagined or otherwise, that he believed was at least equal to the polite realm of literature. This phase of research also resituates Story’s satirical modes of writing and his party ballads within the great body of political literature produced by working men during the first half of the nineteenth century. Story’s importance lies not only in his pursuit of politics but also in his cultural ambition: the third part of the thesis examines formal hybridity in his writing. It reveals how Story was searching for new forms of self-expression and asks to what extent his pursuit of literature was politicised and predicated on the belief that social and economic emancipation was contingent on cultural equality. Overall this thesis argues that Story was using literature to challenge the political, social and cultural boundaries imposed on him as both a workingman and a labouring-class writer.

A prevailing scholarly view holds that John Milton’s monism (his belief that matter and spirit are inseparable) is a reaction to seventeenth-century determinism. My thesis, however, posits that Milton’s monism in fact emerges from his exploration of literary form. Chapter one traces the classical roots of the philosophy and its compatibility with Genesis. It posits the comprehensiveness of monist philosophy and highlights the vitalist (or animate) implications of ancient monist theories for literary form. Spoken or written words, Democritus suggests, correspond to the material building blocks or “elements” of the universe: the construction of literary form is analogous to the creation of the cosmos. Indeed, Lucretius’ letter-atom analogy suggests that the process of creating literary form is essentially identical to the atomic method underlying the composition of other material forms in the universe. Greek atomist thought, the chapter proposes, finds a striking parallel in Jewish mystical beliefs about creation. It is with the letters of the divine name that the Lord was said to have created the universe. I argue that, for Milton, Aristotle is most influential in expressing a vitalist conception of literary form, for in his philosophy, soul generates voice, which manifests itself in writing. Milton acknowledges the association between words and atoms, between letters and primordial substance, and between voice, or breath, and spirit in his monist materialism; after all, in Genesis, God creates by utterance. Examining the relation of vitalism to Aristotelian poetics, I suggest the relevance of the concept to Milton’s hybrid literary forms. Then, analysing the material nature of voice in Milton’s works, I posit in chapter two that Milton’s polemical pamphlets underscore the sense of spirit in writing that we find in the poetry. That literary forms can be perceived to embody soul because they evoke voice is evident also from Milton’s Art of Logic (1672). I suggest in chapter three that Logic is saturated with materialism because the Aristotelian sources on which Milton’s Ramist logic is based express material monism. Milton’s Logic and Areopagitica (1644) provide further evidence of his thinking about the vital potential of literary form through the logical construction of texts, a continued interest, I argue, which ultimately engenders his mature monism. Milton use of dream narratives in Paradise Lost, I propose, suggests that reality varies materially by degrees. The parts that reality comprises become more distinct after the Fall, when Milton’s dream narratives, and his cosmology, changes. Before the Fall, the poet imagines that Earth orbits the sun, and that the sun orbits heaven at the centre of the cosmos, a formation, I explain, that has striking resemblance to modern knowledge of the solar system. With careful attention to the dreams of Paradise Lost, I have determined that monism, for Milton, encompasses the workings of intellect, and in the final chapter, I argue that this principle is central to understanding Paradise Regained. The Son’s method of survival in the wilderness becomes the means by which paradise (the spiritual reality) is regained. Understanding his own nature permits the Son of God physiologically to sustain himself through dreaming; the intellectual achievement alters the material nature of his body so that he is sustained by spiritual food. Monism is at the very heart of Paradise Regained. It is a monist methodology of literary form which enables the poet across his oeuvre truly to represent the nature of reality.

The lack of discussion on art in Spinoza's works has led to the belief that a) the principles of his philosophy are actively hostile to art, and b) that his philosophy has nothing to offer regarding art's theorisation. This thesis examines the few places that Spinoza refers to art in order to discern three things: I) what Spinoza's thoughts on art are; II) how his views on art fit into the wider themes of his philosophy; and III) how his general philosophical position as well as his specific ideas on art might contribute to new models of theorising art. In Chapter One I develop Spinoza's relational and naturalistic concept of individuation, therein providing the theoretical ground for the subsequent chapters which, following Spinoza, treat the work of art as a complex body that conforms to the rules of individuation as they are developed across the Ethics. Chapter Two locates Spinoza's views on the creative act from what he notes of architecture, painting, and other 'things of this kind' in IIIP2Schol. Here I argue that Spinoza radically naturalises the creative act, deriving it from the complex causal activity of extended substance itself. To this extent art is given in IIIP2Schol as an expression of the complexity of Nature. Chapter Three turns to Spinoza's brief words on art and culture in IVP45Schol to ascertain his position on artistic experience. Here I argue that according to IVP45Schol art's necessity for the wise man lies in its ability to foster affective complexity. Chapter Four turns to that other peculiarly human artefact, Holy Scripture, to identify how 'nonnatural' objects come to be differentiated from merely 'natural' objects in Spinoza's strong naturalism. Finally I end with an appendix that brings Spinozistic principles to bear on a consideration of a poem by Futurist poet Mina Loy.

This thesis focuses on the creative work of Edgar Allan Poe, and pieces together how various references to music in his poems and tales function in ways that echo throughout his oeuvre. By taking into account the plots and themes that surround references to music in Poe’s works, this thesis explores how Poe uses and describes music as it inhabits real world settings, liminal spaces, and otherworldly sites. The literature this thesis draws from ranges from tales little-discussed in Poe criticism, such as “The Spectacles” and “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” to more complex and popular tales such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Masque of the Red Death”; the same is true of the poems, which range from “Fanny” to “Annabel Lee.” The exploration of the less critically popular texts in conjunction with the more critically popular ones brings to light a clear hierarchy of music’s function in the tales and poems of Edgar Poe in ways that converse with his treatment of madness and the divine. The work of music and literature scholars will serve as the basis for distinguishing and historically positioning Poe’s use of certain musical terms, as well as ultimately providing a means to express the mythical, philosophical, and theological implications of music’s place in Poe’s works.

This thesis explores the connections between the nineteenth century periodical press and the development of detective fiction, between approximately 1840 and 1900. It argues that these two Victorian developments were closely interrelated, and that each had significant impacts on the other which has hitherto gone underexplored in academic scholarship. The thesis argues that the relationship between the police and the periodical press solidified in the mid-Victorian era, thanks to the simultaneous development of a nationwide system of policing as a result of the passage of the 1856 County and Borough Police Act and the abolition of the punitive 'taxes on knowledge' throughout the 1850s and early 1860s. This established a connection between the police and the periodical, and the police were critically examined in the periodical press for the remainder of the nineteenth century from various perspectives. This, the thesis argues, had a corresponding effect on various kinds of fiction, which began to utilise police officers in new ways - notably including as literary guides and protectors for authors wishing to explore growing urban centres in mid-Victorian cities which had been deemed 'criminal'. 'Detective fiction' in the mid-Victorian era, therefore, was characterised by trust in the police officer to protect middle-class social and economic values. Towards the end of the nineteenth century however, everything changed. The thesis explores how journalistic reporting of a corruption scandal in 1877, as well as the Fenian bombings and Whitechapel murders of the 1880s, contributed to significant changes in the detective genre. This was the construction of the image of the 'bumbling bobby', and the corresponding rise of the private or amateur detective, which ultimately led to the appearance of the character who epitomised the relationship between the police and the periodical - Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

'To Amaze the People with Pleasure and Delight': an analysis of the horsemanship manuals of William Cavendish, the first Duke of Newcastle (1593-1676). William Cavendish published two horsemanship manuals in 1658 and 1667, setting out his method for the noble art of the riding house. This thesis argues that within the canon of Newcastle's writing, his horsemanship manuals are key texts, offering insights into his writing practice, personal philosophy and motivation. To understand the importance of the manuals in their cultural context, Newcastle's contribution to the development of riding as an art is considered, with particular reference to the way in which his attitude towards other authors influenced each manual. A detailed examination of the technical aspects of the manuals illustrates that to ignore the method in favour of the historical and political material is to overlook a vital element. Newcastle's understanding of the horse's mind is a key to his approach, therefore this study argues that his royalist ideologies are supported and paralleled through his treatment and expectation of his horses. The engraved plates that illustrate the first manual are analysed as multi-layered images, offering a notional journey through his estates. The thesis will conclude with consideration of near-contemporary responses to Newcastle's work and argue that the manuals' importance to his own self actualisation and emotional security is written as much into the practicalities of the method as the theatricalities of its presentation.

This study explores the masochistic aspects of Decadent literature, which to date have been relatively neglected, or have received only sporadic attention as merely the passive forms of sadism, or sadomasochism (Mario Praz). As Jennifer Birkett suggests, Decadent sensibility and sexuality have arguably less affinity with Sade than Sacher-Masoch. Following Birkett, and utilising Gilles Deleuze’s idea of the independence of masochism from sadism and description of the distinctive aesthetic features of masochistic texts, I investigate masochistic formations in French Decadent texts; the work of Jean Lorrain and of Joséphin Péladan. This study also involves a review of relevant writings by Freud and post-Freudian psychoanalysts (Leo Bersani and Kaja Silverman); an engagement with current literary-critical scholarship in Decadence (Emily Apter, Charles Bernheimer, Bram Dijkstra and Rita Felski), and in Sacher-Masoch (Nick Mansfield, John K. Noyes, and Anita Phillips), and his influence on Decadent writers.

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