This thesis examines English teachers’ constructions of creativity in three different schools. The investigation is of interest because of the importance given to creativity by English teachers and the contested, shifting role it plays in English teaching and education as a whole. It differs from similar work because it treats creativity as a material resource that teachers can draw on in different ways and measures. In this, it treats the enactment of creativity as a matter of social justice. The thesis draws on a wide body of literature about creativity. Fundamental to this is an overview of the literature as it relates to creativity and language, with most significance given to Williams’ ideas about the centrality of "creativity and self-creation" to knowledge generation (1977: p.212), and to Freire’s about “problem posing” and “banking” forms of education (1970: pps.64-65). It also draws on recent research into the effect of accountability measures in schools. This research suggests that such measures have considerable influence on how education is enacted in schools, placing limits, for example, on creative practices. The data is qualitative in nature and analysed using a framework of critical discourse theory, exploring patterns and omissions in teachers’ comments and interrogating them within the context of dominant policy, educational and institutional discourses. The research itself gathered data from semi-structured interviews with individual English teachers in three different secondary schools, one private and two state comprehensives. The study found that teachers across all three schools constructed creativity in similar ways in the abstract, but in accounts of actual practice, considerable differences emerged across schools. The most pronounced differences were between responses by teachers in the two state schools compared to teachers in the private one. These differences clustered most significantly around constructions of creativity as it related to accountability measures in schools. The findings are important because they suggest that teachers struggle to draw on creative practices, even as they see them as pedagogically important, because of the restrictive nature of accountability measures. They also suggest that some teachers feel more able than others to enact creative practices, depending on the institutional nature of their school.

The object of the research reported in this thesis was to investigate the effects of word characteristics on children's reading performance. The experiments investigating word imagery and age of acquisition showed that imagery was a highly significant word characteristic for less skilled readers. There was an age of acquisition effect which was inversely correlated with reading ability. Probabilistic measures of orthographic regularity (such as Initial Bigram Frequency and Versatility and First Order approximation to English) were shown to be significant predictors of reading for good and poor readers and lexical decision performance for average readers. It also appeared that as reading ability improved, word properties such as the Orthographic Neighbour Ratio, which takes into account neighourhood size and frequency affected reading accuracy in the good and average reader in the lexical decision task. Other measures of orthographic regularity-orthographic neighbourhood size and body type were also shown to affect reading accuracy although effects appeared less marked for skilled readers. The regularity effect was seen to be dependent upon hostility and frequency of word neighbours, and the frequency of the target word itself, rather than due to a regularity-irregularity dichotomy.

The object of this thesis is to contribute to the appreciation of five selected Anglo-Saxon poems - The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Exodus, Andreas, and Beowulf - by analysing their metaphoric use of the sea. Metaphor is an essential and distinctive element of all poetry and, to be genuine, to be alive, and to be ever-interesting, a poem must achieve itself through metaphor. A poem's unique mode of vision is metaphoric, and whatever it communicates we perceive in and through metaphor. This is an axiomatic tenet of the criticism of modern poetry. But criticism of Anglo-Saxon poetry, if it bases its insights on a detailed reference to metaphor, must justify itself on theoretical grounds.

<p> In our search for an understanding of Old English cosmological conceptions we discover that the creation myth is central to the mysteries of the Christian faith, and that the Greek and Latin authors' interpretations of creation, known as "Hexaemera", provide much that is vital and influential to Old English poetic cosmology. My purpose in this dissertation is two-fold. The first is to provide for the Old English biblically-based poems an informing context of Greek and Latin hexaemeral writings drawn mainly from the Fathers of the Church. The second is to examine three Old English texts on creation and paradise as set against the background of the Mediterranean hexaemeral tradition. That a definite and complex accumulation of hexaemeral writings existed from the early patristic era through the Old English period (ca. A.D. 100-750) is confirmed by the wide variety of treatises, tractates, sermons, poems and hymns, assertive and didactic literary genres all revealing one major purpose -- the demonstration of intelligible order in the universe which is to be perceived through a vision of God's wisdom in creation.</p> <p> From this immense body of traditions about creation and paradise emerges a pattern which suggests to us the hypothesis that the Old English Christian poets, whose access to a broad range of such writings has been established, pondered and incorporated the hexaemeral features and conventions while adding their own variations to the creation theme. An important corollary to this hypothesis is that the Old English accounts of creation and paradise were influenced by an elaborate, lettered, and learned tradition which deserves special critical emphasis. Recent scholars have stressed the need for a comprehensive study of the potentialities of allusion in Old English poems to traditional Christian allegorical and tropological interpretations, as well as a study of the scholarly habits of perception which distinguished the monastic and ecclesiastical writings of the Middle Ages. This thesis is intended to fill a small aspect of this need in its exploration of the lettered traditions of creation which preceded and existed alongside Anglo-Saxon civilization.</p> <p> In order to develop this thesis I have categorized its two parts, respectively, as the patristic and poetic traditions. Part One offers an inquiry into the exegetical treatment of creation and paradise revealed in the Fathers, the Christian Latin poets, and related sources. The exploration is not intended to be comprehensive but representative in a critical mode directed towards illuminating our understanding of certain seminal concepts from which radiated further interpretations of creation in the Old English poetic canon. The figural levels of meaning perceived by patristic authors in such archetypal symbols as the primordial ocean, the green plain and golden groves of Eden, the luminaries of day and night, the fire and hail, snow and vapour of creation, contribute to our understanding of the Old English moulding of creation myths.</p> <p> In Part Two, the critical scope of the study focusses in three separate chapters on the creation :features of the Junius Genesis A and Christ and Satan, and the paradisal elements in the Exeter Phoenix. Equipped with a knowledge of the main features of the Mediterranean hexaemeral tradition, we are enabled to perceive the divergent treatment of creation themes in the relevant Old English texts. The intricacies of Christian exegesis can amplify our appreciation of the more concise Old English poetic hexaemeral in which the major emphasis is on tradition drawn from late classical antiquity, pagan Germanic concepts, and· biblical and patristic imagery. This assertion is not to imply that the Old English poetic texts merely present successive interpretations of creation and paradise without adding any new dimension. The hexaemeral tradition in the imaginations of the Old English poets loses the rigid character of dogma and develops into a vision of the world as cosmopoesy.</p> <p> The boundaries of investigation in this thesis are necessarily limited. I have selected a scope of study within the main documentable collection of traditions which aided in shaping Old English cosmogonic mythology. Throughout the study I argue for the significance of, and the indispensable need for, knowledge of Christian traditions in the area of Old English hexaemeral writings which constitute mythopoeic or imaginative literature in contrast to the homiletic character of influential patristic doctrine.</p> / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(文学) / 甲第24276号 / 文博第901号 / 新制||文||723(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院文学研究科文献文化学専攻 / (主査)教授 家入 葉子, 教授 廣田 篤彦, 教授 河﨑 靖 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Letters / Kyoto University / DGAM

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This thesis examines the role of spatial representation in Old English poetry. Focusing on the presentation of setting and spatial relationships in narrative poetry, it argues that sensibility towards the creative potential of spatial representation within a conventional tradition constitutes a significant element of Old English poetic technique. It emphasizes the importance of intertextual reading practices which recognize the dialectics of text and tradition underlying spatial representation in individual examples. Chapter one introduces the subject, outlining the relevant critical contexts in which the thesis stands and describing the methodology that is followed in the subsequent chapters. It also describes the connection between the representation of space and critical assumptions regarding vernacular poetic composition. Chapter two focuses on poetic accounts of the angelic rebellion. The presentation of this event as a territorial and spatial conflict establishes a contrast between vertical and horizontal spatial relationships which relates to concerns prevalent throughout the Anglo-Saxon period over conflicting models for power relationships. The prominence of vertical spatial relationships in these accounts serves to legitimize hierarchical power structures. Chapter three considers territorial conflict in Old English battle poetry. Similarities in the use of setting and the construction of a sense of place in these texts suggest the influence of established poetic conventions. However, poetic artistry is evident in the ways in which spatial representation contributes to the wider thematic and artistic concerns of these texts. Chapter four examines poetic representations of the prison. Whilst such representations do partially reflect conceptualizations of the prison current in Anglo-Saxon England, they also demonstrate a deeper interest in the valence of enclosed space. The chapter extends the intertextual approach of the thesis to consider the possibility of direct borrowing between poems. Chapter five clarifies the argument of the thesis regarding the relationship between spatial representation and poetic technique and identifies some directions for further work.

Many Old English poems reflect the Anglo-Saxon writers's interest in who could exercise power and how language could be used to signal a position of power or powerlessness. In previous Old English studies, the prevailing critical attitude has been to associate the exercise of power with sex—the distinction between males and females based upon biological and physiological differences—or with sex-oriented social roles or sphere of operation. Scholarship of the last twenty years has just begun to explore the connection between power and gender-coded traits, attributes which initially were tied to the heroic code and were primarily male-oriented. By the eighth and ninth centuries, the period in which most of the extant Old English poetry was probably composed, these qualities had become disassociated from biological sex but retained their gender affiliations. A re-examination of "The Dream of the Rood," "The Wanderer," "The Husband's Message," "The Wife's Lament," "Wulf and Eadwacer" and Beowulf confirms that the poets used gender-coded language to indicate which poetic characters, female as well as male, held positions of power and powerlessness. A status of power or powerlessness was signalled by the exercise of particular gendered traits that were open for assumption by men and women. Powerful individuals were depicted with masculine-coded language affiliated with honor, mastery, aggression, victory, bravery, independence, martial prowess, assertiveness, physical strength, verbal acuteness, firmness or hardness, and respect from others. Conversely, the powerless were described with non-masculine or feminine-coded language suggesting dishonor, subservience, passivity, defeat, cowardice, dependence, defenselessness, lack of volition, softness or indecisiveness, and lack of respect from others. Once attained, neither status was permanent; women and men trafficked back and forth between the two. Depending upon the circumstances, members of both sexes could experience reversals of fortunes which would necessitate moving from one category to the other, on more than one occasion in a lifetime.

This thesis investigates the representation of the human life course in Old English poetry. It attends to constructions of the lifespan as a durational unit, as well as the ‘stages’ or discrete age-related experiences which together form patterns for life development, shared across a diverse range of texts. Throughout this study, the importance of close-reading is emphasised; the bulk of the analysis is concerned with issues of style, lexis and narrative. By these means, it becomes possible to perceive how concepts of the human life course shade into other networks of meaning: these include ideas of ensoulment and embodiment, life experiences of non-human entities, wider narrative patterns which impact representations of life progression, mechanisms and hierarchies of social role and communal existence, and systems of memory collection and the nurturing of ‘wisdom’. The introductory chapter addresses various possible modes of ‘life course’ structuring, in both Anglo-Saxon writings and modern scholarly traditions. Latin and Old English vocabularies of ageing are summarised and an overview is given of previous scholarship attendant on the Anglo-Saxon material. The following three chapters of the thesis then assess representations of different parts of the life course in different groups of texts. The second chapter is concerned with depictions of early life in the Exeter Book Riddles; it contends that these texts have been unduly passed over in discussions of ageing in Old English, seemingly due to their (mostly) non-human subjects. The third chapter addresses the treatment of early and late adulthood in the verse holy lives Andreas, Guthlac A, Juliana and Judith: it is in this chapter that concepts of the life course most clearly intersect with issues of social organisation. The fourth chapter is concerned with the characterisation of old age in Beowulf and Cynewulf’s epilogue to Elene, alongside other texts; the concept of ‘wisdom’ acquired through experience is closely scrutinised, and the verbal and poetic elements of good judgment are elucidated. This thesis concludes that Old English poetry presents human ageing in a manner which encompasses a diverse range of experiences and interrelates with a multitude of wider conceptual frameworks. As such, the texts do not subscribe neatly to an ‘ages of man’ idea. Nonetheless, attention paid to the patterns of human ageing which do emerge from the poems can facilitate more sensitive and productive readings of the texts themselves. The thesis closes with some examples of passages which may be newly interpreted and appreciated in the light of how the life course is conceived across the Old English poetic corpus.