Prose murder pamphlets first appeared during the final three decades of the sixteenth century and were a successful part of the early modern market for cheap print throughout the seventeenth century. There is a corpus of over 350 extant prose murder pamphlets printed between 1573 and 1700. The literary analysis of murder pamphlets undertaken in this research reveals them as an identifiable genre with recognisable narrative and rhetorical strategies. The Calvinist theology of providence and predestination gave the prose murder pamphlets their distinctive chain-link structure which began with original sin, progressed through sinfulness to murder, condemnation, death and salvation through God’s divine grace. The chain-link narrative proved particularly sympathetic to the absorption and promulgation of other Protestant narratives, including those of divine providence, anti-papist propaganda, and control of youth, sodomy, dying, and English historiography. This structure also proposed that murder should be interpreted allegorically, as the narrative pattern was an allegory of an individual’s journey through life from the prediction of original sin to the assurance of salvation. An analysis of the embedded Protestant narratives of the murder pamphlets shows that murder was presented to early modern readers so that it could be scrutinised for its rhetorical, religious and political significance. The representation of murder, therefore, intersected with the religio-political crises and ecclesiastical politics of the seventeenth century. For over a century it carried forward a particular representation of English Protestantism, constructing the reader as an English Protestant ‘subject’: someone who was a member of the English nation, subject to a monarch and government that should embody godly rule, but who was also an individual Protestant with a godly duty to read and interpret God’s purpose. This research demonstrates that although materially fragile, murder pamphlets were culturally robust and a detailed study of them contributes to a more detailed understanding of early modern literary culture.

An understanding of the concept of decadence in the late nineteenth century is not dependent on a purely linguistic approach to the various forms of literary language in which it might be manifested. Rather, the label of decadence invokes (and deliberately flouts) perceptions of normality in a number of cultural spaces, not all of them strictly textual. Importantly, the personality of the artist figure is also a part of the definition of decadence. Decadence, that is, is not limited to a particular mode of textual performance; it is also a matter of how the artist's personality is interpreted through a critical assumption current throughout the nineteenth century, that the text acts as an index of the moral status of the writer. Decadence, then, is about reception, as well as conception. Given that meaning accrues to the figure of the artist in the definition of decadence, and given that the late nineteenth century was a period of conflicting discourses of sexual politics, the definition of decadence is bound up with the matrix of associations around such concepts as sex, gender and sexuality. The three writers at the centre of this study all demonstrate decadent potential in their refusals to respect the conventions of gender — both in terms of the subjects and forms they each chose for literary representation, and for the choices they made about the living of their lives. In his poetry Wilde took up a series of dramatic poses, inconsistent with each other, inconsistent even within single poems. In doing so, he called into question prevailing standards and ideals of masculinity — sincerity and purposiveness — and he was attacked for doing so even before he was tried for gross indecency in 1895. Symons's subject matter — the preponderance in his poetry of the liminal figures of the dancer and the actress, and the liminal spaces of the music-hall and deserted city streets at night — explicitly courted a decadent label, and, indeed, Symons helped to defme the term. Contemporary audiences read his poetic persona back onto his personality. And his decadence, like Wilde's, also came from his flouting of the rules of masculinity, in his case, his exposure of the gender and class ideology of the gentleman, by speaking aloud of its implications. That decadence has an importance for sexual politics is signalled by the fact that there are very few women writers who seem to 'suit' the label. Vernon Lee provides a test case here of the argument that decadence is to be defmed primarily as a falling away from an idealised standard of masculinity. Lee wrote impeccably decadent fiction, but is not generally thought of as a decadent writer, perhaps precisely because she was a woman writer for whom a term that resides in conventions of the masculine is inappropriate. Decadence is a notoriously difficult term to define, and this thesis attempts to show a range of definitions of the word in terms of its favoured themes, forms and and their relation to ideas of artistic personality; it shows that the label is inextricably bound up in the sexuality debtes of the 1890s.

The thesis is a Critical Edition of Derek Walcott’s Omeros, consisting of a Critical Introduction and Annotations. The Critical Introduction analyses: - Narrative - Settings - Metaphor and Paronomasia - Symbolism - Historiography - Intertexts - Dualism - Autobiography - Dialects - Prosody. The Annotations comment on more than 1000 references that may be obscure and on specifics of narrative, language and prosody. This study presents new conclusions about some aspects of Omeros: - It challenges the prevailing view that the work is written substantially in a variation of terza rima and shows that regular quatrains predominate. - It demonstrates ways in which the metrics follow the sense of the narrative and takes a more balanced position on the use of Caribbean as opposed to classical metrics than that put forward previously. - It identifies a paragraphic structure to the verse. - It proposes a new prosodic structure for the significant Chapter XXX/iii. - It extends Walcott’s recognised use of numerology into word counting the names of characters. - It develops the idea of Walcott’s dualism and his use of pairing and contradiction as a dialectical method. - It defines his wide use of paronomasia and shows that many of the puns have a metaphorical aspect beyond mere word-play. - It analyses some of Walcott’s symbolism. - It identifies intertextual links to his earlier works and to some thirty other writers, and suggests homage to Hemingway and possibly Heaney. - It provides the first complete analysis of Walcott’s rhyme types in Omeros. In its analysis of Omeros and in the Annotations it has included commentary from across the critical literature, to provide some sense of other views on Walcott’s writing, and has included as many as possible of Walcott’s own comments on Omeros and on the writer’s task, as a background to understanding the poem.

Winifred Holtby was a novelist, journalist and feminist, writing in the 1920s and 1930s. This thesis focuses on her feminist resistance to the fashion for sexual division in interwar Britain. She reads it as a social and political backlash against women’s equal rights that seeks to drive women out of the workplace and back into the home. In Holtby’s view, the popularisation of Freud and the growing appeal of fascism contribute to this backlash by stressing women’s primary role as wives and mothers. For Holtby, Sir Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists, sums up this fashion for sexual division when he declares in 1932, ‘we want men who are men and women who are women’. Previous scholarship has focused on Holtby’s work in dialogue with her friend and fellow feminist, Vera Brittain. This thesis adopts a more panoramic perspective to consider Holtby’s work in the context of other feminist contemporaries and in the context of feminist intellectual history. Each chapter examines how Holtby draws inspiration from a figure in feminist history in order to challenge the influences of psychology and fascism on attitudes to women between the wars. Holtby declared that Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was the ‘bible of the woman’s movement’ and the first chapter examines Wollstonecraft’s influence on Holtby’s feminist thought. The second chapter considers Holtby’s defence of the spinster against interwar prejudice that castigated the spinster as sexually frustrated and psychological abnormal. By subverting Charlotte Brontë’s romance narratives for an interwar ‘feminine middlebrow’ readership, Holtby valorises women’s work in the community. The third chapter addresses the fascist veneration of motherhood, analysing how Holtby recognises and assimilates the feminist potential of Alfred Adler’s theory of Individual Psychology to her anti-fascist critique.

This contextualist study re-examines the contested critical question of Jonathan Swift's political character. It is concerned with the historical meaning of Swift's texts and attempts to recover their original political impact. Politically-literate contemporaries claimed to read Jacobite Tory politics in Swift's texts. Rather than dismiss the judgement of Swift's contemporaries, this study asks whether there is anything about Swift's political writing in polemical context that could have led contemporaries to construe the politics of his texts as Jacobite Tory. The conclusion this study reaches is that aspects of Swift's political rhetoric are consonant with Tory and Jacobite polemic. While contesting current conceptions of Swift as a Whig, this study offers a partial revision of that scholarship which describes Swift as a non-Jacobite Tory. The thesis is based on an analysis of Swift's prose, poetry and correspondence and contemporary (mainly printed) sources books, pamphlets, poems on affairs of state and newspapers. Some new or neglected polemical contexts and analogues for Swift's works are suggested. Chapter 1 considers some of the problems and contested issues in interpretation of Swift's political biography and writing. Chapter 2 witnesses Swift's combination of High Church attitudes with a radical political critique of Whig establishment. Swift is read in juxtaposition with Jacobite Tory authors such as George Granville, Lord Lansdowne. Chapter 3 relocates A Tale of a Tub in historical context to reveal the satire's relation to High Church Tory polemical languages. Chapter 4 discusses the disaffected Tory aspect of Gulliver's Travels. Chapter 5 attempts to register the complexity of the textual evidence of Swift's attitude to Jacobitism. Detailed attention is given to his politically-revealing attitudes to the Dutch. A coda briefly describes Swift's discontent with the Revolution settlement, examines this Church-of-England Man's sentiments on the crucial ideological issue of resistance, and suggests the importance of Hugo Grotius in Swift's political thought.

Social Reality and Narrative Form in the Fiction of Henry Green contests the dominant reading of Henry Green's fiction as an abstract, autonomous textual production. My thesis situates Green into a number of literary and socio-historical contexts and argues that doing so challenges a number of prevailing critical orthodoxies. I also argue that Green's fiction is formally constructed through a variety of dislocations, from displacing the centrality of plot, undermining the integrity of character, silencing the narrative voice and questioning the authenticity of the self. To relate social reality to narrative form, each of the four main chapters is dedicated to one of four substantive aspects of material reality: age, class, geography and the body. In the first chapter, I examine Green's relationship to the writing of his generation and to the concepts of age and youth. I argue that Green was deeply ambivalent towards generational belonging or the notion that identity could be supplied through one's generation. My second chapter investigates Green's treatment of social class and positions his Birmingham factory novel, Living, against 1930s theories of proletarian fiction and its canonical texts. My third chapter considers sites of authority both in the external world (geographic space) as well as within the novelistic space. The eclipsing of the narrator and the subsequent translation of the imaginative faculty to the reader is a part of Green's strategy to displace sites of authority. My final chapter looks at Green‘s treatment of the physical body and argues that disability is a central aspect of his novelistic practice. The impossibility of unity and wholeness, therefore, sheds light not only on the physicality of modern man but also on wholeness as a mental and linguistic possibility when the times are 'breaking up.'

No description available.

This thesis shows that 'Shakespeare' (both the works and the man) was at the forefront of literary activity in the nineteenth century. By focusing on concerns about the identity of the British nation and its people it shows that Shakespeare was a constant presence in the debates of the day and that a number of agendas were pursued through what were ostensibly writings about Shakespeare's plays and the biography of their author. The Introduction first notes Shakespeare's transition from Elizabethan playwright to Victorian cultural icon and proceeds to outline nineteenth-century critical practice and changes in the social organisation of knowledge. From here the shift in how Shakespeare was considered is noted as well as the fact that, despite increasing interest in the history of the phenomenon, the nineteenth century has been largely neglected. What exploration there has been of this period has tended, by its nature as part of larger surveys or issue-specific studies, to oversimplify the complexities of nineteenth-century criticism. Further to this, the nineteenth century itself is often treated as a time of unsophisticated development and as a precursor to modern thought rather than a period of interest in its own right. A variety of what this thesis terms 'literary pursuits' during this period are then contextualised, as well as the changing role of the critic in nineteenth-century society. This is accompanied by an exploration of the community of readers and writers who would have engaged with these works. Finally, the methodological decisions which have directed this thesis are explained, including the privileging of page over stage, and the choice of those nineteenth-century writers who have been examined. The main body of the thesis is divided into two sections: Part One (Chapters One and Two) gives a broad taxonomy of ways in which nineteenth-century writers used Shakespeare as a means for addressing other issues, and Part Two (Chapter Three) uses a specific case study through which to examine these particular issues. It shows that attitudes to Shakespeare were shaped by an ongoing dialogue concerning the identity of the nation and its population. However, while there was much commonality regarding the agendas for which Shakespeare was used, the ways in which various different writers approached this was surprisingly diverse. Chapter One, 'Nationalism,' looks at how Shakespeare could be used in order to serve a nationalistic agenda: this involved either allying Shakespeare with the nation itself (by utilising Shakespeare's nationality, writing in a rhetorically charged manner, or interpreting Shakespeare's works in a certain fashion), or equating the nineteenth century with the early modern period (and highlighting various commonalities or differences with those times). The concept of nationalism is contextualised by looking at various attitudes to the nation which were driven by the challenges of the expanding Empire. Chapter Two, 'Moralism,' looks at the ways in which Shakespeare was used as a tool by those who sought to promote certain behavioural traits amongst their readers. The different ways in which writers made use of Shakespeare are situated within a discussion of nineteenth-century philosophical and moral positions. This chapter looks successively at what is termed 'Private Moralism' (a concern with abstract ideas, such as self-control and adherence to familial or religious ties), and 'Public Moralism' (that is, efforts to improve the outward or physical attributes of individuals, such as financial accumulation or class status). Part Two of the thesis focuses on how Victorian writers used Shakespeare specifically in relation to Shakespeare's Sonnets. To this end, Chapter Three, 'The Sonnets,' looks at how writings on the Sonnets pursued moral or nationalistic agendas. This chapter also seeks to draw together the strands of nationalism and moralism by showing that anxieties about the state of Britain fed into writing about the Sonnets at this time and that this involved a complex debate about the Sonnets, ancient Greece, and the nature of what would today be termed homosexuality. A significant contention of this chapter is that nineteenth-century attitudes towards the Sonnets need to be appreciated on their own terms rather than anachronistically via a modern understanding of homosexuality. The Conclusion suggests that Shakespeare was used by nineteenth-century critics and biographers as a location within which to debate certain overarching concerns of the day. How these issues were approached, however, took different forms and Shakespeare was employed for different ends, which points to a general unease regarding the identity of the nation. As the formal institutionalising of the English Literary canon was taking place during the period covered by this thesis it seems reasonable to suggest that the use of Shakespeare was related to Shakespeare's position of dominance within the canon. Finally, suggestions are made as to how the ease with which Shakespeare could be used - as well as the unavoidable difficulties which are attendant with Shakespeare - might have affected this process of canonisation.

This thesis examines the intellectual significance of early Caribbean writer Herbert George de Lisser in his literary writings and as such is a work of recovery and criticism. Each chapter concentrates on a specific, predominantly European, literary genre and investigates how de Lisser experiments with these genres in order to not only support and recognise the emergence of a local national literature, but also to create a cultural national identity based upon the symbolic use of women to define Jamaica as a nation. Situating de Lisser within colonial discourse and the socio political arena of the British Empire, the introduction sets out the postcolonial theoretical framework and relocates de Lisser within the context of West Indian literature, debating his literary neglect alongside his need to be reclaimed. Chapter I debates the traditional notions of nationhood and examines the dislocation and (re)gendering of nation and nationhood through the lens of women as founders of a nation with the main emphasis on his novel "Anacanoa." Chapter II concentrates on de Lisser's "historical" novels and explores the representation of heroism and the search for a national identity in two of de Lisser's novels, Revenge and Psyche, written at the beginning and the end of his career. This chapter examines the way in which the novels' (re)negotiation of the representations of heroism is explored within individual characters. Chapter III examines women as a symbol of Jamaica through the lens of female independence and national identity. The focus of this chapter rests on de Lisser's literary works that have received a limited amount of literary investigation, namely Jane's Career and Susan Proudleigh, with a third novel "Myrtle and Money" which is not only a sequel to Jane's Career (although written some 30 years later), but also creates a trilogy of texts that serves to represent the political complexities of early twentieth century Jamaica. Chapters IV and V act as sister chapters and examine the representation of women through the (re)clamation and (re)creation of folk legends and the commodification of literature in the novels Morgan's Daughter and The White Witch of Rosehall. These chapters consider how de Lisser's appropriation of a legend encourages that legend to evolve into a symbol for nationalism and historical heritage. Experimenting with the genres of sentimental literature and gothic fiction respectively, de Lisser investigates the dichotomy of European and Jamaican cultures. Chapter VI focuses upon the general constructions of nationhood which are founded upon traditional hegemonic public and private spheres. With an in-depth investigation into his periodical Planters' Punch which was produced from 1920-1945, this chapter analyses how de Lisser continuously blurs these spherical boundaries by creating strong women who are capable of fulfilling the "role" of the male in civilised society and therefore relocates them into the public arena. Finally, the conclusion explores de Lisser's perception of women and highlights how by investigating his literary works through his representation of women, de Lisser is able to be reconciled within a more delineated and inclusive Caribbean literary canon.

This thesis, entitled ‘Shaping, Intertextuality and Summation in D. H. Lawrence's Last Poems’ , is the first full-length study of the poetry written by Lawrence in 1928-30, posthumously labelled ‘More Pansies’ and ‘Last Poems’ by Richard Aldington in 1932. My opening chapter discusses the characteristics of these two late poetry notebooks, challenging interpretations offered by Holly Laird and Christopher Pollnitz. I argue for the necessity of moving beyond an analysis limited to the consideration of poem sequences within a verse-book, or the evolution of individual poems through draft-stages. This conviction provokes a discussion of intertextual theory, in order to establish an approach which will facilitate the placing of Lawrence's late poetry in wider contexts. The resulting methodology aims to combine an empirical selection procedure in which intertexts are chosen according to key triggers or signposts within Lawrence-text, with an awareness that such selection is arbitrary, constituting an inevitable retrospective ordering. Chapters 2-7 each focus on a specific text, area or genre in which significant intertextual assimilation is identified. In chapters 2 and 3, four crucial poetic precursors - Keats, Shelley, Swinburne and Whitman - are discussed, both in relation to Lawrence's blatant allusions, and in terms of the insidious ‘weaving’ of precursive text into Last Poems. Chapter 4, emphasising that intertextuality should be recognised as spanning genre divisions, focuses on the significance of the pre-Socratic fragments published in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy. Chapter 5, also foregrounding prose intertexts, discusses three relevant anthropological works: E. B. Tylor's Primitive Culture, James Frazer's The Golden Bough and Gilbert Murray's Five Stages of Greek Religion, in relation to the poems advocating a conscious 'return' to different modes of writing and living. In Chapter 6 the term ‘intra-textuality’ (self-borrowing) is introduced, with Sketches of Etruscan Places as the focus. Lawrence's writing (in addition to his wide reading) on the Etruscan civilisation is seen to underlie fundamental mythological aspects of Last Poems. Intra-textuality remains the focus of Chapter 7, which discusses Apocalypse (the only major work written by Lawrence after Last Poems) as well as numerous related intertexts, in order to illuminate Lawrence's use of key apocalyptic symbols in the late poetry. The concluding chapter considers whether or not the posthumously imposed title Last Poems is appropriate, and whether this ‘body’ of verse can be treated justifiably as a summation of Lawrence's life and/or art. The short prologues to the 1930 edition of Birds, Beasts and Flowers, and the prose poem 'Fire', are brought into play as texts which succeed Last Poems, taking Lawrence's (freeverse) poetry writing in new directions. My interrogation of the concept of ‘fastness’ provokes a consideration of the implications of creative immortality and the possibility of different kinds of renewal, or ‘fresh starts’.