This thesis attempts to identify a particular epistemological stance as a trans-historical generic feature of the British novel, seeking theoretical commonalities across readings of four novelistic texts. Drawing upon conventional critical reliance on realism as a definitive feature of the novel, chapter one examines the dialectical interplay of empiricism and scepticism in the intellectual climate and public discourse of eighteenth-century Britain as an influence on realistic literary modes and proposes that the novel as a genre is preoccupied with problems of epistemology. Chapter two considers Jane Barker’s Galesia trilogy as an example of novelistic engagement with a common theme in the empiricism/scepticism dialectic: the epistemological complications entailed by individual subjectivity. Barker’s thematic emphases on uncertainty, multiplicity, and fallenness coincide with a generically entrenched, and thus novelistic, orientation toward open-endedness and unfinalizability, as articulated in the work of Mikhail Bakhtin. Chapter three associates realism with mimesis, a figure whose tendency toward duplicity and reversibility align it with Jacques Derrida’s concept of pharmakon. Mimesis-as-pharmakon is considered in the context of Tobias Smollett’s The Adventures of Roderick Random. Chapter four shifts critical focus to contemporary fiction -- Martin Amis’s Money: A Suicide Note -- and examines how postmodernist literary techniques, particularly the metafictional inclusion of an author figure, reiterate the novelistic portrayal and exemplification of epistemological provisionality that underlies eighteenth-century texts. Chapter five, with analysis of Ian McEwan’s Saturday and reference to the philosophy of Iris Murdoch, suggests that the problems of knowledge entailed by situated individual subjectivity, as represented by the novel, privilege a corresponding ethical posture of deference and openness to the other. In an afterword, these ethical implications are extended to suggest a possible political significance to the genre.

British Aestheticism’s demand for an elite audience has been conceived as emblematizing its reputation as a socially-disengaged movement. This thesis revises literary historical accounts of the movement by challenging such long-held assumptions. It aims to develop a more complex understanding of Aestheticism’s theorized reading practices in order to examine how the movement’s elitism evolves out of a concern for specialized methods of critical engagement with form, which are conceived as having ethical consequences. For authors and critics associated with British Aestheticism, a specialist appreciation of form, far from being a retreat from ethics, represents a refined mode of social engagement. In short, this study considers how the movement’s theories of art’s social utility are held to depend upon its elitism. Scholarship has tended to utilize recuperations of Aestheticism to suit certain theoretical agendas and in the process has revised our understanding of the movement’s elitism. Feminist scholarship, for example, has defined a broader, more inclusive and capacious movement in which the link between art’s social utility and aesthetic value is redefined so that Aestheticism is open in principle to anyone, including the public at large. Nicholas Shrimpton has pointed out that the use of the term Aestheticism in recent scholarship ‘as a chronological catch-all [means] the term “Aesthetic” has been stretched so thin that it is [in] danger of collapsing.’ This thesis aims to recuperate the elitism of British Aestheticism, arguing that we should not allow modern values and priorities to reconstruct our understanding of Aestheticism’s critical terms and concepts. In doing so, it aims to re-historicize the Aesthetic Movement. More precisely, it shows how Walter Pater, Henry James and Vernon Lee (pseud. Violet Paget) formulate frameworks of ‘ideal’ aesthetic response against the backdrop of their engagements with intellectual and literary culture. Each chapter traces a number of connecting threads concerning stylistic supremacy, readerly ethics and artistic responsibility that run between the works of these three figures. The first chapter reassesses Aestheticism’s elitist critical practices in relation to its readerships. This chapter pays close attention to the relationship between Pater, James and Lee’s aesthetic theories and authorial strategies expanding our traditional picture of the evolution of Aestheticism to encompass a more complex understanding of its theorization of its readerships. The second chapter traces the influence of the philosophical concept of Arnoldian disinterestedness as a negotiated framework of ‘ideal’ aesthetic response. It considers how a tension between elitism and ethics underlies this critical practice. Whilst this activity preconditions its practitioners for social interaction, it requires a specialist critic to undertake it. The third chapter examines how late-19th century psychological discourse informs our understanding of the tension between elitism and ethics which inhabits Aestheticism’s appropriations of disinterestedness. Overall, the argument of this thesis aims to reassess to the movement’s traditional emphasis on artistic integrity, readerly ethics and stylistic supremacy, but, at the same time, to rethink the periodicity and capaciousness of Aestheticism itself.

This dissertation examines relationships between Northern Irish Troubles fiction and its secondary critical literature. Producers of genre are viewed as consumers of the genre to which they contribute and the consumption of genre is seen as a pre-requisite of production. The research method is designed to examine genre systematically through the analysis of a large data set representative of the genre spectrum. It employs analytical concepts drawn from semiotics, specifically, paradigms and syntagms. Results are interpreted using Raymond Williams' "structures of feeling" and a modified version of Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model. The review of the secondary literature of Troubles fiction reveals two interpretative models. The first sees Troubles fiction as a static site of cultural production in which a narrow range of negative or false stereotypes is endlessly reproduced. The second sees Troubles fiction as a site of cultural production that has experienced a form of cultural rupture as a younger generation of writer critiques and re-interprets conventional representations. Analysis reveals that neither interpretative model emerging from the secondary critical literature fully describes Troubles fiction. Conventional critical approaches to Troubles fiction based on intuitive and impressionistic ways of seeking knowledge miss minute shifts in the genre's history. In particular, critical studies miss the return to relatively conservative thriller codes and conventions in novels published in the early 1990s during the peace talks. Critics have most regard for novels written by Irish literary authors and novels containing literary and technical modifications. The modality-orientated content modifications of 1980s thrillers do not attract literary interest. This study sees genre as historically contingent, taking the view that the relationship between the macro-level perspective of generic system and the micro-level perspective of individual novel is best explored through specific description and comparison of novels both diachronically and at the level of the synchronic moment.

This study undertakes an examination of fool-master discourse in Shakespeare with the help of discourse stylistics, an approach to the study of literary texts which combines findings from the fields of discourse analysis, conversation analysis and pragmatics. The analysis aims to show how the relations of power which exist between dramatic characters are manifested by the linguistic organization of the dialogue as interactive process. Fool-master discourse in Shakespeare is analysed from three different perspectives: the use of the pronouns of address (you/thou); the organization of the discourse as a whole; and the politeness strategies used by fools and their employers in face-to-face interaction. With regard to the pronouns of address, it is shown that neither a structural model nor a sociolinguistic one are sufficient per se to satisfactorily explain the constant shift of pronoun which occurs in Early Modern English dramatic texts. It is suggested that a model of analysis rooted in discourse analysis and pragmatics ought to be developed. Burton's framework is used to study the conversational structure of fool-master discourse, and to show how the power relations obtaining between dramatic characters are manifested by the internal organization of dramatic dialogue. Politeness phenomena in fool-master discourse are studied following Brown and Levinson's model and it is shown that both the fools and their employers orient to face in interaction. Finally, this study of power relations in fool-master discourse shows that, contrary to much current critical opinion, the fools in Shakespeare are not licensed jesters who enjoy unlimited freedom of speech. Feste, Lavatch and Lear's Fool need to resort to complex linguistic strategies if they want to make their criticisms and, at the same time, avoid being punished.

This thesis offers a new approach to the study of actor-audience relations in late medieval English drama and endeavours not only to emphasise the performative elements of medieval plays, but also the effects that they may have produced in performance. Adopting a phenomenological perspective, the work focuses on the audience's corporeal experience of the drama and draws on modern theories of performance, including the intersections with anthropology and, more recently, cognitive neuroscience. The literary, poetic and dramatic aspects of the three case studies chosen are analysed in depth with supporting evidence from the literature, iconography and theory of the period. Five distinct chapters divide the thesis: the first is an overview of the broader context of the study and the methodology used; Chapter Five discusses the findings and implications of the work, and the three central chapters each consider one key element in an audience's experience of medieval performance. Therefore, Chapter Two examines vocal sound in Christ before Herod; Chapter Three investigates the effects produced by the actor's physical movements in The Castle of Perseverance, while Chapter Four shifts attention onto the audience's activities in The Play of the Sacrament and how they may have contributed to the dramatic event. The findings suggest that, in many cases, medieval playwrights and performers had a sophisticated grasp of their medium, understanding its unique impact on human physiology and psychology and, moreover, that they consciously manipulated the fundamental components of the drama to create an experientially profound encounter for their audiences. These conclusions further highlight the need to re-evaluate current concepts of medieval performance space, as well as the extent to which the play texts themselves can illuminate the more ephemeral qualities of medieval theatre. But perhaps the most significant outcome of this thesis is the acknowledgement that medieval audiences not only read and heard what was presented to them, but felt the performances in both body and soul.

The scientist in fiction is much maligned. The mad, bad scientist has framed much of the debate about literary representations of science and with good reason since he is a towering icon of popular culture. Yet, I will propose that an equally preeminent figure provides an alternative model of science in fiction. This is the detective. Links between developing scientific disciplines and the emerging genre of detective fiction have been well described to date. Yet the history of the detective as scientific icon has not been told, particularly not as it engages with the history of the mad scientist. These two paragons of modem culture developed from a groundswell of gothic narrative and imagery that emerged in the late 18th century and continued to entertain and challenge audiences throughout the 19th century, as they still do to this day. My aim is to recover some of the complexity of past public images of science, and the understandings that such icons relate to, as they develop and meander through a variety of 19th century fictions. In a series of time slices I relate these figures, their iconography and narratives, to contemporary debates about science and follow through the elements that each generation retains, remoulds and claims for their own time. Ultimately, I hope to show that an panalysis of the mad scientist alongside other fictional scientific figures provides a far more nuanced picture of potential meanings, than the negative and fearful response that he is often assumed to represent. This is significant because both these icons are current in popular culture today and as such are part and parcel of the present pool of cultural resources that provides tools for thinking about science and society in the 21st century.

In view of the recent introduction of a literature component in the Malaysian English language teaching syllabus, this research study sets out to determine the present situation concerning the teaching of literature in ESL in Malaysia with particular reference to the Class Reader Programme (CRP). This is in order to develop two proposed course designs for the teaching of literature in ESL at the secondary school level with special emphasis on the Malaysian context. Under the present circumstances, this study offers an immediate response to the new developments and challenges brought about by the literature in ESL programmes especially when the Malaysian Education Ministry implemented the CRP at the Form One level in all secondary schools beginning from the 1989 academic year. The Ministry also plans to introduce the forthcoming Elective Literature in English Programme (ELEP) for the upper secondary level (Forms Four-Five) during the 1991-92 school session. These programmes aim to introduce the use of literary texts for language and literary purposes. This study is also in line with the current effort undertaken by the Department of Languages at the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) to develop teaching literature in ESL courses for its pre- and in-service education and training (INSET) programme. Questionnaires were developed and used as the means for gathering the data in three separate surveys which were carried out for the purposes of this study. The three respective surveys were to investigate: (1) the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) TESL in-service teachers' training to teach literature in ESL in Malaysia; (2) teachers' response to the CRP; and (3) teachers' response to the needs analysis of course components for teaching literature in ESL in Malaysia. In addition, separate interviews which involved two assistant directors from the Ministry of Education, Malaysia had also been undertaken to obtain further information pertaining to the aims and implementation procedures for the literature in ESL programmes (CRP and ELEP) at the secondary school level in Malaysia. The sample for this study consisted of 144 in-service teachers at UPM who were undergoing a four-year Bachelor of Education (B. Ed.) programme in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) and twenty-three Form One English language teachers from eleven selected rural and urban secondary schools in Malaysia who had been involved with the CRP. The outcome of this study primarily revealed that in the English language syllabus the respondents were not adequately prepared to teach the literature component; thereby, establishing the need for teaching literature in ESL courses in teacher education programmes in Malaysia. In relation to this finding, two proposed course designs which cater for the integrated language and literature teaching programmes in Malaysia (CRP and ELEP) were developed as an initial and practical response toward this undertaking. The two proposed courses are known as "Literature in ESL in the Language Class" and "Literature in ESL in the Literature Class”. Essentially, these two complementary courses promote the use of literary texts in the ESL classroom. Due consideration had been given to the following factors in the process of developing the two proposed courses: (1) the aims and objectives of the literature in ESL programmes in Malaysia (CRP and ELEP); (2) the results of the three empirical surveys which were conducted for the purposes of this study; (3) the review of the literature; and (4) the researcher's five years of practical experience in working with the Teaching of English as a Second Language (TESL) pre- and in-service teacher training and development programme at UPM. It is hoped that the results of this study will have some implications for future considerations on teaching literature in ESL courses, particularly in Malaysia, and also provide some basic principles and directions for future research in the area. More importantly, this initial effort should be regarded as a primary attempt to address the inadequacy of courses on methodology in the teaching of literature in ESL in the Malaysian teacher education curriculum. It may also serve as a practical guide to those who are interested in understanding more about the nature of literature teaching in ESL in general and in the Malaysian context in particular.

This thesis examines how representations of Toronto in contemporary Canadian literature engage with place and further an understanding of spatial innovation in literature. Acknowledging the Canadian critical tradition of discussing place and space, the thesis moves the focus away from conventional engagements with wilderness motifs and small town narratives. In this way the thesis can be seen to respond to the nascent critical movement that urges engagement with contemporary urban spaces in Canadian literature. Responding to the critical neglect of urban representation, and more particularly, representations of Toronto in Canadian literary criticism, this thesis examines Toronto as a complex and contradictory site of symbolic power across critical, political and popular discourses. Furthermore, this thesis repositions an understanding of Toronto by paying attention to literary texts which depict the city's negotiation of national, local and global forces. The thesis seeks to understand the multiplicity of the city in lived, perceived and conceived forms - seeing Toronto as Torontos. Questioning existing frameworks deployed in Canadian literary criticism, the thesis develops a unique methodology with which to approach the complex issues involved in literary writing about place, drawing on contemporary Canadian criticism and transnational approaches to critical literary geography. The central chapters focus on four texts from the twenty-first century, three novels and one collection of poetry, approaching each text with a critically informed spatial lens in order to draw out how engagements with Toronto develop spatial innovation within literature. The thesis analyses how engaging with Toronto challenges writers to experiment with literary form. In turn the thesis seeks to elucidate the spatial developments achieved through literary writing. The thesis then demonstrates an understanding of the material geography of the city, situating readings with reference to interview material from parties involved in writing, producing and distributing literary depictions of Toronto. Hence it combines traditional literary criticism with a spatially and socially engaged criticism, in order to clearly address the literary geographies of Torontos.

History is a problem for the history plays. The weight of ‘true’ history, of fact, puts pressure on the dramatic presentation of history. Not fiction and not fact, the plays occupy the interstitial space between these opposites, the space of drama. Their position between the binary opposites of fact and fiction allows the history plays to play with history. They view history as a problem to be solved, and the different ways in which each play approaches the problem of history gives us a glimpse of how they attempt to engage and deal with the problem of creating dramatic history. Each history play rewrites the plays that preceded it; the plays present ‘history’ as fluid and shifting as competing narratives and interpretations of the past come into conflict with each other, requiring the audience to act as historians in order to construct their own narrative of events. In this way the plays dramatise the process of remaking history. This can be seen in the relationship between the two parts of Henry IV, which restage the same narrative in a different emotional key, and the way that Henry IV’s retelling of the events of Richard II from his own perspective at the conclusion of 1 Henry IV forces the audience to re-evaluate the events of the earlier play, reinterpreting the dramatic past and imaginatively rewriting the play in light of the new perspective gained on events. The history plays thus create a new, dramatic history, a history without need for historical precedent. The plays deliberately signal their departure from ‘fact’ through anachronism, deviation from chronicle history and wholesale dramatic invention. In this sense the plays deliberately frustrate audience expectations; knowledge of chronicle history does not provide foreknowledge of what will happen onstage. History in the theatre is new and unpredictable, perhaps closer in spirit to the uncertainty of the historical moment rather than the reassuring textual narrative of the chronicles.

This is a study of the multiple constructions and appropriations of Geoffrey Chaucer’s paternitas of the English literary canon. It examines the evidence from the compilatio and ordinatio of fifteenth-century manuscript anthologies containing the poet’s works, and it interrogates the social conditions of production of these codices, as well as the ideology informing their compositional and paratextual programmes. Conceptually, my thesis is underpinned by a broad engagement with manuscript studies, as the codices to which I attend become objects of bibliographical and codicological examination, while being scrutinised through a post-structuralist framework. This theoretical approach, which comprises Michel Foucault’s revisions o f historiography and the contiguous debates on translation practices and queer theories, allows me to read critically the socio-cultural situations which inform the plural incarnations and appropriations of Chaucer's paternal authority. My study is structured in four chapters. I begin in Chapter I by engaging with Thomas Hoccleve's literary and iconographic mythopoeia o f Chaucer who is positioned as the clerical and sober fons et origo of English vemacularity. In Chapter III interrogate the appropriations of this initial paradigm of paternal authorship and I demonstrate how fifteenth-century manuscript collections fabricate Chaucer as a courtly and lyrical Father whose work is validated by his affiliations to and reproduction of dominant aristocratic literary practices. Chapter III situates these hegemonic modes of composition and mise-en-page in the context of French manuscript culture with which Chaucer's patemality of the English canon is inextricably intertwined. These associations with the ‘master’ culture, however, disperse the Father's authority in an intervemacular site of linguistic and cultural negotiations. Similarly, Chapter IV engages with the displacement of Chaucer's paternitas in the material space of the codex, as the glossarial apparatus of the manuscript copies of his works articulates voices of dissent. No longer the stable patriarch constructed by Hoccleve, Chaucer occupies a fluid and permeable space of authority that can be inhabited by a polyvocality of hermeneutic voices and is, therefore, susceptible to perpetual acts of co-option.