This study provides a new account of the evolution of the eighteenth-century British novel by reading it as a response to contemporary interest in, and self-consciousness about, print communication. During the eighteenth century, print went from being a marginal technology to being one with an increasingly wide circulation and a diverse range of applications. The pervasive adoption of print generated anxiety about its positive and negative effects, prompting a series of responses from writers. Examining the work of five British novelists from across the long eighteenth century, this dissertation investigates the influence of eighteenth-century philosophical thinking about human understanding and social interaction on the assumptions that these novelists made about the way their work would be received. In particular, this thesis explores the ways in which these novelists respond to contemporary philosophical ideas about the cognitive functions of the imagination by experimenting with the form of their work in order to generate new kinds of reception. But this study also shows that, while these five novelists drew on the tenets of eighteenth-century moral philosophy, their work exposed a number of the limitations of that philosophy by putting it into practice. Each chapter in this study focuses on a different aspect of the intersection of mediation and imagination. Chapter One considers the ways in which Locke's understanding of probability informed Richardson's attempts to promote specific affective reading practices with his epistolary fictions and editorial commentary. Chapter Two reads Sterne's manipulations of the material page in Tristram Shandy as an attempt to expose the limitations of print communication and to suggest new ways of reading that could overcome those limitations. Chapter Three examines the writing of Smith, Kames, Mackenzie, Reeve and Godwin in order to illustrate both the promise and the danger that these authors attribute to imaginative sympathy and to the reading practices that promote sympathetic reactions. Chapter Four explores Scott's experiments with a form of fiction that could collapse the distance between writing and orality in order to force readers to reevaluate the complex relationship of sound and writing in the establishment of communities in an age of print.

This study provides a new account of the evolution of the eighteenth-century British novel by reading it as a response to contemporary interest in, and self-consciousness about, print communication. During the eighteenth century, print went from being a marginal technology to being one with an increasingly wide circulation and a diverse range of applications. The pervasive adoption of print generated anxiety about its positive and negative effects, prompting a series of responses from writers. Examining the work of five British novelists from across the long eighteenth century, this dissertation investigates the influence of eighteenth-century philosophical thinking about human understanding and social interaction on the assumptions that these novelists made about the way their work would be received. In particular, this thesis explores the ways in which these novelists respond to contemporary philosophical ideas about the cognitive functions of the imagination by experimenting with the form of their work in order to generate new kinds of reception. But this study also shows that, while these five novelists drew on the tenets of eighteenth-century moral philosophy, their work exposed a number of the limitations of that philosophy by putting it into practice. Each chapter in this study focuses on a different aspect of the intersection of mediation and imagination. Chapter One considers the ways in which Locke's understanding of probability informed Richardson's attempts to promote specific affective reading practices with his epistolary fictions and editorial commentary. Chapter Two reads Sterne's manipulations of the material page in Tristram Shandy as an attempt to expose the limitations of print communication and to suggest new ways of reading that could overcome those limitations. Chapter Three examines the writing of Smith, Kames, Mackenzie, Reeve and Godwin in order to illustrate both the promise and the danger that these authors attribute to imaginative sympathy and to the reading practices that promote sympathetic reactions. Chapter Four explores Scott's experiments with a form of fiction that could collapse the distance between writing and orality in order to force readers to reevaluate the complex relationship of sound and writing in the establishment of communities in an age of print. / Arts, Faculty of / English, Department of / Graduate

Of all of Austen<&trade>s works, Lady Susan tends to stand alone in style and character development. The titular character of the novella in particular presents a literary conundrum for critics and readers of Austen. In an attempt to understand the character and why Austen wrote her, Lady Susan has been considered as a œmerry widow (Lane), a Machiavellian power figure (Mulvihill), and an indication of Austen<&trade>s familiarity with gossip and adultery (Russell). Despite these varied and colorful readings, critics have failed to fully resolve the differences between Lady Susan and Austen<&trade>s more beloved, maidenly heroines such as Elizabeth Bennet and Anne Elliott.This paper delves into one explanation that has hitherto been overlooked”Lady Susan<&trade>s relationship to the Restoration rake character trope. In light of Lady Susan<&trade>s philandering, independent, and mercenary ways, as well as her likeable yet reprehensible personality, the connection to the Restoration rake is readily apparent. Reading Lady Susan as a rake better informs critical understanding of this character and sheds new light on Jane Austen<&trade>s own perspectives on gender, while also forming a dialectic for critics and audiences for their own perspectives on gender, gender roles, and acceptable behavior. To accomplish this task, this paper explores Austen<&trade>s own early experiences with theatre and her predilection for theatrical allusions, the rake character<&trade>s genealogy and influence on literature, and a close reading of the novella in context of Restoration comedies.

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Wilderness landscape, a setting common in Romantic literature and painting, is generally overlooked in the art of the Middle Ages. While the medieval garden and the city are well mapped, the medieval wilderness remains relatively trackless. Yet the use of setting to represent interior experience may be traced back to the Neo-Platonic use of space and movement to define spiritual development. Separating themselves as far as possible from the material world, such writers as Origen and Plotinus avoided use of representational detail in their spatial models; however, both the visual artists and the authors who adopted the Neo-Platonic paradigm, elaborated their emotional spaces with the details of the classical locus amoenus and of the exegetical desert, while retaining the philosophical concern with spiritual transition. Analysis of wilderness as an image for spiritual and emotional transition in medieval literature and art relates the texts to an iconographic tradition which, along with motifs of city and garden, provides a spatial representation of interior progress, as the medieval dialectic process provides a paradigm for intellectual resolution. Such an analysis relates the motif to the core of medieval intellectual experience, and further suggests significant connections between medieval and modern narratives in regard to the representation of interior experience. The Divine Comedy and related Continental texts employ both classical and exegetical sources in the representation of psychological transition and spiritual conversion. Similar techniques are also apparent in English texts such as Beowulf and the Anglo-Saxon elegies, in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, and Troilus and Criseyde, and in the northern English The Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These literary texts, further, include both ideas and techniques which are analogous to those of visual arts, where frescos and altarpieces show the wilderness as metaphor for transition, and where manuscript illuminations relate this visual concept to texts. Thus, the wilderness as a landscape of personal crisis becomes in the Middle Ages a significant part of the representation of interior experience in painting and in literature.

This thesis investigates the representation of social reality that can be reflected by folk belief and the supernatural within mythic worlds created in epic poetry. Although the society, itself, can be regarded as the creator of its own myth, it may still be subjected to the impact of the synthesized mythic world, and this study seeks to address the roles of the society in the shaping of such mythic worlds. The research is inspired by an innovative approach, using James Macpherson’s Ossian (1760-63) and Elias Lönnrot’s Kalevala (1835-49) as epic models that benefit from mythical traditions. Through the examination and the comparison of these two epic collections, both of which seem to have a close association with social reformation and restructuring, the study explores the universality of human nature. It also reveals the extent mythic worlds may exhibit the ‘realities’ of their source-societies and how mythical tradition may become a reflection of a society’s transforming past modes of thinking. Moreover, the study devotes special attention to the influence of mythic heritage on national awakening and the construction of national identities. The research treats Macpherson as the re-inventor of Gaelic oral tradition with his Ossian, where he portrays a Romanticized image of a gallant past according to the norms of the eighteenth century. Therefore, the mythic world of the epic can be seen as a combination of an ancient heroic past and the aesthetic refinement of a polished age. In this framework, as the product of a society going through a transition period from traditional to modern, Ossian seems to reflect the society’s changing world-view, both celebrating, and mourning for a culture on the verge of extinction. Focusing on the Kalevala, the study analyzes its portrayal of Finnish folk belief. The Kalevala, like Ossian, is an attempt to recover ancient tradition, which seems to revolve around supernatural and divine elements, with hopes to establish a common social reality. It is an expression of Finnish language, belief and culture, whose production was prompted by the looming Finnish nationalism. Therefore, the evolving mode of thought represented in the mythic world of Kalevalaic poems, is expected and favoured by the society, enabling the epic to encourage a social reformation.

L’idée du Nord se manifeste sous diverses formes révélatrices d’un réel magnétisme géo-culturel ayant donné naissance à plusieurs mythes et idéologies. On assiste dès la seconde moitié du XVIIIe siècle en Grande-Bretagne à un affrontement pour la primauté culturelle entre gothicisme et celtisme, qui finirent par coexister en vertu d’une certaine congénialité septentrionale. Au-delà de la simple formule romanesque, "l’appel du Nord" fut une dynamique centrale dans la naissance du mouvement romantique britannique. En outre, cet intérêt marqué pour l’espace nord-britannique, symptomatique pour beaucoup d’un rejet du Sud incarné par la France révolutionnaire et l’empereur Napoléon, aurait tendance à renforcer notre certitude quant à la réalité de l’appel du Nord dans la littérature romantique britannique, qui, au demeurant, ne se confina pas aux frontières nationales, mais porta son attention jusqu’aux régions nordiques et arctiques. Rappelons finalement que la visée de cette étude latitudinale ne fut jamais d’offrir une définition étriquée du romantisme mais plutôt une lecture thématique du mouvement avec pour axe principal de réflexion le Nord, tel que celui-ci intervint dans la construction identitaire du Royaume-Uni. / The idea of the North appears in diverse forms expressive of a real geo-cultural magnetism that gave birth to many myths and ideologies. The second half of the 18th century in Great Britain was the theatre of a battle for cultural primacy between Celticism and Gothicism, which ended up coexisting in virtue of a certain northern congeniality. Beyond the conventional romantic formula, the call of the North was a crucial dynamic in the emergence of a British Romantic literature. What’s more, this marked interest for the northern space, symptomatic for many of a rejection of the South epitomized by revolutionary France and the emperor Napoleon, tends to reinforce our conviction as to the reality of the call of the North in British Romanticism. However, the scope of such a phenomenon was hardly restricted within the British isles and extended to the Nordic and Arctic regions. Let us finally remind that the aim of this latitudinal study has never been to provide a narrow definition of Romanticism, but more of a geo-cultural reading of the movement, directed by the idea of the North as featured in the national identity-making process of Great Britain

This dissertation examines the place of Hellenism in nineteenth-century literature as a background to my discussion of Algernon Charles Swinburne’s poetic treatment of Apollo, the Greek god of poetry and of the sun. My point of departure is the common view that sees the Victorians’ fascination with Hellenism as representing a collective sense of dissatisfaction with Christian culture, its politics, and morality. Raised High Anglican, Swinburne was an avid and devoted believer throughout his early life. However, a spiritual crisis which he experienced during his years in Oxford in the late 1850s caused him to grow extremely critical of Christianity and eventually forsake his faith by his mid-twenties. Yet Swinburne’s rejection of Christianity did not result in his rejection of spirituality. And indeed, throughout his poetic career, Swinburne searches for alternative deities that would replace the Christian God. One such deity is Apollo, who becomes a pivotal figure in Swinburne poetry starting with the 1878 publication of Poems and Ballads and in the collections that follow. Focusing on seven major poems written during a period of almost three decades, I show how Apollo serves as the main deity in an emerging Swinburnean mythology. Swinburne’s Apollonian myth, I show, consists of three stages: the invocation and conceptualization of Apollo as a new god by manipulating Biblical and Classical notions of divinity; the formation of a unique Apollonian theology; and the shift toward a nihilistic agnostic vision of spirituality. Each stage, I argue, presents the development of Swinburne’s thought, as well as his deep engagement with nineteenth-century debates about religion, mythography, and the reformative function of poetry. As such, my dissertation has two main purposes: first, expanding the scope of Swinburne scholarship by providing a new thematic context for his later poetry; and second, reclaiming Swinburne’s place in nineteenth-century intellectual history by showing his contribution and involvement in discussions about some of the period’s most central issues.

Cette étude est une analyse du rapport entre la poésie d’Auguste Brizeux et la chanson bretonne, inspirée par l’étrangeté de sa forme et de son style poétiques, semblables aux particularités de la chanson folklorique de Basse-Bretagne. Nous supposons donc que cette étrangeté résulte de l’adaptation de la forme de la chanson bretonne à la poésie française. Si tel est le cas, ceci nous amène à une nouvelle question : comme Brizeux était très proche de Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué, auteur du Barzaz-Breiz, cet art poétique a-t-il quelque rapport avec ce fameux recueil de la chanson bretonne ? C’est ce qui a motivé nos recherches et nous amène à en présenter le résultat. / This study is an analysis of the relation between the poems of Auguste Brizeux and traditional Breton folksongs. It is inspired by the curious and unconventional poetic structure found in his poems, similar to the forms particular to the traditional song of Lower-Brittany. We suppose that this particularity comes from the adaptation of the poetic system found in Breton song to French poetry. If that is the case, this hypothesis would also lead to a new question: As Brizeux was close to Théodore Hersart de La Villemarqué, author of the Barzaz-Breiz, had there been a real influence between the poetic practice of our poet, Brizeux, and the production of the so-called “Breton folksongs" published in this La Villemarqué's famous book? This compelling question is the source of interest in our comparative study, its motivation and the thread that leads us to an intriguing conclusion.