This thesis examines the novels of Christine Brooke-Rose and A. S. Byatt in order to question the extent to which contemporary British novelists are free to innovate with the forms of literary realism, forms that have a long and valued tradition in British literary production. Both authors, I argue, have reassessed the limits of the realist novel over the course of their careers, and the specific ways in which they engage with, or depart from, their literary inheritance are discussed. The introduction contextualises the literary climate out of which the two writers emerge. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was a commonplace of literary criticism to declare the “death of the English novel.” In the years following modernist experimentation, British novelists made a conscious return to the mimetic realism of the nineteenth century. Rather than the intellectual sterility that is often assumed to have dominated this period, I observe that there were in fact many writers who were continuing the innovations of the preceding generations, Christine Brooke-Rose and A. S. Byatt amongst them. To view realism to be in need of renewal is first of all to view literary production in terms of an ontological-historical distinction of texts as types of objects. It may be also to neglect the ways in which literary history is always already in dialogue with the present. Both authors have made concerted efforts to refresh literary realism; however, they have proceeded in very different ways. Brooke-Rose has experimented with the content and the form of the novel in order to renew conventions she insists are fatigued or overworked. The novels she has published since 1964 depart radically from what would ordinarily be recognised as realist fictions as they make no attempt to disguise their own textuality. Byatt, on the other hand, has reassessed realism through the forms of realism itself. Through an engagement with literary history, she revisits realism to pursue what has always been of value within it. In so doing, she creates a developmental model of literary production in which literary debts are made visible in the work of the contemporary writer. Chapter One examines Thru, the literary experiment for which Brooke-Rose is most celebrated. My starting point is her claim, following Roland Barthes’s S/Z, that she is the author of writerly as opposed to readerly texts. I argue that to establish any such easy opposition is to neglect Barthes’s departure from the polemicism that had marked his earlier work. Rather than interrogating how well her texts are supported by her claim to be writerly, I turn the opposition around in order to examine precisely how Barthes’s readerly operates within Thru. Through a close reading both of the novel and of Barthes, I illustrate that many characteristics of literary realism that Brooke-Rose argues are exhausted, in particular characterisation and narration, are still operating in Thru. Chapter Two develops Brooke-Rose’s opposition of readerly and writerly in order to examine its consequence for her own experimental writing. Here I return to Thru to demonstrate the ways in which Barthes’s readerly and writerly operate as interdependent processes rather than as opposing terms. I then reconsider her earliest work, a period she has since disavowed. I argue that rather than a separation, there is a continuum between her earliest works and her later, more experimental, writing that has not been recognised by the author or her critics. In Chapter Three I turn my attention to Byatt’s insistence on a developmental model of literary production. Here I identify the role that evolutionary narratives play in her texts. Two of her works, Possession and “Morpho Eugenia” are set largely in 1859, a year in which a specific epistemological emergence was to reconsider genealogical relations. In this chapter I examine the writings she invents for her characters and argue that she takes metaphors from natural history in order, not only to show the close relationship between literature and natural history, but to provide her reader with a framework of literary-generational descent. Chapter Four examines more closely the ways in which Byatt converses with her literary predecessors. She offers a version of realism that has always been concerned with perception, and with the impossibility of translating that perception into verisimilar fiction. In this chapter I identify the role that art works play within two of Byatt’s earlier novels, The Virgin in the Garden and Still Life, as she finds in them the same metaphorical ambiguities that bind the language of the novelist to imprecision. I then examine the ways in which metaphor works in these novels to elude precise signification of meaning. Chapter Five returns to Byatt’s neo-Victorian texts, Possession and Angels and Insects, and examines the author’s ventriloquism of her Victorian characters, which includes Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Arthur Hallam. Ventriloquism, I argue, is concerned with a remembrance of the literary dead within the present work and is thus an expression of mourning. However, to avoid melancholia the new text must also emphasise its difference from that which is being ventriloquised. I then discuss Byatt’s focus on nineteenth-century spiritualism, as it is through the trope of the séance that she reconsiders the afterlife of literary history itself. The final chapter examines the role of the critic. The mourning of Byatt’s fictionalised Tennyson is singular and overpowering. Chapter Six begins with a consideration of two of Possession’s critics, Mortimer Cropper and Leonora Stern, whose readings, I argue, are similar to Tennyson’s mourning in their inhospitality to other readings, other mournings of the literary text. I compare Cropper and Stern to Possession’s other critics, Roland Michell and Maud Bailey, whom Byatt places in the role of literary heir. Not only do Roland and Maud display an essential respect for the texts that they study, but also their reading is open to revision. The literary text, as Barthes argues, must always keep in reserve some essential meaning. Only through interpretive revision, Byatt implies, is the promise of this hopeful-yet-impossible revelation made to the reader.

Building on previous feminist literary criticism of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South (1854-55), this essay analyses the portrayal of wives and mothers in the novel from an intersectional feminist perspective. It examines how the narrative shows that gender and economic status or class intersect to create varied representations of Victorian women's marginalisation. The analysis argues that the novel, on the one hand, depicts wives and mothers as united by their status at "the other" in patriarchal Victorian society. On the other hand, the novel juxtaposes economically privileged and poor wives and mothers to show that they are not equally isolated, powerless, or willing to comply with Victorian gender roles. The result is a complex and empathetic portrayal of wives and mothers' privilege and poverty under patriarchy, which challenges the Victorian ideal of wives and mothers as "angels in the house".

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Anne Brontë utilise ses talents de romancière pour explorer le domaine du féminin. Cette étude se propose d’étudier les différentes manifestations de l’expression féminine dans ses romans. Il est question d’abord de lire le premier roman, Agnes Grey, comme un Bildungsroman féminin qui raconte le périple de formation, de maturité et d’épanouissement de l’héroïne : jeune fille passive, silencieuse et pusillanime elle devient épouse, mère, éducatrice et écrivaine confiante et éloquente. Le deuxième chapitre explore la métaphore de l’enchâssement en rapport avec le deuxième roman, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. L’examen des différents niveaux de discours imbriqués dans la structure narrative illustre les relations complexes entre les sexes dans le modèle de société patriarcale que propose le roman. Le troisième et dernier chapitre s’attache aux attributs identitaires créatifs de l’héroïne. Son ingéniosité qui se manifeste dans ses écrits, ses peintures, ses talents d’éducatrice et son empathie lui permettent non seulement de survivre et de créer dans un environnement hostile, mais de faire bénéficier pleinement ses amis et ses proches de son expérience personnelle. Les études consacrées à l’auteure montrent que le thème de l’expression féminine n’a guère mobilisé l’attention des critiques. Cette thèse, qui propose des pistes inédites de recherche, offre une réflexion synthétique sur la question. / Anne Brontë makes use of her talents as a novelist in view of exploring the realm of the feminine. This work proposes to study the different manifestations and usages of feminine expression in her novels. To start with, her first novel is to be read as an example of a feminine Bildungsroman describing the journey of formation, of maturity and fulfillment of the heroine who evolves from a passive, silent and shy young woman to a self-confident and eloquent wife, mother, educator and writer. The second chapter explores the metaphor of embedding in relation to the second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The chapter examines the different levels of discourse overlapping in the narrative structure in order to illustrate the complex relationships between the sexes in the model of patriarchal society the novel presents. The third and last chapter studies the creative identity attributes of the heroine. Her ingenuity manifests itself in her writings, her paintings, her educational skills and her empathy, not only allowing her to survive and create in a hostile environment but also her close friends to benefit from her personal experience. A review of the studies on the author shows that the theme of feminine expression has not received much critical attention. This thesis, presenting new paths of research, offers a synthetic vision of the question.

Because of critical neglect, there is no established terminology to describe techniques of suspense. Borrowing from Aristotle, Koestler, and others, a new body of concepts is suggested and importantly, a distinction of tense is established, between types of suspense which relate to the narrative past, present, and future. The classical world's intuition of a connection between mental uncertainty and the physical state of hanging has conditioned Western man's notion of narrative suspense until a comparatively recent date. Eighteenth-century theories of the sublime helped to create an understanding that suspense was not necessarily painful. Through an analysis of novels by Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens, Hardy, and Conrad, an attempt is made to identify and evaluate the most common suspense strategies in the period's popular genres, notably the Austenian romance, mystery, and tragedy. The Austenian romance is compared to the detective story in that narrative presentation is determined by the need to control the reader's expectations, and to achieve an ending which is both satisfactory and surprising. The latter requirement may have contributed to the gradual disappearance of the authorial "voice" in the course of the nineteenth century, and a consequent reduction in the pleasures of irony and comedy. During the Victorian period, many genres are combined in the long novel, but mystery gradually advances in popularity and sophistication, to the point where narrative events are often inappropriately exploited as secrets. Tragedy involves a creative conflict between the reader's hopes and expectations, so he is permitted to glimpse the overall tragic process, and suspense is generated on the levels of theme and causaliy. The problems incurred by an inability or unwillingness to conclude structures of theme suspense are considered finally.

This paper explores the contemporary reader´s fascination with the Victorian period focusing on Michel Faber´s neo-Victorian novel The Crimson Petal and the White (2002). By comparing and contrasting various literary elements that link the Victorian novel to contemporary neo-Victorian fiction it simultaneously shows the similarities and differences between the nineteenth-century Victorian sensorium and that of the present day. It puts particular emphasis on the sensory perceptions of vision and smell, since those two senses are the most prominent ones in Victorian and neo-Victorian fiction and they are also regarded as extremes on the sensory scale. The nineteenth-century urban hygiene campaign transformed, in particular, the perception of olfaction. This study concludes that our contemporary society bears many similarities to the Victorian period as a society of great change. The renewed interest in the Victorian signifies the twenty-first century reader´s desire for an idealized world set in another time, which yet appears familiar and recognizable. Neo-Victorian fiction thus functions as a means of knowing both your heritage and finding your own place in the present day. The sensory perception of foremost smell is part of our cultural heritage and thus the neo-Victorian novel mirrors the deo-Victorian concept.

В данной работе мы рассматриваем различный характер критики гендерных стереотипов в женской викторианской литературе на материале романов «Мельница на Флоссе» Джордж Элиот и «Жены и дочери» Элизабет Гаскелл. В первой части работы мы рассматриваем жанр романа воспитания, вопросы его генезиса и эволюции, а также подробно описываем женский роман воспитания как одну из его разновидностей. Кроме того, в теоретической главе мы также выявляем особенности репрезентации гендера в литературе (в частности, мы обращаем особое внимание на феномены женского письма и женского чтения) и рассматриваем гендер как социокультурное явление в викторианском обществе. Заключительные параграфы первой части освещают историко-культурный и социальный контекст творчества Дж. Элиот и Э. Гаскелл. Вторая часть нашей работы посвящена непосредственному анализу романов «Жены и дочери» и «Мельница на Флоссе». В ней последовательно рассматриваются такие аспекты текстов, как объектная и субъектная организация, нарративная структура и стилевые особенности. Большое внимание уделяется выделению собственно женской парадигмы становления в романах. Жанровый анализ произведений включает также выявление черт «двойного» романа воспитания в данных текстах. Две параллельные линии становления героя и героини составляют структурную основу данной разновидности жанра и играют важную роль в определении специфики критики гендерных стереотипов, так как в «двойных» романах воспитания можно увидеть четкое сопоставление мужской и женской парадигм становления и выявить различия между ними. Сравнительный анализ двух романов с привлечением изученного теоретического материала позволяет заключить, что ключом к пониманию специфики критики гендерных стереотипов в данных произведениях является роль общества как неотъемлемлемого фактора формирования личности и как контролирующей инстанции, которая предписывает нормы поведения для мужчин и женщин. / In this paper, we examine the different approaches to gender stereotypes criticism in Victorian novel on “The Mill on the Floss” by George Eliot and “Wives and Daughters” by Elizabeth Gaskell. The first part of the work is devoted to the genre of formation novel, the problems of its genesis and evolution, and also describe the female educational novel as one of its varieties. Additionally, the theoretical chapter also covers gender representation in literature (namely, we pay special attention to the phenomena of women’s writing and women’s reading) and consider gender as a sociocultural phenomenon in Victorian society. The concluding paragraphs of the first part cover the historical, cultural and social context of J. Eliot’s and E. Gaskell’s novel. The second part of our work provides an analysis of the novels "”Wives and Daughters"” and “Mill on the Floss”. It consistently deals with such aspects of a literary work as image and narrative structure, and features of style. Much attention is paid to the female characters development in the given novels. Genre analysis of works also includes revealing the features of the “double” educational novel in these texts. Two parallel lines of the male and female characters development form the structural basis of this genre and play an important role in rendering gender stereotypes criticism, as in the “double” educational novels one can see a clear juxtaposition of the male and female paradigms of self-fulfillment and reveal the differences between them. A comparative analysis of the two novels with the use of the studied theoretical material allows us to conclude that the key to understanding the nature of gender stereotypes in these works is the role of society as an integral factor in the formation of personality and as a controlling authority that prescribes norms of behavior for men and women.

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This thesis traces Hardy's involvement in the theatre from the 1880s to the 1920s. The narrative of Hardy's relationship with the theatre is set against an analysis of the changing nature of the stage during this period, though I acknowledge throughout the thesis the fact that Hardy's awareness of the theatre did not perfectly keep pace with its evolution. The aim of the thesis is to examine the motivations determining Hardy's work in the theatre in light of the fact that he seemed so dismissive of its efficacy. I trace the history of Hardy's adaptations of his work for the stage, before setting the scripts against the novels in order to weigh the extent to which the novels resist translation into a different medium – whether there is something integral to Hardy's plots that cannot be conveyed on stage. I have chosen to focus predominantly on material that made it beyond a rough sketch on a scrap of paper, on projects that reached the stage of rewritings and commercial negotiations - often years before they were produced. My selection has been determined by the belief that the material is indicative of the development of Hardy's understanding of the relationship between his work and the possibilities adaptation offered. My first chapter, on the history of an adaptation of 'Far From the Madding Crowd' in 1882, argues that Hardy's collaboration with J. Comyns Carr on the script was driven by his desire to assert his copyright over the novel's afterlife. The adaptation may never have been performed, but simply have been registered with the Lord Chamberlain as a deterrent against unauthorised adapters. It was the plagiarism row over Arthur Wing Pinero's possible theft of Hardy's plot in his popular pastoral play, 'The Squire', that pushed Hardy and Carr to stage their version. My second chapter looks at the history of Hardy's adaptations of 'Tess'. I am interested primarily in his writing of two scripts in the mid-1890s, and his negotiations with leading actresses in response to their interest in creating the part of Tess. The chapter then looks at the circumstances leading to the eventual staging of the play in the 1920s, focusing on the difficulties posed by producing a script which was by then thirty years old, and showing its age. In the third chapter I concentrate on plans to stage two novels, 'The Woodlanders' and 'Jude'. Neither was produced, but both are evidence of Hardy's increasing interest in the possibility of selecting from his material, rather than compressing it into the time available. The two adaptations allied Hardy much more closely with the avant garde than his earlier work had done – 'The Woodlanders' was begun in 1889 at the suggestion of J. T. Grein and C. W. Jarvis, two men who would later found the Independent Theatre, a private subscription society which pioneered the staging of Ibsen in England. Hardy's own sketches for adapting 'Jude' (1895, 1897, 1910, 1926) concentrated on Sue's position. I set Hardy’s realignment of 'Jude' against a focus on the place of women in unhappy marriages, drawing principally on Hardy's contribution to a debate about the role of wives in the 'New Review' for June 1894 and a 'Westminster Review' article by the feminist Mona Caird (August 1888), which provoked three months of debate (and 27,000 letters) in 'The Daily Telegraph' on the question 'Is Marriage a Failure?' Caird’s ideal dovetails with Sue's views on marriage as 'legalized prostitution' and her revulsion from 'the dreadful contract to feel in a particular way in a matter whose essence is its voluntariness!' The final chapter of the thesis looks at two adaptations of 'The Dynasts'. The first is a wartime entertainment staged by Harley Granville Barker in 1914, the second is Hardy's own adaptation for Dorset amateur actors (the Hardy Players) to perform in 1916, which concentrated on the impact of the war on the local populace. I then turn to the premiere of Hardy's only full-length drama written specifically for the stage – the one-act Arthurian play 'The Queen of Cornwall' (1923). I argue in this final chapter that Hardy was beginning to move from the role of reluctant adapter to that of director, conscious of the boundaries imposed by the stage and experimenting with how to craft his work to fit within them, rather than abridging his material indiscriminately.

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