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Gordon, Sara Rhianydd. "Reading and imagining family life in later medieval western Europe." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:601245df-1c95-4bfe-8a08-b99a334278fa.
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This thesis discusses the ideals of behaviour which sought to govern family life and which were common currency in England and northern Europe, how they were constructed, and how the late medieval gentry and nobility interacted with them. Hagiography, sermons, and courtesy literature all explicitly sought to influence the views and behaviour of their audiences, whilst the letter collections of the Pastons, Plumptons, Stonors, Celys, and Armburghs offer an insight into the self-perceptions of the recipients of this didactic material. Much of this material has been studied, but it did not exist in a vacuum. Images in books, often marking key moments in a typical life-cycle, supported, extended, even contradicted the notions inculcated by these texts, were increasingly relevant to later medieval daily lives, and both influenced their audience and were used by their audience as a form of self-fashioning. The five chapters of this thesis each explore a different aspect of the medieval lifecycle. Chapters One and Two take the foundation of the household, marriage, as their starting point, discussing courtship and the ideal marriage ceremony, as well as the attributes and behaviour of the ideal spouse. Chapter Three turns to how this household operated on a wider scale, demonstrating how lords were caught between Christ's example and the pressures of lavish lay display when building networks of friendship. Chapter Four considers the genesis of a new generation: how images and texts conveyed sometimes different notions of the ideal mother and father, the location of the household as a place of learning, and the importance of models when shaping the development of the ideal child. Lastly, Chapter Five investigates the end of the lifecycle, death, and how images and texts worked together to propound the central medieval idea of a 'good death'. Consideration is given throughout this thesis to how the norms of behaviour communicated by texts and images may be studied.
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Jennings, Emily. "Prophetic rhetoric in the early Stuart period." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:13643178-0544-4b2b-9ca3-55d6c73a5d26.
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This is a study of the political prophecy in England in a period delimited by the accession of King James I (1603) and the end of the Interregnum (1660). It combines the analysis of hitherto obscure manuscript texts with that of printed works to provide a nuanced account of the uses and reception of prophecies in this period. Chapter One (which focuses on the first decade of James's reign) and Chapter Two (which covers the period 1613-19) approach the analysis of dramatic treatments of political prophecy through the study of prophecy both as a rhetorical buttress to the Jacobean state and as a protest genre. Attentive to the elite bias of the legal documents wherein allegedly oppositionist uses of prophecy are recorded, these chapters heed the counsel of historians who have found literary scholars insufficiently suspicious of the rhetoric of these materials. A focus on dramatic texts, neglected by the historians, reveals that Jacobean playgoers were encouraged to regard both official prophetic rhetoric and official rhetoric about prophecy with scepticism. Chapter Three considers how native and continental prophetic traditions were expanded and repurposed in England around the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, when belief in the purportedly inspired status of prophecies was rare but recognition of their utility as a vehicle for political discussion was nonetheless widespread. Chapter Four explores the adaptation and tendentious exposition of medieval, sixteenth-century, and Jacobean manuscript prophecies in printed propaganda for both the royalist and parliamentarian causes in the mid-seventeenth century. This study of literary and archival sources finds that previous scholarship has overestimated the extent of popular faith in the authenticity of allegedly ancient and inspired prophecies in the early Stuart period. The longevity of purported prophecies, it concludes, was ensured through the recognition, appreciation, and exploitation of their rhetorical affordances.
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Lazar, Jessica. "1603 - the wonderfull yeare : literary responses to the accession of James I." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:a0b0e575-da98-405d-81d8-8ddd0bf53924.
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'1603. The Wonderfull Yeare: Literary Responses to the Accession of James I' argues that when James VI of Scotland was proclaimed James I of England on 24 March 1603, the printed verse pamphlets that greeted his accession presented him as a figure of hope and promise for the Englishmen now subject to his rule. However, they also demonstrate hitherto unrecognized concerns that James might also be a figure of threat to the very national strength, Protestant progress, and moral, cultural, and political renaissance for which he was being touted as harbinger and champion. The poems therefore transform an insecure and undetermined figure into a symbol that represents (and enables) promise and hope. PART ONE explores how the poetry seeks to address the uncertainty and fragility, both social and political, that arose from popular fears about the accession; and to dissuade dissenters (and make secure and unassailable the throne, and thereby the state of England), through celebration of the new monarch. Perceived legal, political, and dynastic concerns were exacerbated by concrete difficulties when James was proclaimed King of England, and so he was more than fifty miles from the English border (only reaching London for the first time in early May); his absence was further prolonged by plague; this plague also deferred the immediate sanction of public festivities that should have accompanied his July coronation. An English Jacobean icon was configured in literature to accommodate and address these threats and hazards, neutralizing fears surrounding the idea of the accession with confidence in the idea of the king it brings. In the texts that respond to James's accession we observe his appropriation as a figure of hope and promise. PART 2 looks to more personal hopes and fears, albeit within the national context. It considers how the poets engage with the King's own established iconography and intentions, publicly available to view within his own writing - and especially poetry. The image that is already established there has the potential either to obstruct or to enable national and personal causes and ambitions (whether political, religious, or cultural). The poetry therefore develops strategies to negotiate with and so appropriate the King's own self-fashioning.
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Whelan, Fiona Elizabeth. "Morals and manners in twelfth-century England : 'Urbanus Magnus' and courtesy literature." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4ccb50b9-7e0e-49c8-b9c5-104dfefa3fea.
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This thesis investigates the twelfth-century Latin poem entitled Urbanus magnus or 'The Book of the Civilised Man', attributed to Daniel of Beccles. This is a poem dedicated to the cultivation of a civilised life, aimed primarily at clerics although its use extends to nobility, and specifically the noble householder. This thesis focuses on the text as a primary source for an understanding of social life in medieval England, and uses the content of the text to explore issues such as the medieval household, social hierarchy, the body, and food and diet. Urbanus magnus is commonly referred to as a 'courtesy text'. This thesis seeks to understand Urbanus magnus outside of that attribution, and to situate the text in the context of twelfth and thirteenth-century England. Thus far, scholarship of courtesy literature has focused on later texts such as thirteenth-century vernacular 'courtesy texts' or humanist works as exemplified by Erasmus's De civilitate morum puerilium. This scholarship looks back to the twelfth century and sees texts such as Urbanus magnus as 'early Latin courtesy texts'. This teleological view relegates such earlier texts to positions at the genesis of the genre and blindly assumes that they belong to the corpus of 'courtesy literature'. This neglects both their individual importance and their respective origins. This thesis examines Urbanus magnus as a didactic text which contains elements of 'courtesy literature', but also displays moral and ethical concerns. At the heart of the thesis is the question: should Urbanus magnus be considered as part of the genre of courtesy literature? This question does not have a simple answer, but this thesis shows that some elements and sections of Urbanus magnus do conform to the characteristics of courtesy literature. However, there are further sections that reflect other literary traditions. In addition to morals and ethics, Urbanus magus reflects other genres such as satire, and also reveals social issues in twelfth-century England such as the rise of anti-curiale sentiment and resentment of upward social mobility. This thesis provides an examination of Urbanus magnus through the most prevalent themes in the text. Firstly, it explores the dynamics of the medieval household, along with issues such as social mobility and hierarchy. Secondly, it focuses on the depiction of the body and bodily restraint, covering topics such as speech, bodily emissions, and sexual activity. Thirdly, it discusses food and diet, including table manners, food consumption, and dietary effects of foodstuffs. The penultimate chapter looks at the manuscript dissemination of the text to investigate the different uses which Urbanus magnus found in subsequent centuries. The delineation of Urbanus magnus as part of the genre of courtesy literature ignores the social, cultural, and literary impact on the creation of the text. In response, this thesis has two aims. The first is to minimise the notion of genre, and treat Urbanus magnus as a text in its own right, and as a product of the twelfth century. The second shows that Urbanus magnus reflects both continuity and change in society in England following the Norman Conquest.
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Sawyer, Daniel. "Codicological evidence of reading in late medieval England, with particular reference to practical pastoral verse." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8c21053f-e347-4349-9cc4-b1fa0229e95a.
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This study advances and adds detail to our history of the reading of verse in England c.1350-1500. Scholarship has established major twelfth- and thirteenth-century changes in reading, and linked these changes to manuscripts containing the modern Middle English verse canon. Historians of early modern reading have also argued for distinctive changes in their own period. But the examination of reading between these two clusters of change has been limited. This study therefore asks how later medieval Middle English verse was read. The surviving copies of The Prick of Conscience and Speculum Vitae, two hugely successful religious instructional poems, form the primary body of evidence. This body is augmented by reference to hundreds of other manuscripts containing Middle English verse. Together, these can reveal much about what was normal and abnormal in reading. They are also an important part of the context for the reading of more canonical Middle English verse. Manuscript studies often proceeds through case studies of individual books and unusual evidence such as marginalia. This thesis turns to codicology to understand more widespread evidence for reading, combining qualitative case studies with quantitative techniques borrowed and developed from continental scholarship. The first chapter examines evidence of provenance, revealing that both The Prick of Conscience and Speculum Vitae were read by an impressive range of people and remained current into the sixteenth century. The second chapter considers the navigational aids used in copies of both poems. Reading in this period has been characterised as 'discontinuous', but it could be discontinuous in diverse ways, and readers also read continuously. The third chapter is a large-scale study of books' size and shape, showing how these features can reveal books' reading histories, sometimes in counterintuitive ways. The fourth chapter contends that readers in this period attended closely to rhyme and probably read for balanced rhyme structures. The fifth chapter uncovers the ways in which these poems were rewritten for new readers and investigates the composition of the Southern Recension of The Prick of Conscience, arguing that this new text was partly a formalist intervention. The conclusion summarises the new 'baseline' history of the reading of Middle English verse which is offered here, and gestures towards implications for our reading of the Middle English poems which are canonical today.
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May, Simon. "Marlowe and monarchy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:84716f56-e527-4a6b-820c-d2204c87cfe2.
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Focusing on the works of Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), this thesis explores the complex engagement of popular drama with the political and religious writing of the Elizabethan fin de siècle. It focuses on the five plays by Marlowe that feature royal protagonists: 1-2 Tamburlaine (1587), Dido, Queen of Carthage (1588), Edward II (1592), and The Massacre at Paris (1593). By interpreting each play in its immediate political context, it shows that Marlowe did not deal with monarchy in the abstract but responded to current affairs - from the incursions of the Ottoman Empire to the threat of the Spanish Armada, from the conspiracy claims of Catholic polemic to the debate surrounding England's involvement in continental warfare. The introduction situates the thesis in the critical and historiographical context relating to Marlowe and to the relationship between literature and politics in the early modern period; it provides the justification for reading Marlowe's plays as topical statements. Chapter One looks at 1-2 Tamburlaine in the light of contemporary attitudes to the Ottoman-Safavid War. Chapter Two shows that Dido, Queen of Carthage adapted the stories and tropes of polemic to reflect fears of Catholic conspiracy and Spanish invasion. Chapter Three reads Edward II as a creative response to the print war of 1591-2, which centred on the moral character of the queen's closest counsellors. Chapter Four proposes that Marlowe's final play, The Massacre at Paris, employed arguments drawn from Reason of State to influence decisions at the 1593 Parliament. The thesis concludes by suggesting that despite Marlowe's reputation as a radical overreacher, his drama displays considerable sympathy for the monarchs who must rule precariously and without the option of private happiness.
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Neal, Derek. "Meanings of masculinity in late medieval England : self, body and society." Thesis, McGill University, 2003. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=84534.
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Masculinity is a set of meanings, and also an aspect of male identity. Understanding masculinity in history, therefore, requires attention to culture and psychology. The concept of a "crisis of masculinity" cannot address these dimensions sufficiently and is of little use to the historian.This analysis of evidence from late medieval England begins with the social world. Legal records show men defending, and therefore defining, masculine identity through interaction among male peers and with women. Defamation suits suggest a fifteenth-century identification of masculinity with "trueness": an uncomplicated, open honesty. A "true man," in late medieval England, was not just an honest man, but a real man.
Social masculinity constituted honest fairness, permitting stable social relations between men. Transparent honesty, good management of the household ("husbandry"), and self-command preserved males' social substance, their metaphoric embodiment represented tangibly by money and property. Lawsuits and personal letters show how masculine social identity took shape through competition and cooperation with other men. "Power," "dominance" and self-fulfilment were less important than sustaining this network of relations.
Men's relations with women are best understood within this homosocial dynamic. Men's adultery trespassed on other males' substance, while women's adultery indicated poor management of one's own. Sexual slander against men could injure their social identity, but was unlikely to demolish it, as it would for a woman. The celibate minority of men shared these concerns.
Medical texts, late medieval men's clothing, satirical poems, and courtesy texts prescribing self-control show that the male body provided important meanings (phallic and otherwise), through failure, inadequacy or excess as often as not. Sexual activity, and other uses of the body, might be managed differently as self-restraining or self-indulgent discourses of masculinity demanded.
A psychoanalytic reading of medieval romances reveals fantasized solutions to the problem of males' desire for feminine and masculine objects. Romance literature displays a narcissistic subjectivity created in defensive fantasies of disconnection. Such features derive from a culture demanding incessant social self-presentation of its men, which permitted very little in daily life to be kept from the scrutiny of others.
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Manderson, Kate. "Fabian socialism and the struggle for Independent Labour Representation, 1884-1900." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1998. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0003/MQ43910.pdf.
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Khulpateea, Veda Laxmi. "State of the union cross cultural marriages in nineteenth century literature and society /." Diss., Online access via UMI:, 2007.
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Wong, Chi-man Lorraine, and 黃芷敏. "Cultural fever, consumer society and pre-orientalism China in eighteenth-century England." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2002. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B31227946.
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Evans, Angela. "Cinema, entrepreneurship and society in the South Wales valleys, 1900 to the 1970s." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2016. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/97647/.
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This thesis explores the role played by small-scale cinema entrepreneurs in the south Wales valleys in establishing cinema as the predominant cultural medium of the twentieth century. The focus and methodology draw heavily on the �new cinema history� that emerged in the early 2000s and champions a reorientation of cinema history away from a concentration on films as cultural products towards a more sociological approach that views cinema as a social institution located within specific community settings. The continuing dominance of small-scale cinema ownership in the south Wales valleys (in most areas of the UK, the major cinema chains, such as Odeon and ABC, came to control the market) meant that cinema proprietors were often prominent local figures. Not only did they exercise a considerable amount of influence on the audience experience, they were also active players in their local communities, cultivating relationships with civic leaders, contributing to a range of local good causes and promoting the community benefits of cinema. Given the controversial nature of cinema, they became adept �cultural brokers,� negotiating with regulatory authorities, appeasing oppositional groups whilst keeping a weather eye on fluctuating popular tastes. The divisive nature of cinema makes it an ideal lens through which to examine the dynamics of civil, social and commercial life of south Wales towns as they transitioned from conditions of economic boom to post industrial bust. The focus of this study is Bargoed in the Rhymney Valley, which was home to the Withers, one of the most important, and yet little known, cinema-owning families in south Wales. By holding the magnifying glass up to a single town and business the aim is to move beyond generalizations and examine closely how various social, economic and cultural forces interplayed at the local level.
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Lauer, Laura Elizabeth. "Women in British Nonconformity, circa 1880-1920, with special reference to the Society of Friends, Baptist Union and Salvation Army." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1997. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ff846f2b-fe1f-4cb5-a38f-d0844d1b45df.
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The reclamation and analysis of women's experiences within three Nonconformist denominations is the focus of this thesis. The first chapter places each denomination in its social and theological context, and describes its governing structures. The bulk of the thesis is devoted to situating women within this context and examining the ways in which women sought representation within male-dominated governing structures. Chapter two examines the conflict between Friends' egalitarian theology and women's lack of governing power. Although women Friends gained access to the governing body of the Society, the issue of equality remained problematic. The chapter finishes with a discussion of the Society's split over women's suffrage. The Baptist Zenana Mission is the focus of the third chapter. Zenana missionaries claimed spiritual and imperial authority over "native" women and used the languages of separate spheres to carve out a vocation for single women in keeping with denominational norms. In so doing, they marginalised the work done by missionary wives. The fourth chapter begins with an examination of the life and theology of Catherine Booth, whose contribution to the Salvation Army is often neglected. Catherine advocated women's ministry in terms that validated both "women's work for women" and public preaching. This chapter looks at the appeal of officership for women, especially the empowering experiences of salvation and holiness, and charts the growth of the Women's Social Work. Despite the Army's egalitarian theology, conflict was felt by women officers who struggled to combine corps and family duties. The final chapter briefly examines idealised representations of women to conclude that their defining power, while significant, was by no means hegemonic.
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Cameron, Nicholas W. "Reclaimed territory : the plays of John McGrath and the 7:84 theatre company considered as a continuum of twentieth-century theories concerning theatrical form." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/15983.
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Bibliography: pages 617-630.This dissertation proposes to examine the work of John McGrath and the 7:84 Theatre Company as part of a continuum of theatrical experimentation culminating in postmodernism. To clarify the relationship between aesthetic form and social praxis the inquiry proceeds in two salient lines of direction: the first tracing the withdrawal from "realism" of major theorists of modernist ideology, the second defining the political and social milieu which provided the matrix for the development and staging of McGrath's plays. Recognising the partisan disposition of the 7:84 Theatre Company, the focus is on not only the division between political commitment and aesthetic experimentation, but also their potential for conciliation. At stake here is the socio-political nature of dramatic form itself and the contradictions implicit in political theatre's inherent structure. Tested against actual modes of procedure in the staging of McGrath's plays, and against the plays themselves, are the modernist propositions on aesthetics and politics argued within the context of German Marxism by Bloch, Lukacs, Benjamin, Adorno, and Brecht. The inquiry into problematising representational modes is then extended to include the postmodernist resistance to both realism and modernism, seeking precisely where and how McGrath's theatre supports this opposition. Following a critical dissection of representative texts, the conclusion attempts to establish their validity as postmodernist art, wordlessly disclosing within the parameters of their own language structure what cannot be asserted effectively by the practice of politics itself.
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Rogers, Janine. "Gender and the literature culture of late medieval England." Thesis, McGill University, 1998. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=35053.
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This dissertation explores the impact of gender ideologies held by medieval readerships on the production of books and circulation of texts in late medieval England. The first chapter explores how the professional book trade of late medieval London circulated booklets of Chauceriana which constructed masculinity and femininity in strict adherence to the courtly love literary tradition. In the second chapter, I demonstrate that such a standardized representation of courtly gender could be adapted by a readership removed from the professional book trade, in this case the rural gentry producers of the Findern manuscript, who present a revised vision of femininity and courtliness in their anthology. This revised femininity includes several texts which privilege the female speaking voice. The third chapter goes on to investigate the use of the female voice in one particular genre, the love lyric, and asks if the female lyric speaker can be associated with manuscripts in which women participated as producers or readers. Finally, the fourth chapter turns to masculinity, examining how the commonplace book of an early 16th century grocer, Richard Hill, contains selections from didactic and recreational literature which reinforce the ideals of masculine conduct in the merchant community of late medieval London. The dissertation concludes that manuscript contexts must be taken into account when reading gender in medieval English literature.
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Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Florence Anne. "Class, community and individualism in English politics and society, 1969-2000." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2014. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.708279.
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McAleer, Joseph. "Popular literature and reading habits in Britain, 1914-1950." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1989. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:7cf39377-41a1-4a44-bb62-0786b297fc37.
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This thesis is an examination of the mass-market publishing industry in Britain after the First World War and of the 'literature' read by the lower-middle and working classes: novels and weekly magazines. We chronicle the development of the industry both generally and through the experiences of three publishers, examine the activity and motivations of the reading public and consider the treatment of contemporary issues and attitudes within popular fiction as a useful barometer for the historian. There are seven chapters. Chapter 1 considers the period before 1914 in order to provide the necessary background for an understanding of the focus of this study, 1914-1950. The origins of the popular publishing industry and Wilkie Collins' 'Unknown Public' are examined and continuities with post-1914 popular literature traced. In Chapter 2 a broad overview of our period is conducted: the development of the industry and of the market, the influence of war and the depression, and the effect on reading of the growth of other leisure activities. Chapters 3 and 5 look at the reading habits of adults and children/adolescents from the lower-middle and working classes. In both cases contemporaries and readers themselves seemed to think 'escapism' was paramount in the selection of 'light' fiction and there was therefore a significant continuity between child and adult reading. Finally, Chapters 4, 6 and 7 focus on the histories and influence of three publishers of popular fiction during this period. These include two of the most successful (Mills and Boon, D.C. Thomson) and in contrast, a prominent but declining firm (The Religious Tract Society). In each case the complex relationship between market forces and editorial policies is discussed. We conclude that a reciprocal relationship existed between publisher and reader, with the latter dictating much of what was published. Popular fiction, moreover, served to reinforce predominant stereotypes and ideological views of society rather than to impose specific doctrine.
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Hewitt, Lucy Elizabeth. "Civic agenda : associations, networks and urban space in Britain, c1890-1960." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/5721.
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Over the course of the nineteenth century, while many towns and cities grew at a remarkable rate, interest in architectural design, planning, and the quality of urban landscapes also increased. By the close of the century a number of associations had been established that were concerned with promoting the care of ancient buildings, the protection of open spaces, or the quality of future urban growth. During the twentieth century associational activity concerned with the quality of urban space has proliferated. Many, if not most, towns and cities in Britain have an organized body dedicated to campaigning and acting for the interests of local identity, development and heritage. Sometimes these are called Preservation Trusts (as in St Andrews or Cambridge), sometimes they are simply named after the city to which they belong (The London Society or The Warwick Society), most commonly they are known as Civic Societies. Regardless of name, they share key objectives: the promotion of high standards in planning and architecture; the preservation of historically or aesthetically significant buildings; the education of the public in the history, geography, and architecture of the local environment. In the early twentieth century these organizations provided a focus for discussions about the nature of urban space and approaches to shaping the development of towns and cities. They brought together a range of individuals, including planners, architects, reformers, academics, artists and politicians, who shared a concern for the landscape of Britain’s cities. Through their discussions and activities emerged an approach to urban development that emphasised socio-scientific methods and ideas in combination with an argument about the affective bonds that connect individuals to a place. The approach was often called civics and the agenda pressed forward by civic associations and their members forms the focus for this study. This work explores the continuities between philanthropic experiment in the later nineteenth century and the civic movement of the twentieth century by demonstrating the connections between earlier and later activities, and emphasising the continued involvement of a number of key individuals and families. It makes a contribution to understanding professional development in the fields of planning, architecture and urban studies. Key figures in the history of British planning, such as Patrick Abercrombie, Raymond Unwin and George Pepler, formed their early professional networks through civic groups, while architects including Charles Reilly and Aston Webb developed their collaborations through their involvement with the civic movement. Furthermore, individuals whose role in British urban sociology, most notably Patrick Geddes, has influenced the ways in which we study our urban areas first promoted their ideas and methods through the network of civic associations that developed over the course of early twentieth century. Through the analysis this thesis draws in theoretically informed questions. Firstly these relate to the role of voluntary associations and networks in structuring the development of professions, circulating their bodies of specialist knowledge and securing wider participation in urban policy. Secondly, the thesis considers the manner in which spaces come to hold the meaning and memories of particular groups, the significance and power of representations of place and the emerging tradition of spatial history that privileges the micro-processes through which places are created and sustained.
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Bromling, Laura Cappello, and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Arts and Science. "From the pens of the contrivers : perspectives on fiction in the nineteenth-century novel." Thesis, Lethbridge, Alta. : University of Lethbridge, Faculty of Arts and Science, 2003, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10133/154.
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This thesis investigates the way that moral and aesthetic concerns about the relationship between fiction and reality are manifested in the work of particular novelists writing at different periods in the nineteenth century, Chapter One examines an early-century subgenre of the novel that features deluded female readers who fail to differentiate between fantasy and reality, and who consequently attempt to live their lives according to foolish precepts learned from novels. The second chapter deals with the realist aesthetic of W. M. Thackeray; focusing on the techniques by which his fiction marks its own relationship both to less realistic fiction and to reality itself. The final chapter discusses Oscar Wilde's critical stance that art is meaningful and intellectually satisfying, while reality and realism are aesthetically worthless: it then goes on the explore how these ideas play out in his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray.iv, 120 leaves ; 28 cm.
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Whitten, Doreen Muriel. "Protection, prevention, reformation a history of the Philanthropic Society, 1788-1848." Thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London), 2001. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/137/.
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This study explores the origins and early evolution of the Philanthropic Society with the aim of making a contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of philanthropy. The Society was founded, in 1788, at a time of growing public concern over the failure of existing legal measures to stem a perceived rising tide of crime. Explicitly conceived as a crime prevention enterprise, the Society focused its attention on a constituency of poor children who either seemed destined for or who had already embarked on a criminal career. The Society's educational experiment in moulding them into law-abiding citizens was initially located in a group of family houses scattered around the village of Hackney. It then made a swift transition to a purpose built Institution in Southwark and remained there until a decision to establish a Reformatory Farm School, at Redhill, was taken in 1848. On one level, this study describes how the Society's development was nurtured by Philanthropists with a diversity of interests in the fields of commerce, jurisprudence, medicine, local poor-law and penal administration. It presents new information on the interplay of ideas and influences that helped shape the Society's institutional policy and practice over the period. At another level, this study takes us through a pre-modem policy landscape to the point at which a voluntary enterprise in protection, prevention and reformation attracted the support of the Government and became the subject of statutory action. By examining hitherto underused Philanthropic archival sources and previously overlooked Government documents, it traces a complex network of interaction between informal and formal agencies in the dissemination of reforming ideas and the shaping of social policy. In doing so, it describes how conventional views on the respective roles and relationships between charitable agencies and the State began to change during the early nineteenth century. A revised version of this thesis has been published as 'Nipping crime in the bud: how the philanthropic quest was put into law' (2010), Waterside Press, Hook, ISBN 1904380654
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Lawrence, Ranald Andrew Robert. "Cultural climates : the municipal art school and the reformulation of civic identity in Victorian Britain." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2015. https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.709252.
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Bethune, Carol. ""The pleasures of the mind" : themes in early feminist literature in England, 1660-1730." Thesis, McGill University, 1993. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=69608.
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This thesis examines the writing in poetry and prose of a small group of English feminist writers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The best known of these authors was Mary Astell (1666-1731). The influence on the feminists' ideas of the philosophies of Descartes and of the most prominent English thinkers of the period, the Cambridge Platonists, is described.The thesis focuses on three main themes in the seventeenth century feminists' writing. These were occupation, education and marriage. Emphasis is put on education as the most important of the feminists' concerns. They believed that the poor education women received in comparison with that received by men put women at a disadvantage in society in general and in personal relationships with men. They also believed that education was vital for personal happiness and spiritual fulfillment. In their writing about occupation, the feminists stated that the things that middle and upper class women were expected to do were unfulfilling. They wanted the right to occupy themselves with reading and writing without facing ridicule. On the subject of marriage the feminists' main concern also centred around education. They believed that women were at a disadvantage in the marriage relationship because they were not as well educated as their husbands. They thought that more equitable marriages were desirable, and that they would exist if women were better educated.
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Birkeland, Mairianna. "Politics and society of Glasgow 1680-1740." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1999. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1487/.
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Edwards, Arthur John. "Religion and society in Monmouthshire, 1840-1880, with particular reference to Thomas Thomas, the Pontypool Baptists and the campaign for disestablishment." Thesis, Cardiff University, 2016. http://orca.cf.ac.uk/95955/.
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This thesis examines the effects of the campaign for disestablishment upon the religious and social life of Monmouthshire in the period 1840-1880. From a position of strength in 1840, nonconformists intensified their efforts to redress their religious and social grievances and to support the programme of the Liberation Society founded in 1844. The main focus of this study is the increasing influence of the Baptists, the strongest Nonconformest denomination in Monmouthshire during this period. The importance of the Baptist College and those involved in its leadership under its principal Dr Thomas Thomas, is analysed through the Dissenters’ campaigns against compulsory Church rate and state-funded education. Thomas’s leadership was paramount, not only in the Baptist College but also through crane street chapel of which he was pastor in a joint appointment for thirty –seven years. His stature was publicly recognised when he was appointed President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland in 1872. He had become leader of the Baptist churches in Monmouthshire by1857 when he was chiefly responsible for setting up the Monmouthshire English Baptist Association at Pontypool. Thomas became noteworthy as a leader not only of Monmouthshire Baptists but also in the religious and social life of the county. His relationships with other religious leaders and his influence upon them are examined. This study seeks to fil a historiographical gap in our understanding of the impact of the campaign for Disestablishment in its early phases upon the religious life of Monmouthshire. It also provides a picture of the two institutions that were essential to the development of the Dissenters’ campaign for religious equality, Pontypool Baptist College and Crane Street Chapel. From the available resources, an analysis is provided.
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Hone, Joseph. "The end of the line : literature and party politics at the accession of Queen Anne." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d847a561-130a-42f0-b78f-2463e9e65535.
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This thesis provides the first full-length account of the political and cultural significance of the accession of Queen Anne. It offers a critical reassessment of the politics of the royal image across a spectrum of texts, events, and artefacts - from panegyrics, newspapers, sermons, royal progresses, and processions to medals, coins, and playing cards. Recent scholarship has emphasized the importance of party politics to the literature and culture of the early eighteenth century. This thesis nuances that assumption by arguing: (1) that the principal focus of partisan texts was competing representations of monarchy; and (2) that the explosion of partisanship at the start of the eighteenth century was triggered by unrest about the royal succession. Anne was the last protestant Stuart. She had no surviving children. This thesis explores how authors such as Daniel Defoe, Joseph Addison, Alexander Pope, and a great many lesser known and anonymous writers and propagandists conceptualized the end of the Stuart dynasty. Anne's accession forced writers to conjecture on the future succession. There were two rival claimants to the throne after Anne's death: the protestant Electress Sophia of Hanover and Anne's Catholic half-brother, James Francis Edward. Sophia's claim was statutory, James's hereditary. Factions emerged in support of both claimants. Almost all topical writing took a stance on the issue. Many sided with the government, supporting Hanover. Yet some writers favoured the illegal but hereditary claim of James Francis Edward; they had to express support in covert ways. This succession crisis triggered not only printed polemic, but also swathes of clandestine manuscript literature circulating in the Jacobite underground. The government took a hard line on Jacobite writers and printers; this thesis documents both their persecution and the techniques they used to evade the law. The thesis concludes by suggesting that this oppositional literary culture only disintegrated after the defeat of the Jacobite rebellion, and the consequent settlement of the Hanoverian succession, in late 1716. After this point, royal succession ceased to be a major source of political discontent.
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Kanemura, Rei. "The idea of sovereignty in English historical writing 1599-1627." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610131.
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Moses, Julia Margaret. "Industrial accident compensation policies, state and society in Britain, Germany and Italy, 1870-1925." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2010. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609115.
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Thompkins, Mary. "The Philanthropic Society in Britain with particular reference to the Reformatory Farm School, Redhill, 1849-1900." University of Western Australia. School of Humanities, 2007. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2007.0221.
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This study of the Philanthropic Society (later the Royal Philanthropic Society) sets out to explain how it survived during many shifts in thinking about the treatment of juvenile offenders in nineteenth-century Britain. The study also pays particular attention to relationships between the Society and the state, showing how the Society was gradually drawn into dependence on the state. The thesis begins with an overview of the Society's work prior to its decision to move from London to Redhill in 1849. Next it proceeds to a close study of the Society's work until the end of the century. The decision to concentrate on the Redhill Farm School reflects not only changing views about the reformation of young offenders, but also the financial imperatives which forced the Society along paths shaped by the state. Close attention is paid to the way Parliamentary inquiries and commissions, which in the mid-Victorian period tended to laud the Society as a model, later criticized it for lagging behind advanced thinking. Interwoven within this narratives are descriptions of the specific measures the Society took for training and caring for boys at Redhill. It explores the nature of unpaid labour, training and discipline enforced at the farm school. It also examines the variety of subjects taught during the years a boy would spend working within a strict discipline, and the methods used to enforce such discipline. Another subject worthy of extended consideration is the Society's enthusiasm for emigration to British colonies following a boy's term of incarceration. The thesis closes with an examination of how and why the Society lost its reputation as a leader in the treatment of young offenders in the late-Victorian period, as government imposed new rules and regulations. The overall argument is that the Society born as the result of moral panics about children at risk became a long-term survivor as the result of partnerships with the state.
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Windon, Geoffrey. "No familiar spirit: aesthetic experience and radical enquiry in the literature of early romanticism." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 1992. https://hdl.handle.net/2123/26734.
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Film-makers - cinematographers and directors - have an expression for something which in general they should not do; not, that is, it they wish to work within the dominant conventions of cinematic realism. I'Crossing the Iine'l induces a disorienting, "unnatural" reversal of perspective, which can best be explained in terms of a basic “two-shot": if an imaginary line were to be drawn between two people who if only by virtue of being in the same shot are in some sort of relation with each other, then ”crossing the line“ would refer to a sequence which brought into close proximity views taken from both sides of that line. That this can be a literary no less than a cinematic phenomenon is indicated by Coleridge's criticisms of Spenser's allegory, discussed in Part III below, in which it is alleged that "that which is and may be known, but cannot appear from the given point of view, is confounded with the visible".1 This would be unsettling provided that it were not accompanied by some naturalising device such as attributing one of these perspectives to a third character - an eavesdropper, for example. Any such unmodified effect threatens the fiction of a unified point of view belonging to some privileged observer, a disembodied eavesdropper such as God perhaps or, to stick with the theme of cognitive privilege, a philosophical systematiser, a "Spy Nozy" who strives not to get caught out as in Coleridge's anecdote in the tenth chapter of the Biographia Literaria. In that instance the joke depends upon the presumed nai'veté of the person who, for whatever reason having no legitimate part in a rather erudite discussion, crosses the line by identifying himself with its subject.
Like all good stories Coleridge's anecdote has many uses. What if it is not the comic "light relief" but the poetic or philosophic self which crosses the line? A case in point would be Coleridge's friend Wordsworth, the other person who was being spied upon, in his description of crossing the Alps in the sixth book of The Prelude. In Coleridge's story the result is not only exoneration from the suspicion of Jacobinism but a positive enhancement of authority as the anecdote is employed in attributing to himself a particular cultural and political competence and trustworthiness. In Wordsworth's dialectic of self-consciousness the identification of the naive with the perspicuous person is no joke because here the line is crossed and then re-crossed as ignorance is transformed into knowledge. In this reverse motion or retrospection error itself has crossed the line, becoming unavoidable, in a manner of speaking “transcendental“.
In the following discussion the sublime is treated as one moment of a general aesthetic in which it serves as an enabling figure for authoritative transmissions, transactions, or translations which may be political, pedagogical or sexual but are in any case textual. Such a general aesthetic, treated here mainly in the writings of Burke and of Coleridge up to the time of the publication of the Biographia, is centred on conjunctions of the contingency, unpredictability and, at times, the vulnerability of the finite, historically particular self with the inclusive dynamics and sweeping vistas of cultural and historical transformation.
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Murphy, Amy Tooth. "Reading the lives between the lines : lesbian literature and oral history in post-war Britain." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2013. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4243/.
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In existing scholarship of twentieth-century British lesbian history the post-war period has been largely overlooked. Whereas the interwar period and the 1970s and 1980s have garnered much critical interest as crucial loci of lesbian identity formation, the post-war period has been obscured between the two. What work does exist has focused almost exclusively on the creation of lesbian public spaces and lesbian communities. This has been to the exclusion of research into lesbian home and private life, and has also served to obscure experiences of closeted or isolated women. The critical focus on the interwar period in particular has also been facilitated and corroborated by lesbian literary studies, which has used the modernist movement as the backbone for the creation of a lesbian literary canon. This has been to the obscuration of lesbian literature of the post-war period. Furthermore, this academic bias has overlooked the significance of the cultural value of such literature by failing to acknowledge or investigate what lesbians in post-war Britain were actually reading. This thesis positions itself at the intersection of these research gaps. Employing an interdisciplinary approach this project argues for the greater inclusion of post-war literature and post-war lesbian lives in scholarly investigation. Through close textual analysis of a range of post-war lesbian literature and oral history interviews conducted by the author, this thesis presents insights into the minutiae of lesbian life and into the roots of lesbian identity formation within this period. To situate itself within existing historiography this thesis takes as its starting point the lesbian magazine, Arena Three (1964-71), undertaking an analysis of the magazine’s book review column in order to build a picture of the post-war lesbian reader. Following on from this, close textual analyses of lesbian pulp fiction and original oral history transcripts are used to assess representations of domesticity. Specifically the concepts of hetero-domesticity and homo-domesticity are developed and employed to investigate lesbian identities as they existed within both heterosexual and same-sex relationships. Graham Dawson’s oral history theory of ‘composure’ is used to examine how lesbian narrators are successful or unsuccessful in incorporating experiences of hetero-domesticity into wider lesbian narratives. This framework is similarly employed to investigate the ways in which homo-domestic experiences can assist lesbian narrators to achieve composure. Lastly oral history reminiscences of reading in the post-war period are analysed in order to assess the role that literature played, both in lesbian identity formation and in facilitating narrators’ journeys into wider lesbian social worlds.
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Gill, Josephine Ceri. "Race, genetics and British fiction since the Human Genome Project." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.610822.
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Abraham, Adam. "Spurious Victorians : imitation and the nineteenth-century novel." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2016. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cbf24b85-cc63-42be-ba84-2f065942c4d8.
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In 'A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism', Jerome J. McGann writes, '[A]n author's work possesses autonomy only when it remains an unheard melody'. For the published and successful writer in the nineteenth century, such autonomy was often unattainable. Publications such as The Pickwick Papers inspired an array of opportunistic successors, including stage plays, unauthorized sequels, jest books, song books, and shilling and penny imitations. Despite the proliferation, this strain of writing is rarely studied. This thesis recovers ephemeral, scurrilous texts, often anonymous or pseudonymous, and reads them in the context of their canonical sources. Retrieving bibliographical environments, it demonstrates how plagiaristic, parodic, and willfully unoriginal works impacted on the careers of three novelists: Charles Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton, and George Eliot. The thesis argues that formal distinctions among modes of Victorian writing - criticism, parody, and plagiarism - often blur. Further, it argues that our understanding of a particular novelist's work must be broadened to include sequels, spinoffs, and imitations: to know a particular author means to know the spurious and oftentimes bad (morally or aesthetically) works that the author inspired. The Spurious Victorians of the title form something of countercanon to the 'major' writers of the period. Thomas Peckett Prest, Rosina Bulwer Lytton, and Joseph Liggins, among many others, informed and influenced the literary history that has in turn denied them admission. William Makepeace Thackeray wrote, 'If only men of genius were to write, Lord help us! how many books would there be?' Of course, Victorian print culture found room for the genius and the subgenius, Boz as well as Bos. 'Spurious Victorians' recovers works that have been lost from view in order to better understand the process by which an individual authorial voice emerged amid an echo chamber of competing, imitative voices.
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Woodford, Benjamin. "Reactions to the growth of monarchical power in the Cromwellian Protectorate." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.609343.
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Maciver, Ruairidh Iain. "The Gaelic poet and the British military experience, 1756-1856." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30582/.
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This thesis examines Gaelic poetry and the military between 1756 and 1856. While previous studies have collated and analysed the poetry of two of the other major impacts on Gaelic society at this time, clearance and emigration, there has so far been no concerted attempt to examine and place in context the corpus of Gaelic military material of the period – despite this verse being widespread in the poetic record. This poetry has been largely neglected by scholars of Scottish history, and, though selected pieces have been examined by scholars of Celtic Studies, it has not received the fullness of attention that such a major concern in the poetic record deserves. This thesis therefore directly addresses this gap in previous scholarship. The study first considers the historical and literary context for this corpus of poetry, in order to establish the background to Gaelic military verse in the post-Culloden period. A chronological approach is taken to consider this poetry over the course of five chapters. The first period explored is that between the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War and the French Revolutionary War (1756-93). Two chapters cover the period of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815), focussing respectively on verse by soldiers and non-combatants. The next chapter has as its focus the period between the British Victory at Waterloo and the end of the Crimean War (1815-56). The last chapter takes a different chronological approach to those which preceded it, examining women’s poetry and the military across the one-hundred year time period. Each of these chapters explore the background to, contemporary context for, and content of this corpus of Gaelic military verse from 1756 to 1856. A full database of the corpus of 178 poems is also included. There is a focus throughout the thesis on the manner in which poets drew from and utilised their poetic tradition to contextualise the British military and its influence. Another major strand of the research is its examination of loyalty as expressed or revealed in the poetic record. The thesis contends that this corpus of poetry deserves a central place in the military historiography of the Highlands and Gaelic literary criticism.
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Dawkins, Charlie. "Modernism in mainstream magazines, 1920-37." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:71ef5fb2-9a5a-4277-9b0d-edf307acd1e7.
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This thesis studies five mainstream British weekly magazines: 'Time and Tide', the 'Nation and Athenaeum', the 'Spectator', the 'Listener', and the 'New Statesman'. It explores how these magazines reviewed, discussed and analysed modernist literature over an eighteen-year span, 1920-37. Over this period, and in these magazines, the concept of modernism developed. Drawing on work by philosopher Ian Hacking, this research traces how the idea of modernism emerged into the public realm. It focuses largely on the book reviews printed in these magazines, texts that played an important and underappreciated role in negotiations between modernist texts and the audience of these magazines. Chapter 1, on 'Time and Tide', covers a period from the magazine's inception in 1920 to 1926, and draws particularly on Catherine Clay's work on this magazine. It discusses the genre of 'weekly review' that this new magazine attempted to join, and the cultural place of modernism in the early 1920s. Chapter 2, on the 'Nation and Athenaeum', covers Leonard Woolf's literary editorship (1923-30), under the ownership of J. M. Keynes, and makes use of Keynes's archive at King's College, Cambridge, and Woolf's at the University of Sussex. Chapter 3, on the 'Spectator', covers Evelyn Wrench's editorship (1925-32), and explores the relationship between this magazine, ideologies of conservatism, and modernism. Chapter 4, on the 'Listener', focuses on the magazine's publication of new poetry, including an extraordinary 1933 supplement that printed W. H. Auden's 'The Witnesses'. This work revolves around Janet Adam Smith, literary editor in these years, and draws on Smith's archive at the National Library of Scotland as well as the BBC archives at Caversham. Chapter 5, on the 'New Statesman' in the 1930s under new editor Kingsley Martin, explores a period when modernism was more widely recognized, and pays particular attention to a short text by James Joyce printed in 1932, 'From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singer'.
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Williams, Vivien Estelle. "The cultural history of the bagpipe in Britain, 1680-1840." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2013. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/5085/.
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Bagpipes and pipers, as cultural identifiers, are embedded within their national culture, charged with symbolisms. British authors have often viewed bagpipes as cultural icons, endowing them with connotations from devilish to virtuous, from rural to military. By analysing literary and artistic references one can perceive how the attitude towards the bagpipe changes with the evolution of Britain’s internal dynamics. Jacobitism contributed in casting a particular light on the bagpipe: it was the ‘voice of the rebellion’. In Scotland this constituted a reason for national pride, while in England the ‘common denominator’ of the Scot-enemy charged the bagpipe with the worst connotations. After Jacobitism stopped being seen as a threat, authors and artists came to view the bagpipe in a different light: the once negative icon was now imbued with ancestral values. The Scot – and the bagpipe by synecdoche – was romanticised: as James Boswell wrote, “The very Highland names, or the sound of a bagpipe, will stir my blood, and fill me with [...] a crowd of sensations with which sober rationality has nothing to do” (1785). The words of many Romantic authors contributed in characterising the instrument, endowing it with implications the influence of which is still relevant today.
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Ellison, Robert H. (Robert Howard). "Orality-Literacy Theory and the Victorian Sermon." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1995. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc279297/.
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In this study, I expand the scope of the scholarship that Walter Ong and others have done in orality-literacy relations to examine the often uneasy juxtaposition of the oral and written traditions in the literature of the Victorian pulpit. I begin by examining the intersections of the oral and written traditions found in both the theory and the practice of Victorian preaching. I discuss the prominent place of the sermon within both the print and oral cultures of Victorian Britain; argue that the sermon's status as both oration and essay places it in the genre of "oral literature"; and analyze the debate over the extent to which writing should be employed in the preparation and delivery of sermons.
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Trowles, Tony Albert. "The musical ode in Britain, c.1670-1800." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:2c30162d-7b1d-45ba-9e3c-301129ecb38c.
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The musical ode, which developed during the 1660s and 1670s as a means of celebrating occasions of particular significance (often by setting a specially written text), remained popular throughout the eighteenth century, and can be regarded as the earliest form of large-scale secular choral music to have developed in England. This dissertation discusses the nature of the genre (including its relationship with the poetical ode), and surveys the contexts in which odes were composed and performed. It is supplemented by a catalogue which lists some 270 examples of the genre. Among the earliest odes were those written for performance at the court in London. These have already been the subject of musicological study, but although they were the biggest stylistic influence on the other odes written during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, they were not quite the earliest examples of the species. At the University of Oxford, the practice of performing specially composed odes to enhance academic ceremonial dates from at least 1669, and the custom continued throughout the following century. The odes on St Cecilia's Day also originate in the late seventeenth century, but although the works performed in London between 1683 and 1701 have received some scholarly attention, odes on the same theme written later in the century, along with works performed at a number of provincial centres, have not hitherto been discussed in the context of the wider ode genre. Also neglected have been the birthday odes performed at the Vice-regal court in Dublin during the eighteenth century. These complement the London court odes, but have not previously been listed or discussed in detail. Other odes were written for charitable causes, and to commemorate a miscellaneous array of occasions, including military victories and the inauguration of new buildings. In addition, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, some composers responded to developments in the poetical ode by setting libretti which had no 'occasional' inspiration, but which were notable literary achievements in their own right.
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Allsopp, Niall. "Turncoat poets of the English Revolution." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:72c956c3-ec8b-4b07-ad91-a05b0e72fd39.
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Edmund Waller, William Davenant, Andrew Marvell, and Abraham Cowley were royalist poets who changed sides following the English Revolution, attracted to Cromwellian military power, and the reforming aims of the Independents. This thesis contributes to existing scholarship by showing that the poets engaged strongly with theories of allegiance, self-consciously returning to first principles - the natures of sovereignty and obligation - to develop a concept of allegiance that was contingent and transferrable. Their crucial influence was Hobbes. Hobbes collapsed partisan perspectives into a general theory of sovereignty constituted by a de facto protective and coercive power; this was grounded on a psychological analysis of humans' restless appetite for power. The poets' approach to Hobbes was crucially mediated by Machiavelli, who provided a less abstract account of the relationship between individual agency and collective institutions, and whose concept of virtù offered a model for how restless ambition could be harnessed to political order. An introductory chapter sketches out the intellectual background to this body of theory and reflects on the methods used to show how the poets dramatized it in their works. Chapter two considers the disintegration of Waller's courtly poetry under the pressure of civil war, and his resulting turn to rationalist theory. Chapters three and four focus on the immediate aftermath of the revolution, considering the synthesis of Hobbes' and Machiavelli's theories of military power ventured by Davenant, and the influence of Davenant's ideas on Marvell's Machiavellianism. Chapter five focuses on Cowley and his more religiously-inflected account of Hobbesian psychology and political obligations. Chapter six asks how the poets responded to the Restoration of Charles II, and in particular charts their influence on the younger poet John Dryden. With their emphasis on materialist psychology, the turncoat poets abandoned allegory in favour of a mode of dramatization which observed the contingent circumstances in which allegiances could be generated, dissolved, and transferred. They possessed a political conservatism, but a conceptual radicalism which presented a serious challenge to Anglican and constitutionalist discourses of Stuart monarchy.
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Clare, Tom. "Monuments, society and the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, with particular reference to Cumbria and the northern Irish Sea region." Thesis, Liverpool John Moores University, 2011. http://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/6099/.
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This thesis argues that henges, stone circles and ring cairns form a 'spectrum' of monuments with origins in the earlier Neolithic. In that context it is suggested that some of the structures located beneath long cairns were originally free standing foci. How the monuments might reflect contemporary society is discussed and it is shown that some standing stones might have been the focus for gatherings of people as large as those suggested for henges and stone circles. Evidence is presented showing that there appears to have been a continuity of traditions and world view from the Early Neolithic into the Late Neolithic and beyond. Similarly the distribution of later monuments appears to relate to Early Neolithic core areas which continued to be important and linked to 'status'. The relationship of the monuments to particular aspects of the environment is explored and it is shown that wetland environments, including floodplains, are a major feature in the location of the early foci. It is concluded that these would have been important resource areas in the Mesolithic as well as Early Neolithic with implications for our understanding of the Mesolithic -Neolithic transition.
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Mills, Rebecca May. "'Thanks for that elegant defense' : polemical prose and poetry by women in the early eighteenth century." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2000. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d98a502d-97b4-4dd2-b5e6-1f8c432b5cb7.
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The end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth saw many women writers from numerous social ranks, political affiliations and religious denominations reading, writing, circulating and publishing polemical prose and poetry in defence of their sex. During this surge of protofeminist activity, many of these women decried 'Customs Tyranny' by advocating a more egalitarian status for themselves, especially in regard to marriage, education and religion. This thesis, then, is a socio-historic study of the lives and writings of several polemical women writers, namely, Mary Astell (1666-1731), Mary, Lady Chudleigh (1656-1710) and Elizabeth Thomas (1675-1731). It also considers how and why protofeminism evolved in the late seventeenth century and reached a climax between 1694, when Astell published A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, and 1710, when Chudleigh published Essays upon Several Subjects. Until now, scholars of early women writers have labelled Astell the foremost English feminist of her day. Consequently, many of her contemporary protofeminist writers have been neglected. By contextualizing their lives and texts within the political and literary activity at the turn of the eighteenth century, this thesis ultimately argues that women polemicists, such as Chudleigh and Thomas, who followed Astell into print, were not merely echoes and disciples. Rather, they furthered the evolution and secularization of a genre that anticipates feminism proper, which began to develop in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In order to uncover and rediscover the personal and professional details of these women's lives their class, education, friendships and patronage relationships this thesis relied heavily upon material evidence such as letters, parish records, legal records, prison records and wills. As a result, it combines feminist, materialist inclinations with traditional methodology, such as historical and archival research.
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Smith, Helen. "The Fire and the Ash." Thesis, Edith Cowan University, Research Online, Perth, Western Australia, 2002. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1644.
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This thesis comprises two parts. Part One is a novel (The Fire and the Ash), set in the latter half of the nineteenth century. lt chronicles, for the most part, the marriage of a young Irish couple. Part Two is an essay entitled Victorian Women and the Law. This area of research was selected because the life span of the woman in my novel coincides almost precisely with the reign of Queen Victoria. The life of women in Victorian Britain is commonly known to have been difficult. The social dictates of the time required that they be groomed from early childhood for a life of servitude to father and, hopefully, later a husband. There was little room, apart for a small minority of exceptional women, for self-expression, other than through the domestic arts within the home.
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Collis, Karen. "Shaftesbury and learned culture." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.669898.
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Higgins, Benjamin David Robert. "We have a constant will to publish : the publishers of Shakespeare's First Folio." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ab876515-5984-46a5-8bf0-8346165fb583.
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This thesis is a cultural history of the publishing businesses that financed Shakespeare's First Folio. The thesis argues that by 1623 each of the four businesses that formed the Folio syndicate had developed an influential reputation in the book trade, and that these reputations were crucial to the cultural positioning of the Folio on publication. Taking its lead from a dynamic new field of study that has been called 'cultural bibliography', the thesis investigates the histories and publishing strategies of the business owned by the stationers William and Isaac Jaggard, who are usually thought of as the leading members of the Folio project, as well as those owned by William Aspley, John Smethwick, and Edward Blount. Through detailed analysis of the publishing strategies of each stationer, the thesis puts forward new theories about how these men influenced the reception of the Folio by transferring onto it their brands, and the expectations of their readerships. The business of each Folio stationer was like a stage with an audience assembled around it, waiting for the next production to emerge. This thesis identifies the publishing activities that attracted the audiences of the Jaggards, Blount, Smethwick, and Aspley, and ultimately suggests the Folio was granted significant legitimacy through the collaboration of these men. After an introductory chapter that locates the thesis in its scholarly field, the first chapter tells the history of syndicated book publishing in England, and reviews what we know of the pre-production process of the First Folio, taking a particular interest in how the publishing syndicate formed. The following chapters then form a series of case studies of the four publishing businesses, reviewing the apprenticeships and careers of each stationer before suggesting how those careers created a context of meaning for the Folio. These case studies focus on the authoritative reference publishing of the Jaggards, the religious publishing of William Aspley, the geographical location of John Smethwick's publishing business beside the Inns of Court, and the cultural achievements of Edward Blount. In conclusion the thesis explores the idea that it was the unique partnership of these businesses that consecrated the Folio as an emblem of literary taste.
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Iles, Katharine. "Constructing the eighteenth-century woman : the adventurous history of Sabrina Sidney." Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2012. http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7211/.
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The story of Thomas Day’s attempt to educate a young girl according to the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, with the aim of marrying her, has often been referred to as a footnote in Enlightenment history. However, the girl chosen by Day, Sabrina Sidney, has never been placed at the centre of any historical enquiry, nor has the experiment been explored in any depth. This study places Sabrina at its centre to investigate its impact on her and to examine the intellectual and societal debates that informed Thomas Day’s decision to educate a wife. This thesis argues that Sabrina Sidney was in a constant state of construction, which changed depending on a myriad of factors and that constructions of her were fluid and flexible. These constructions were both conscious and unconscious and crucially, they were created as much by Sabrina as by those around her. This research concludes that placing minor historical figures to the centre of historical enquiry fundamentally changes the histories of which they are a part and that it is possible to use a variety of sources to construct a rich and detailed biographical study that offers a new perspective on the English Enlightenment.
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Thouroude, Véronique Joséphine Gabrielle. "Sickness, disability, and miracle cures : hagiography in England, c.700-c.1200." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2015. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b9c42b2d-9d25-454c-bed9-169ef79e223b.
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This thesis considers how religious literature represented sickness and disability in Anglo- Saxon and post-Conquest England. Based on Gospel accounts of Jesus's healings, narratives of miracle-cures were highly valued within medieval Christian culture. By analysing a selection of miracle-cure narratives from the main period of miracle writing in England, from the age of Bede to the late twelfth century, this project considers the social significance of such stories. All miracle-cures followed the pattern of a spiritual triumph over the material world, but this thesis focuses on how hagiographers represented human experiences of sickness and disabilities. The first two chapters of this thesis address the conceptual structure of the project. The first explains the two areas of scholarly theory that underpin this thesis. These are the use of narrative sources for historical study; and sociological conceptualisations of bodily difference. The second chapter orientates the case-studies selected for this project in their context. Miracle-cures were recounted in relation to other aspects of the culture of medieval England, most importantly the theology of sainthood and of sin. The remaining three chapters of the thesis provide detailed thematic analysis of selected miracle-cure narratives. The third chapter asks how the spiritual experience of bodily difference was understood. The next chapter considers the physical understandings of a body that was affected by either sickness or disability, and the links between miracle-cure narratives and contemporary medical theory. The fifth and final chapter addresses the representation of social aspects of sickness and disability in these texts, in particular the moralising rhetoric of such texts in favour of community support. This thesis concludes with a discussion of how modern Disability Studies and scholarship on medieval culture benefit from interaction with one another.
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Logan, Sandra Ann. "Willing subjects : historical events and rhetorical occasions in early modern England /." Diss., Connect to a 24 p. preview or request complete full text in PDF format. Access restricted to UC campuses, 2000. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/ucsd/fullcit?p9981962.
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Brown, Ian. "History as theatrical metaphor : history, myth and national identities in modern Scottish drama." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30714/.
Full textAbstract:
The completion of History as Theatrical Metaphor, now submitted for consideration for the award of the degree of Doctor of Letters, represents an integration and culmination of a number of related strands arising from both my practice as a playwright over the last five decades and my relevant academic research. Susanne Kries has summarised a key approach underlying my writing of history plays as ‘deconstructing the ideological intent behind the very endeavour of writing history and of revealing the ways by which mythologies are formed’. Much of my related academic research shares this interest. A recurring theme of both playwriting and scholarly writing, central to the work submitted, is the significance of the interaction of drama, language – especially Scots and English – and history. The initial phase in exploring such themes was in my developing professional playwriting practice. In 1967, I wrote the first draft of Mary, eventually produced by the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company in 1977. In this first version I sought to address the theme of the life of Mary, Queen of Scots, but in a revisionary way. The play’s first acts, before Mary arrives on stage, involved an unlikely affair between Mary of Guise, Queen Regent in Mary’s absence in France, and her Secretary of State, Maitland of Lethington, conceived as a cross between a Chief Minister and a Mafia consigliere, a relationship in which Mary of Guise achieved some form of Lawrentian ‘authentic’ sexual release and self-fulfilment through her relationship with a powerful Scots leader. This motif was developed when Mary arrived and proceeded to fall under the magnetic spell of the even more Lawrentian Bothwell, a transformation of her sexuality and identity marked by the fact that about half way through her scenes she stopped speaking in French-inflected English and started to speak in Scots. The play’s tendentiousness was further marked by its being written in Scots-language free verse. The decision to write in Scots was consciously, if superficially, ideological. It sought to reflect the vibrant language amongst which I grew up on a council scheme, although in my home the dominant language was Standard Scottish English. I also sought to take a revisionary view of Scottish history, seeking to avoid what I saw as the sentimentalisation of that history in plays by an older generation like that of Robert McLellan. What I was concerned to do was later outlined explicitly by Tom McGrath in a 1984 interview, talking of his own practice: I suppose at that time we were coming up with a different ideology. We were coming up with a different approach after all that work, work that had been done [by writers like MacDiarmid and McLellan] in Scots language. We were coming up with this street level sound of existentialist man in the street, "black man in the ghetto" type of writing. It just upset the applecart. (Later I would develop a contextual interpretation of the shift McGrath refers to, and which I sought to be part of, in arguing that the use of Scots on stage was key to supporting and enhancing the cultural prestige of Scots in the 2011 chapter, ‘Drama as a Means for Uphaudin Leid Communities’. This – in a continuing conscious intention to assert the potential and status of Scots – while academic in content, was written entirely in Scots.) In short, from the beginning of my professional playwriting, a key strand was experiment in and exploration of the relationship of drama, Scots language, community identity and history, particularly the interrogation of accepted versions of ‘history’. The first draft of Mary came by the early 1970s to seem to me to be unsatisfactory in its exploration of the interaction of drama, language and history. By then, it appeared in its sensationalist version of Scottish history to have fallen into a parallel trap to the earlier one of a sentimental and romanticised view of that history. It certainly had moved away from conventional treatments of Scotland’s past, but was rather tending to a simplistic dramatic interpretation pour épater les bourgeois. Indeed, its attempts at sexual directness made it unacceptable at that time, 1968-69, to the management of the Royal Lyceum. While its Literary Manager Alan Brown spoke positively of the play, he still felt the company could not present it. Within very few years my own view came to be that, while it might substitute a certain late-adolescent Scots-language raunchiness for earlier playwrights’ Scots-language sentimentalities, it was itself somewhat naïve and sentimental. Further, the use of Scots in a free verse form, rather than adding anything to the dramatic potential of Scots language, seemed to remove it from the everyday discourse which inspired me to use it in the first place. This change of critical perspective and creative intention arose from two related developments in my dramaturgy. One was the impact of a variety of late 1960s theatrical experiments which impressed me in dealing with historical and political material in a post-Shavian and post-Brechtian way. These included the 1964 film version of Peter Brook's production of Peter Weiss's Marat/Sade, which I saw in 1968, John Spurling's MacRune's Guevara (1969) and Peter Nichols's The National Health (1969) in the programme of the National Theatre in London, New York’s Negro Ensemble Company's version of Peter Weiss's The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey, which is concerned with Portuguese colonial exploitation, presented in the 1969 London World Theatre Season, and John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy's version of Horatio Nelson’s life and reputation, The Hero Rises Up, presented by Nottingham Playhouse at the 1969 Edinburgh Festival. I was further impressed by the theatrical techniques of the New York-based LaMama troupe, by its version of Paul Foster's Tom Paine (1967) and the popularised and commercialised exploitation of those techniques in Hair (1967). I had also read Foster's Heimskringla! Or The Stoned Angels (1970), written for LaMama and derived from Norse sagas. All employed varying metatheatrical techniques to deconstruct received versions of history and politics which extended my own understanding of what was creatively possible. The second development was that, as those plays affected my understanding of theatrical possibilities in exploring historically based themes, I was researching and beginning to draft my next play on a historical theme. This explored the life, business ethics and politics of Andrew Carnegie. On top of all of this, at this time, having showed Max Stafford-Clark, Artistic Director of the Traverse Theatre, a first draft of Carnegie, begun during the autumn of 1969, I was invited by him to work, in my first professional theatre role, as a writing assistant on the first Traverse Workshop Theatre Company production, Mother Earth (1970), directed by Stafford-Clark when he ceased to be director of the Traverse itself. With his new company, he was developing the deconstructionist and improvisational rehearsal techniques that would later be more widely thought of as the creative method of his Joint Stock Theatre Company, into which the Traverse Workshop Company morphed in 1974. The dramaturgical lessons learned from the examples cited above and by working with such a creative and methodologically innovative director as Stafford-Clark were allied to my own quizzical view of Carnegie’s reputation. This was partly derived from the fact that my great-grandfather was a first cousin of Carnegie’s. There were family stories which, if they did not fully undermine his philanthropic reputation, suggested there were other sides to his career.
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Hargreaves, John A. "Religion and society in the parish of Halifax, c. 1740-1914." Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 1991. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/4606/.
Full textAbstract:
Most recent studies of religion and society have focussed on the period from c. 1880 to 1914, basing their investigations upon late-Victorian newspaper censuses of churchgoing. This thesis aims to study the development of religion in its economic and social context in a large northern industrial parish over a longer period of time from c. 1740 to 1914. In religious terms this period extends from the mid-eighteenth century Evangelical Revival to the decline of organised religion in the early twentieth century. In economic and social terms the period is characterised by the transformation of the parish from a semi-rural, proto-industrial society dominated by a relatively small but expanding market town, into a predominantly urban advanced industrial society dominated by a medium-sized textile manufacturing town and several smaller urban centres of textile production; supporting a wide diversity of associated industries and trades, but still containing within its boundaries sharply contrasting urban and semi-rural environments. The thesis aims to assess how religious expression within the parish of Halifax was affected by the changing economic and social environment, in particular the urban-industrial experience, and how religion helped shape the new urbanindustrial society during the period from the middle of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of the First World War. It argues that whilst the pessimistic view of a moribund Georgian Church of England can no longer be sustained by the Halifax evidence, the Established Church nevertheless lacked the logistical resources to respond effectively to the new urbanindustrial society as it emerged within the parish in the lateeighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, providing an opportunity for the growth of Evangelical Nonconformity, especially Methodism. It maintains that Evangelical Nonconformity and an Anglican Church renewed by Evangelical incumbencies during the period 1790-1827 and reformed as a consequence of national legislation in the 1840s played a vital role within the expanding urban-industrial society, surviving the experience of industrialisation and urbanisation and displaying a remarkable vibrancy, despite underlying downward trends in churchgoing in the late-Victorian era. It suggests that the causes of the decline of organised religion during this period were complex, but related more to the onset of industrial-urban stagnation and decline than to the experience of industrial-urban expansion.
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Cobley, Jennifer Francis. "The construction and use of gender in the pamphlet literature of the English Civil War, 1642-1646." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2010. https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/169833/.
Full textAbstract:
This thesis examines how the authors of ephemeral print used the gender framework for political ends during the first Civil War. In particular it considers how both the royalist and parliamentarian pamphleteers constructed and promoted a hegemonic, patriarchal definition of manhood amongst their male supporters in order to encourage them to fight for either king or parliament. It also demonstrates how the pamphleteers of each party drew upon deep-seated cultural allusions and a pre-existing language of insult in order to claim that their enemies were ‘unmanly’ or ‘effeminate’ and therefore unable or unwilling to uphold the patriarchal social order. The thesis shows that the pamphleteers of both sides set out to demonstrate that their own men were exemplars of patriarchal manhood, while simultaneously claiming that the anti-patriarchal behaviour of their opponents had betrayed their unsuitability for a position of authority within the commonwealth. Gendered language was therefore a powerful way to legitimise the claim of one’s own side to patriarchal authority and political power while simultaneously delegitimizing the claim of one’s opponents. The introduction outlines the key questions which the thesis seeks to address and gives my reasons for undertaking this study. Chapter one examines the reluctance of past generations of historians to study the wartime tracts and highlights the importance of the new cultural history, gender studies and the linguistic turn in bringing the gendered language of the wartime tracts to academic attention. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the print culture of the Civil Wars. In particular, the pioneering work of David Underdown has led other historians to explore how the wartime pamphleteers made use of cultural references in order to communicate political ideas. Chapter one situates my thesis within these recent developments in scholarship. Chapter two considers the main gendered themes of the parliamentarian tracts during the first Civil War. It explores how and why manhood was constructed and how gendered insult was utilised by the pamphleteers. Chapter three focuses on how three principal royalist personalities were represented in parliamentarian tracts, namely Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria and Prince Rupert. Chapter four considers the broader gendered themes within the royalist literature of the period and tests the assertions of previous historians that royalist propaganda was frequently elitist and self-defeating. Chapter five explores the royalists’ treatment of three key parliamentarian figures: Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, Sir William Waller and Lady Ann Waller. It explores the careful treatment that Essex initially received from the royalist polemicists and contrasts this with the increasingly barbed attacks that were made against Waller, particularly by commenting upon the actions of his wife, Ann. The conclusion summarises the key arguments of the thesis and relates my findings to other broader questions regarding the operation and contestation of patriarchal power during the conflict, the practice of printing and how the use of gendered language developed in the polemical works of the later 1640s. The thesis ends with a brief discussion of some areas in which further research might enable us to better understand the vital role that gender played in reinforcing authority during the turbulent 1640s.
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Williams, Siân Bethan. "Quixotes, dreamers and 'imaginists' : deluding the heroine in the novel from Richardson to Austen." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1998. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5307bedc-a6b9-42be-bdb6-534035c975e9.
Full textAbstract:
The following study is an examination of the deluded heroine in the novel between 1740 and 1820. Through close readings of fiction by Samuel Richardson, Charlotte Lennox, Frances Burney, Charlotte Smith, Ann Radcliffe and Jane Austen, and discussion of relevant works by other authors of the period, the reasons for the prevalence of this figure are considered. The thesis proposes that this choice of protagonist enabled the exploration of a number of the issues that most concerned contemporary novelists. Principal amongst these was the question of identification between reader and literary protagonist. Throughout this period authors engaged in attempts to develop and control the audience's response. The desired end was the "improvement" of readers by the experience of the situations, mistakes and trials of the text's central characters. Increasingly though, the unpredictable and fluctuating nature of the readers' reactions was recognised. The result was a conflict between "text as instruction", the moral education that authors professed to offer, and "text as fiction", the attractions of story, adventure and imagination which were ostensibly valued only as they brought readers to works intended to improve them. The connection of the latter to romance was a further source of tension. The establishment of the novel as a model for life was premised on claims to probability, but aspects of the texts remained which worked against mimetic representation. These oppositions explain the contemporary popularity of the quixotic narrative, since the quixote both enacted the "madness" of excessive imaginative involvement with literature and could also be shown learning to make a "correct" choice of genre for reading. The strategies that can be observed within the quixote novel have a wider application when they are considered alongside the patterns of imitation, influence and parody which characterise the fiction of the period. In order to examine these features, the thesis includes an analysis of two important literary dialogues: those between Richardson and Lennox, and between Radcliffe and Austen. My focus on the heroine acknowledges the significance of gender in the period's fiction. Created by both female and male authors, such figures could be either exemplary models or quixotic warnings. They nevertheless share an experience of delusion followed by enlightenment constructed in order to benefit the "reading Misses" following their adventures. Unlike much recent criticism, however, my concern is more with the author as creative artist, text as literary process and reader as imaginative participant, than with historical or sociological contexts.