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This dissertation coordinates two problems which have hitherto resisted adequate synthesis: the form-critical problem of describing proverbial-sounding Synoptic sayings and the tradition-historical problem of assessing the rhetorical habits of Jesus and his immediate successors in oral tradition. The approach taken here to linking these qualifies not only form-critical assumptions of continuity between written forms - in Kleinliteratur - and identifies oral Sitze im Leben of mnemotechnical scholasticism, but also of the recent emphases on radical discontinuity between oral and writing modes of tradition. The connection proposed here between re-description of so- called Wisdom-sayings and oral traditional aspects of the gospels is in the Hellen educational category of gnome. Defined, exemplified and prescribed in basic Graeco-Roman educational texts as well as in technical, philosophical manuals of Rhetoric and in a rich collection-literature, gnome is superbly attested as an exercise in primary education, in all kinds of public-speaking and in cross-cultural (including Jewish) tradition. Moreover, Hellenistic cultivation of gnome primarily as a speech-type, indeed as a conversational means of argumentation in any Sitz im Leben, and only secondarily though still extensively as a literary technique makes it a particularly pertinent term of comparison for New Testament criticism. Recognizing gnomic continuity between oral and written Synoptic tradition allows discussion of the authenticity not only of individual sayings (on criteria of dissimilarity), but also collectively of the gnomic manner (on criteria of oral-literate continuity and multiple attestation): quite apart from the (in)authenticity of each gnome, gnomic style is central to Jesus' self-expression and earliest tradition. In this sense gnomai are a particularly valuable data-set for reassessing the critically controverted relationship between Jesus' rhetoric and law: in Synoptic tradition gnome is exploited suggestively as a non-legal means of addressing conventionally legal topics.

This thesis examines a practice of nineteenth-century novelists which has often been mentioned by critics but never studied in detail - the setting of much of their work in a period a generation or two before the time of writing. Its main focus is on the fiction of George Eliot set in the recent past: Scenes of Clerical Life (1857-58), Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Felix Holt, The Radical (1866), and Middlemarch (1871-72). However I begin by looking briefly at the pioneering novel in the field, Waverley (1814), and go on to discuss three more novels by Scott - Guy Mannering (1815), The Antiquary (1816) and Redgauntlet (1824) - as well as three by Thackeray: Vanity Fair (1847-48), Pendennis (1848-50) and The Newcomes (1853-55). Since I aim to discover the attitudes these writers adopted to the recent past, and conveyed to their first readers, this study involves discussion not only of the periods in which the novels are set, but also of the periods in which they were written, so as to establish the knowledge and preconceptions which the books' early readers brought to bear on the fiction. Where possible I quote the responses of actual contemporary readers, notably those of the early reviewers. This thesis draws attention to the various functions a setting in the recent past could serve in nineteenth-century fiction: to arouse nostalgic feelings for a vanished but remembered past, or sympathy for the people of the past, to point out that change is sometimes more apparent than real, to comment obliquely on contemporary issues, to highlight the unchanging features of human nature and human predicaments, to examine the role of the individual in effecting change.

From the 1740s to 1800 there was a great increase both in the output of novels, and the number of women novelists. At the same time, an idealized view of femininity was prevailing in society. The relationship between these two features of eighteenth-century life helps us to assess the contribution of some eighteenth-century women to the development of the novel. In this period women's novels show some distinctive features, particularly in their portrayal of women. The idealized eighteenth-century view of women saw them as naturally virtuous, chaste, and full of the sensibility which was increasingly seen as an important positive quality. Therefore an idealized woman is the central figure in many sentimental novels. This idealized figure, used especially by women novelists, is of ambiguous significance. She raises women's status by demonstrating female superiority, but does so by modesty and submissiveness, qualities which eighteenth-century feminists perceived as inimical to women's emancipation. Women's novels often contain contradictions between explicit support of female emancipation, and idealized portraits of submissive heroines. Chapter 1 discusses the reasons for the rise of the woman novelist. Chapter 2 discusses her role and the reviewers' part in defining that role. Chapter 3 discusses women novelists in relation to feminism. The following chapters focus on particular writers. Sarah Fielding is a didactic writer with a certain feminist consciousness. The novels of Frances Brooke and Elizabeth Griffith epitomize the idealization of the heroine. The comic attack on the heroine is described with reference to Charlotte Lennox's work. The"relationship between sentimental- ism, didacticism and feminism is studied with reference to Clara Reeve and Harriet Lee. Chapter 8 introduces the 1790s, when politics dominates fiction and sentimentalism is attacked, and chapters on Jane West, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Charlotte Smith suggest the variety of women novelists' responses to these developments.

This thesis examines the development of the novel in the eighteenth century in relation to changing attitudes to death, and looks at how far shifting notions of the moral purpose of the novel and subsequent changes in its treatment of deathbed scenes, murders, duels, suicides and speculations about heaven and hell reflect changing beliefs and the modification of strict Christian ideals to accommodate or combat new feelings and philosophies. In establishing this background, the thesis draws upon popular devotional literature, sermons, minor novelists (such as Sarah Fielding and Henry Mackenzie), periodicals, plays, poetry, biography, paintings and funeral iconography. Each chapter attempts to establish the typicality and individuality of a particular author in relation to the period in which he was writing. My starting-point is Richardson, who uses the novel to question both old and new attitudes, paving the way for the novel's predominantly emotional approach to mortality. Fielding's comic novels provide a striking contrast to this, whilst also revealing a concern for emotional comfort which is at once typical of the period and highly individual. Sterne is seen as questioning not only the ways in which we evade and find consolation for our mortality but also our self-indulgent response to death in fiction. The last two chapters deal with the closing decades of the century, when hopes and fears roused by revolutionary ferment led to fresh uncertainties concerning death and the afterlife. In Ann Radcliffe's sentimental-Gothic novels, religious uncertainty is exploited as a source of sublime terror, while the English Jacobins, Godwin, Holcroft and Bage, attempt to modify the conventions of death in the novel in order to communicate a wholly secular philosophy in which Clarissa's hope of heaven is replaced by the hope of man's perfectibility on earth.

The subject of this thesis is the unusual nature, in the presentation of courtship and marriage, of Trollope's depiction of women as compared with that of other novelists of the first part of the Victorian age. To demonstrate Trollope's remarkable objectivity and realism, I consider first the treatment by him and by three other male novelists of the period of the motivations towards marriage of women. In the first chapter I sketch out the concept of marriage that actually prevailed and suggest thereby the importance of its achievement for women; and also give a rough idea of the restrictions imposed on the treatment of the subject by the critical consensus of the times. In the next four chapters I illustrate the artificiality, according with these restrictions, with which Dickens, Thackeray and Kingsley deal with the subject of courtship, and contrast with this the sympathetic understanding towards women that Trollope exhibits. I examine in detail in the sixth chapter critical reactions to the works of these writers, in an attempt to show to what extent the distinctions I have made were noted by the Victorians and by more recent critics. In the second part of the thesis I deal with the treatment of relations in marriage itself. Having first considered the singularly few instances in the novelists discussed earlier of the workings of marriage treated on an independent basis, I examine the approach of George Eliot who, along with Trollope, expands upon the subject at length. Arguing that a dogmatic view of the marital relation vitiates her treatment, in the final chapter I explore the contrast offered by Trollope's realistic presentation of the topic.

Maurice Maeterlinck fulfilled a unique role in England at the end of the nineteenth century. He interpreted the symbolist vision for the English. His symbolist plays established the expressive power of a very simple style and offered an alternative to melodrama and realism. The mystical direction of his art appealed to the writers of the Celtic Renaissance. W.B. Yeats drew on Maeterlinck's theory and practice until the end of his career. During the 1890s, it was Maeterlinck's translation of the symbolist aesthetic in terms of the dramatic form which appealed to Yeats. The Shadowy Waters is Yeats's most extended exercise in a style indebted to "Symbolisme". During the years of Yeats's involvement in the Irish Literary Theatre, Maeterlinck's dramatic theories took over from his plays as the prime source of interest to Yeats. In addition, Yeats was strongly interested in the scenic innovations associated with Maeterlinck's work. The second chapter deals with the important speculations about anti-illusionist modes of dramatic presentation which were developed in France and England at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries, and which were anticipated in the prose writings of Charles Lamb. Chapter three consists of a discussion of Arthur Symons's unpublished play, Barbara Roscorla's Child, which registers Maeterlinck's influence. Chapter four examines Harley Granville Barker's encounter with Maeterlinck. It shows that Barker was particularly impressed by Maeterlinck's stress on inwardness. Barker's writings on acting and dramatic theory reflect his familiarity with Maeterlinck's Le Trésor des humbles, in particular the essay "Le Tragique quotidien". The chapter includes a discussion of Barker's unpublished play, A Miracle. Finally, the chapter on Henry James concentrates on the manner in which Maeterlinck provides one of the chief contexts of The Wings of the Dove. The frequent invocation of Maeterlinck's theory and practice is one of the important ways in which James suggests meaning and shapes the reader's response.

This thesis takes as its starting-point the theoretical and critical writings on music from the second half of the 18th century - mostly by German authors such as H.C. Koch and J.F. Daube. The intention is to illustrate the preoccupations and concepts of these authors in the period associated with the development of Classical symphonic style. I have noted the emphasis on textures and on certain aesthetic criteria, such as "Feuerigkeit" and "das Unerwartete", and I have attempted to trace the growth of meanings given to these terms over a period of about 50 years. To illustrate the formal implications of the "symphonic allegro" described in these writings, I have discussed specific examples in the second chapter from the symphonies of J.C. Bach, F.X. Richter, G. Pugnani, P. Beck, etc. (These are given in score in the Appendix of Musical Examples) Emphasis is placed on the contrasting roles of tutti and lightly-scored texture in articulating the internal structure of the first section of the allegro movement; and on the types of formal expansion (such as prolonged dominant preparation) and harmonic surprise already used by symphonic composers in the 1750s-60s. The third chapter is concerned exclusively with the symphonies of Haydn, illustrating his capacity to devise new relationships and roles for the traditional contrasts of texture and dynamic level in the symphonic allegro. The important sketch for the finale of Symphony No.99 is discussed, as a case in which the relationship between tutti transition and second subject is only gradually decided in the composer's plans. The harmonic aspects raised in connection with Haydn's symphonies are considered in more detail in the 4th chapter, which moves from the element of cadential expansion - in the form of interrupted cadences and interrupted or prolonged cadential progressions - to that of tonal contrasts at the level of independent and clearly defined periods which play a part in the thematic growth of the movement. The importance of flattened submediant and flattened mediant relationships are underlined in this context. Haydn's quartets have been largely used as the basis for this discussion. In the 5th chapter, the subject is the growing complexity and variety of tonal treatment in Haydn's development sections, from his observance of traditional key-schemes, through his experimentation with fausse reprise effects, to the enlargement of his procedures to include both flat and sharp key relationships. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the "enharmonic" modulatory schemes characteristic of Haydn's late style. In the final chapter, the intention has been to illustrate some of the different functions of tonal contrast that grew up alongside and after those described in terms of Haydn's music. A contrast is drawn between Haydn's use of flattened submediant areas within a single key area, and the use by Mozart and Beethoven of similar effects for the purposes of modulating from first to second group key. Finally, some of the great first movements of Schubert are discussed to illustrate the growth of the principle of harmonic and expressive contrasts to encompass very large areas of tonal stability.

The material of this thesis is the area of personal humour roughly covered by τὸ ὸνομαστὶ κωμῳεν - the body of jokes which involve reference or allusion to individuals from the contemporary or near contemporary world, and which gave rise to the ancient compilation of κωμῳδούμενι. In an introductory chapter I draw on the combined evidence of plays and fragments to give some impression of the role of this type of satire in Old Comedy as a whole in the later fifth century, stressing in particular the overlap between Aristophanes' choice of targets and his rivals', and suggesting that this indicates the genre's capacity to create publicity for its own exploitation. The second chapter analyses the treatment of personal jokes in the scholia on Aristophanes, and shows that this typically involves a questionable model of satire, largely taken over by modern commentators on the plays, as a reflector of the truth about its targets. In the third chapter I argue that we need to adopt a view of Aristophanes as a much more active creator of publicity and of satirical images which may often owe as much to the appeal of popular stereotypes of disapproved behaviour as to the facts about the individuals to whom they are comically attached. Chapter four concentrates on choral jokes, demonstrating in particular the special scope for inventive satirical colour allowed by the separation of the major choral sections from the concerns of the dramatic episodes. The final chapter focusses on a variety of functional, formal and technical aspects of personal jokes: these include the ways in which jokes are integrated into the composition of dialogue; comically expressive uses of antilabe; the importance of the position of a name within the structure of a joke; and visual elements in personal satire. An index of names and references is included.

It is the object of this thesis to present the chief stylistic and structural characteristics of five thirteenth century Norse sagas selected as representative of Sturla Þórðarson's literary background; to show in what ways and to suggest why he did or did not follow their examples; and on the basis of this, to offer a new interpretation of the style and structure of Sturla's Íslendinga Saga. The five sagas are considered chronologically in the order they are believed to have been written. Sverris Saga is a partisan record of an unconventional Norwegian king's reign (1177-1202) based on the king's personal experience and contemporary witness. Knytlinga Saga (c. 1260), a celebration of Danish Christian princes (940-1187), has an unadorned style, at times not unlike Sturla's, but its concentration on the single theme makes it too constricted for Sturla's complex material. In Heimskringla (c. 1230), a history of Norwegian kings up to 1177, Snorri Sturluson freely adapts and selects from his source material to produce a wellreasoned pattern of events. Sturla's material for Íslendinga Saga was too close to him to be manipulated in this fashion. He probably learned most from his own experience of writing Hákonar Saga in 1263. Although this was written under the constraints of diplomacy, Sturla was confronted with the task of ordering a mass of virtually contemporary material. Njáls Saga, an almost wholly fictional work, depends for its unity on complex interactions between figures motivated by their inner temperaments. Sturla also records diverse human emotions, but his narrative must depend on actual happenings and therefore lacks the contrived flawlessness of Njáls Saga. Yet Sturla's selection and arrangement of his authentic material - a dense mass of facts - show that his control is perfect. He writes with awesome sobriety and psychological insight, and he rejects any artificial structure.

In its current sense, courting means 'wooing'; but its original meaning was 'residing at court'. The amorous sense of the word developed from a purely social sense in most major European languages around the turn of the sixteenth century, a time when, according to some historians, Western states were gradually moving toward the genesis of absolutism and the establishment of courts as symbols and agents of centralised monarchical power. This study examines the shift in meaning of the words courtship and to court, seeking the origins of courtship in court society, with particular reference to the court and literature of the Elizabethan period. Chapter 1 charts the traditional association between courts and love, first in the historiography of 'courtly love', and then in historical and sociological accounts of court society. Recent studies have questioned the quasi- Marxist notion that the amorous practices of the court and the 'bourgeois' ideals of harmonious, fruitful marriage were antithetical, and this thesis examines whether the development of 'romantic love' has a courtly as well as a bourgeois provenance. Chapter 2 conducts a lexical study of the semantic change of the verb to court in French, Italian, and English, with an extended synchronic analysis of the word in Elizabethan literature. Chapter 3 goes on to diversify the functional classification required by semantic analysis and considers the implications of courtship as a social, literary and rhetorical act in the works of Lyly and Sidney. It considers the 'humanist' dilemma of a language that was aimed primarily at seduction, and suggests that, in the largely discursive mode of the courtly questione d'amore, courtship could be condoned as a verbalisation of love, and a postponement of the satisfaction of desire. Chapter 4 then moves away from the distinction between humanist and courtly concerns, to examine the practice of courtship at the court of Elizabeth I. It focuses on allegorical representations of Desire in courtly pageants, and suggests that the ambiguities inherent in the 'legitimised' Desire of Elizabethan shows exemplify the situation of poets and courtiers who found themselves at the court of a female sovereign. In chapter 5 discussions of the equivocation inveterate to courtly texts leads to a study of The Faerie Queene, and specifically to Spenser's presentation of courtship and courtly society in the imperialist themes of Book II and their apparent subversion in Book VI. The study concludes with a brief appraisal of Spenser's Amoretti as a model for the kind of courtship that has been under review.

The thesis is primarily an investigation of the heroic ideal propounded in the novel and the relationship of that ideal to the ideological climate of the period 1630-1660. Part I I: The heroic novel owes much to the Greek romances, l'Astrée and Amadis de Gaule but offers a different ideal of heroism from them. The Greek romances had depicted essentially passive heroes, l'Astrée the heroism of renunciation and Amadis the heroism of physical strength and prowess. The heroic novel presents a hero whose nature is more important than his deeds though it is through his deeds that his nature is manifested. He exists at a higher level than the rest of mankind and is an incarnation of moral freedom. II: Though the general characteristics of the hero were agreed upon by all writers of heroic novels, there were important differences in the way the qualities which made up the hero were interpreted. In general terms, the pessimistic concept of heroism saw the hero as completely cut off from the rest of mankind, concerned only with his egocentric image of himself ; the optimistic concept stressed the altruistic side of heroism, the hero working for the rest of humanity. The terminology of heroism - générosité, gloire, vertu, etc. - was interpreted variously in the light of this distinction. III: The heroic novel assumed the existence of a benevolent providence leading the hero on to his ultimate destiny but, within that area, showed him resisting the attacks of fortune by direct action. To be heroic, he had to resist fortune directly : any attempt to anticipate problems or find ways round them was by definition unheroic. Heroism was therefore opposed to any form of prudence which suggested that action could be rendered unnecessary. IV: Heroism drew support from the Catholic humanist theory of the passions which superseded the neo-stoic morality of the early seventeenth century. The hero derived his energy from his passions and directed them towards the end proposed by his will. The two passions of major interest, love and ambition, could produce a superhuman individual when properly directed. The supremacy of the will came into question, however, particularly during the 1650s, and the novel began to depict heroes who were unable to control their passions absolutely. V: In the major tradition of the heroic novel, love was subsumed by the need to retain moral freedom : both hero and heroine ensured that their relationship did not lead to subjection to their partner. The increasing influence of feminism led to the acceptance of the view that women were morally stronger than men, which combined with the decline of the belief in the supremacy of the will to produce a relationship in which the male was subservient and self-effacing. Love came to take precedence over the maintenance of heroic status. VI: The justifications for the pre-heroic novel put forward in the seventeenth century usually relied on the claims of the imagination. The heroic novel developed together with a prose-epic theory of the novel, according to which fiction was linked closely to history to produce a greater moral impact than history alone could provide. Within the novel itself, however, historical truth was secondary to the aims of stirring the reader's imagination and impressing a moral attitude upon him. Many of the historical incongruities in the novel can be explained in terms of these aims. Part II VII: Ariane and l'Histoire celtique are proto-heroic novels : both depict a hero who to a certain extent devotes his energies to rising above fortune and asserting his moral independence. VIII: Polexandre arrives at its final version after several earlier stages in which the heroic element is gradually increased. The definitive version of 1637 depicts a superhero with absolute will-power, free from the defects of ordinary men. He has received a kind of "grace" which makes him capable of pursuing and achieving the highest virtue. IX: Ibrahim defines heroism in terms of the individual's ability to control his passions. The heroic virtues depicted are such that heroism is an ideal which most people would be capable of achieving, associated with the ideal of honnêteté. X: Cassandre holds up an ideal of absolute individual freedom. Heroism is egocentric, the hero faithful only to his own image of himself. XI: Cléopâtre ostensibly postulates the same heroic ideal as Cassandre but it has been affected by the discovery that the individual cannot guarantee to control his passions. Moral autonomy is thus disappearing. Women appear as superior because they have a stronger sense of bienséance than men and are therefore more capable of dominating situations involving the passions. XII: Le Grand Cyrus analyses the nature of the emotions to which mankind is subject. It makes plain the potential tyranny of the passions and proposes an ideal of restrained emotional involvement (amitié tendre) as a defence against them. Part III XIII: The heroic novel declined rapidly around 1660 after maintaining its popularity throughout the 1650s. "Realistic" novels and the burlesque cannot really be seen as anti-heroic. The major factor in the decline seems to have been the loss of belief in the supremacy of the will with the consequent revelation of the power of involuntary love. By 1660, the heroic novel had ceased to offer a heroic ideal in favour of an analysis of the affective side of human nature. The heroic framework became redundant and the nouvelle took over the analytical function being performed by the novel. The heroic novel is a factor in the search for moral values during the period 1630-1660. It offered an ideal of human liberty, defined variously by different authors, but all the definitions had to give way before the realisation that human freedom was restricted by human nature.

The thesis concludes that because the cult-centred approach has been so concerned with the cultic functions of the psalms, it has failed to appreciate the personal contributions of the psalmists, and in so doing has often misinterpreted the primary purpose of a psalm. A life-centred reading of the Psalter is therefore a vital component in correcting this imbalance in psalmic studies today.

The thesis examines Bolivian fiction written about the war with Paraguay (1932-35), known as the Chaco War. The study takes two different perspectives: the first considers the fiction as works of literature, and studies three major aspects of fictional writing: narrative organization, characterization arid figurative language, in order to investigate the constraints imposed upon writers who produce fiction about an historical event, (in this instance a military conflict). The second perspective views the works of fiction as historical documents and assesses their informative value by comparing factual information supplied in the novels with that provided in historiographical accounts and also by examining the kind of information which is the peculiar contribution of fiction to the understanding of an historical event. These two examinations are undertaken in Chapters V and VI respectively, and constitute the main body of the thesis. In order to place them in a wider context, the thesis considers previous critical studies of Chaco War fiction (in the Introduction). There follows a study of the relationship between the writing of contemporary history and documentary fiction (Chapter I), a brief summary of the Chaco War (Chapter II), an examination of some possible influences and precedents (Chapter III) and a survey of the writers and the works of Bolivian fiction of the Chaco War (Chapter IV). The conclusion suggests that the problems encountered by writers of documentary fiction are those faced by any naturalist writer, compounded here by the nature of the subject matter. If they cannot fully succeed on an artistic level, however, these works do provide a view of the historical facts of the war which is reasonably accurate. In addition they lead to a distinctive understanding of the war as an historical experience which no historiographical work can produce.

English-speaking Germanists have shown considerably less interest in Gottfried Benn than their German colleagues. The latter have produced, in recent years, a multitude of critical works, approaching Benn from various angles and arriving at very different conclusions. Outside Germany, the picture is less variegated. The few voices to be heard seem to agree that there is, or may be, some value in Benn's poetic works, but little or none in his theoretical pronouncements. By offering a dissenting view, this thesis hopes to animate the discussion outside Germany and, with due respect, to expose and correct a number of misconceptions that have, in my view, tarnished Benn's image and brought upon him undeserved opprobrium. I shall endeavour to show that Benn's views on lyric poetry form a consistent and significant pattern of thought which defies the many suggestions we have heard of his fickleness, irrationalism, rigid formalism and all-pervading self-contradiction. A diachronic approach seemed best suited to counter the assumption of an essential stasis of Benn's views - an assumption that underlies tacitly most critical discussions of the various aspects of his alleged irrationalism. At the same time, this approach brings out the consistency with which Benn's views developed and crystallized. Three chapters of my thesis are devoted to tracing this development (chapters two, three and four): close interpretations of some critical and literary works, selected to represent the successive stages of Benn's evolving thought, are designed to illuminate and place into context Benn's understanding of the various issues he himself raised and elaborated over the years. From these analyses emerges a poetic theory identical with that presented at Marburg under the title 'Probleme der Lyrik' and discussed, for strategic purposes, in my first chapter. This rather extended discussion has three principal goals: First, to show that Benn, in order to be understood, must be approached as a poet and provocateur who aims at neither accuracy of quotation nor conceptual precision and consistency, but at effective formulation. Second, to present in a new light the salient aspects of Benn's poetological conception. The creative process is shown to be thought of as involving, at all stages, a close co-operation of intellectual and imaginative energies. It is suggested that the 'absolute poem' , as Benn envisages it, is a vehicle of depth and significance whose 'monologic' character activates and affects the reader; that poetic 'montage' aims at the production of an organic whole whose 'fascination' addresses itself to the reader's emotional and cognitive faculties; that the 'transcendence of the creative pleasure' is an aid in life. Third, to call attention to Benn's 'historical' stance which causes him to relate every important aspect of 'modern' poetry to the poetic tradition and invalidates the charge, levelled against Benn from various quarters, that he adopted a progressive pose to present an antiquated second-hand theory. Chapter five deals with the question of Benn's alleged self-contradiction. It argues that 'ambivalence' and 'tension', to be clearly distinguished from 'contradiction', are the principles informing the whole of his poetological thought, endowing it with perspective, depth, and ultimate credibility. In conclusion it is suggested that the generally accepted placement of Benn's poetology at the extreme 'absolute' , 'anti-human' end of the modernist spectrum and, consequently, our evaluation of its historical significance, need to be reconsidered.

The thesis sets out to do two things. It seeks first of all to describe the revival of interest in the Caroline era which defines the nature of an "English Tradition" in the Eighteen Nineties. Secondly, in doing so it seeks to reappraise three significant poets of that era, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, and Francis Thompson, in terms of their participation in this revival. The first chapter, "Craving Viaticum", deals with the general background of the Eighteen Nineties period. It suggests that the Symbolist movement equates with the Decadent one in a more direct way than has often been allowed, and deals with the era's enthusiasm for nostalgia and past ages as part of its reaction against current society. It also explores the period's allegiance to hero-figures. The second chapter, "The French Connection: Pater's Part", deals with Walter Pater, and evaluates him in terms of his art and criticism, suggesting how these develop from a nostalgic desire to re-create past ages in the image of his present ideals. The more exaggerated claims made by critics of his work for the influence of French writers on him are questioned, and Pater's relation to the "English Tradition" is discussed. In the third chapter, "The French Connection: Other Approaches", the tendentiousness of those critics who attempt to define the entire Decadent era in Britain in terms of French influences is discussed and exposed. The fourth chapter, "New Births of Decadence: The English Tradition and the Seventeenth Century", deals with the relation of the literature of the period to the Caroline era in detail, and the fifth chapter, "Of Academic Interest", is concerned with analysing this relationship through discussion of both contemporary and present-day critics, adducing statistical evidence to prove a resurgence of interest in the writers of the Caroline era in the period 1880-1910. The sixth chapter, "By the Statue of King Charles: The Jacobite Revival" deals with the political and religious aspects of the Caroline revival, and charts the growth of neo-Jacobitism in the Eighteen Nineties and its relation to literary history. The seventh chapter, "Against Nature: Defining Decadence", suggests that the root of Decadent thinking is myth, and that the counterpart of Symbolism in the world of decadent nostalgia was the iconic religious and political culture of the court of King Charles I, a convenient archetype for Decadent myths of ritual, aristocracy, and martyrdom. This discussion closes the first part of the thesis. "Francis Thompson, Faithful Decadent: Catholics and Criticism" is Chapter Eight. It discusses Francis Thompson in relation to his critics, and the manner in which views of his work have been polarised between two main schools of criticism. Chapter Nine, "Faithful in my Fashion", suggests a resolution of this historically polarised critical discussion by assessing Thompson's poetry in close relationship with the work of the seventeenth-century sacred poets. The tenth chapter, "Waif of Romance: The Poetry of Ernest Christopher Dowson", assesses Dowson in relation to Herrick and the Cavalier lyrists, discussing also how he stands as a type in relation to his age. The eleventh chapter, "Lionel Johnson: One of Those Who Fall: His Life and Ideas", is concerned with the crisis in Johnson's thought over the natures of guilt and beauty, and how this is illustrated in his poetry. The twelfth and final chapter, "The Life and Work of Lionel Johnson: A Long Blast Upon the Horn: His Work and Themes", assesses Johnson's nostalgia for the Stuart era in terms of a resolution of his present poetic crisis through past values. His intellectual and intertextual relationships with Ben Jonson and Marvell are also discussed. The thesis closes with an assessment of Johnson's achievement based on his allegiance to the Caroline revival with which the argument throughout has been concerned.

During the Duke of Alençon's second courtship of Queen Elizabeth the Earl of Leicester emerged as the leading opponent of the marriage. At the same time he began to patronize a circle of writers which included Gabriel Harvey, Edmund Spenser and Philip Sidney, who helped to create the 'golden 1 literature of the English Renaissance. In this thesis I investigate their relations with Leicester and by a detailed examination of their main works, such as the Spenser-Harvey Letters, the Old Arcadia, theShepheardes Calender and theFaerie Queene, and their development, show how they reflect the Earl's intellectual and political concerns. I argue that Alençon was a notable patron and that his growing knowledge of his rival's academic interests encouraged Leicester to maintain his own literary faction. One of his aims was to show the French that English culture was not provincial and he demon- strated this in the entertainment The Four Foster Children of Desire for which he was largely responsible. Having outlined the background of the crisis of the courtship I evoke Leicester's life and circumstances during this period, particularly his relationship with the Queen and patronage at Oxford. I then describe the distinctive interests of his circle in law, history, politics and poetry and go on to establish that Alençon took part in the French academic movement and that his courtiers included distinguished poets and thinkers. The second half of the thesis is a series of detailed studies of Harvey, Spenser and Sidney in relation to Leicester, and their writings during the Alençon court- ship. Finally I examine the court entertainments of this period and argue for the Four Foster Children as a turning-point in Elizabethan literature. My conclusion is that Leicester was a more loyal and discriminating patron than he is usually said to have been and that he played a significant part in introducing the 'golden' age of Elizabethan literature.

The thesis examines the relationship between poetry and politics under Elizabeth and James, tracing certain changes in modes of artistic representation through historical analysis of particular masques and entertainments. The introductory chaper discusses the close connection between poetry and ceremonial in the Renaissance: in panegyric the poet's private imagination is subordinated to public images, and his art is one of ceremonial "ornamentation". Subsequent chapters discuss the effects of social, political and religious changes on this ceremonial poetic. Chapter 31 relates the political symbolism of Tho Faerie Queene to the tradition of pageantry on which it was based, and analyzes the growing tension in the later books between public and private vallies. Chapter III discusses the new developments of the 1590s, arguing that both in politics and in literature new tensions were being felt. The first part deals with the poets associated with Essex, the second with the poetry of Sir Walter Ralegh. Chapter IV discusses the effects on panegyric of the new, less external concepts of decorum introduced by the writers of the "plain style", with special reference to FullcGreville and Samuel Daniel. Chapter Y deals with Jonson's masques, showing that while in political concent they mirror the line taken by the king and his more conservative advisers, in artistic form they display an ambivalence characteristic of Jonson's work. Chapter VI discusses the Jacobean poets wco imitated Spenser, showing the continuity of l.heir political concerns from the public poetry of the 1590s and arguing that Spenserian poetry, especially pastoral, became a protest against the corruption of the Jacobean court. A newly discovered draft of a masque for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in 1613 is included in an Appendix.

Volume I. Part I describes the known versions of the Erec/Gereint story, giving whatever information is available about the circumstances of their composition. Particular attention is paid to the manuscript tradition of Erec et Enide by Chrétien de Troyes, to the place occupied in that tradition by the exemplar which was available to Hartmann von Aue, and to the two manuscripts of the French prose adaptation (showing the significance of the text contained in the unpublished Paris MS.). Part II is concerned with the highly problematical relationship between Erec et Enide and the Welsh story of Gereint fab Erbin. It is argued that the author of Gereint must have used a written source that was in a language other than Welsh. However, an important feature of Gereint is the technique of using formulas which, being Welsh, cannot have been taken from the (foreign) narrative source. There is evidence also of borrowing from a passage in the Historia Regum Britanniae, combined with material from Welsh tradition. Since the Welsh author used a technique of composition that will account for the differences between Gereint and Erec there is no advantage in supposing a lost common source. The disadvantages of such a supposition are that Chrétien's source may not have been a written text, and that it requires a belief in a whole series of coincidences to account for the total disappearance of the manuscripts. A final argument is available from the fact that Gereint incorporates information contained in a couplet which seems to be a later interpolation into the Erec text. Volume II contains the material (mainly text) which is to be read in parallel with the main discussion. The major item is an edition of Gereint fab Erbin (with English translation) marked in such a way as to show the different elements of its composition, and with corresponding passages from Erec et Enide set in parallel.

The thesis is based on a first-line catalogue of versions of the Greek Anacreontea in Latin, French and Italian from 1469 to 1605 (55 poets) and in England from 1518 to 1683 (59 poets). Texts are given of the principal versions of the six most popular Anacreontic poems: these are the two recusationes (Poems 1 and 16 in Stephanus), "The Beggar Cupid" (Poem 3), a drinking song (19), "Cupid and the Bee" (40), and the cicada-poem (43). After a review of modern critical theory of the quality, dating and authorship of the Anacreontea, it is shown how the poems became famous as the work of Anacreon in France in the 1550s, through the efforts of Estienne, Dorat and Ronsard: one unpublished poem may have been known earlier by Joannes Secundus. All the versions of the six poems listed above are compared in detail: particular attention is paid to the sources and tone of the English translations. Some account is given of all other English poets and dramatists of the period who made use of the Anacreontea. Included are imitations by Watson, Barnes, and other Elizabethan sonneteers: scholarly versions by A. W. and Thomas Stanley: and the "paraphrastic" translations of Cowley, Willis and Wood. There are detailed discussions of Spenser's "Anacreontics" in Amoretti, of Holyday's play Technogamia, of Lovelace's "The Grasse-hopper", and of emblems by Whitney and Ayres: also included are versions by Berkenhead, Brome, Cotton, Drayton, Thomas Forde, Greene, Greville, Herrick, Richard James, Jonson, Kendall, Leech, Lodge, Oldham, Randolph, Rochester, Shakespeare, Sherburne, Shirley, Sidney, Soowthern, Spelman, Suckling, Thomas Tomkis and Mary Wroth. The conclusion summarises contemporary translation theory, and delineates three main phases of translation in England. There is a special discussion of poems entitled "Anacreontics", and a list of seventeenth-century musical settings.

The purpose of this thesis has been to use tragedy to discover conceptions about mental and emotional processes reflected in contemporary language which, though it may not have been used throughout the society in the particular forms tragedy uses, was understood, and felt to be powerful, by the contemporary audiences of the plays. Through detailed examination of the type of imagery used in thinking about the mind, various inferences have been made about conceptions of the sources of harmful emotion and about the ways in which men judge each other, how they sympathize with each other, and how far they can understand each other's private feelings, in a society which may have been in these respects very different from our own. The material has been confined to tragedy - though parallels from other poets and evidence of particular beliefs and theories have been sought in archaeological data, medicine, philosophy and history - since tragedy, is for two reasons, particularly suitable for a study of this kind. First, the process of watching a tragedy involves observation aid evaluation of other people from their actions; the audience is invited to react to and ponder the implications of different 'serious actions' the imitation of which is included in Aristotle's definition of tragedy. Secondly, tragedy is a musical event which offers in different musical patterns the expression and resolution of extreme emotions; and one of the main points to emerge in this thesis is Greek fears of unrhythmical and uncontrollable emotion. The images associated with emotion are those of savage daemons and wild beasts. As on the mythological level Orpheus could control wild beasts by the power of his music, on the social and dramatic level music, which imposes order, rhythm and harmony on those listening to it and performing it, can calm extreme emotions in ritual and in tragedy, of which it is an essential part. Chapter One: In the Mind. This chapter examines statements about the composition of the mind in tragedy: the different mental organs, located deep within the hitman body, their movement in relation to each other, and their 'darkness'. The images which express the activity of the mind disturbed include: shaking and trembling, filling, swelling and inflammation; wave, storms, wind and breath. The dreams that visit the mind are imagined as coming out of the earth; but the 'muchos' of the mind is implcitly compared to the underground darkness in which the blind seer lives. The mind itself is imagined to be 'prophetic'. The imagery of wave and storm, drawn from the world outside to express feelings within the mind, suggests the easy association of the components of the natural world and the components of the mind; an association demonstrated in the theories of Presocratics and Hippocratic writers. Finally, the supreme fear is fear of the mind 'adrift': the motif of the 'wandering mind' is reflected in the geographical wandering of mad figures in myth. Their activities and feelings are expressed in images and pursuit: of the goad, yoke, and whip. Chapter Two: Into the Mind. This chapter explores the outside sources of mental harm. Passions that trouble the mind are expressed and described with the help of imagery, and the imagery draws mainly on the outside world: on the daemons of cult and fantasy, and on the wild animals who endanger man physically. Part A considers the shapes of persecution, culturally-determined, which provide models for the individual imagination. The Olympian gods, their winged weapons; the Erinyes, their goads and love of blood; the Gorgon, her piercing eye; the Sphinx, her claws and dangerous song; the animals, the 'death-bringers', particularly the bull, horse, dog, lion and snake. Part B examines the images of emotion themselves: wings and piercing weapons; rays of the eye; driving and blows; hunting and ambush; wrestling and capture (human imagery); biting and eating (animal imagery); and imagery from the natural world, wind, wave, fire, storm. Chapter Three: Into And Out Of The Mind. The material studied so far suggests a world-view which emphasizes the external source of human emotion and pain. But some images, some forms of theory, some direct atatements in tragedy (and elsewhere at this period) suggests that another world-view also operated within the imagination; that the source of human emotion and disease lay within man himself. For various reasons, not least emotional comfort, this view is not canvassed as widely, nor does it affect language and belief as powerfully, as the first. There are areas of experience, however, where it is important, and particularly in ideas about madness and demonic possession. Madness in tragedy is presented as a temporary event which passes and leaves the man 'himself' again. The case for belief in demonic possession at this period, which has been challenged recently, is reconsidered; and the implications of demonic possession and inspiration are discussed, of the external and internal sources of power good and bad. Examples are collected of the recognition in tragedy of the projection process, lay which the mind projects its own feelings, particularly the dangerous ones, outside into the world. The psychoanalytic concept of projection is outlined, and the role it has played in psychologically-oriented medical history: particularly in Paracelsus and Freud. Fifth-century medical theories are examined: theories of the origin of the physical and mental disease. These invoke both external sources of harm, and internal ones. In medicine and poetry alike the two views, though apparently paradoxical, operate in a complementary way, since belief is shifting and inconstant in societies and individuals alike. There are parallels in Anthropological material for the complementary relation of inconsistent world views: and the tendency of theorists has always been to divide mental functioning into two types (compare theories which divide mental structures, and divide them into three). Chapter Four: Out Of The Mind. This chapter considers the actions that express emotion. These are of two kinds, the individual actions of which tragedy is composed (considered in chapter five), and involuntary and ritualized actions, which may have sons universal physiological basis but which are also culturally determined. The natural process of observation - 'opsis' - is replaced in tragedy by words (eg 'Why are you pale?'). Physical reactions to emotion mentioned in tragedy are collected, and deductions made by observers about the internal feelings which produce such reactions. Parallels from medicine are considered: the importance of observation in medical theory and practice has given us a picture of the physical symptoms of physical disease which resemble the physical symptoms of emotion recorded in tragedy. There are dangers in taking physical symptoms recorded in poetry too literally (illustrated by a study of Sappho fr. 31), but though the poetic expression of such symptoms is affected by dictates of convention and genre, it does provide evidence for the tendencies of observation and reaction accepted in the whole society, if not for the single 'true' experience of a lyric poet. Tragedy: the main feature in physical symptoms of emotion and madness is a terrifying unrhythmical violence, which corresponds to the wild movements of the pursuing daemons in Chapter two, and the wild twisting movements in the images of the mind of Chapter one. The principle of projection, discussed in Chapter three, is working here, projecting the wild movements of the body of the man suffering intense emotions, onto both his imagined pursuers, and the unseen organs of his mind. Ritualized expression of emotion is an attempt to impose order, rhythm and control on this violence. The ritual expression of grief, the emotion which occurs most often in tragedy, tries to control emotion in two ways.

Hagop Baronian (1843-1891) was an outstanding Armenian literary figure, whose satire reflected the political and social realities of Western Armenian life in the 1870s and the 1880s. This thesis is the first systematic attempt to study his social and political views. No such studies exist in the West, and the attempts of Armenian writers are on the whole hasty, incomplete, and restricted in scope. For this thesis, extensive research has been made into the political and social realities of Armenian life in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century in order to analyse and evaluate Barcnian's political and social ideas in their proper context. Chapter I sketches Baronian's biography. Chapters II, III, IV and V form the first part of this thesis and deal, in chronological order, with Baronian's political views which, hitherto, have been given little attention. Chapter II is devoted to the study of Baronian's view of the Armenian Constitution which he initially supported for having introduced a large degree of secularisation and democracy to the government of the community. However, Baronian soon came to realise that the Constitution was an inadequate tool. This led him to join forces with some Armenian leaders to propose substantial amendments for the document, which was however never in fact revised. The Polozhenie (Statute) which regulated the affairs of the Armenian Church in Russia is also discussed in Chapter II. Baronian was bitterly critical of the document as restricting the rights of the Armenian community and of the Armenian Church, and bringing the latter under strict control of the Russian government. Chapter III analyses Baronian's criticism of Ottoman internal policy which he held responsible for misgovernment in Armenia. It emerges from Baronian's criticism that oppression in the Armenian provinces was due to two cardinal reasons: the legal status of the Armenians as second-class citizens, and the failure of the Ottoman authorities to preserve law and order. Baronian held that the only way of rectifying the situation was by way of peaceful reform. However, he contended that the Ottoman government was at once unwilling to introduce reform in Armenia and incapable of it. Baronian also maintained that the empire lacked the expertise and financial resources to initiate an extensive programme of reorganisation. All this led Baronian to believe that only external pressure would compel the Porte to review its internal policy (Chapter IV). Baronian expected such pressure from Europe, which, as he saw it, should also provide the Empire with the technical expertise and subsidies to modernise itself. The outbreak of hostilities in the Balkans and the subsequent reform plans for the area were regarded by Baronian as a precious opportunity to force an overall programme of reform on the Porte. However, in Baronian's view, the conflicting interests of the Powers and their self-centred ambitions prevented them from exerting effective pressure on the intransigent Ottoman administration. Baronian dissected the activities of the Armenian leadership in his Armenian Big-Wigs, which is analysed in Chapter V. Baronian criticised most of the Armenian leaders for their lack of what he considered as the basic qualities of public leaders, namely competence, dedication, audacity and integrity. Baronian also censured the Armenian priesthood. While some prelates harrassed their flock by an excess of incompetent activities, many other priests declined to assume any office in the provinces and, residing idly in Constantinople, pursued ecclesiastical preferment or other vain ambitions. Some of the leaders of the so-called anti-Hasunist movement within the Catholic Armenian Community were also depicted by Baronian. Since they claimed a voice for lay elements in governing the Catholic community, Baronian sympathised with their cause but found that the movement was doomed to failure, most of these leaders being motivated by personal ambitions or impractical ideas. Part II (Chapters VI, VII and VIII) of this thesis is devoted to the study of Baronian's social views. In Chapter VI Baronian's comic characters are analysed and the social problems he raised in his comedies and his satirical novel are discussed. In his novel (The Most Honourable Beggars) Baronian dismissed many of the Armenian intelligentsia as parasites and poured contempt on the wealthy for their apathy towards culture. In his comedies Baronian illustrated the old adage concerning the limits to men's capabilities (A Servant of Two Masters) and castigated the vice of sycophancy (The Flatterer). He demonstrated that marriage uniting couples of incompatible ages resulted in immorality and the destruction of the family (The Oriental Dentist). Baronian held that the incompetence of the Armenian Judicial Council, which handled questions of marriage, was a contributory factor to the decrease in the number of marriages among Armenians. He also criticised the rigid approach of the Judicial Council (and therefore the Armenian Church) to divorce, which, Baronian contended, should be granted on valid grounds (Uncle Balthazar). Baronian, who almost exclusively reflected the social realities of the Armenian community of Constantinople, found that this society was in rapid decline (Chapter VII). He was concerned with the institution of marriage because the family, together with morality, religion and education constituted the main pillars of a prosperous society. Despite advocating equality in marriage, Baronian manifested strong patriarchal tendencies, and held that a woman's primary role, designed by nature, was motherhood. In Baronian's view money profoundly affected human relations and the moral cast of men who abandoned human virtues in pursuit of material gain and vain ambition. Baronian noted that men's religious zeal was also in decline due to their materialistic approach. However, the Armenian priesthood was equally to blame. The failure of many priests in their pastoral duties and their often impious conduct greatly affected the religious feelings of the congregation. Finally, Baronian maintained that the Armenians were still backward in the field of education. The national authorities failed to allocate sufficient funds and the community was reluctant to support the educational network financially. For Baronian theatre and literature played a vital role in transforming a society in that they combined the aesthetically beautiful with the socially useful (Chapter VII). Advocating socially conscious literature he emphasised the need for a local and up to date repertoire, and criticised the romantic authors of the time, whose works failed to satisfy his aesthetic and social principles. The conclusion to the thesis sums up Baronian's social and political ideas. Baronian believed that the well-adjusted individual was the basis for social progress, also envisaging a principal role for the family, religion and education. He recognised man as the source of legislative and political power and advocated parliamentary democracy. He illustrated the consequences of the inequal Ottoman political system with the plight of the Armenians and maintained that substantial and peaceful reform was the only way of redressing the situation.

This study serves as an introduction to al-Āmidī's critical thought and to one version of a hitherto unpublished section of al-Muwāzana, Cambridge University Library Ms. Qq286 (which is reproduced in anno- tated form, Appendix, D). It also examines some of the main trends in the recent study and evaluation of 'Abbasid criticism,of which al- Muwāzana has, in the Arab world, become a focus. The Appendix (A-C) discusses editions and manuscript versions of the text, providing a reconstruction of the jumbled Ms. Qq286, and concludes that those portions of the work previously considered lost are most probably to be looked for in a different form - that of complementary rather than consecutive texts, fragments of one of which are already available in the footnotes to AZZĀM's standard edition of the Diwan of Abū Tammam; these are examined in some detail. Textual problems are also examined, in the light of related problems of interpretation, in Chapter I, in which the structure of the surviving portions of al-Muwāzana, which has often been considered haphazard, is shown to serve a specific didactic purpose consistent with the details of al-Āmidī's practical criticism. Chapter II_looks at this framework in greater detail, showing to what extent Āmidī is bound by inherited techniques, but also in what ways he succeeds in promoting a novel and rigorous definition of the scope of criticism. Chapter III continues Chapter II's scrutiny of the details of al-Āmidī's critical method, and explores the key element in al-Āmidī's critical thought, the notion of poetry as 'truth'; Chapter IV shows how he attempts to justify this notion in historical terms, and how, in so doing, he succeeds - where Ibn Ṭabāṭabā had earlier failed - in establishing poetic 'truth' as a general concept of some versatility. One of the concerns of Chapters II to IV is thus to reassess al-Āmidī's originality in the light of his transformation of earlier criticism, the nature of his debt to which- has often been misunderstood. The other is to reply to the question raised in the Introduction - what is the value of 'Abbasid criticism? can we afford to neglect it in favour of a direct approach to Arabic poetry? - by contrasting al-Āmidī's conception of the relationship between critic, reader and text with the concerns which dominate Arabic literary studies today. These are shown not to be without weaknesses and inconsistencies; the conclusion suggests that al-Āmidī's concern with poetic 'realism' - a contrast is implied with the current interest in the 'phantastic' and 'baroque' elements in 'Abbasid poetry - might provide fruitful ground for future literary research.

The thesis investigates the fictional uses of the figure of the unchaste woman over the period of the early feminist movement in order to trace attitudes towards woman as a sexual being and as a person in her own right. The cheap and popular literature of the period has been used both to illuminate accepted conventions, so that the achievement of major novelists can be more clearly understood, and to discover differences in style, moral intent, and emotional content of the fiction consumed by women of various social classes which may be related to class-based differences in feminine role, expectations, and self-image. [continued in text ...]

An abstract of a commentary - which must follow the winds and turns of the text it explains - cannot reasonably be expected. The present opportunity may, however, be used to summarise the principles behind my own specimen. Any commentary tries (at least in theory) to examine its subject's work from as many viewpoints - historical, philological, etc. - as are appropriate and possible. When the works, like Stesichorus', only exist in a highly fragmentary state, this impossible ideal seems slightly more capable of fulfilment than usual: there is less text and so more time (and space) to explain it. This approach from a large number of different viewpoints is not only more attainable in Stesichorus' case, it is more necessary: isolated scraps of poetry, whose context is often totally uncertain, require full examination before their secrets can be yielded up. Hence, for instance, the amount of effort devoted by other scholars - and now by me - to the subject of Stesichorus and art. And hence the exceedingly detailed scope of the commentary. For evern one word fragments have a philological and, sometimes, a stylistic value. And the speculation of earlier critics must be evaluated and preserved if plausible, or candidly denounced if unlikely, in an attempt to prevent repetition of the error.

This thesis explores the use made by Lyly, Spenser, Chapman and Marston of the idea of metamorphosis, with a brief epilogue on Jonson. The two preliminary chapters define certain important contexts for the theme of metamorphosis in this period. Chapter I briefly considers Ovid's use of the theme, the Pythagorean and Platonic theory of transmigration, and the allegorization of metamorphosis. Medieval commentaries on the Metamorphoses are examined, but it is argued that Renaissance attitudes to Ovid and to metamorphosis are significantly different, being uniquely sensitive to both the poetic and metaphysical aspects. Renaissance responses to Apuleius' Golden Ass are also examined. Chapter II studies other Renaissance contexts: in the philosophy of man, in magic, witchcraft and alchemy, and in the love-poetry of Petrarch and Ronsard. Neither Elizabethan lyric poetry nor the epyllion, however, make suggestive use of theltheme: it is explored more fully in larger structures or different poetic modes. The next four chapters deal with the English writers. Lyly's plays use the theme of metamorphosis in two contexts: love, and the adulatory myths of the court. Chapter IV considers the complex and varied uses of metamorphosis in Spenser's Faerie Queene. It examines the treatment of of myth, the concepts behind the Garden of Adonis, and transformation as related to the theme of mutability. Chapter V examines the idea of form, set against deformity or transformation, in Chapman's poetry: especially The Shadow of Night and Hero and Leander. Here the basic philosophic or metaphysical assumptions behind Renaissance views-of the myth of metamorphosis are defined. Chapter VI deals with the satiric use of transformation by Marston. His Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image is analysed as parodying the common image of metamorphosis as an effect of love. The satires present a negative image of transformation caused by man's guilt and folly. The Epilogue, dealing with the negative image of transformation in Jonson's. plays and the positive one in the masques, concludes the study while suggesting further directions for exploration.

This is a study of some of the works of the Japanese novelist, Ozaki Koyo (1867-1903). The aim has been to identify the legacy that the fiction of the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) left in his work, so comparatively little attention has been paid to his life or to works that throw no light on this question, such as his adaptations and translations of western literature. Koyo's fiction was influenced by two distinct literary traditions from the Tokugawa period. His interest in ninjobon, a genre of romantic novel, spanned his creative life and imparted to his works a tendency towards complex romantic plots and a concern for realistic dialogue. For a few years, however, this source of influence yielded to another: Koyo was involved in the revival of the works of Ihara Saikaku which took place in the years around 1890, and this profoundly affected his language and style for several years. Attempts to imitate Saikaku's fiction also enabled him to experiment with uses of the narrator that were foreign to ninjobon writers, and he became progressively more interested in probing the minds of his characters. He took these developments further in his last two novels, stimulated both by the western fiction he had read and by current literary fashions. In Tajo takon he used the narrator to express his rejection of views of marriage imported from the West; in Konjiki yasha he combined the qualities of ninjobon with a study of usury. Apart from revealing some of the areas in which Meiji fiction was indebted to tradition, Koyo's works show that the influence of Tokugawst fiction was not always as harmful as it is often supposed to be.

This thesis traces the various vievs of Horace held in the seventeenth century and examines translation and imitation in the period. The main focus is on the influence of Horace's Od.es on lyric poetry. For the period 1600-1660, four authors are discussed in detail, Ben Jonson, Herrick, Marvell and Covley. Other authors treated include Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Donne, Campion, Chapman, Wotton, Carev, Randolph, Cartvr4ght, Habington, Vaughan, Lovelace, Fanshave, Mildmay Fane, George Daniel of Besvick, Milton, Oven Felltham, Izaak Walton, Denham, Waller and Alexander Brome. In the period from 1660, authors discussed include Dryden, Rochester, Sedley, Dorset, Mulgrave, Otvay, Etherep;e, Wycherley, Oldham, Prior, Ambrose Philips, Katherine Philips, John Norris, Cotton, Lady Mary Chudleigh, Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, John Ranrlet, John Tutchin, Temple and Evelyn. The introduction argues briefly that although Horace is normally associated vith the eighteenth century, in fact his Odes were more Influential in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, and points to some misconceptions about the nature of Horace's poetry that have helped to obscure this. It notes that the interest in the Odes in the period is a change from the Mediaeval and sixteenth-century approach to Horace, and points out that the study of hov a period responds to a particular poet throve light on its general character. Chapter I provides some background information. It outlines the place of Horace in the school curricula and shove that the twin emphases in the school reading of HOrace were on his morals and his style, the latter being studied vith the practical aim of imitation. School textbooks are described. An account of editions of Horace in the period follows. It is pointed out that the text of Horace was more corrupt than it is today* and argued that some of the translators of Horace used the school edition of John Bond. The twin emphases of commentary on Horace are again shown to be on his morals and his style: Parthenio's commentary is examined in some detail. Next, some ideas about Horace's life disseminated by the lives included in editions are mentioned. Finally, the influence of quotation books and emblem books is considered. It is argued that though they contained many of the poet*s favourite Horatian passages, this does not mean that writers did not read Horace directly. It is shown that they present a moral Horace and that they sometimes cause distortion through excerpting passages out of context. Chapter II deals with the volumes of translations of Horace by Thomas Drant, John Ashmore, Thomas Hawkins, Henry Rider, John Smith, 'Unknown Mase', and Richard Panshawe. A brief sketch is given of the development of translation in the century, and it is pointed out that there are some examples of the 'imitation* before Cowley. The books of translations are then examined against this background, and it is argued that Fanshawe should not be viewed as heralding the mid-century revolution in translation but as fitting into his own period. The twin interests of the translators are analysed as being content, primarily moral, and lyric style. Fanshawe is seen as of particular interest as trying to embody Horatian moral ideals in his life and as being most successful in conveying Horace's lyricism. Chapterin discusses various ways in trhich the formal aspects of Horace's Odes influenced seventeenth-century lyric. It is pointed out that this influence has been obscured because English writers do not produce pastiches but recreate Horace in modern modes and because of generic differences between the Odes and seventeenth-century lyric. Some differences in structure and style between the two are then considered, Cowley's translation of C.111.i and Carew's The Spring being used to illustrate the differences of structure. Some exceptions are noted in the poetry of Milton, Jonson, Herrick, etc. Next, the similarities and areas of influence are discussed - blends in tone, methods of making lyric personal and various poetic poses.

The regions of James II, III, and IV in the second half of the fifteenth century in Scotland saw a distinctive flowering of advice to princes literature. This is the first account of its kind to examine in detail the sources, arguments, and extent of political comment of each individual work. In particular it employs both literary and historical sources to reveal the largely unrecognized impact of continental, especially French, political thought, on a number of writers. The study opens with a consideration of the poem De Regimine Principum, a politically very forthright advice work, influential for a century or so after its composition. Chapter 2 deals with the writings of Sir Gilbert Hay, whose work shows clear influences from the continent, particularly in the Buik of King Alexander, which is also seen to have interesting links with De Regimine Principum. Chapter 3 discusses the romance Lancelot of the Laik, a poem less precise in its allusions, but clearly indicative of a number of recurrent preoccupations in Scottish advisory literature in the areas of justice and kingly minorities. The two following chapters examine The Talis of the Fyve Bestes, which gives a markedly nationalistic evocation of good kingship, and The Buke of the Chess, where Scottish advice to princes is seen at its least politically aware. In Chapter 6 advice appears in yet another genre, the devotional poem The Contemplacioun of Synnaris, where the wider associations of `kingship' with the nosce te ipsum tradition are apparent. Chapters 7 and 8 concern The Thre Prestis of Peblis and John Ireland's Meroure of Wyssdome, possibly produced around the same time, but presenting their advice in very different manners: the Thre Prestis adroitly worked and entertaining, the Meroure, highly theological and drawing strongly on continental writers, notably the sermons of Jean Gerson. In conclusion it is shown that through this context we can best appreciate the purpose and formidable execution of Robert Henryson's advice to princes fable lq The Lion and the Mouse.

This thesis is an examination of the dialogues of Xenophon's Cyropaedia. Chapter I opens with a brief introduction to the Cyr. - its genre, date, epilogue and place in modern scholarship. The second half of the chapter is devoted to an overall survey of the work's dialogues. The dialogues are listed and divided into seven main categories; various formal features of the dialogues - their length, number of speakers, presence of an audience, dramatic background etc. - are noted. The second chapter deals with the "Socratic" or didactic dialogues of the Cyr. These conversations are first compared to Xenophon's actual Socratic dialogues, particularly those of the Memorabilia, and are shown to have several of the same characteristics: a leading didactic figure, discussion of ethical questions, the use of analogies and a series of brief questions and replies etc. A detailed commentary on the "Socratic" dialogues of the Cyr. follows; some of these dialogues are seen to be livelier and more dialectical than Xenophon's genuine Socratic conversations and his hero Cyrus is not always assigned the role of teacher. Symposium dialogues are the subject of the third chapter. These conversations are shown to have several features or themes in common, such as a blend of serious and light conversation, a discussion of poverty and wealth, a love interest and rivalry among the guests. The symposia of the Cyr. are compared to earlier literary symposia, including those of Plato and Xenophon, and some of the more Persian features of these parties are pointed out. Chapter IV deals with the novelle or colourful tales of the Cyr. - the stories of Croesus, Panthea, Gobryas and Gadatas. The characters and plots of these stories are found to have much in common with the novelle of Ctesias and Herodotus. Nonetheless, it is argued in a detailed commentary on these dialogues that Xenophon displays considerable skill and originality in the telling of these tales. The fifth chapter is a brief commentary on the remaining categories of dialogues: short or anecdotal conversations, negotiation, planning and information dialogues. These dialogues are compared to similar conversations in other works by Xenophon. Finally, there are three appendices. The first questions whether Cyrus is portrayed as an ideal hero even after the conquest of Babylon, and the second discusses the problem of Persian sources in the Cyr. The third appendix is a list of the speeches of the Cyr.

Luca Marenzio has long been acknowledged as one of the greatest masters of the Italian madrigal, yet no collected edition of his works exists: in particular relatively few of the six-voiced madrigals are available in published form, and criticism has tended to concentrate on the five-voiced works. This thesis presents an Edition with Commentary of the six-voiced madrigals published in six books between 1581 and 1595. Two polychoral madrigals and a madrigal by Antonio Bicci also found in those books are included in an Appendix, together with two furtner madrigals included by Phalèse in his 1594 edition of Books I-V, which proved a valuable collative source. The Commentary presents a stylistic study of the madrigals in the Edition and a critical survey of their place in Marenzio's output, together with an editorial commentary and extensive bibliographical material. Following an outline of the madrigal's chief characteristics, Chapter One presents a biographical and critical account of Marenzio's work. Each book of madrigals is considered individually and in relation to his stylistic development. Finally the chapter treats briefly of his influence, with contemporary and historical comment. A stylistic analysis of the music in this Edition follows, considering particularly the relationship between music and text, texture, form, tonality and chromaticism. The poets, forms and principal sources of the texts are then considered. Chapter Four discusses the Edition - sources, notation, tempo, pitch and musica ficta - and concludes with a note on performance. Two Critical Commentaries deal respectively with music and text, the latter providing a comparison between musical and literary versions and listing poets (some newly discovered) and literary sources. The Bibliography lists all published appearances of the six-voiced madrigals and provides a complete reference for the literary sources consulted. The complete texts of the madrigals are given in an Appendix.

This thesis examines the controversial South African War's influence on English poetry, highlighting the individual responses of established poets and drawing on the work of numerous minor verse-writers to define the changing tradition of 'patriotic' and 'war' poetry. Chapter I sketches the historical and social background, noting how events in South Africa assumed great magnitude for contemporaries whose popular Imperialism was severely tried and who made an unprecedented national 'war-effort'. In Chapter II the late-nineteenth-century tradition of 'patriotic' poetry is identified, through analysis of verse-anthologies and contemporary critical opinion, and by briefly studying the war's lesser poetry which confirmed this mood of Art-for-Morality's-sake writing. Chapter III describes Kipling's personal affection for South Africa, and the political aspirations which were related to his dedicated 1890s' verse-lessons. His reactions to the conflict reveal the disillusionment which distanced Kipling from his audience and changed his patriotic and imperialistic teaching. Inflated by the war, 'Rudyard Kiplingism' became a powerful literary movement. Chapter IV explains the discredit brought by Robert Buchanan's 'Hooligan' criticism, Edgar Wallace's 'barrack-room ballad' imitations, and Kipling's own ill-judged verses 'The Absent-Minded Beggar', but also argues that certain soldier-poets usefully exploited his reputation. Chapter V evaluates the contributions of four respected and influential patriotic poets: the 'undistinguished adequacy' of Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate; the strident verses of W.E. Henley; Henry Newbolt's strongly idealistic encouragement and consolation; and William Watson's brave but costly anti-war stance. Chapter VI considers a variety of poets in demonstrating how, while religious sanction for human conflict and empire-building was emphatically re-affirmed, some questioned the principle of War (including Meredith and Hardy) and denounced the sufferings inflicted on the Boers. The strain imposed on fireside poets' customary responses and rhetoric is outlined in Chapter VII, which also discusses the sentiments of Hardy's discontented 'war-poetry' and The Dynasts, before assessing the impact of personal bereavement on A.E. Housman's loyal poetry.

This study aims to produce a positive assessment of the Franciade, by viewing Ronsard's epic venture in the context of works by Ronsard himself and by poets such as Baïf and Belleau. The com- positions considered extract single episodes from an epic whole, and are united by their structural and rhetorical techniques, forming a group dominated by the Franciade. The first chapter examines the question of genre raised by the fragments, and reviews classical models utilized by the French poets, placing particular emphasis upon the Alexandrians. It re- veals how the sixteenth-century poets long to produce a full-scale epic . Chapter 2 groups the fragments according to theme, highlighting Argonautic poems, notably Ronsard's Hymne de Calais, et de Zetes, Hymne de Pollux et de Castor, and Hylas. Chapter 3 examines the structure of the fragments in terms of contraction and expansion. Some poets circumscribe their material with a prelude and conclusion; others extend its temporal and spatial perspectives, by such means as retrospection, prophecy, and descriptions of ornate objects. The rhetoric of the fragments is seen in Chapter 4 to reflect the expansive urge: simile, circumlocution, and preterition all widen the poetic vistas. Chapter 5 studies Ronsard's approach to the problem of inven- ting an original framework for his epic, how he tries to lend it coherence by structural and rhetorical means. Yet the techniques Ronsard practised in the fragments finally prevail: the Franciade breaks up into a series of vivid miniatures: Ronsard repeatedly returns to material made familiar by classical epics. The conclusion emphasizes that the 'accidental' fragmentation of the Franciade should be viewed alongside the voluntary frag- mentation of the sixteenth-century heroic miniatures. The Franciade should, especially, be considered in conjunction with other Ron- sardian productions, such as the Argonautic hymns. Together with these, it forms an intricate fretwork of epic motifs.

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.

The main part of the thesis is a commentary on Silius Italicus Book 1, concentrating on the poet's attempts to blend history into epic. Close scrutiny of his language reveals his awareness of the problems involved in writing historical epic, as he varies his diction and conventions at different stages of the book. The commentary also examines his manipulation of the historical tradition. Excursus 1, The Structure, examines Silius' solution of the largescale problem of shaping his historical raw material into a poem that conformed to the conventions of proportion and harmony. It is suggested that he did not seek unity through a hero or by thematic means, but by superimposing a coherent pattern on to the events of the war. Excursus 2, The Gods, investigates Silius' decision to retain the traditional epic divine apparatus. It is argued that such a decision is intelligible and not to be summarily dismissed as misguided. Any "failure" of the divine apparatus in Silius is a matter of practice, not of theory.

The view that the lute exercised an important influence on the formation of French harpsichord style in the seventeenth century is a commonplace of musicology which has not until now been thoroughly investigated. This thesis is an attempt to determine the nature of that influence taking into account as much of the available relevant material as possible. The first chapter outlines the status and function of stringed keyboard instruments, particularly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, using a wide variety of non-musical sources whether literary, archival, or documentary. It also charts the relative standing of the two instruments and the interrelationship of their repertoires as viewed by contemporaries throughout the seventeenth century. The second chapter provides a survey of the evolution of French lute style based on a detailed study of most of the French lute sources from the period cl600-cl670 and including the more important sources from cl670-cl700. The third chapter presents detailed comparisons of individual works existing in versions for both lute and keyboard. These are based on numerous parallel transcriptions presented in the second volume. The material for this section is provided by a concordance file for virtually all French seventeenth-century lute sources designed to be usable in conjunction with Gustafson's keyboard catalogue. The final chapter is an attempt to define the degree of affinity existing between particular features of the central harpsichord style and that of the lute on the basis of principles established in the previous discussions. This thesis contains the first detailed discussion of the works of the principal seventeenth-century French lutenists in the context of a survey of the general development of the lute style. Numerous illustrative examples of hitherto unpublished lute music are included in the second volume. The final chapter also discusses some new sources of French harpsichord music dating from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, with transcriptions. Also discussed for the first time is the Premier Livre (1687) of Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, and a transcription of a suite supposedly written in imitation of the lute is given. A comprehensive concordance of pieces existing in versions for both lute and harpsichord is given in Volume II.