Academic literature on the topic 'PR0451 19th century'

This thesis examines certain narratives in Richard Burton's and T.E. Lawrence's encounters with the Arab East. By juxtaposing both Orientalists' accounts of Arab sexuality with the changes that had been taking place in Arabic literary and cultural discourse of the time, I highlight what appears to be a disparity in representation. Nonetheless, I argue that this disparity stems from a perception of ‘difference' that characterises the relationship between East and West. This perception of ‘difference' is further explored in the writings of Arab scholars on European culture since the beginning of the Euro-­‐Arab encounter in the nineteenth century. I expose the epistemological bases of this modern encounter and situate it within the political changes that had been shaping the emerging Middle East on the eve of modernity. Burton and Lawrence are also situated within this context. I show how their Orientalist discourse involved a process of conflating ‘text' and ‘experience' while interacting with the Arab East. This conflation is evident in their textual rendition of certain experiential episodes they underwent in the Orient. While both Orientalists' attraction to the Arab East may have been epistemological in origin, I argue that their narratives on Arab homoeroticism have been discursively subjective. In this, they appear to reflect the selectivity with which fin-­‐de-­‐siècle Arab scholars had been reproducing accounts of their past cultural heritage; albeit paradoxically. When Burton and Lawrence seem to have been heightening manifestations of Arab male-­to-male sexuality, their contemporary Arab intellectuals had been engaged in a process of systematic attenuation of the traces of past depictions of homoerotic desire in Arabic literature. Although I focus on analysing texts from both Orientalists, I also draw on contemporary historical events, for they form part of the contextual framework in which my analysis operates.

When Rudyard Kipling died in January 1936, the resulting national and international mourning indicated the popularity and enormous influence of his life and work. It demonstrated the esteem in which he was still held and the consequent longevity of his literary success. This thesis examines how Kipling established, maintained and protected his reputation, his purpose in doing so and considers if concern about his own ethnic purity was a central motivation for him in this regard. This thesis explores Kipling‟s preoccupation with the reputation of the enlisted man – or „Tommy Atkins‟ figure – and his sympathy with the „underdog‟ and discusses how recuperation of this denigrated image was instrumental in establishing and increasing Kipling‟s poetic and literary success. His intimate personal relationship and fascination with the enlisted man is investigated, especially in terms of Empire and the Great War and juxtaposed with discussion of Kipling‟s numerous elite, establishment military and political connections. His post-war link to the soldier is considered, including the powerful and enduring effects of the death of his son. Exploration of Kipling‟s writing is undertaken using material from the University of Sussex Special Collections Kipling Archive, including Kipling‟s personal papers and correspondence which are referred to throughout and the six volume collection of Kipling‟s correspondence edited and published by Thomas Pinney. Additional, selective close-reading of his verse and prose illustrates arguments in the personal papers and indicates that Kipling‟s literary reputation vindicated both himself and the image of the soldier. Work from poets contemporary with Kipling is used in context, to provide comparison and contrast. In addition to the main thesis, an appendix volume is in place to offer further exploration of the primary archive material.

This thesis explores the meanings of home in Elizabeth Gaskell's fiction. I argue that there are five components to Gaskell's fictional iteration of homes, each of which is explored in the chapters of this thesis. I analyse the ways in which Gaskell challenges the nineteenth-century cultural construct of the home as a domestic sanctuary offering protection from the strains and stresses of the external world. Gaskell's fictional homes frequently fail to provide a place of safety. Even the architecture militates against a sense of peace and privacy. Doors and windows are ambiguous openings through which death can enter, and are potent signifiers of entrapment as well as protective barriers. The underlying fragility of Gaskell's concept of home is illustrated by her narratives of homelessness, which for her, is better defined as a psychological, social and emotional separation rather than the literal lack of shelter. Education takes place within the home and is grounded in Gaskell's Unitarian beliefs and associationist psychology. Gaskell creates challenging paradigms for domestic relationships in her fictional portrayals of feminized men and servants. Her detailed descriptions of domestic interiors provide nuanced and unconventional interpretations of character and behaviour. I draw on Gaskell's letters, her non-fiction writing and a range of other contemporary documents for insights into her fictional presentations of home. This methodology provides a creative, holistic interpretative framework within which Gaskell's achievement can be more adequately measured. I argue that Gaskell's own experience of home was that of an outsider lingering on the borderland, and her concept of home was therefore unstable, fluid and unconventional. The tensions she experienced in her personal life found their way into her fiction, where her portrayal of home is multifaceted and complex.

This thesis explores the influence of John Milton on the edges of Victorian culture, addressing temporal, geographical, bodily, and sexual thresholds in Victorian poetry, painting, and prose. Where previous studies of Milton's Victorian influence have focused on the poetic legacy of Paradise Lost, this project identifies traces of Miltonic concepts across aesthetic borders, analysing an interdisciplinary cultural sample in order to state anew Milton's significance in the period between British Romanticism and early twentieth-century critical debates about the value of Paradise Lost. The project is divided into four chapters. The first explores apocalyptic images and texts from the 1820s-Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826) and the paintings of John Martin-in relation to Miltonic aetiology and eschatology. These texts offer a complex re-thinking of the relation between personal loss and universal catastrophe, which draws on and positions itself against prophecy and apocalypse in Paradise Lost. In the second chapter I address conceptual connections that cross boundaries of medium and nationality, identifying the presence of a Miltonic notion of powerful passivity in the writing and marginalia of Herman Melville and the paintings and anecdotal appendages of J. M. W. Turner. In the third chapter I consider Milton's importance for A. C. Swinburne's poetic presentation of peripheral sexualities, identifying in Milton's poetry a pervasive metaphysics of bodily 'melting' or 'cleaving' which is essential to Swinburne's poetic project. The final chapter analyses the presence of the Miltonic in the fiction of Thomas Hardy, whose repeated readings of Milton contributed to both establishing his poetic vocabulary, and prompting a career-long engagement with Miltonic ideas. The thesis refocuses attention on peripheral elements of the work of these writers and artists to re-articulate Milton's importance for the Victorians, whilst bringing together models of influence which show the Victorian Milton to be at once liminal and galvanising.