'Deor and nytenu mid us': animals in the works of Ǽelfric

This dissertation examines the use of animals in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints and Catholic Homilies, outlining the transmission process of various sources of animal knowledge available to and used by Ælfric. The contexts in which Ælfric uses animals, which sources he uses in these passages and how he deviates from his source material (if at all) combine to illustrate how Anglo-Saxon authors could weave classical, biblical, early Christian and local knowledge together and incorporate the different traditions in their own work.

Milton and romance: vernacular romance and chivalric traditions in Paradise Lost

The thesis examines Milton's strategic use of romance in Paradise Lost, arguing that such a handling of romance is a provocative realignment of its values according to the poet’s Christian focus. The thesis argues that Milton's use of romance is not simply the importation of a tradition into the poem; it entails a backward judgement on that tradition, defining its idealising tendencies as fundamentally misplaced. The thesis also examines the Caroline uses of romance and chivalry in the 1630s to provide a vision of British unification, and Milton's reaction to this political agenda.

Representations of Catholicism in selected works by Colm Tóibín

The aim of this thesis is to provide an original and extensive study of Colm Tóibín as the “secular revisionist who acknowledges Catholicism as an enduring element of Irish society” (Ryan, Ireland and Scotland 251). Tóibín is uniquely placed to interpret many aspects of Ireland in the latter half of the twentieth century and I will argue that intertwined with his revisionism of Irish history is a reimagining of Ireland and Catholicism in fictive terms. An extensive amount of material from Tóibín’s time as a journalist and travel writer will feature in my research because it validates my argument concerning his prolonged engagement with Catholicism. Similarly, a broad range of Tóibín’s prose will be studied because it affords opportunities for an exploration of a literary Catholic oeuvre in his fiction. Therefore, I am emphasizing that a crucial linkage of Catholicism is identifiable throughout Tóibín’s diverse canon of work. However, I will argue that divergences of attitude and mode can be found in how Tóibín depicts Catholicism in his journalism and fiction. My argument identifies Tóibín’s recurrent journalistic questioning of the Church’s teaching and leadership but I classify a benignity towards Catholicism in his travel writing and fiction. Overall, Tóibín’s fiction merits significant status in this thesis because of the representations of Catholicism in the work of a writer who has been short-listed three times for The Booker Prize.

"I have nothing to say, only to show": appropriation in the poetries of Trevor Joyce, Alan Halsey, and Susan Howe

This thesis studies contemporary poetry’s innovations in textual borrowing and the range and scope of its appropriative practices. The restrictions of the inherited definitions of appropriation include a limited capacity for expression and meaningfulness, a partial concept of appropriation’s critical capacity, and an inadequate sense of the poet’s individual and unique practice of appropriation. This thesis resolves the problematic constraints limiting contemporary definitions of appropriation by tracing the history of the practice to reveal an enduring relation between appropriation and poetic expression. Close readings of Trevor Joyce’s, Alan Halsey’s, and Susan Howe’s poetry serve as evidence of contemporary poetry’s development of appropriation beyond the current ascriptions and offer some direction on how the critical understanding of appropriation might be extended and redefined. Here, appropriation is recognized as another source of lyric expression, critical innovation, and conceptual development in contemporary poetry. This thesis encourages a new perspective on the purpose and processes of poetic appropriation and the consequences of its declarative potential for both poet and poem.