847 research outputs found

    Correspondence to Mary Ann Smith From Whitney M. Young Jr., March 21, 1960

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    Correspondence from Whitney M. Young Jr., Dean at the Atlanta University School of Social Work, to Mary Ann Smith discussing an upcoming documentary by Edward R. Murrow of the National Broadcasting Company. The documentary is on Atlanta, and the show's director is requesting to meet Mary Ann Smith at the dean's office. 2 pages

    Mary Ann Cox Index: Royal Society Collection

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    Burton-Wood: in a series of letters, by a lady (Mrs. - Cox nee Wight), London (printed for the author by H.D.Steel) 1783, vol.11 (octovo vol, leather bound) Enclosed: note The book Burtonwood was written by the mother of Mary Ann Cox who ran the first coach from Hobart to Launceston. It was passed on to me by her grand-daughter Miss Dora Clerk of Malahide. I also am a grand-daughter of Mrs. Cox. Joan Harvey (John Edward Cox m. Mary Ann Halls V.D.L. 1821 J.E.C. started Hobart-Launceston coach) - (note - Mrs. Harvey's identification of the author of the volume was based on family tradition although not confirmed - no details are known of John Edward Cox's parents) Poems by C(harles) Best c 1847 - 1849 Includes poems to Miss Wilmot (Georgiana Wilmot, - Mrs. C. Butler) and Mary Wilmot. Enclosed: note by Joan Harvey Article on Mrs. Mary Ann Cox 1950. A pioneer career woman (on coach service between Hobart - Launceston) from "Woman's Day" Aug. 21, 1950 (news clipping) R.S. 14

    Women's life writing 1760-1830 : spiritual selves, sexual characters, and revolutionary subjects

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    PhDThis thesis uses print and manuscript sources to analyse and interpret women's life writing at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. I explore printed works by Catharine Phillips, Mary Dudley, Priscilla Hannah Gurney, Ann Freeman, Elizabeth Steele, Mary Robinson, Helen Maria Williams, Mary Wollstonecraft, Grace Dalrymple Elliott, and Charlotte West and discuss the manuscripts of Mary Fletcher, Mary Tooth, Sarah Ryan, and Elizabeth Fox. Of these sources, five have never been analysed in the critical literature and six have received little attention. Considered as a group, this large corpus of texts offers new insights into the personal and political implications of different models of female selfhood and social being. In chapter one, I compare the religious identities presented in the spiritual autobiographies of Quakers and Methodists. For these women, religious identification provides a powerful sense of social belonging and enables public participation. However, it may also lead to a loss of self in the demand for religious conformity and self-abnegation. In chapter two, I consider the life writing of late eighteenth-century courtesans. These women adapt available models of femininity and female authorship in order to establish themselves as socially connected subjects. However, their narratives also reveal that dependence on the sexual and literary marketplace puts female selfhood under pressure. In chapter three, I explore the eyewitness accounts of British women in the French Revolution. I argue that, for these writers, connecting personal identity to political history is an enabling source of self-definition but it also exposes them to the risks of self-fragmentation. In my focus on the social function of women's life writing, I present an alternative to the traditional alignment of the eighteenth-century autobiographical subject with the autonomous self of individualism. These narratives allow us to reconsider the productive and problematic dialectic between personal expression and representative selfhood, self-authorship and collective narratives, and individualism and social being. They suggest that women's life writing has the potential to be both the self-expression of a unique heroine and the self-inscription of a politicised subject

    A more comprehensive and commanding delineation: Mary Shelley's narrative strategy in Frankenstein

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    This thesis argues that the first edition of Frankenstein challenges conventional reading by employing what Simpson in Irony and Authority in Romantic Poetry calls Romantic irony, where the absence of a stable 'metacomment' precludes an authoritative reading. The novel hints at such readings but prevents them. The insights offered by Tropp's Mary Shelley's Monster, Baldick's In Frankenstein's Shadow, Poovey's The Proper Lady and the woman writer and Swingle's, 'Frankenstein's Monster and its Relatives: Problems of Knowledge in English Romanticism' are considered, but none recognises the full implications of the instability deriving from multiple first- person narratives. Clemit's The Godwinian Navel acknowledges the novel's indeterminacy, but reads a specific ideological purpose in it. Paradise Last provides a language to describe the relationship between the monster and Frankenstein, but proves too unstable to fix identity or establish moral value. Similarly, Necessity ultimately fails to provide a stable explanation in terms of cause and effect. The status of nature shifts between foreground and background, never allowing final definition. These uncertainties destabilise knowledge which is compromised by its provisional nature: no authoritative reading is possible, yet the novel has narrative coherence. The reader is encouraged to try to develop a reading the structure prevents. The radical nature of the first edition is highlighted by comparison with the 1831 edition, which removes much of the ambivalence and gives the novel a clearer morality. The novel challenges conventional methods of deriving authority by disturbing the reader's orthodox orientation in the world around him' (Simpson) in order to afford 'a point of view to the imagination for the delineation of human passions more comprehensive and commanding than any which the ordinary relations of existing events can yield' (Mary Shelley)

    The 'true use of reading' : Sarah Fielding and mid eighteenth-century literary strategies.

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    PhDThe aim of this thesis is to explore, by examining her life and works, how Sarah Fielding (1710-68) established her identity as an author. The definition of her role involves her notions of the functions of writing and reading. Sarah Fielding attempts to invite readers to form a sense of ties by tacit understanding of her messages. As she believes that a work of literature is produced through collaboration between the writer and the reader, it is an important task in her view to show her attentiveness toward reading practice. In her consideration of reading, she has two distinct, even opposite views of her audience: on the one hand a familiar and limited circle of readers with shared moral and cultural values and on the other potential readers among the unknown mass of people. The dual targets direct her to devise various strategies. She tries to appeal to those who can endorse and appreciate her moral values as well as her learning. Her writings and letters testify that she is sensitive to the demands of the literary market, trying to lead the taste of readers by inventing new forms. The thesis opens with an overview of Sarah Fielding's career, followed by a consideration of her critical attention to the roles of reading. I go on to examine the narrative structures and strategies she deploys, with a particular emphasis on her use of the epistolary method. The following chapter deals with her attention to the reading of the moral message tangibly embodied in her educational writing. It is followed by an analysis of the activity which earned her a reputation as a learned woman. Various as the forms of her works are, they invariably reflect her attempt to balance herself between the two demands of inventiveness and familiarity

    "In this moment of alarm and peril": Female Education, Religion and Politics In the Late Eighteenth Century, With special reference to Catharine Macaulay and Hannah More

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    PhDCatharine Macaulay and Hannah More are conventionally represented as ideological opposites. Through an analysis which centres on their writings, this thesis critically examines that representation, and more broadly explores contemporary perceptions of the roles of women of the middling sort in the late eighteenth century. It argues that revolution, particularly the French Revolution, created a climate wherein the duties of women became the subject of increasing debate. The discussion challenges and builds upon recent work on women's writing and history, by examining how and why the role of women changed at this time. This work is concerned with contemporary representations of women, and concentrates on analysis of primary texts and archival material over a wide range of genres, including educational treatises, plays, popular tracts, political pamphlets, historical writing and newspapers - the latter proving a major resource. Following a critical introduction, the thesis falls into four chapters. Chapter one discusses the reputation, critical reception and public fame of Macaulay and More, thereby providing insights into contemporary sexual and social politics. Women were considered arbiters of morals and manners - believed to play a vital role in ensuring social stability - and the second chapter examines how the threat of revolution led to increasing anxiety and debate about the nature of female education. The third and fourth chapters discuss religion and politics respectively, and argue that beliefs about the interdependency of Church and State, together with the feminization of religion, legitimized women's involvement in politics and enlarged their sphere of influence. 3 The conclusion argues that the political and religious climate provided opportunities for women to reassess and redefine their roles; while often remaining within parameters defined by commonly held perceptions of femininity, they politicized the domestic, extended female agency, and elevated the status of women

    Harmony and discord within the English ‘counter-culture’, 1965-1975, with particular reference to the ‘rock operas’ Hair, Godspell, Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar

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    PhDThis thesis considers the discrete, historically-specific theatrical and musical sub-genre of ‘Rock Opera’ as a lens through which to examine the cultural, political and social changes that are widely assumed to have characterised ‘The Sixties’ in Britain. The musical and dramatic texts, creation and production of Hair (1967), Tommy (1969), Godspell (1971), Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and other neglected ‘Rock Operas’ of the period are analysed. Their great popularity with ‘mainstream’ audiences is considered and contrasted with the overwhelmingly negative and often internally contradictory reaction towards them from the English ‘counter-culture’. This examination offers new insights into both the ‘counter-culture’ and the ‘mainstream’ against which it claimed to define and differentiate itself. The four ‘Rock Operas’, two of which are based upon Christian scriptures, are considered as narratives of spiritual quest. The relationship between the often controversial quests for re-defined forms of faith and the apparently precipitous ‘secularization’ and ‘de-Christianization’ of British society during the 1960s and 1970s is considered. The thesis therefore analyses the ‘Rock Operas’ as significant, enlightening prisms through which to view many of the profound societal debates – over ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ in the widest senses, sexuality, the Vietnam war, generational conflict, drugs and ‘spiritual enlightenment’, and race – which were, to some considerable extent, elevated onto the national, political agenda by the activities of the broadly-defined ‘counter-culture’. It considers subsequent representations of the ‘counter-culture’ as the root of a contested but enduring popular legacy of ‘The Sixties' as a period of profound cultural change

    "different sentiments & different connections supports them" : sensibility, community, and diversity in British women's Romantic-period poetry

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    With diversity as an overarching theme, women writers' responses to the cultural feminisation and developing social climate of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain are explored through analyses of their poems on sensibility, community, and abolition. To determine a focus for expressive criticism and recover Romantic women writers from the social and historical contexts that have previously succeeded in highlighting male literary achievements, women's poetry is considered a distinct contribution to Romanticism. This dissertation analyses poems written by Joanna Baillie, Anna Barbauld, Harriet and Maria Falconar, Frances Greensted, Frances Greville, Elizabeth Hands, Eliza Knipe, Isabella Lickbarrow, Hannah More, Amelia Opie, Priscilla Pointon, Mary Robinson, Mary Scott, Helen Maria Williams, Ann Yearsley, and Mary Julia Young. Although literature brought together the public and private spheres, sensibility mediated between the two and served as a social currency for women. The various applications of sensibility are apparent in its dual-gendered nature, its link with reason, and the significance of economic language. A new genre of the "Address to Sensibility" was prominent in the period and followed a loose formula which defined sensibility, traced its personal impact, and determined a link between the Romantic culture and heightened emotion. Through explorations of poems on intellectual coteries, patronage, creative influence, Reviews, and literary critique, it is evident that women poets' affiliations with the literary community were marked by a discomfort based on their literary associations, the anxiety about their public reception, and the social differences in the literary community. However, the development of social, intellectual, literary, and critical communities alleviated this discomfort and contributed to women's participation in literary culture. In addition, women poets expressed sensibility and used images of community in diverse ways in their works against slavery and the trade. Abolitionist poetry acts as a case study of the particular motifs, highlighted throughout, such as the amalgamation of masculine and feminine, the political and economic applications of sensibility, the association of feeling with reason and community, and the assertion of individuality amidst commonality. Women poets' petitions to alleviate the sufferings of slaves paralleled arguments for the improvement of British society to benefit women. The poems discussed signify the complexity of the issues of sensibility, community, and diversity

    Poetics of the same: a philosophical poetic recourse into sameness

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    PhDThis study endeavours to investigate the philosophical and poetological dimensions, the philological origins, and significant philosophical-literary representations of the Same. It also assesses sameness as a philosophical and poetological modus operandi; that is to say, it analyzes the ways in which the Same operates in different types of discourses both as an object of investigation and as an agent of (poetic) thought. The concept of the Same or the operation of sameness as the philosophical question par excellence will be considered in the development of Continental philosophy and philosophical poetics from classical antiquity to Postmodernism, and its transposition into poetry. The elaboration of the issue of sameness encompasses any philosophical inquiry which seeks to establish the essence of Being and make it susceptible to a general, unifying principle: as a search for an underlying element; for a metaphysical unity or universal, preceding division or difference and amounting to the harmony in the Universe; or for a transcendental absolute totality. Postulations of the pure conceptual difference are likewise examined as part of the elaboration of sameness, and will be viewed as indispensable for revealing the genuine plenitude of sameness. Part One traces the inception of sameness as a concept of pure identity, amounting to the harmony of the Universe by virtue of the operations of belonging (Presocratics), participation (Plato), and emanation (Plotinus), anchored in the relationships between the One and the many, between the Whole and its parts, between the Original and the copy. Part Two inquires into the limits of postulating sameness in terms of pure identity and points to two possible solutions to this problem: a philosophical-aesthetic digression from sameness (Kant and related aesthetic theories of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) and the return to sameness as an absolute totality in Part Three (Schelling and Hegel). Part Four investigates the re-postulation of sameness as pure Difference (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida), hence the entire re-organization of thought in terms of the other. Part Five analyzes the transposition of sameness from 3 philosophy into the poetic language of repetition, using Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus as its prime poetic example. It will be argued that the philosophical displacement of the Same from a concept of identity into that of difference does not amount to an abandonment of its plenitude, but rather points to the need for a precarious balance between sameness and difference, the simultaneous quest for unity and the absolute singularity of the other. This balance, it will be argued, must be sought for in every genuine creation

    Patronage and Professionalism in the writings of Hannah More, Charlotte Smith and Ann Yearsley, 1770-1806.

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    This thesis examines the changes which were occurring in the literary marketplace at the end of the eighteenth century. The place of the traditional aristocratic patrons was gradually being taken by publishers and book sellers, who were increasingly dealing with writers direct. This move away from patronage towards a new form of professionalism took place during two decades of intense political upheaval and questioning of national identity, and at a point where women writers were being seen increasingly as a natural part of literary culture. The argument is focused on three case studies of women who came to prominence in the 1780s, and explores their different experiences of life as professional writers, patrons and protegees. Their work is placed within the context of two significant political and social events; the beginnings of the movement to abolish the slave trade in 1788, and the French Revolution. In particular, the thesis enagages with the Revolution's descent into the Terror in the 1790s, and the response of British writers to this most brutal phase. Also considered are the various ways in which a literary work could be brought into print at the end of the eighteenth century, and how the three central women were able to move from one mode of publishing to another. This thesis also sets out to offer a fresh perspective on the careers of these women, and in particular to recover the reputation of Ann Yearsley as a writer of note in the 1790s. It is proposed that a broader view needs to be taken of the factors influencing literary production in the 1780s and 90s than is currently the case, and the argument is concluded with a consideration of the relationship between patronage and professionalism at the end of the eighteenth century, and an assessment of the significance of patronage in an increasingly professional literary marketplace
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