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This thesis is the first research project to provide a thorough examination of the memory of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, exploring portrayals of their heroism and considering how such depictions impact our understandings of Black female heroism. Tubman and Truth frequently appear together in representations, but scholars are yet to analyse how these Black women have become heroes, with no thorough examination of how depictions of their heroism interact and impact upon one another. In providing the first comprehensive analysis and comparison of Tubman and Truth's memory from the late 1930s to present day, this thesis highlights how current understandings of Black female heroism are defined by prevailing ideas of white and Black male heroism. Through analysis of a variety of representations, such as artwork (including murals and sculptures), theatre productions, poems, and film, this thesis argues for a re-evaluation of Black female heroism and presents a new model that centres around Black women's experiences, with recognition of their triple oppression and the different forms of resistance they employed, including those performed by "ordinary" Black women. By exploring how Tubman and Truth's memory struggles against hegemonic ideas of heroism, I examine alternative heroic behaviours that centre around Black women's resistance, such as anti-lynching activism and trade union organising, to expand our understandings of who is deemed heroic. Moreover, in analysing Tubman and Truth's persistent role as Black female heroes, I offer vital insight into the limitations of existing depictions, with representations often shaped and limited by concepts of exceptionality and acceptability. Throughout the following chapters, I examine how portrayals of Tubman and Truth as "superwomen" who overcome overwhelming oppression maintain ideas of exceptionalism, noting how their depiction as Moses and a religious preacher further supports this limiting framework. In analysing depictions of Tubman and Truth's militancy, this research also considers how ideas of acceptability narrow our understandings of their heroism, thus noting how exceptionalism and acceptability can obscure features of Tubman and Truth's lives and memories, whilst also contributing to the erasure of "ordinary" Black women and their heroic behaviours. Through this research, I also examine the instances in which artists and writers challenge the confines of exceptionality and acceptability, arguing that these portrayals create an alternative heroic lineage that positions Tubman and Truth alongside other Black women, while also highlighting the latter's malleability as a Black female hero. Indeed, in prioritising Black women's experiences and recognising their triple oppression, I argue that these artists and writers broaden our understandings of Black female heroism. Thus, in examining the different ways in which Tubman and Truth are portrayed as heroes across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this thesis develops a model of Black female heroism that allows for better understanding of the ways in which Black women are remembered.

What do a duelling crossdresser, a chicken, and an out-of-work clown who liked to gamble on himself have in common? They were, I will argue, all part of a constellation of early modern celebrities, sharing certain elements of celebrity culture. While each celebrity had a different persona, they shared appellations - like the term 'blazing star' - and at one stage or another, they were some variation of the talk of the town or in the 'common report' of the world. This thesis looks at celebrity across early modern literature and culture, and the different forms of media that helped transmit it, including gossip, playtexts, and chapbooks. Exploring celebrity as a social phenomenon transmitted by different media, this thesis will investigate how early modern audiences created and interacted with celebrities. Audience value for celebrities is expressed through narrative but also through money, betting on celebrities or paying for products associated with them. When the celebrity is monetised through gambling, social capital directly converts to economic capital, suggesting intense social connections between early modern fans and celebrities. Audiences alternatively used celebrities' personas to assert status, seek allies and experience emotion. Celebrity was an important facet of identity creation in early modern culture, something literary texts such as The Roaring Girl (ca.1607-10) and Astrophil and Stella (1591) are occupied with trying to understand.

This thesis draws on conceptual tools developed in Michel Foucault's late work on 'technologies of the self' to historically reposition The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), not as the inaugural text of the 'psychoanalytic movement', but instead as belonging to a long-standing tradition of practices and writings, which view the self as an object of cultivation, representation, and knowledge. In order to historicize psychoanalysis in this way I critically examine practices and techniques employed within hypnotism and experimental psychology, in addition to literary discourses on self-representation in 19th century autobiography. As a scientific treatise, a technical manual and a quasi- autobiographical text, Interpretation borrows from each of these approaches. In doing so, however, Freud would install a tension at the heart of the modern self that radically undermined the liberal conception of the individual as transparent, coherent, and responsible. My conviction is that positioning psychoanalysis within the history of practices of the self, and charting its 'pre-history' in these terms will deepen our understanding of Freud's oeuvre as a significant event and agent in the history of subjectivity. For as this thesis contends, Freud contributed to the emergence of the notion that the self was an object that could be critically renegotiated via the relation of the self to itself, rather than submission to religious values, universal notions of duty, or bourgeois aesthetics. In doing so, Freud provided certain techniques of self-reflection to individuals who would not have had the authority or expertise to give an account of, or alter themselves in this way before. Finally, this reading also subverts Foucault's critique of psychoanalysis (represented in his middle works) by arguing that Freud's 'technology of the self' cannot be subsumed under the rubric of 'governmentality,' and instead constitutes a 'caustic' technology that enables individuals to identify and renegotiate prior subjections.

William Shenstone was a polymath. He wrote letters, essays, composed poetry, painted water-colours, played musical instruments and indulged in architectural design, but above all he created a landscape garden at The Leasowes in the West Midlands that became a celebrated place to visit in the eighteenth century. Shenstone worked during the early days of the English landscape garden movement, and while others created grounds with political and/or historical themes he fashioned a garden in a 'naturesque' style. He created a version, called a ferme ornée that was a distinctive form of English garden at the time. This thesis is the first detailed study of The Leasowes and presents a re-evaluation of his garden. Though many people have written about the landscape in the past, few have had the opportunity to look at it from a multidisciplinary perspective which marries an exploration of archival and literary material with landscape studies and archaeological evidence. The study evaluates why and how Shenstone created his garden. It explores his cultural networks and influences and what he did to make it distinctive. It looks at the planting regime and the verse and poetry that illuminated the garden. Finally, it discovers other gardeners who were influenced by his work before and after his death.

This thesis examines how an officer with so many perceived detractors reached senior leadership positions in the Royal Air Force of the Second World War; that officer is Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Utilising prosopography as a methodology, and grounded in an understanding of leadership theory, though recognising the limitations of applying modern language to historical analysis, this thesis surveys the development processes used by the RAF to nurture officers for senior positions. Furthermore, this thesis argues that the RAF, bounded by the Service’s culture and ethos, took an interest in the leadership development of its officer class as it had a stake in producing able leaders capable of defending its independence. This was done through modern conceptions, such as socialisation, job assignments, action learning and nurturing. These concepts formed the basis of nurtured officers shared experiences, and this thesis illustrates how Leigh-Mallory was representative of the type of officer the RAF wanted to lead the Service. The experiences outlined in this thesis focus on training, education and job assignments, which included aspects, such as the importance of Staff College attendance, command experience and staff duties. Participation in these key shared experiences made officers such as Leigh-Mallory ‘visible’ to those able to further nurture officers careers while giving them the knowledge required to lead at the senior level. By understanding the culture and context of the development of the senior leadership of the RAF of the Second World War, this thesis now allows for a more considered understanding of the effectiveness of officers such as Leigh-Mallory during that conflict.

Charting the trans-Atlantic movement of ‘dynamic’ psychiatry from The Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, Baltimore, to Gartnavel Mental Hospital, Glasgow, this thesis throws light upon the resultant ‘dynamic’ case note records, produced in Gartnavel during the 1920s. By undertaking an in-depth, qualitative analysis of Gartnavel’s case note records and corresponding archival materials, I explore the polemical question, posed, amongst others, by Foucault, of how psychiatry achieves its distinct status as a science of the individual. Foucault, most notably in Discipline and Power, ascribes to the psychiatric profession the power to fashion individual patient histories into cases, cases which simultaneously emphasise the individuality of a patient, while condensing, i.e. ‘fixing’ their identities that they may be constituted ‘an object for a branch of knowledge and a hold for a branch of power’. This thesis, while recognising the validity of this argument, explores how the clinical practices and philosophical outlook of dynamic psychiatry in the early twentieth century enabled both patient and psychiatrist to negotiate the construction of the psychiatric case note record, and consequently of patients’ individual identities. D. K. Henderson, physician superintendent of Gartnavel between 1921 and 1932, was one of the first, if not the first psychiatrist fully to incorporate dynamic principles into the working practices of a British mental hospital. Initiating methods of case note taking and staff meeting consultation (now integral components of modern day psychiatric practice) he transported the teachings of his mentor, the Swiss émigré psychiatrist Adolf Meyer, to the everyday clinical practices of Gartnavel. The dissemination of dynamic psychiatry through Henderson’s published works and medical teachings is recognised as having integrally shaped the practices of Scottish psychiatry in the twentieth century. However, the significance of the unpublished case note records, produced under his superintendence of Gartnavel during the 1920s, as sources of historical enquiry has gone largely unrecognised. A near-unique archive of ‘dynamic’ case note records is used in this thesis to reveal, what Roy Porter termed, a ‘history from below’ of clinical practices and examinatory processes. For as Henderson employed stenographers and clinical clerks to record verbatim and semi verbatim the dialogues that passed between patients and psychiatrists within staff meetings and mental examinations, I, as Porter himself aspired to, take as the focus of my research a history of the ‘two-way encounters between doctors and patients’. By employing an interdisciplinary research method, one that incorporates Foucauldian, literary, critical medical humanities, as well as more traditional forms of medical history scholarship, I establish a history of dynamic psychiatry set within clinical encounters. Engaging with current debate, evolving primarily within the interdisciplinary sphere of the medical humanities, I argue these records reveal a history of medical humanism, one in which both patients and psychiatrists actively shaped the history of twentieth century Scottish psychiatry.

Lieutenant-General Sir Richard Ernest William Turner served Canada admirably in two wars and played an instrumental role in unifying veterans’ groups in the post-war period. His experience was unique in the Canadian Expeditionary Force; in that, it included senior command in both the combat and administrative aspects of the Canadian war effort. This thesis, based on new primary research and interpretations, revises the prevalent view of Turner. The thesis recasts five key criticisms of Turner and presents a more balanced and informed assessment of Turner. His appointments were not the result of his political affiliation but because of his courage and capability. Rather than an incompetent field commander, Turner developed from a middling combat general to an effective division commander by late 1916. His transfer to England was the result of the need for a proficient field commander to reform the administration. Turner proved to be an excellent administrator, a strong nationalist, and was crucially responsible for improvements in administration and training in England. Finally, the conflict with Sir Arthur Currie, the commander of the Canadian Corps, rather than being motivated by obstructionist jealousy was the outcome of competing institutional imperatives and Currie’s challenging personality.

This thesis is the first academic study of nineteenth-century artist and drawing master Samuel Lines (1778-1863) and his five sons: Henry Harris Lines (1800-1889), William Rostill Lines (1802-1846), Samuel Rostill Lines (1804-1833), Edward Ashcroft Lines (1807-1875) and Frederick Thomas Lines (1809-1898). The thesis, with its catalogue, has been a result of a collaborative study focusing on a collection of works on paper by the sons of Samuel Lines, from the Permanent Collection of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA). Both the thesis and catalogue aim to re-instate the family’s position as one of Birmingham’s most prominent and distinguished artistic dynasties. The thesis is divided into three chapters and includes a complete and comprehensive catalogue of 56 works on paper by the Lines family in the RBSA Permanent Collection. The catalogue also includes discursive information on the family’s careers otherwise not mentioned in the main thesis itself. The first chapter explores the family’s role in the establishment of the Birmingham Society of Arts (later the RBSA). It also explores the influence of art institutions and industry on the production of the fine and manufactured arts in Birmingham during the nineteenth century. The second chapter discusses the Lines family’s landscape imagery, in relation to prevailing landscape aesthetics and the physically changing landscape of the Midlands. Henry Harris Lines is the main focus of the last chapter which reveals the extent of his skills as archaeologist, antiquarian and artist.

'To bewilder the enemy and mislead him continually as to our real positions and attentions is one of our most hopeful tasks and to do this ingenuity, imagination and daring are required.'(Ronald Penrose, 1941, Home Guard Manual of Camouflage, p.13) This thesis approaches the cultures and geographies of military conflict, charting the history of military camouflage through a multi-faceted biography of this technology’s life-path. By studying the scientific biography of Dr Hugh Cott (1900-1987), eminent zoologist and skilful artist turned camoufleur in WWII, entwined with the fragmentary mobile biographies of other camouflage practioners, including artists, animals and even a magician, the sites and spacings of camouflage’s life-path from the late-nineteenth century into the Desert War are traced. The military’s enrolment of diverse outside specialists practised in visual literacy is examined to reveal that technological development led to transformations, not only in military knowledge, but also in the militarism of knowledges such as science and art. Moving through the scientists’ fieldsite, the committee boardroom, the military training site and the soldiers’ battlefield, this thesis uncovers the history of a most ambiguous military invention, exposing its darker patterning and thus subverting a long-dominant narrative of camouflage as solely a protective technology. Furthermore, this camouflage biography is narrated from the perspective of the technology’s inventors and practioners as a means to encounter the situated and also embodied nature of technological innovation in military conflict. It demonstrates that, as camouflage transformed battlefields into unsettling theatres of war, there were lasting consequences not only for knowledge and technology, but also for both the ethics of battle and the individuals enrolled in this process. Overall, this geographically structured biography explores how camouflage is a jarring technology, combining aesthetic and artistic appreciation with complex scientific theory, to guileful and deadly effect.

The collecting of Chinese ceramics had become an increasingly popular activity in late 19th-century Britain. Whereas the 18th century was characterised by an interest in porcelain for the purpose of interior design, the political developments between China and Britain enabled a new approach to Chinese cultural identity; different Chinese material became available in the wake of the Second Opium War (1856-1860) and the subsequent sacking of the Imperial Summer Palace of Yuanmingyuan, and this material entered Britain for the first time. Due to the opening of China to foreign merchants, Britons now could move freely in the country and gain access to ‘luxury goods’ such as porcelain. As a result, a different taste for Chinese porcelain emerged and developed, which would reflect on the collecting scene in Britain. This thesis examines the motivations and collecting patterns of three British collectors (George Salting, William G. Gulland and William Lever) in the context of late 19th- and early 20th-century Chinese porcelain collecting. All three men built significant collections in the given period, which entered national institutions by gift and/or bequest, as well as a purpose built gallery in one case. Nonetheless the collectors’ achievements in the field of Chinese ceramics have not been analysed extensively and therefore the present thesis aims at complementing the existing research. The study makes predominant use of primary unpublished material on the three collections, which enables conclusions to be drawn on the incentive and approach of these collectors in accumulating Chinese artefacts during this period. In consideration of those findings, it will be argued whether their collecting encouraged an underlying common motif and how their tastes matched the general concept of collecting porcelain in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The first chapter provides an introduction to the subject, and will be followed by a historical abstract of 19th-century collecting in Britain and a review of the published literature in the second chapter. The third chapter examines the collecting activity of the oldest collector, George Salting, by analysis of his purchase activity and the bequest of his Chinese porcelain collection to the Victoria and Albert Museum. The fourth chapter considers the collecting of William G. Gulland, whose first-hand experience of East Asia prompted him to collect and publish books on Chinese porcelain. The fifth chapter will look into the collecting principles of William Lever, whose Chinese collection stands in contrast to his overall British taste. The conclusion in the sixth chapter will summarise the major points of the preceding chapters and it will put the achievements of the three collectors into perspective with the general idea of collecting Chinese porcelain in Britain in the period under discussion.

This is a study of the life and activities of August Torma, an Estonian diplomat. He was born in 1895, well before his country broke free from Tsarist Russia, and died in 1971, in London, when Estonia was back in the Russian, by then Soviet, fold. Although a biography, it has the capacity to provide fresh insights into Estonian history.The study begins with Torma s early years and his activities during the First World War, observes his subsequent progression through the ranks at the Foreign Ministry in Tallinn and thereafter follows him to Rome, Bern and Geneva where he was appointed ambassador. The focus of the study falls on his years in London where he was posted in 1934. With the help of archival material the study sheds new light on a difficult period in Estonian history, particularly on the years leading up to the 1940 loss of independence, the Second World War and its aftermath. Torma s final three decades in England were a struggle for survival as financial problems persisted and his diplomatic position was gradually eroded.The study concludes that although Torma did not live to see Estonia regain its independence in 1991 he kept the idea of Estonian sovereignty very much alive during the Cold War and maintained the concept of legal continuity which was to form the cornerstone of the country s resurrection.

For over a century Pentecostal historiography has superficially recognised Pastor Joseph Smale as one of many individuals involved in the chain of events leading up to the 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles. However, an in-depth biographical assessment of Smale’s unique contribution has, to date, never been attempted. Therefore, this thesis provides the first analysis of Smale as a person and as a pastor, thus furnishing Pentecostal and Baptist historiographies with important biographical and theological insights that otherwise would have remained hidden beneath the surface of the Azusa Street storyline. These research findings are also innovative with regard to the connections between CH Spurgeon and Smale, such that this thesis proposes a distinct “Spurgeonic” root, among the multiple roots that were intrinsic to the emergence of Pentecostalism. The primary method involved establishes a correlation of the true biographical facts, while constructing valid opportunities to accurately detect Smale’s own “voice” speaking. Thus, having traced Smale’s pastoral formation within the context of his training at Spurgeon’s College and on into subsequent pastorates, the research explores the contextual preparation for Smale’s anticipation for revival. James E Loder’s model “The Logic of Transformation” is utilised as a framework for the purpose of structuring the incremental stages of Smale’s convictional insights. Smale’s role prior, during and after the 1905-06 revival in Los Angeles is then analysed with a view to establishing the extent of his Pentecostal life and practice. In particular, his preaching, ecclesiology and missiology are the focus of examination in light of early Pentecostalism, whilst also explaining in part Smale’s subsequent disaffection with the Pentecostal movement. Theologically, Smale’s roots are noted to combine during the revival period, integrating Wesleyan views of sanctification with the Spurgeonic emphasis that “The Pentecostal Blessing” would provide the impetus for intensifying sanctification and anointing for service. In conclusion, the legacy of Smale's ministry is recalibrated, suggesting that his "Word" and "Spirit" teaching and experiences could yet contribute a useful case study to progress ecumenical dialogue between Reformed and Pentecostal/Charismatic constituencies, and those researching the relationship between "organization" and "freedom" in the Spirit.

A valuable manuscript written by Imam Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Salim Al-Saffārinī Al-Hanbali (1114-1188 AH / 1702-1774 CE). There are two manuscripts available at Princeton University library in the United States of America and copies at Jum'ah Al-Mäjid Center for Culture and Heritage in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Al-Safrarini explained " `Umdat Al Ahkäm" by Al-Häfiz Al-Jamma'ili. The latter, Al- Jamma'Ili collected Hadith jurisprudence from , Sahib Al-Bukhäri and Sahib Muslim. Al-Safrarini used both linguistic and jurisprudence explanations in addition to companions' biographies who narrated Hadith. I only edited Sales Chapter "Kitdb Al- Buyü "' form "Kashf Al-Lithäm". This research is divided into two parts: Study and Edition. The study contains three chapters. In the first chapter I introduce A1-Jammd'ili as follows: Name and Origins, Birth, Early Life and the Search for Knowledge, His Sheikhs, His Students, His Appreciation by Other Scholars, Academic Works, Qualities and Ethics, His Ordeal and His Death. The second chapter specifically introduces Al-Saffärini as follows: Author's Era, Name and Origins, Birth, Early Life and the Search for Knowledge, His Sheikhs, His Students, His Appreciation by Other Scholars, Academic Works, Qualities and Ethics and His Death. The third chapter contains a study of "Kashf A1- Litham" as follows: book title and its attribution to the author, description of the two manuscripts of the book, the book's significance, author's approach, author's sources, criticism of the book and editional methods. The edition aspect of the work was accurately completed by using an objective academic method to organise the text, supply punctuation marks, number pages, rewrite the text in accordance with modem rules of dictation, locate sürahs and verses, refer Hadiths to their sources, explain vague vocabulary, conform Qur'dnic texts to `Uthmani scripture, define idioms, verify jurisprudence issues, correct grammatical mistakes and describe eminent persons and places. The edition is concluded with general technical indexes.

Maria Graham is known as a travel writer, but she also translated works from French and German into English, wrote on history, painting, stories for children, and kept personal journals. My thesis centres on her travel journals and memoirs, published and unpublished. Graham is one of the first female travel writers to acquire fame as a writer shortly after publication, or to provoke controversy; in the cases of Brazil and Chile she actually is the first woman to write about those emerging states. She is outstanding as well for the authority of her narrative voice, her disregard of restrictions imposed on women’s text during her time, her complex approach to gender issues and for the changes experienced by her narrating persona. She begins by constructing a well informed but detached observer who reports her visit to India and the first visit to Brazil in a cold and distant voice, but who later allows another voice to filter through her text, an event that turns the narrator into a mere shadow in parts of the journal on Chile. It is in this journal that Graham begins to build up a contradictory persona who can be superior, ironic, and scathing when describing other women, but who can portray herself as a helpless heroine in a traditional romance when her script so demands it. In the second visit to Brazil this complex narrator becomes warmly eulogising of the country and its ruler, but this attitude does not last. The position is reversed in the third journal, which has elements of a spy thriller at times. The last chapter concerns the journals written in and about Europe regardless of chronology; they illustrate one of the main postulates of the thesis: that Graham evolved as narrator from detached observer to heroine up to the journals written at the end of her life, which become explorations into the narrator’s inner self.

This thesis explores the lives of women in a small group of families in the Nottinghamshire elite between 1720 and 1820. A close reading of family papers, gives access to the minutiae of female life and it is from these small details that the attitudes, activities and responsibilities of elite women are constructed. Drawing on the distinct historiographies of women and gender, and of the elite, the evidence produced by this sharply-focused approach is used to explore women's formal and informal roles, and the specific ways in which they were fulfilled, in the domestic, social, economic and political life of the elite. Consideration is first given to attitudes towards girls within the family and to how childhood experience contributed to the construction of elite womanhood. An assessment of the level of convergence between family and individual interests in the matter of marital choices is followed by an exploration of the weight of domestic responsibility experienced by women within the family, as wives, mothers and housekeepers. Attention turns to assessing the extent of female engagement with political, economic and social life, in the pursuit of personal and family interests. The narratives of women and their families illuminate how the female elite balanced the particular mix of subordination and privilege conferred upon them by gender and status. The range of activities in which they engaged and the multifaceted nature of that engagement demonstrate that throughout the eighteenth century women at all levels of the Nottinghamshire elite worked to support the ethos of elite pre-eminence in many small but cumulatively significant ways.

Much has been written about Mikhail Nikolaevich Tukhachevsky. His development of the “Deep Battle” military theory in the late 1920s and 1930s, the attendant mechanisation of the Red Army and his role in the development of the Soviet military/industrial complex have been well-researched. The “Tukhachevsky Affair”, the discussion surrounding his execution in the military purge of 1937, continues to attract interest. However, a detailed analysis of his early life and Civil War command career has never been completed. This gap is filled by this thesis. Tukhachevsky’s early life is explored to provide background, but also to provide a biographical account and to illustrate who he was when he joined the Red Army and Bolshevik Party in 1918. The thesis demonstrates that he was not a communist at this stage. However, his command experiences during the Civil War, combining military tactics of continuous manoeuvre warfare with constant frontline mobilisations, political agitation and repression, allowed him to develop a theory of class warfare and saw his conversion to a belief in the efficacy of Marxist principles when applied to military methods. Tukhachevsky’s success in the Civil War is compared to his failure in the Polish-Soviet War and the basis for the latter is that his continuation of class warfare methods were unsuitable for the conflict in Poland. The success of Tukhachevsky’s class warfare methods is explained by their relevance to the situation and social fabric of Russia at the time. The retention of these principles to form the basis of the operational side of “Deep Battle” is argued, as is Tukhachevsky’s openness to innovation in weaponry and tactics gleaned during his Civil War command. Tukhachevsky’s role in the early Red Army formulation is detailed, as is his development of the concept of “unified command” involving the creation of Red Commanders. The Communist Party leadership’s use of Tukhachevsky as a “troubleshooter” to deal with prioritised areas during the Civil War, leading to his service on every major Front at crucial stages is highlighted, as are the connections he made on the Civil War battlefields, friendly and hostile. It is shown that during his Civil War commands he met with those with whom he would later work and that their collaboration and experimentation began almost immediately.

The following PhD thesis will explore the connection between autobiography and myth of origin: On the one hand, I am concerned with the ways in which women autobiographers rewrite classical myths of origin; on the other hand, I contend that autobiography itself is a myth of origin, a recreation of the forces that created the narrator. Throughout this thesis, I will develop two main themes: the first is the use of myth as a framework for autobiographical writing. This is possible because of myth's characteristic double focus on the universal and on the particular version, the historical context. Myth allows feminist autobiographers to connect themselves to universal truths from which they are barred by patriarchal tradition and to carve out their own, highly personal version. The second theme is that the autobiographers depict the origin as the core of the self and utterly Other. First, the narrator has to rely on the stories of other people, or a 'family memory'. Second, the past can be seen as connected to or leaving traces in the present; at the same time, it can be completely Other and incompehensible. Third, the autobiographical I is often cut off from her origins, and a constructive return that integrates the past and the present self is only possible through a deliberate act of mythmaking: It is mythmaking and storytelling that provides a connection between self and Other. I hope to make a contribution to feminist theory of autobiography as well as to feminist theory. Reading autobiography as myth of origin approaches the persistent problem of the relationship between the historical author and the autobiographical self. Moreover, I will explore the the specific relation between women and origins, and address the necessity for feminist theory to develop a framework where self and Other are intimately connected.

The thesis is a three-part study of the theory and practice of autobiography. The writing of the New Zealand novelist, poet and autobiographer Janet Frame (1924-) is used as casestudy throughout, juxtaposed to canonical texts of autobiography (typically written by white western males) which have been used to draw conclusions about the self. Frame's 'autobiographical' writings (in particular her three-volume autobiography, To the Is-Land, An Angel at My Table and The Envoy From Mirror City; and her novels Faces in the Water and Owls Do Cry) are used to suggest a new approach to interpreting both the self in society and the relationship between narrated self and context. Part One is a re-reading of three classic texts of the genre, St.Augustine's Confessions, Dante's Vita Nuova and John Bunyan's Grace Abounding. The assumption that such texts describe an 'autonomous, unitary' male protagonist is thoroughly questioned and the texts are read to reveal instead the characteristics of fragmentation and alterity usually reserved for descriptons of the self in women's autobiographies. The point is emphasised that the narrated self of autobiography must always be precisely located in time and space. In Part Two, the definition of autobiography as genre is explored. Two schools of thought are identified: one which focuses on the contract between reader and writer (Lejeune), the other which highlights that the self is constructed in and through the narrative which purports to represent it (Bruss, Barthes). Frame's writing is then used to test the application of such models. The relationship between 'history' and 'fiction' is discussed as the pivotal distinction on which the notion of autobiography hinges. Through a reading of Frame's autobiographies and Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative, the notion of a 'textual contract' as a new definition of autobiography as genre is developed: this definition maintains both the importance of the life outside the text but also the representative nature of narrative to transform that reality within the text. Part Three puts into practice the theory of 'locating the self'. Frame's autobiographies are first analysed through a series of categories of 'belonging': gender, class, race, nationality and coloniality. It is suggested, using Elspeth Probyn's notion of Outside Belonging, that Frame invents and performs the categories of both poet and schizophrenic in order to find a place to belong. Finally, Frame's narrated self is analysed in the very specific context of the local and national writing culture, demonstrating that the narrated self of autobiography is, to a large extent, instructed in society and rehearsed by the author long before she puts pen to paper. The thesis concludes with the notion of autobiography as metaphor which is seen as resolving many of the theoretical dilemmas posed throughout.