http://hdl.handle.net/1893/183 This community contains the ePrints and eTheses produced by Literature and Languages staff and students. Fri, 25 Sep 2026 08:11:39 GMT 2026-09-25T08:11:39Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38334 Title: Translating Virginia Woolf's feminist perspectives in the 20th and 21st century Author(s): Li, Shaona Abstract: This thesis examines how Virginia Woolf’s feminist discourse has been translated, reframed, and ideologically negotiated within the Chinese context across different historical periods. Woolf’s narrative technique, especially the use of free indirect discourse, challenges established gender norms, making these four works—Mrs. Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando: A Biography (1928), and A Room of One’s Own (1929)— exemplary texts for analysing gender representation in literature and society. Focusing on gender representation, linguistic transformation, and cultural adaptation, this study explores how Chinese translators have addressed Woolf’s complex feminist discourses and evolving constructions of gender, identity, and power. Based on Catford’s theory of "translation shifts" (1965) and Toury’s idea of "optional shifts" (1995), the research assesses how feminist roles and expectations are conveyed to Chinese audiences through these translations. A mixed-method approach is utilised, combining a self-constructed diachronic corpus with detailed textual analysis and content coding using NVivo and WordSmith 6 to examine the linguistic, cultural, and historical variations in Chinese translations. This study uncovers two main findings. First, it challenges the common belief that early Chinese translations of Virginia Woolf’s works were uniformly conservative. Instead, it shows that some early translators actively engaged with Woolf’s feminist ideas, sometimes even emphasising them despite prevailing historical and ideological limitations. Second, the analysis reveals a pattern where co-translated works tend to prioritise fidelity, and sometimes even amplify feminist ideas, whereas individual female translators are more inclined to employ interpretive strategies that emphasise gender critique. Conversely, male translators frequently downplay or domesticate feminist elements. These findings suggest that translator identity and the structure of collaboration significantly influence ideological positioning, regardless of the historical period. This research contributes to feminist translation theory and Woolf scholarship by highlighting the significance of translator agency and collaboration in shaping feminist discourse through translation. Mon, 01 Sep 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38334 2025-09-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38303 Title: ‘Rethink the Title of Your Talk, and Possibly its Substance’: On Speaking (out) About Palestine, Genocide, and Genre Author(s): Squires, Claire Abstract: Framed by a meditation on border-crossing of people and of texts, this essay reflects on the genre of autofiction in relation to the geopolitical contexts of Palestine and global literary marketplaces, as well as outlining a specific example of academic censorship in the context of the 2023– genocidal war on Gaza. It brings together an examination of Palestinian/diaspora literary texts (including Atef Abu Said’s The Book of Gaza: A City in Short Fiction (2014) and Don’t Look Left: A Diary of Genocide (2023), Zaina Arafat’s You Exist Too Much (2020), Yara Hawari’s The Stone House (2021), Ibtisam Azem’s The Book of Disappearance (2024) and Isabella Hammad’s Recognising the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative (2024)) with inscriptions of the author’s own experience, through the lens of publishing studies and literary sociology. The essay explores, by and beyond reading, how resistance, solidarity and activism can occur, while remaining cognisant of geopolitical inequities and privilege. With a focus on the genre of ‘autofiction’, this essay articulates personal and professional questions of academic freedom, activism and solidarity in the face of genocide, blending lived experience with book historical approaches. Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38303 2026-08-27T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38225 Title: Reading the margins: investigating reading practices in early sixteenth-century Scotland Author(s): Pontini, Francesca Abstract: This dissertation examines the marginalia and other forms of readerly intervention found in early printed books owned and used in Scotland before and during the Reformation. It reconstructs how learned Scottish readers interacted with texts, demonstrating that their annotation practices formed part of a shared European scholarly culture. By analysing a corpus of annotated books preserved in Scottish and continental collections, the study identifies a consistent set of annotating tools—such as nota marks, manicules, keywords, and textual summaries—and writing practices which Scottish readers employed in ways comparable to their continental contemporaries. Methodologically, the thesis combines bibliographical and palaeographical analysis with approaches from the history of reading and intellectual history. Detailed case studies focus on William Scheves, readers associated with King’s College, Aberdeen—among them Hector Boece, John Vaus, and Theophilus Stewart and George Buchanan. The dissertation also includes anonymous or unknown readers whose annotations provide valuable evidence for understanding the Scottish cultural context. My thesis shows that learned Scottish readers of pre-Reformation books used a set of common annotating tools and writing practices which they shared with the mainstream of contemporary European scholarship. Through a close examination of marginalia across a range of theological, classical, and humanist texts, the study identifies recurrent features such as systematic nota marks, manicules, keywords, and schematic summaries that reflect the structured reading methods promoted in continental universities and humanist circles. These tools were not random scribal habits but deliberate aids to study, memory, and argumentation, revealing how Scottish readers approached books as active participants in a transnational intellectual culture. Their use of both secretary and italic hands, further demonstrate the permeability of Scottish scholarly practice to European models of learning. The consistency of these annotating techniques across diverse contexts—academic, ecclesiastical, and private—indicates that Scottish scholars were well-informed contributors to the methods and disciplines of scholastic and humanist scholarship. In tracing these practices, the thesis situates Scotland within a wider geography of reading that connected local academic communities to the evolving norms of Renaissance intellectual life. Wed, 01 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38225 2025-10-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38194 Title: Camden and Church Monuments Author(s): Vine, Angus Abstract: This article examines the epigraphic scholarship of William Camden through close readings first of his guidebook to Westminster Abbey, and then of his other works in which he discusses the histories of church monuments, epitaphs, and inscriptions. Camden emerges here as the pivotal figure between the continental epigraphic tradition, which sprung up in the mid-sixteenth century, and brought together philologically minded antiquaries focused on classical inscriptions, and a vein of specifically English church antiquarianism that appeared in the seventeenth century, and which turned instead to medieval and post-medieval remains, often with genealogical and heraldic motivations in mind. Camden’s epigraphic works have received little attention from modern scholars, certainly in comparison with either the Britannia or the Annales, but as this article shows, that neglect ignores both their significance for the history of scholarship and their considerable contemporary impact. Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38194 2026-06-25T00:00:00Z