Scottish Literature 1 Course Handbook 2018-19
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Disfigurement and Disability: Walter Scott's Bodies Fiona Robertson Were I Conscious of Any Thing Peculiar in My Own Moral
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by St Mary's University Open Research Archive Disfigurement and Disability: Walter Scott’s Bodies Fiona Robertson Were I conscious of any thing peculiar in my own moral character which could render such development [a moral lesson] necessary or useful, I would as readily consent to it as I would bequeath my body to dissection if the operation could tend to point out the nature and the means of curing any peculiar malady.1 This essay considers conflicts of corporeality in Walter Scott’s works, critical reception, and cultural status, drawing on recent scholarship on the physical in the Romantic Period and on considerations of disability in modern and contemporary poetics. Although Scott scholarship has said little about the significance of disability as something reconfigured – or ‘disfigured’ – in his writings, there is an increasing interest in the importance of the body in Scott’s work. This essay offers new directions in interpretation and scholarship by opening up several distinct, though interrelated, aspects of the corporeal in Scott. It seeks to demonstrate how many areas of Scott’s writing – in poetry and prose, and in autobiography – and of Scott’s critical and cultural standing, from Lockhart’s biography to the custodianship of his library at Abbotsford, bear testimony to a legacy of disfigurement and substitution. In the ‘Memoirs’ he began at Ashestiel in April 1808, Scott described himself as having been, in late adolescence, ‘rather disfigured than disabled’ by his lameness.2 Begun at his rented house near Galashiels when he was 36, in the year in which he published his recursive poem Marmion and extended his already considerable fame as a poet, the Ashestiel ‘Memoirs’ were continued in 1810-11 (that is, still before the move to Abbotsford), were revised and augmented in 1826, and ten years later were made public as the first chapter of John Gibson Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart. -
AJ Aitken a History of Scots
A. J. Aitken A history of Scots (1985)1 Edited by Caroline Macafee Editor’s Introduction In his ‘Sources of the vocabulary of Older Scots’ (1954: n. 7; 2015), AJA had remarked on the distribution of Scandinavian loanwords in Scots, and deduced from this that the language had been influenced by population movements from the North of England. In his ‘History of Scots’ for the introduction to The Concise Scots Dictionary, he follows the historian Geoffrey Barrow (1980) in seeing Scots as descended primarily from the Anglo-Danish of the North of England, with only a marginal role for the Old English introduced earlier into the South-East of Scotland. AJA concludes with some suggestions for further reading: this section has been omitted, as it is now, naturally, out of date. For a much fuller and more detailed history up to 1700, incorporating much of AJA’s own work on the Older Scots period, the reader is referred to Macafee and †Aitken (2002). Two textual anthologies also offer historical treatments of the language: Görlach (2002) and, for Older Scots, Smith (2012). Corbett et al. eds. (2003) gives an accessible overview of the language, and a more detailed linguistic treatment can be found in Jones ed. (1997). How to cite this paper (adapt to the desired style): Aitken, A. J. (1985, 2015) ‘A history of Scots’, in †A. J. Aitken, ed. Caroline Macafee, ‘Collected Writings on the Scots Language’ (2015), [online] Scots Language Centre http://medio.scotslanguage.com/library/document/aitken/A_history_of_Scots_(1985) (accessed DATE). Originally published in the Introduction, The Concise Scots Dictionary, ed.-in-chief Mairi Robinson (Aberdeen University Press, 1985, now published Edinburgh University Press), ix-xvi. -
Freedom and Responsibility in the Bride of Lammermoor
Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 31 | Issue 1 Article 11 1999 Freedom and Responsibility in The rB ide of Lammermoor Gerry H. Brookes Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Brookes, Gerry H. (1999) "Freedom and Responsibility in The rB ide of Lammermoor," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 31: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol31/iss1/11 This Article is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Gerry H. Brookes Freedom and Responsibility in The Bride of Lammermoor Sir Walter Scott's Bride of Lammermoor (1819) ends in a bizarre disaster. Lady Ashton has driven her daughter to the brink of insanity in an effort to force her to give up her engagement to Lord Ravenswood and to take Frank Hayston of Bucklaw instead. Despite her loyalty to Ravenswood, Lucy Ashton is intimidated and cannot proclaim her feelings. After Ravenswood denounces her for her disloyalty, the wedding to Bucklaw proceeds, but when the bride and groom retreat, she stabs him. They find her hiding in a comer, "her eyes glazed, and her features convulsed into a wild paroxysm of insanity."l The groom survives and will say nothing, but Lucy dies shortly thereafter. Raven swood appears at her funeral and then, on his way to face her brother's chal lenge, drowns in quicksand. -
'A' That's Past Forget – Forgie': National Drama and the Construction of Scottish National Identity on the Nineteenth
Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 44 Article 5 Issue 2 Reworking Walter Scott 12-31-2018 ‘A’ that’s past forget – forgie’: National Drama and the Construction of Scottish National Identity on the Nineteenth-Century Stage Paula Sledzinska University of Aberdeen Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Theatre History Commons Recommended Citation Sledzinska, Paula (2019) "‘A’ that’s past forget – forgie’: National Drama and the Construction of Scottish National Identity on the Nineteenth-Century Stage," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 44: Iss. 2, 37–50. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol44/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “A’ THAT’S PAST FORGET—FORGIE”: NATIONAL DRAMA AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY ON THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY STAGE Paula Sledzinska For centuries, theatre has provided a space for a discussion of social, cultural and political affairs. The link between theatre and politics is of a particularly critical kind, as it is often within the dramatic texts, and on the stage, that the turmoil of revolutionary transformations, historical tragedies, and future visions were portrayed or challenged, and the shapes and images of communities, or indeed nations, explored.1 The -
Gregory Burke's Black Watch
Scottish Polysyzygiacal Identity and Brian McCabe’s Short Fiction Jessica Aliaga-Lavrijseni Abstract Contemporary Scottish literature has increasingly involved complex negotiations between the different Scottish identities that have proliferated since the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. At the present time, the concept of identity postulated is no longer essentialist and monologic, like the one associated to the two halves of the traditional ’Caledonian antisyzygy’, but positional and relational, ’polysyzygiacal’, to use Stuart Kelly’s term. As this article shows, Brian McCabe’s short fiction explores Scottish identitarian issues from a renewed multifaceted and dialogic perspective, fostering an ongoing debate about what it means to be Scottish nowadays, and contributing to the diversification and pluralisation of literary representations of identity. Key words: polysyzygiacal identity, diversification, literary representations, Brian McCabe “A world is always as many worlds as it takes to make a world.” —Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural (2000: 15) “I am rooted but I flow” —Michael, in V. Woolf’s The Waves (1977: 69) Introduction: The Genre of the Short Story in Scotland and the Caledonian Antisyzygy Contemporary Scottish literature has increasingly involved complex negotiations between the different Scottish identities that have proliferated since the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties (March 2002: 1). Especially in the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the (transmodern) conflicts triggered off by globalisation and glocalisation, as well as by the development of communication technologies, have further affected identity construction. But this whole process of the redefinition of identities has always been considered an ongoing process, since cultural identity is “a matter of becoming” (Hall 1993: 394). -
The Tragedy of Lucy Ashton, the Bride of Lammermoor
Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 19 | Issue 1 Article 8 1984 The rT agedy of Lucy Ashton, the Bride of Lammermoor Brian Hollingworth Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hollingworth, Brian (1984) "The rT agedy of Lucy Ashton, the Bride of Lammermoor," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 19: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol19/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Brian Hollingworth The Tragedy of Lucy Ashton, the Bride of Lammermoor Bride Lammermoor stands out among, the Haverley novels in the tightness of its construction and the controlled force of its narration. Dictated while Scott was in severe pain, and almost unaware of what he was ,1 it nevertheless im- presses the reader by its coherence and its melancholy impact. In a mere thirty-five chapters, most told by Scott's standards, he charts with unusual sureness of tone and intention the tra::;ic tale of the death of Lucy Ashton and the Fall of the House of Ravenswood. It might be thought, therefore, that this book might have escaped that general neglect of Scott's work which often seems based on the erroneous assumption that Scott is a long-winded bore with very little of serious importance to say. Yet, some favorable notice by modern critics,2 it has received the attention it deserves as a genuinely tragic novel--an outstanding example of Scott's response to historical change, and his ability to transmute this response into literary art. -
Scottish Literature and Periodization Juliet Shields University of Washington
Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 43 | Issue 1 Article 2 5-1-2017 Introduction: Scottish Literature and Periodization Juliet Shields University of Washington Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Shields, Juliet (2017) "Introduction: Scottish Literature and Periodization," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 43: Iss. 1, 3–7. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol43/iss1/2 This Symposium is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INTRODUCTION: SCOTTISH LITERATURE AND PERIODIZATION Juliet Shields The way we organize the study of literature is changing. Until comparatively recently, it was normative for scholars to specialize in the literature of a particular time and place—for instance Victorian Britain or Colonial America—and for English majors to take survey courses that traced the development of a national literature over time, in addition to classes on genres, topics, or methodological approaches. Diminishing budgets and increasingly globalized campuses, among other factors, have begun to challenge this diachronic model of disciplinary organization. Periodization has also come under theoretical scrutiny, with Ted Underwood and others arguing that it is neither a natural nor an inevitable way to organize our discipline. As just one alternative to periodization among many, Underwood points to “the discipline of history itself, where the looser concept of ‘area’ occupies the institutional role that periods occupy in literary studies.”1 This symposium examines the role that periodization plays in shaping our understanding of Scottish literary history. -
47 from Lucy to Lucia
European Journal of English Language and Literature Studies Vol.8, No.4, pp.47-53, June 2020 Published by ECRTD- UK Print ISSN: 2055-0138(Print), Online ISSN: 2055-0146(Online) FROM LUCY TO LUCIA: WALTER SCOTT’S THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR AS ADAPTED BY DONIZETTI Dr. Mikako Ageishi Professor of English literature, Department of English and American Literature, Komazawa University, Tokyo, Japan Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT: The paper explores the treatment of major female characters in three versions of the narratives most famously known as Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor: the original incident on which the novel was based, the novel itself, and the opera, Lucia di Lammermoor, composed by Gaetano Donizetti. Because of the popularity of Donizetti’s opera, a female character, Lucia, and Lucy in the novel version, is considered a central character in both narratives. However, the novel’s plot focuses on the male protagonist, Edgar Ravenswood, and his revenge story. In a novel with remarkably few female characters, it is striking that Lady Ashton; holds arguably, the most power in the narratives, contrasting starkly with Lucy’s relative feebleness. Through an examination of the respective narratives’ different though intersecting treatments of women’s desire, power, and madness, I argue that the opera’s Lucia gains a different kind of power through Lady Ashton’s madness. KEYWORDS: Walter scott, the bride of lammermoor, donizetti, madness, women’s power INTRODUCTION Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), the Scottish author was one of the most famous writers of his day, and his literary works were popular all over Europe. -
Historical Literature of Early Scotland Benjamin T
Studies in Scottish Literature Volume 26 | Issue 1 Article 10 1991 Historical Literature of Early Scotland Benjamin T. Hudson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Hudson, Benjamin T. (1991) "Historical Literature of Early Scotland," Studies in Scottish Literature: Vol. 26: Iss. 1. Available at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol26/iss1/10 This Article is brought to you by the Scottish Literature Collections at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Studies in Scottish Literature by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Benjamin T. Hudson Historical Literature of Early Scotland As the birds gather at their feast in Sir Richard Holland I s The Buke of the Howlat, they are joined by the Rook, representing a Gaelic bard, who ir ritates the company with his monologue of genealogies, lists of kings and constant demands for food.! Finally he is driven away by popular demand, but not before "making many lies." The student of early Scottish history can sympathize with the Rook's audience as the records of Gaelic Scotland occa sionally resemble productions from the Tower of Babel. Otherwise sober historical documents are embellished with myths, legends and literary allu sions. They suggest a flourishing tradition of historical and pseudo-historical writing in early Scotland that would continue to, and fmd expression in, the historical writings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Yet there has been little effort to identify extant pieces of the earlier Scottish secular literature and less consideration of the influence of those writings on later medieval, or even Renaissance, Scottish literature. -
Rethinking the Traditional Periodisation of the Scots Language Joanna Kopaczyk
Rethinking the traditional periodisation of the Scots language Joanna Kopaczyk 1 The aims of the paper Drawing timelines and setting boundaries between stages in language history is an arbitrary exercise. As Görlach warns in a footnote to his periodisation of the language of advertising, ‘[a]ll period boundaries in historical disciplines are open to objections’ (2002a: 102, fn.1), of which the author of the present paper is very much aware. Languages change gradually and therefore their historical development is a continuum, rather than a set of chronologically ordered neat and homogenous boxes, divided by clear-cut borders. Such borders create a certain illusion of well-defined stages in language history; therefore, they should be based on firm language-internal and extra-linguistic criteria, allowing the temporal continuum to be ‘chopped up’ in a systematic and justifiable manner into more manageable chunks. Periodisation is useful because it allows observing both focal points on the timeline as well as transitional periods. It also creates a framework of reference for comparative purposes: either in a diachronic perspective within a single language, or in a cross-linguistic perspective, when juxtaposing two or more languages at a given stage in history. In this paper I would like to reconsider the most popular, one may say, traditional periodisation of the Scots language (Aitken 1985: xiii), using extra-linguistic and intra-linguistic criteria. One of the reasons why such an analysis seems worthwhile is that certain labels applied to the stages in the history of Scots, for instance the ‘Middle Scots period’, seem to escape such criteria and create an anachronistic picture of Scots. -
The Author of Waverley, with His Various Personas, Is a Highly
Promoting Saint Ronans Well: Scotts Fiction and Scottish Community in Transition MATSUI Yuko The Author of Waverley, with his various personas, is a highly sociable and com- municative writer, as we observe in the frequent and lively exchanges between the author and his reader or characters in the conclusions of Old Mortality1816 and Redgauntlet1824 , or in the prefaces to The Abbot1820 and The Betrothed1825 , to give only a few examples. Walter Scott himself, after giving up his anonymity, seems to enjoy an intimate author-reader relationship in his prefaces and notes to the Magnum Opus edition. Meanwhile, Scott often adapts and combines more than one historical event or actual person, his sources or originals, in his attempt to recre- ate the life of a particular historical period and give historical sense to it, as books like W. S. Crocketts The Scott Originals1912 eloquently testify, and with the Porteous Riot and Helen Walker in The Heart of Midlothian1818 as one of the most obvious examples. Both of these characteristics often tend to encourage an active interaction between the real and the imagined, or their confluence, within and outwith Scott's historical fiction, perhaps most clearly shown in the development of tourism in 19th century Scotland1. In the case of Saint Ronan’s Well1824 [1823], Scotts only novel set in the 19th century, its contemporaneity seems to have allowed that kind of interaction and confluence to take its own vigorous form, sometimes involving an actual commu- nity or other authors of contemporary Scotland. Thus, we would like to examine here the ways in which Scott adapts his sources to explore his usual interest in historical change in this contemporary fiction and how it was received, particularly in terms of its effect on a local community in Scotland and in terms of its inspiration for his fellow authors, and thus reconsider the part played by Scotts fiction in imagining and pro- moting Scotland in several ways, in present and past Scotland. -
The Bride of Lammermoor
The Bride of Lammermoor Sir Walter Scott The Bride of Lammermoor Table of Contents The Bride of Lammermoor......................................................................................................................................1 Sir Walter Scott..............................................................................................................................................1 INTRODUCTION TO THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR.........................................................................2 CHAPTER I...................................................................................................................................................7 CHAPTER II................................................................................................................................................14 CHAPTER III..............................................................................................................................................19 CHAPTER IV..............................................................................................................................................24 CHAPTER V................................................................................................................................................28 CHAPTER VI..............................................................................................................................................35 CHAPTER VII.............................................................................................................................................40