Coyer, Megan Joann (2010) the Ettrick Shepherd and the Modern Pythagorean: Science and Imagination in Romantic Scotland
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Coyer, Megan Joann (2010) The Ettrick Shepherd and the Modern Pythagorean: science and imagination in romantic Scotland. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/2097/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The Ettrick Shepherd and the Modern Pythagorean: Science and Imagination in Romantic Scotland Megan Joann Coyer Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Scottish Literature Faculty of Arts University of Glasgow August 2010 Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................i Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................iii Introduction................................................................................................................1 Section 1: Journeys of the Embodied Soul ........................................................... 11 Chapter 1: Fairy Flights and Ugly Bards ............................................................14 Chapter 2: The Dreaming Shepherd and The Pilgrims of the Sun ...................38 Section 2: The Significant Flesh.............................................................................74 Chapter 3: Phenomenology and Phrenology: ‘A Modern Pythagorean’ in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine ......................................................................76 Chapter 4: Dreaming, Drunkenness, and Damnation: The Influence of Hogg’s Confessions ........................................................................................................122 Section 3: Narratives of Science and Superstition .............................................153 Chapter 5: Disembodied Souls and Exemplary Narratives.............................156 Chapter 6: A Psychological Curiosity..............................................................185 Epilogue: Imagination and Science......................................................................205 General Bibliography.............................................................................................214 Manuscript Bibliography.......................................................................................237 Chronological Bibliography of Periodicals and Annuals ............. See Inserted CD Abstract This thesis focuses on predisciplinary dialogue in the Romantic periodical press, and in particular, on the influence of medical thinking and the science of the mind on the writing of James Hogg (1770-1835). The applicability of twentieth-century psychology to Hogg’s masterpiece, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), is largely responsible for Hogg’s entrance into the modern world canon, and the tension between rational scientific and traditional supernatural explanations in Hogg’s corpus is now a critical commonplace. However, critics have been hesitant to recognise Hogg’s voice in the proto-psychological polemics of his era. The ongoing publication of the Stirling/South Carolina Research edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg has catalysed revisionist scholarship in Hogg studies and is leading to a growing recognition of his pervasive connections within the diverse intellectual culture of the era. This thesis examines his connections to the little-known Glaswegian surgeon and writer, Robert Macnish (1802-1837). Like Hogg, Macnish was an active contributor of short prose fiction and poetry to the Romantic periodical press, and at the same time, he worked as a practicing surgeon in Glasgow, publishing three popular medical texts: The Anatomy of Drunkenness (1827), The Philosophy of Sleep (1830), and An Introduction to Phrenology (1836). These texts engage with popular debates in the periodical press, including the reciprocal relationship between the mind and body, particularly regarding altered-states of consciousness, as well as methodologies in the science of the mind. Macnish’s literary contributions to Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country under his pseudonym, ‘A Modern Pythagorean’, deal with similar themes, and by examining Hogg’s literary and biographical connections to Macnish, a clearer picture of Hogg’s engagement with medical thinking and the science of the mind is created. Macnish’s dedication of a dream-poem to ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’ and the utilisation of an extract from Hogg’s poem The Pilgrims of the Sun (1815) as a headpiece in The Philosophy of Sleep (1830) are the starting points for the first section, while Karl Miller’s assertion in Cockburn’s Millennium (1975) that Hogg’s Confessions may have influenced Macnish’s Blackwoodian prose fiction is examined in the second section. The final section questions why Macnish chose to use ‘James Hogg’ as his nom de guerre for his short prose tale, ‘A Psychological Curiosity’, published in The Scottish Annual (1836), and examines Miller’s i assertion that Macnish’s Blackwoodian tale, ‘The Metempsychosis’ (1826), may have influenced Hogg’s tales, ‘On the Separate Existence of the Soul’ (1831) and ‘Strange Letter of a Lunatic’ (1830), both published in Fraser’s . It is concluded that Hogg and Macnish shared numerous preoccupations and influenced one another’s writings over the course of many years. The connection between moral virtue and health pervades both authors’ corpuses, as the relationship between cause and effect is literalised through physically and therefore mentally transformational experiences. The engagement of both authors with the debate surrounding the explained supernatural has a profound impact on their writings, and both are preoccupied with the methodologies of the science of the mind, including the metaphysics of the common sense philosophers and the ‘bump-reading’ of the phrenologists. By the end of his career, Macnish fully ascribed to the explanatory power of phrenology. In contrast, Hogg remains resistant to place full faith in modern conceptualisations of natural law, while also forwarding an embodied theory of the imagination, the mind, and the soul. For Hogg, one comes closest to a divine understanding of the natural world through aesthetic experience and imaginative belief, which ready the mind and body for the joys of the world to come. Finally, Hogg, as an autodidactic peasant-poet, was himself an object of study in the science of the mind, but an examination of the relationship of his life and writing to that of Macnish reveals that he was both ‘a psychological curiosity’ and psychologically curious. ii Acknowledgments I would like to thank the trustees of the National Library of Scotland and the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, and Special Collections at the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh for allowing me to quote from and cite manuscripts held in their collections. I am also grateful to Cambridge Scholars Publishing and Pickering & Chatto for allowing me to reproduce material published in the chapters I contributed to The Apothecary’s Chest: Magic, Art & Medication , ed. by Konstantina Georganta, Fabienne Collignon, and Anne-Marie Millim (2009) and Liberating Medicine, 1720-1835 , ed. by Tristanne Connolly and Steve Clark (2009). This thesis would not have been possible without the funding I received from the Overseas Research Scheme and the Faculty of Arts at the University of Glasgow, and I would also like to thank the British Association for Romantic Studies for funding a period of my research at the National Library of Scotland through the Stephen Copley Postgraduate Research Award. The Department of Scottish Literature has been my home away from home for nearly five years and has provided an incredibly supportive environment. In particular, my supervisors, Dr. Kirsteen McCue and Dr. Gerard Carruthers, have provided invaluable advice and guidance, as well as continual inspiration. I would also like to thank Mrs. Joyce Dietz for all her kind assistance. To those in the postgraduate research room, you all made it seem so much easier! Finally, I would like to thank my family, and in particular my parents, Ronald and Rebecca Coyer, for their constant love and support. Any success of mine is really a success of yours. iii Introduction When I was a youth, I was engaged for many years in herding a large parcel of lambs, whose bleating brought the whole Sturdies of the neighbourhood to them, with which I was everlastingly plagued; but, as I was frequently weaving stockings, I fell upon the following plan: I catched every sturdied sheep that I could lay my hands on, and probed them up through the brain and nostrils with one of my wires, when I beheld with no small degree of pleasure, that, by this simple operation alone, I cured many a sheep to different owners; all which projects I kept to myself, having no authority to try my skill on any of them; and it was several years before I failed in one instance. 1 James Hogg, ‘The Ettrick Shepherd’,