English hegemony/Scottish subjectivity

First Sentence

Colonized peoples struggle for "permission to narrate," according to Edward Said. That is, they battle to tell their own tale, and thus to assert a reality distinct from that imposed by the intrusive power. In this dissertation, I trace the efforts of nineteenth-century Scotland's authors to retrieve and assert a specifically Scottish tale, one that will enable Scots to maintain their separate subjectivity while yet participating in England's alluring narrative of bourgeois economic mobility. The tale they retrieve is a vigorous narrative based on Calvinism. Across the dissertation, I focus on successive attempts by Scott, Hogg and Stevenson to precipitate nineteenth-century Scotland's pervasive Calvinist ideology into the national consciousness, and to make it function as a buttress against cultural colonization.

Description

Tracks the strategic use of Calvinism to establish Scottish difference in the nineteenth century. Looks particularly at Scott, Hogg, and Stevenson. Texts include: Old Mortality, The Heart of Midlothian, The Brownie of Bodsbeck, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, "Thrawn Janet," "The Merry Men," The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and The Master of Ballantrae.

Subjects