Scottish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion

257 Pages·2017·8.593 MB·English

by  Carol Margaret Davison and Monica Germanà

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‘This collection of essays should be a “must” for those whose interests focus on
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the late Victorian cultural world, as it is observed through the lens of the
Gothic. In private or in academic and public libraries, this book will doubtless o
enjoy a long shelf life.’
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Benjamin F. Fisher, Professor Emeritus, University of Mississippi
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‘Very professionally edited by two world leaders in Gothic studies, this collection
i
offers well-written, sharply documented, and “heart of the matter” accounts by
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experts on each significant realm of the Victorian Gothic, along with an
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excellent bibliography of further readings. It is therefore a highly valuable book
for students of the Gothic world-wide.’

Jerrold E. Hogle, University Distinguished Professor, G
The University of Arizona
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The first multi-disciplinary scholarly consideration of the
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Victorian Gothic
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These fourteen chapters, each written by an acknowledged expert in the field, provide an i
invaluable insight into the complex and various Gothic forms of the nineteenth century. c
Covering a range of diverse contexts, the chapters focus on science, medicine, Queer theory,
imperialism, nationalism, and gender. Together with further chapters on the ghost story,
realism, the fin de siècle, pulp fictions, sensation fiction, and the Victorian way of death,
the Companion provides the most complete overview of the Victorian Gothic to date.
The book is an essential resource for students and scholars working on the Gothic,
Victorian literature and culture, and critical theory.
C
Andrew Smith is Reader in Nineteenth Century English Literature at the University of ana
Sheffield. His published books include The Ghost Story 1840–1920: A Cultural History dro
(2010), Gothic Literature (2007, revised 2013), Victorian Demons (2004) and Gothic Ml ScottiSh
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Radicalism (2000). o E
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of Gothic Literature (2013). He is the founder editor of Gothic Studies, the refereed journal of er Dy
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the International Gothic Association. v
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ào An Edinburgh Companion
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ISBN 978-1-4744-0819-6
9 781474 408196 Edited by
Cover image: Abney Park Cemetery, London © William Hughes. Carol Margaret Davison and Monica Germanà
Cover design: McColmDesign.co.uk
Scottish Gothic
Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic
Series Editors
Andrew Smith, University of Sheffield
William Hughes, Bath Spa University
This series provides a comprehensive overview of the Gothic from the
eighteenth century to the present day. Each volume takes either a period,
place, or theme and explores their diverse attributes, contexts and texts via
completely original essays. The volumes provide an authoritative critical tool
for both scholars and students of the Gothic.
Volumes in the series are edited by leading scholars in their field and make a
cutting-edge contribution to the field of Gothic studies.
Each volume:
• Presents an innovative and critically challenging exploration of the
historical, thematic and theoretical understandings of the Gothic from the
eighteenth century to the present day
• Provides a critical forum in which ideas about Gothic history and
established Gothic themes are challenged
• Supports the teaching of the Gothic at an advanced undergraduate level and
at masters level
• Helps readers to rethink ideas concerning periodisation and to question the
critical approaches which have been taken to the Gothic
Published Titles
The Victorian Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion
Andrew Smith and William Hughes
Romantic Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion
Angela Wright and Dale Townshend
American Gothic Culture: An Edinburgh Companion
Joel Faflak and Jason Haslam
Women and the Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion
Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik
Scottish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion
Carol Margaret Davison and Monica Germanà
Visit the Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic website at:
www.edinburghuni versitypress.com/series/EDCG
Scottish Gothic
An Edinburgh Companion
Edited by
Carol Margaret Davison and
Monica Germanà
Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in
the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject
areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-
edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce
academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our
website: edinburghuniversitypress.com
© editorial matter and organisation Carol Margaret Davison and
Monica Germanà, 2017
© the chapters their several authors, 2017
Edinburgh University Press Ltd
The Tun – Holyrood Road
12(2f) Jackson’s Entry
Edinburgh EH8 8PJ
Typeset in 10.5/13 Sabon by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4744 0819 6 (hardback)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0820 2 (webready PDF)
ISBN 978 1 4744 0821 9 (epub)
The right of Carol Margaret Davison and Monica Germanà to be
identified as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright
and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1. Borderlands of Identity and the Aesthetics of Disjuncture:
An Introduction to Scottish Gothic 1
Carol Margaret Davison and Monica Germanà
2. ‘The Celtic Century’ and the Genesis of Scottish Gothic 14
Nick Groom
3. The Politics and Poetics of the ‘Scottish Gothic’ from Ossian
to Otranto and Beyond 28
Carol Margaret Davison
4. Robert Burns and the Scottish Bawdy Politic 42
Hamish Mathison
5. Scottish Gothic Drama 59
Barbara A. E. Bell
6. Scottish Gothic Poetry 75
Alan Riach
7. Calvinist and Covenanter Gothic 89
Alison Milbank
8. Gothic Scott 102
Fiona Robertson
9. Gothic Hogg 115
Scott Brewster
vi Contents
10. ‘The Singular Wrought Out into the Strange and Mystical’:
Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Transformation
of Terror 129
Robert Morrison
11. Gothic Stevenson 142
Roderick Watson
12. J. M. Barrie’s Gothic: Ghosts, Fairy Tales and Lost
Children 155
Sarah Dunnigan
13. The ‘nouveau frisson’: Muriel Spark’s Gothic Fiction 168
Gerard Carruthers
14. Scottish Gothic and the Moving Image: A Tale of Two
Traditions 181
Duncan Petrie
15. New Frankensteins; or, the Body Politic 195
Timothy C. Baker
16. Queer Scottish Gothic 208
Kate Turner
17. Authorship, ‘Ghost-filled’ Islands and the Haunting
Feminine: Contemporary Scottish Female Gothic 222
Monica Germanà
Notes on Contributors 236
Index 240
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our series editors, Andy Smith (University of
Sheffield) and Bill Hughes (Bath Spa University), for inviting us to col-
laborate on this research project, which, we hope, will pave the way for
more work in the field of Scottish Gothic.
We also owe special thanks to Edinburgh University Press’s Jackie
Jones, Publisher, and Assistant Commissioning Editor, Adela Rauchova,
for her ongoing support throughout the publishing process, and the
Press for their financial support towards the illustrations in the volume.
We are also indebted to a number of agencies, scholars and colleagues
who have helped us in various ways. Special thanks go to the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for a Standard
Research Grant (2008–11) in support of research undertaken towards
this volume, Alex Warwick (University of Westminster) for granting
research time to support the development of this book, the University
of Windsor for research support in the form of a Humanities and Social
Sciences Research Grant (2015), Kate Turner (University of Westminster)
for completing work on the collection’s index, and Ashley Girty (McGill
University) for editorial assistance on our joint Introduction.
Last but not least, we would like to thank the collection’s authors
for their tremendous patience and commitment to this project, and
their insightful contributions that will offer innovative ways of thinking
about Scottish Gothic for generations of future scholars.
Carol Margaret Davison
(University of Windsor)
Monica Germanà
(University of Westminster)
To my beloved parents,
Alexandra Mc Lean and William Davison,
whose intense relationship to their Scottishness
resonates at the heart of this book.
C. D.
To Elliott Patrick Germanà Murray (b. 14 January 2016),
for his spectacular entry into the world alongside this book.
M. G.
Chapter 1
Borderlands of Identity and the
Aesthetics of Disjuncture:
An Introduction to Scottish Gothic
Carol Margaret Davison and Monica Germanà
‘How can a “Scottish Gothic” be conceived?’ So asks Nick Groom
in his provocative chapter in this collection, in the face of a histori-
cal, theoretical and political conundrum identified recently by other
critics. In his article devoted to ‘Shakespeare, Ossian and the Problem of
“Scottish Gothic”’, for example, Dale Townshend (2014) wrestles with
the category of the Scottish Gothic given its union of seemingly irrecon-
cilable terms whose yoking, he suggests, is counter-intuitive. According
to Townshend, ‘Scotland’s political and historical relationship to things
“Gothic” . . . [is] a vexed and complicated issue’ that renders discussion
of the anachronistic category of the ‘Scottish Gothic’ a fraught enter-
prise. One must adopt, he says, ‘a greater sensitivity to [the] political
history’ of the eighteenth century (2014: 227), when the Goth and the
Celt/Scot were generally positioned as discrete ethnographic categories.
The idea of a ‘Gothic Scotland’, however, did not prove difficult to
conceptualise in the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth
when a Romanticised portrait of Scotland furnished the nation’s most
prevalent cultural image. As Ian Duncan astutely observes in regard to
the politics of literary history, it was ‘Scotland’s fate to have become a
Romantic object or commodity’ rather than a site of Romantic produc-
tion (Duncan et al. 2004: 2). Such an objectification was ironic given
the existence of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and its rationally
fuelled preoccupations. That objectification was also, notably, expressed
in two forms – in both the lighter and darker, more Gothic, shades of
Romanticism. Despite the differences in these two manifestations, the
Highlands served in both as a synecdoche for a Scotland that exemplified
two primary attitudes towards ‘British’ history and rapid modernisation.
In the first, tourist literature of the era ‘deprecate[d] Scotland’s modern
developments’, imagining the Scottish nation as ‘immune to the passage
of time’ (Grenier 2005: 136, 135). This immunity served an agenda