Home » Items tagged with 'Scottish literature'

Items tagged with 'Scottish literature'

Post: Bluebooks and Gothic Chapbooks [Part I]

Laura Kremmel is beginning the last year of her PhD at Lehigh University, completing a dissertation that considers the ways in which Romantic-era Gothic literature picks up the theories of late eighteenth century medicine. She … Continue reading

Post: Victorian Legacies: Sir Walter Scott in Context

by Emma Butcher The blow is struck—the lyre is shattered–the music is hushed at length. The greatest—the most various–the most commanding genius of modern times has left us to seek for that successor to his … Continue reading

Article: Walter Scott and James Skene

This essay contends that Skene, Scott’s amateur-artist friend, was often used as a visual research assistant for many scenes contained within the Waverley novels. Skene became an advisor to some of the earliest illustrations of Scott’s novels that were produced beyond Scotland. In the introduction to the fourth canto of Marmion, dedicated to Skene, Scott writes: ‘The shepherd, who in summer sun, | Had something of our envy won, | As thou with pencil, I with pen, | The features traced of hill and glen’. This glimpse of Skene sketching next to Scott reveals a significant aspect to their friendship: Skene’s sketches were used as aides-memoire, visual references or even inspirations to Scott’s literary imagination for many descriptive topographical or architectural passages within his novels. Through close readings of the novels, Scott’s correspondence and Skene’s own memoir, Hill establishes that Skene contributed signgiicant visual stimuli for a number of Scott’s works. Continue reading

Article: When King Arthur Met the Venus

The first edition of Bannerman’s Tales of Superstition and Chivalry (1802) contained an erotic engraving of a naked Venus figure, which was declared ‘offensive to decency’ by Scottish audiences in the poet’s native Edinburgh. Garner’s account investigates the controversy surrounding the engraving and the puzzling disparity between it and the ballad it illustrated: the Arthurian-themed ‘Prophecy of Merlin’. Using evidence from Bannerman’s correspondence with noted Scottish male publishers and antiquarians, this essay argues that decision to include the dangerous engraving was symptomatic of current anxieties surrounding a female-authored text which threatened to encroach on antiquarian and Arthurian enquiry. Continue reading

Post: Teaching Romanticism IV: Taught Masters

by Daniel Cook At this time of year we begin to field queries, and applications, for our Taught Masters programmes. As it happens, the postgraduate committee in the School of Humanities at Dundee have also … Continue reading

Post: Introductory Post: Blathering about Transatlantic Law and Literature

by Brian Wall Thanks to Anthony and the rest of the Romantic Textualities team for letting me chime in here. I’m planning on being a semi-regular contributor to the site whilst I dodge inquiries from … Continue reading

Post: Teaching Romanticism III: Scottish Literature

by Daniel Cook This semester I’m convening a new upper-level undergraduate module: Scottish Literature before 1900. A couple of years ago our resident Scottish literature expert, a highly affable and active George MacDonald scholar, David … Continue reading

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