The Monastery: a Romance

Scott, Walter

doi:10.1093/oseo/instance.00219115

Cited by 3 publications

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“…As a member of the Avenel household reports to the monks, the widowed Lady of Avenel has in her possession (we never learn how she came by it) a "thick black volume with silver clasps." 18 Readers' view of the Lady's reading matter is mediated by an illiterate character, Elspet, for whom this book is illegible, an object to be described rather than a discourse to be paraphrased. When the monks hear Elspet's report, they suspect that the volume is an English translation of the Bible, a translation they consider heretical, and attempt its confiscation.…”

Section: Scott's "Perilous Volume"mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Book as Fearful Thing

Fielding

Lynch

2020

The Unfinished Book

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Some books seem to have the power to possess their readers. This chapter traces the figure of this fearfully empowered book in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century contexts, when such books challenged more familiar celebrations of literacy and of the press’s power to disseminate enlightenment. Using a concept of “magic materiality,” taking our cue from legends conflating the printer Johann Faust with the sorcerer Dr Faustus, we explore the association, in Scottish gothic novels especially, of printed books with fearsome potency and political danger. In Walter Scott’s The Monastery, we show, a “black book” with an eerie life of its own represents both a Protestant Bible and a book of spells. Finally, we consider a historical episode shaped by this literary phenomenon, demonstrating how over the course of the 1793 sedition trials in Edinburgh, copies of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man came to resemble the magic books of the era’s supernatural fiction.

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Section: Scott's "Perilous Volume"mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Book as Fearful Thing

Fielding

Lynch

2020

The Unfinished Book

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“…Frederick Valletta notes that there was a surge of English stories about ghostly battles after the Civil War, and argues that this was linked to a contemporary fear that the ghosts of soldiers were returning, having not had proper burials. 133 The Scottish ministers collecting and publishing stories of ghostly battles may not have been presenting them as accounts of the returning dead, but the stories might nonetheless have stemmed from ghost beliefs, and might have been read as such by sections of their audience. The interest in special providences hinted at the possibility that ghosts, too, might be transformed into divine messengers.…”

Section: Seventeenth-century Providentialismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They were included in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer, but were judged unscriptural and removed from the 1552 and 1662 versions. 133 The Scottish Book of Common Prayer, controversially imposed in 1637, signified a partial return to the 1549 version, including prayers of oblation and invocation. 134 The Nonjurors split into two camps, the 'usagers' and the 'non-usagers'.…”

Section: Theological Controversy and The Laird Of Coul's Ghostmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…She appears as a beautiful woman 'with a voice of ineffable sweetness'. Unlike the ghost in 'The Tapestried Chamber' or Alice's wraith, the White Lady is not really a dead person; Scott compares her to a brownie or fairy, and she explains that she is Something betwixt heaven and hell-Something that neither stood nor fell- 133 Semi-transparent and clad in white, however, the figure taps into ghost stereotypes.…”

Section: The Ghosts Of Walter Scott and James Hoggmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aberdeen professor of theology James Garden explained in the 1690s that 'Megg Mullach, & Brownie ... are two ghosts, which (as it is constantly reported) of old haunted a family in Strathspey of the name of Grant' 132. Meg was usually presented as a female; John MacCulloch described her as the 'female Brownie', and William Grant Stewart suggested that she and Brownie might have been man and wife 133. However, she could also take a masculine form, and might even serve as a defender of men's rights.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland

McGill

2018

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This thesis analyses perceptions of ghosts in Scotland, with particular focus on the period from 1685 to c. 1830. According to traditional wisdom, this was a time when society was becoming progressively more rational, with magical beliefs melting away under the glare of Enlightenment scholarship. However, this thesis argues that ghosts actually rose to a new cultural prominence in this period, to the extent that Scotland came to be characterised as a haunted nation. The first chapter provides 'apparitions ... no longer played an important part in the serious debates of the 6

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Talking to peasants: language, place and class in British fiction 1800–1836

HODSON

2023

English Language and Linguistics

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This study uses the Dialect in British Fiction 1800–1836 database to chart the changing representation of the language of the labouring poor during the early nineteenth century. It finds that, broadly speaking, while the voices of the labouring poor are sometimes represented in novels at the start of the period, most novels evince little interest in either the linguistic nuances of these characters’ speech, or the access to their lives and thoughts that this speech provides. Around the middle of the period, there is a rapid increase in the fictional representation of the voices of the labouring poor specifically in novels set in rural Scotland and Ireland and – at least in some novels – this is connected to a greater interest in the lives and perspectives of these characters. By the end of the period, while there is a broadening out into extraterritorial varieties and a continuing interest in the voices of the rural labouring poor of Scotland and Ireland, these developments have not translated in any substantial way to an interest in either the rural labouring poor of England or Wales, or the urban labouring poor of any nation or region. Overall, the study demonstrates how fiction can be used to provide an insight into changing attitudes towards speakers and language varieties.

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The Monastery: a Romance

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

The Book as Fearful Thing

The Book as Fearful Thing

Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland

Talking to peasants: language, place and class in British fiction 1800–1836

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