Literature in English, British Isles Commons^™

‘How The Erde Is Of A Figure Round’: Mapping Space In The Buik Of Alexander The Conqueror, Katherine H. Terrell

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the image of the world, the concept of a mappamundi, and comments on particular regions and countries, in Gilbert Hay's poem The Buik of Alexader the Conquerour, to argue that Alexander’s mapping, like his military campaigns, reconfigures space as territory that is amenable to exploitation, and that Hay's poem, the only Alexander poem to mention Scotland, shows an historical process, the "translatio imperii," "that will eventually circle back around to a Britain (and a Scotland) no longer imbued with treachery, but ready to assume power."

How To Fight Evil: Lessons For The Church On Spiritual Warfare From Bram Stoker’S Dracula, Bronwyn M. Gray

Liberty Theological Review

Dracula by Bram Stoker is an amazing piece of writing that is often misrepresented. Some Christians dismiss it because of the skewed belief that to enjoy life and literature is somehow less holy, and Dracula is also dismissed because of the judgment that books with blood, horror, and monsters cannot possibly grow us in holiness or teach us anything good. Not only is it forgotten that God created us to enjoy beauty, but also, to the second reason, the Bible itself contains blood, horror, and monsters; indeed, the Bible contains much more! Another unfortunate reality is that in the Western …

The Fall Of Númenor (2022) By J.R.R. Tolkien, Edited By Brian Sibley, Douglas C. Kane

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review, by Douglas C. Kane, of The Fall of Númenor (2022) by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Brian Sibley

Bureaucratic Sorceries In The Third Policeman: Anthropological Perspectives On Magic & Officialdom, Alexandra Irimia

Languages and Cultures Publications

This article discusses The Third Policeman through the lens of a dialectic of enchantment and disenchantment that is firmly anchored in the history of anthropological discourse on bureaucracy (Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, Tambiah, Herzfeld, Graeber, Jones). From this angle, Flann O’Brien’s novel is examined as an aesthetic illustration of an essentially anthropological argument: although bureaucracy has been described as an eminently rational form of social systematisation, regulation, and control (since Weber), it also functions, paradoxically, as a symbolic site for irrationality and supernatural occurrences, haunted by madness, mystery, and delusion. The novel is intriguing partly due to its nonchalant, humorous entwining of …

Esther Inglis, Octonaries, Upon The Vanitie And Inconstancie Of The World, Edited From Folger Ms V.A.91, Jamie Reid Baxter, Georgianna Ziegler

Studies in Scottish Literature

This article provides the first-ever printed text of the poem-sequence discussed in the preceding article, Octonaries, upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the Worlde (1600), by the Franco-Scottish poet and calligrapher Esther Inglis (1571-1624). The text given here has been transcribed from one of two manuscripts of the Octonaries in the Folger Library, MS V.a.91. Variant readings from two further manuscripts, Folger MS V.a.92, and New York Public Library Spencer Coll. MS. 14, along with some glosses, are given in the following section. NOTE: The text here now (June 13) incorporates a few final editors' corrections inadvertently omitted …

Esther Inglis, Octonaries: Textual Notes And Glosses, Jamie Reid Baxter, Georgianna Ziegler

Studies in Scottish Literature

These notes record variant readings from two further manuscripts of Esther Inglis's Octonaries, Folger MS V.a.92, and New York Public Library Spencer Coll. MS. 14, collated against the text transcribed in the preceding item, Folger Library, MS V.a.91. The notes also indicate the places where the order of the octonaries varies between manuscripts and also include a few glosses on Scots words likely to be unfamiliar to non-Scottish students or scholars. NOTE: the current version (June 25 2023) incorporates minor corrections. Please refresh your browser if you downloaded an earlier version. SSL Ed.

Appendices To Inglis, Octonaries: Titles And Dedications From Other Mss, Mss Containing The ‘G.D.’ And ‘Velde’ Sonnets, Who Was ‘G.D.’?, Jamie Reid Baxter

Studies in Scottish Literature

Three Appendices to the preceding article on Esther Inglis's Octonaries: (1) transcribe the Titles and Dedications in other manuscripts; (2) record the five MSS containing the ‘G.D.’ and ‘Velde’ Sonnets discussed in the article; and (3) review possibilities for the identity of 'G.D.', proposing that it was George Douglas, a gifted vernacular poet and translator of Boethius.NOTE: the current file (August 9 2023) includes further minor corrections. Please refresh your browser if you downloaded a previous version. SSL Ed.

Robert Watson’S Lectures At St. Andrews: Logic, Rhetoric And Metaphysics, Rosaleen Greene-Smith Keefe

Studies in Scottish Literature

Examines the contributions to rhetoric of Robert Watson (1730?-1781), Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics at the University of St. Andrews from
1756-1778, and Principal from 1778-1781, based on surviving manuscript sources at St Andrews, and demonstrates the philosophic diversity in rhetorical theory at this time, showing differences among the Scottish literati on the epistemology of language and the origin of grammar, identifying some contrasts and connections between Watson and his near contemporaries Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, and George Campbell, and suggesting his distinctive place in the development of 18th century rhetoric and the history of English studies.

Walter Scott, The Two Sicilies, And Events ‘Of Recent Date’, Graham Tulloch

Studies in Scottish Literature

Traces Walter Scott's interest in Sicily and Naples through his earlier writing up to his travels to both in 1831-1832, discusses his treatment of Neapolitan history and politics in essays in 1816 and 1829, especially his accounts of Joachim Murat (1767-1815), king of Naples from 1808-1815, and in Masaniello, leader of the popular rising in 1647-48, and suggests how these interests connect to Scott's unfinished short novel Bizarro, written in 1832 but first published in 2008, so unavailable to earlier Scott scholars.

Burns And The Altar Of Independence: A Question Of Authentication, Patrick Scott, Gerard Carruthers

Studies in Scottish Literature

Describes and illustrates the only known manuscript of Robert Burns's short 'Poetical Inscription for an Altar to Independence'; notes ongoing disputes over the authenticity of several other of Burns's political poems from the 1790s; traces the manuscript's provenance from the Kern sale in 1929 (when it was cataloged as genuine) to Sotheby's in 1982 (when it was cataloged as a forgery), to its current location in the J.M.Shaw Collection, Florida State University Libraries, where more recent internal records catalogue it as authentic; points out evidence confirming its authenticity; and provides the first collation of the manuscript against the text published …

Burns And Jean Armour, Ellisland, 1788: A Letter Fragment In The Roy Collection, Patrick Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Describes and illustrates a two-sided fragment of Robert Burns's letter from Ellisland to his wife Jean Armour, in Muchline, from September 12, 1788, concerning her move to join him, and news for his brother Gilbert. Only four letters from Burns to Jean are now known; the main body of this letter was printed by Waddell in 1869, and was later recorded in the Honresfield Collection (now the Blavatnik-Honresfield Collection), but this section, now in the G. Ross Roy Collection at the University of South Carolina, was snipped off by the then-owner Mary MacLaughlan Nicolson for a collector before Waddell saw …

Scott’S Reparative Land Ethic, Nigel Leask

Studies in Scottish Literature

A review essay discussing Susan Oliver's "important and convincing" book Walter Scott and the Greening of Scotland: Emergent Ecologies of a Nation (Cambridge University Press, 2021), noting Scott's land ethic and active role in managing his estate at Abbotsford and in afforestation, and suggesting that Oliver's book presents "a cumulative literary history of Scotland’s ecologies," so that Scott's poetry and novels "assume a new relevance for 21st century readers".

A New Study Of Cunninghame Graham, Carla Sassi

Studies in Scottish Literature

Surveys the steady growth of interest in the Scottish fin-de-siècle writer, adventurer, socialist M.P., and nationalist leader R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936), and reviews Lachlan Munro's "timely and important study" R. B. Cunninghame Graham and Scotland: Party, Prose, and Political Aesthetic (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), judging it an "inspiring and innovative investigation," and suggesting that Cunninghame Graham's "construction and performance of his identities as a writer, adventurer, politician and activist should indeed be seen as an artistic expression in its own right."

‘Scoto-Shamanistic’: The Collected Works Of Kenneth White, Richie Mccaffery

Studies in Scottish Literature

A review-essay discussing the work and influence of the expatriate Scottish poet and cultural theorist Kenneth White, based on vols 1-2 of the new Edinburgh University Press edition of White's Collected Works, edited by Cairns Craig (2021, paperback 2023), placing White in a line of Scottish polymath internationalist writers, from Buchanan and Urquhart, through Miller and Carlyle, to Geddes and MacDiarmid.

Books Received And Noted, Patrick Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Brief reviews or notices of some recent books about Scottish literature, Scottish writers, and related topics.

Contributors To Ssl 48:2

Studies in Scottish Literature

Brief biographical notes on contributors to the current journal issue.

Robert Burns To Maria Riddell, A Lost Burns Manuscript And A Victorian Facsimile, Patrick Scott, Ronnie Young

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reviews the textual history of Robert Burns's brief letter to Maria Riddell, in spring 1795, in Dumfries, mentioning the miniature portrait by Alexander Reid; notes that the manuscript, owned in the late 19th century by Dr Thomas C.S. Corry of Belfast, and later by John Gribbel of Philadelphia, cannot now be located; and describes and illustrates the facsimile made of it in 1864 for Vincent Brooks in the Autographic Mirror, now the only source of this letter manuscript available to the Glasgow editorial team for the forthcoming Oxford edition of Burns's Correspondence.

Review Of Placing Charlotte Smith, Eds Elizabeth A. Dolan And Jacqueline M. Labbe, Heather Heckman-Mckenna

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Placing Charlotte Smith edited by Elizabeth A. Dolan and Jacqueline M. Labbe, written by Heather Heckman-McKenna

Review Of Female Husbands: A Trans History, By Jen Manion, Jeremy Chow

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This review evaluates Jen Manion's Female Husbands: A Trans History.

Review Of The Life And Legend Of Catterina Vizzani: Sexual Identity, Science And Sensationalism In Eighteenth-Century Italy And England, By Clorinda Donato, Ula E. Lukszo Klein

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Review of The Life and Legend of Catterina Vizzani: Sexual Identity, Science and Sensationalism in Eighteenth-Century Italy and England, by Clorinda Donato, written by Ula Lukszo Klein. Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, Liverpool University Press, 2020, 347 pp., 3 b/w images. ISBN: 978-1-789-62221-8

Review Of The Novel Stage: Narrative Form From The Restoration To Jane Austen, By Marcie Frank, Kathleen E. Urda

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

A review of Marcie Frank's The Novel Stage: Narrative Form from the Restoration to Jane Austen by Kathleen E. Urda

Negotiating Gender, Representing Landscape: Teaching Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard’S Letters, Journals And Watercolours From The Cape Colony (1797–1801), Lenka Filipova

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The article focuses on Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard’s letters, journals and watercolours that she produced during her stay at the Cape Colony (1797–1801). Combining a series of tasks focused on close reading of Barnard’s work and a critical discussion of the historical context, the article provides a teaching strategy to examine her work with respect to the gendered discourse of the eighteenth century, and her approach to the Cape landscape and its inhabitants which both employs and, significantly, subverts contemporaneous conventions. More specifically, the tasks draw attention to Barnard’s use of ‘the modesty topos’ and the way she uses rhetorical …

Teaching Mary Wollstonecraft's Travelogue Of Historical Trauma, Annette Hulbert

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Abstract: I teach Mary Wollstonecraft’s Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) in an undergraduate English literature course on “Survival Narratives of the Eighteenth Century” at the University of California, Davis. The aim of this course is to show how significant perilous voyages were to the ways in which writers in eighteenth-century Britain imagined and interpreted their world. The course draws from the burst of new scholarship on rethinking the traditional “rise of the novel” narrative in imperial, oceanic, and global contexts and develops interpretive frameworks for the eighteenth century’s changing relationship to commerce and …

Ripped From The Headlines: Teaching Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Letters In The Context Of 21st-Century Controversies, Susan Spencer

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In the long shadow of 9/11 and the ongoing COVID pandemic, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters connect with the lived experience of today’s students, especially the cluster of eight letters dated 1 April 1717. By emphasizing parallels between Montagu’s observations and the students’ own lives, The Turkish Embassy Letters can add a modern dimension to the eighteenth century in general, challenges of gender, and texts written in and about the Muslim world.

Teaching Eliza Fay's Original Letters From India (1817) Through Classroom Editing, Lacy Marschalk

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Travel writing is an ever-growing area of interest in eighteenth-century studies, but it can be difficult to teach. Students often find the writing dry and unrelatable, and faculty who have had little experience with travel writing in their own educations may not know which texts would prove useful to their courses. In this article, I discuss the travel narrative with which I've found the most pedagogical success, Eliza Fay's Original Letters from India (1817). Fay's initial journey to India includes a range of captivating adventures, including encounters with Marie Antoinette in Paris, bandits in Egypt, and Hyder Ali in Calicut, …

Concise Collections: Teaching British Women Travelers, Tiffany Potter

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

No abstract provided.

Cooking Up Knowledge: Materiality, Recipes, And Jane Barker’S A Patch-Work Screen For The Ladies, Carolin Boettcher

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

The recipes included in Jane Barker’s A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies (1723) appear to be some of the most jarring and out-of-context inclusions in the narrative. This article explores the relationship between Barker’s novel and the form of the recipe collection in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on both a material and an epistemological level. The entanglements between recipes and the patchwork screen not only point to the processes of constructing and conveying knowledge, but also to the materiality of these processes as Galesia and the Lady build the patchwork screen. Her focus on the materiality of …

Postures After The Antique In Eighteenth-Century Portraits Of Women, Lauren K. Disalvo

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This paper re-examines the relationship between eighteenth-century portraiture and the antique where women adopt the postures of floating female figures from Pompeiian wall paintings in eighteenth-century portraiture. I argue that eighteenth-century floating portraits afforded their female sitters an opportunity to assert classical knowledge while adhering to typical conventions of femininity.

The Enigma Of Goldberry: Tolkien’S Narrative Braiding Of Genre- And Symbol-Related Vocabularies In The Withywindle River-Daughter, Derek Simon

Journal of Tolkien Research

The enigma of Goldberry continues to stimulate diverse readings of her narrative in the Withywindle Cottage episode. The root contention of this article is that Goldberry’s enigma is textured through Tolkien’s complex narrative braiding of multiple genre- and symbol-specific vocabularies woven together throughout her episode. The effort to interpret the enigma of Goldberry needs to be grounded in the philological, lexical, and thematic signifiers circulating in her storyline. These mythopoeic signifiers are variously conveyed by the genre- and symbol-related vocabularies influencing her enigma in the narrative. Where much of the critical commentary has justifiably considered a single strand of source …

Preface To Ssl 48.2, Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the range of periods the journal covers, introduces current contents, pays brief tribute to the Hume scholar Donald T. Siebert and the Burns collector Frank R. Shaw, and alerts readers to editorial and publishing changes to be announced in the coming year.