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Introduction

The Scottish Novel after Scott

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 July 2021

Juliet Shields
Affiliation:
University of Washington
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Summary

Introduction: Walter Scott’s tales of chivalry and adventure inaugurated a masculinized Scottish romance tradition that celebrated a sublime and heroic version of Scotland. Nineteenth-century Scotswomen responded to Scott’s influence by establishing a countertradition of unromantic or even antiromantic representations of Scotland. Their novels challenge the long-standing claim that Scotland lacked any equivalent to the English realist novel. In turning from the past to the present and from the sublimity of Scott’s Highland landscapes to farmhouses, factories, and suburban villas, Scottish women writers brought romance to everyday life, illuminating the magnificence of the mundane. Drawing on the evangelical discourses emerging from the splintering of the Presbyterian Church in 1843, they represented fiction as a form of spiritual comfort, an antidote to the dreary monotony and petty frustrations of daily existence.

Type
Chapter
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Scottish Women's Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century
The Romance of Everyday Life
, pp. 1 - 32
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Introduction
  • Juliet Shields, University of Washington
  • Book: Scottish Women's Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century
  • Online publication: 27 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009000048.001
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  • Introduction
  • Juliet Shields, University of Washington
  • Book: Scottish Women's Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century
  • Online publication: 27 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009000048.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Juliet Shields, University of Washington
  • Book: Scottish Women's Writing in the Long Nineteenth Century
  • Online publication: 27 July 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009000048.001
Available formats
×