Wednesday, September 06, 2006

"Doubleness" in Scots Literature

To examples given in lecture of the critical commonplace notion of "Doubleness" in Scotland --
a debilitatingly fractured culture chracterised by an infamous doubleness, a conception that has ‘constrained Scottish criticism in its insistence on the idea of a tradition defined by internal oppositions', and of Scottishness as a ‘damaged identity'; in turn, contextualising this writing in terms of international cultural processes brings into relief the complexities of the Scottish situation,
-- which included Highlands & Lowlands, Catholic & Scots Calvinist, the paradoxical oppositions in the witches' chaunt in Shakespeare's Macbeth, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jeckell & Mr. Hyde, and, primarily, Scotland as colonised & colonising, add as creatively significant Calvinism's Elect & Damned ....

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