Kirkyard Romanticism

Book excerpt: Examines Scottish Romantic writers’ shared focus on the ideological import of an imagined national dead Describes the role played by death and the grave in Scottish Romantic cultural nationalism Explores engagement of authors including James Hogg, John Galt and John Wilson with contemporary debates around anatomy, contagion, psychology and migration, providing new contexts for canonical Scottish Romantic texts Considers how kirkyard Romanticism helped to shape understandings of national identity both at home and abroad The early nineteenth century saw the dead take on new life in Scottish literature; sometimes quite literally. This book brings together a range of Scottish Romantic texts, identifying a shared interest an imagined national dead. It argues that the publications of Edinburgh-based publisher William Blackwood were the crucible for this new form of Scottish cultural nationalism. Scottish Romantic authors including James Hogg, John Wilson and John Galt, use the Romantic kirkyard to engage with, and often challenge, contemporary ideas of modernity. The book also explores the extensive ripples that this cultural moment generated across Scottish, British and wider Anglophone literary sphere over the next century.