James Hogg's Private memoirs and Confessions of a justified sinner : intimations of the beyond

Abstract

James Hogg's Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner offers a striking example of the ability of 'individual talent' to reshape traditional themes in a remarkably singular manner. While acknowledging this text as a work of Gothic fiction, regard will be had to its singularity in its unique refashioning of themes such as the double and the Faustian pact. By introducing an element of doubt into the equation, Hogg gives these established themes in a less than orthodox treatment. The result is a novel that may justifiably be accounted one of the most outstanding works of 'fantastic' literature. The first chapter of this dissertation will therefore explore the work in the light of Todorov's 'fantastic'. The structural and thematic complexity of the text will become increasingly evident. The second chapter will bring poststructuralist and psychoanalytic theories to beat for what they may contribute toward a reading of the text and the fantastic as it is manifested therein. The question of the possibility of transcendence will be addressed. For although the fantastic constantly strives against its bounds and challenges the limits of language by mercilessly exposing them, it can never free itself from language - but can only work its subversion from within. The inarticulable 'beyond' is a tantalising suggestion that remains forever inaccessible to symbolic language, an absent presence that eternally eludes capture. The pursuit is therefore necessarily an endless one, resisting closure.