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J.B. Pick Biography

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“In Confessions of a Justified Sinner James Hogg is neither identified with, nor overwhelmed by, the darkness in the universe, nor does he suffer from hatred or despair. He sees the cause of Wringhim's disintegration as an inner weakness which chooses to identify with false doctrine. Since Wringhim lives in illusion, he is easy meat for a master practitioner of it. Hogg himself, on the other hand, is confident of his personal wholeness. He repudiates extreme doctrine from a basis of robust common sense, and his recognition of the power of the diabolical sublime does not endanger his own sense of solid worth. He retains a forth-right good-will which shows itself in cheerful endorsement of those characters in the book who accept life and enjoy themselves.”

Common SenseDiabolicalFalse DoctrineJames HoggRobert Wringhim
Book:The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction
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“Folk-tales and ballads conceive of Elfland with a different notion of time to our own. Its people mirror the activities of our world as if to mock or distort them, and to our eyes seem immortal. They affect our world, bringing benefit or harm, but these results are not consonant with our rules, and may resemble the arbitrary operation of luck or chance. Although men may interact with these folk, they can neither understand nor trust them. The Border Ballads in general are ready to accommodate similtaneously a theology of expiation, reward and punishment, and an Elfland which has no moral imperatives, and interpenetrates our own in unpredictable ways, even inserting off-spring among us by means of the changeling.”

BalladsFolktalesChangelingElflandBorder Ballads
Book:The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction
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“Of course freedom for Hyde proves another form of bondage for Jekyll, just as in Hogg's book Wringham's 'Election' results not in liberation, as he imagines, but slavery to Gil-martin. For Jekyll as for Wringham there is a continual development and deterioration, so that in the end he finds himself going to sleep as Jekyll and waking as Hyde, with no control over events. He is mortally afraid that 'the balance of my nature might be permanently overthrown, the power of voluntary change be forfeited, and the character of Edward Hyde become irrevocably mine.”

Robert Louis StevensonEdward HydeHenry JekyllJames HoggRobert WringhimGil Martin
Book:The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction
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“In Confessions of a Justified Sinner James Hogg is neither identified with, nor overwhelmed by, the darkness of the universe, nor does he suffer from hatred or despair. He sees the cause of Wringhim's disintegration as an inner weakness which chooses to identify with false doctrine. Since Wringhim lives in illusion, he is easy meat for a master practitioner of it. Hogg himself, on the other hand, is confident of his personal wholeness. He repudiates extreme doctrine from a basis of robust common sense, and his recognition of the power of the diabolical sublime does not endanger his own sense of solid worth. He retains a forthright good-will which shows itself in cheerful endorsement of those characters in the book who accept life and enjoy themselves.”

False DoctrineJames HoggRobert Wringhim
Book:The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction
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“A son of the Free Church Manse brought up to Calvinism, he adopted at Oxford first rationalist philosophy, and then the social asumptions of the English establishment, and often writes as if he were in fact descended from a long line of Cotswold squires. His last work of fiction, Sick Heart River gives a lucid account of his own development, and seems to me to be a deliberate effort to reconcile himself with life and death throught the charcter of Edward Leithen, of whom he says, 'it is possible to keep your birth-right and live in a new world - many have done it.' But not, I think, without acquiring a permanent inner loneliness and sense of exile.”

ExileCalvinismOxford UniversityFree ChurchJohn BuchanEdward LeithenEnglish EstablishmentEnglish SquireSick Heart RiverSon Of The Manse
Book:The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction
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