The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg. An English gothic novel in the context of moral philosophy

Abstract

The article is concerned with the unique ethical and aesthetic features of gothic fiction between the 18th and 19th centuries, and its representation in James Hogg’s novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Lofty ideals in the novels by A. Radcliff, M. G. Lewis, and C. Maturin often showed strong ties with moral philosophy (its concepts of benevolence, sin as the opposite of freedom, and sense and sensibility as the sources of virtue), permeating 18th-century discussions about morality along with reflections on the elevated and the picturesque. On the artistic plane of the gothic novel, these ideas create two principal oppositions, corresponding to ethical and aesthetic levels: ‘the natural and the unnatural’, and ‘freedom and non-freedom’. They are also present in Hogg’s novel, although represented in a different way. While the ‘natural/unnatural’ dichotomy is mostly a matter of changing the angle for the story’s perception (so that the reader might follow the events from the viewpoint of the pursuer rather than the pursued), though not without interesting aesthetic derivatives, the ‘freedom/non-freedom’ opposition marks a more modern aesthetical transition from the outside world to a fictional one.