130 Years
Citizen of the World or Native Heath - Rob Roy as a test case for Scott's view of the Enlightenment
Thursday 16th June 2016
Murray Pittock MAE FRSE is Bradley Professor and has been in senior leadership roles at the University of Glasgow since 2008: currently he is Pro Vice-Principal. He also serves as Chair of the Governance Board of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs, is co-Chair of the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance, Chair of Trustees of the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures, a Trustee of the National Trust for Scotland and a board member of NISE.eu which brings together research on national identity from 50 research institutes across Europe.
Synopsis:
The lecture addresses how-perhaps more than any other of his novels- Scott’s
Rob Roy interrogates the stadial history model that Scott inherits from the Scottish Enlightenment, both by demonstrating that locality changes personality and that women are in many ways marginalized by the new world of politeness and sentiment that the Enlightenment did so much to build. Being a ‘Citizen of the World’ is a grand claim to universal understanding, but it is shown to be flawed by the specific demands of history and place.
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