Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland

McGill, Martha

doi:10.1017/9781787443662

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…99 The notion that ghosts might return similarly disappeared from medical and natural philosophical discourse: apparitions were framed as hallucinations. 100 This change in the status of ghosts vis-à-vis the late seventeenth century is not easily explicable with reference to changing ideas about the afterlife. There was no more hard-line enforcement of the Reformation doctrine that the dead went directly to heaven or hell, nor did intellectual culture suddenly reject the notion of an afterlife.…”

Section: Spiritual Corporeality and The History Of Ghostsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodies of earth and air: corporeality and spirituality in pre-modern British narratives of the undead

McGill

2022

Journal of Medieval History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholarship on the returning dead has tended to contrast corporeal revenants, or risen corpses, with incorporeal ghosts, or phantoms returning from the afterlife. This article argues that it is misleading to draw so clean a distinction between material and spiritual apparitions. Focusing on accounts discussed in Britain between c.1200 and c.1750, the article demonstrates that the bodies of the returning dead were persistently ambiguous. Popular stories endowed apparitions with both spiritual and corporeal qualities, while medieval and early modern theories about elemental bodies offered a philosophical framework for understanding how apparently insubstantial spectres could interact with the material world. The article further suggests that we might better understand the history of ghosts, and of pre-modern bodies generally, by attending to how understandings of 'spiritual corporeality' changed over time.

show abstract

Section: Spiritual Corporeality and The History Of Ghostsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bodies of earth and air: corporeality and spirituality in pre-modern British narratives of the undead

McGill

2022

Journal of Medieval History

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Daemonologie recast ghosts as demons, and Scottish theologians tended to follow his lead. 128 In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, however, there was renewed interest in supernatural stories. This followed an English pattern: accounts of witches, ghosts, and other supernatural phenomena were published as a defence against scepticism.…”

Section: Ghosts Had Largely Been Rejected By Protestants After the Rementioning

confidence: 99%

A Protestant Purgatory? Visions of an Intermediate State in Eighteenth-century Scotland

McGill¹

2018

The Scottish Historical Review

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The protestant afterlife is generally presented in binary terms, with departed souls going directly to either heaven or hell. However, the possible existence of an intermediate state for the dead was discussed by protestant theologians from the reformation onwards. This article traces the evolution of these debates in Scotland, with particular focus on the eighteenth century. The bishops Archibald Campbell, Thomas Rattray and George Innes produced tracts in support of the intermediate state. By the end of the century it had become a standard element of doctrine among the episcopalians, reflecting the formation of a more distinctive theological and liturgical identity, based on the teachings of the early church fathers. Presbyterians generally dismissed the idea as a papish conceit, but there were exceptions. Most notably, in the 1720s the minister William Ogilvie described a series of meetings with the ghost of Thomas Maxwell, Laird of Cool. His account framed the intermediate state as a sympathetic alternative to calvinist predestination, and spread to a wide audience when it was printed as a chapbook. As the episcopalian church declined and the Church of Scotland fragmented, there was greater scope for individuals to formulate their own theologies, potentially challenging traditional notions of what it meant to be a protestant.

show abstract

“…This was proclaimed all the more forcefully by Protestants. 9 In his 1597 Daemonologie, James VI argued that 'Ghostes and spirites' might have been plentiful in times of 'blinde Papistrie', but had practically disappeared from contemporary conversation. 10 Accused witches described meetings with dead people, but their interrogators were swift to dismiss these 'ghosts' as manifestations of the Devil.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ghosts confirmed the reality of the afterlife, revealed murders and ensured that lands and monies were properly distributed. 14 The stories had clear moral agendas. Some also had political import.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Statistical Accounts (1791-99 and 1834-35) interspersed geographical and topographical analysis with snippets about local beliefs, and there was a proliferation of works about traditional customs and legends. 33 Robert Chambers popularised various Edinburgh ghost stories, including modern-day ghost tour staples about Major Thomas Weir and George 'Bluidy' Mackenzie. 34 But the most marked surge of interest was in Highland ghosts.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Evolution of Haunted Space in Scotland

McGill

2022

Gothic Studies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article explores the popularisation of the concept of haunted space in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scotland. While earlier ghost stories were usually about the haunting of people, the rise of Gothic and Romantic literary aesthetics fuelled a new interest in both the Scottish landscape, and the dramatic potential of lurking spectres. Amid the upheaval of industrialisation and the Highland Clearances, and in a period when Scots were still wrestling with the implications of the 1707 Union, authors recorded stories of wandering ghosts as part of a broader movement to fashion a distinctive identity rooted in a specific cultural context. Against the frequently broad scope of academic literature on spectrality, this article draws attention to the crucial significance of contextual nuances and specific historical and social circumstances. In particular, it points to the fraught politics of loss and repossession in relation to the Highlands’ history of depopulation and modernisation, casting a fresh light on the historical events that have given shape to Scottish haunted space.

show abstract

Ghosts in Enlightenment Scotland

Cited by 4 publications

References 15 publications

Bodies of earth and air: corporeality and spirituality in pre-modern British narratives of the undead

Bodies of earth and air: corporeality and spirituality in pre-modern British narratives of the undead

A Protestant Purgatory? Visions of an Intermediate State in Eighteenth-century Scotland

The Evolution of Haunted Space in Scotland

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About