Maddy Cunliffe
Doctoral Student in Literature - Maddy’s thesis is entitled 'Lowland Superstitions and Economics in the Prose Fictions of James Hogg'
Research Project Title:
Lowland Superstitions and Economics in the Prose Fictions of James Hogg
Supervisors:
Dr Meiko O'Halloran, Dr Jennifer Orr + Dr David Stewart
Contact Details:
Email: m.j.cunliffe3@newcastle.ac.uk
Research Interests
- Scottish Metropolitan and Regional Periodicals
- Oral Storytelling and Superstition
- British Economic Historiography
- The Intersection between Provincial Enlightenment and ‘Moderate’ Presbyterian Theology
- Labouring-class Literary Institutions and Reading Histories
Brief Outline of Research Project:
My project examines the influence of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century political economy on James Hogg’s prose fictions. I investigate how theories surrounding population, poor relief, and educational reform circulated in the Scottish Lowland communities Hogg hailed from - through newspapers, magazines and ‘mutual improvement’ societies – and explore how this discourse informs the themes of his short fictions. Focusing on Hogg’s periodical contributions from 1810 to 1835, my project demonstrates how their blending of economic realism with superstitious, oral tales contends with the anti-economism dominating Romantic literary culture, especially in Blackwood’s Magazine. I reveal how, by transforming Lowland, community-based culture into a site for political and economic debate, Hogg critiques his contemporaries’ paternalistic models of labouring-class education, and fosters modes of intellectual engagement resistant to class-consciousness.