The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

by James Hogg

Book Overview

One of the supreme masterpieces of Romantic fiction and Scottish literature, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is a terrifying tale of murder and amorality, and of one man's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192835904
• ISBN13: 9780192835901
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 7.5" x 5.0"

Customer Reviews

Doppleganger

Is Robert a schizophrenic to be pitied or a psychopath to be loathed? Similar to Dostoyevsky's psychodrama, The Double, we find the exhileration of the psyche brought bare before our perusal. James Hogg's two part account of a "sinner" (a predestined and chosen one albeit) is on surface a derisive gothic narrative of the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination. The taut trance-like animated lustre it creates is exceptionally haunting. The author succeeds in invoking the sublime and supernatural within the fragile make-up of a psyche twisted and enlightened by the religious zeal it professes. If Percy Shelley found the tale as insightful as any upopn the workings of the mind it was primarily because of the tenacity of the precepts which justify the sinner's actions and provoke his behavior. A landscape of horrific charge stages a mind terrifying and a depth where foundations are dug to the root and these dragged with a vengence upon the highest peaks of a reprobates mind. Similar to the Marquis De Sade - studies on sexual allusions between the protagonist and the devil are amusing and should be dabbled into - in its use of reason to legitimize otherwise deplorable executions of conscience; this narrative strikes a balance between two accounts of the same fratricide and ensuing murders, where we are left dizzy and confused and thrown into a state of mind persecuted by truth and the mind's ability to obviate the most simple excesses as they are practiced and divined. At times we question the existence of the double, and on other occasions we are in awe of his personality and presence. The second account is of greater psychological depth and makes one confide with the mind of a murderer propelled by his faith. However we cannot but continue to query our sensibility imputing greed and a rationalizing tendency at play. The author's ambiguity make for rewarding continued readings for this is indeed a psychological analysis of exceptional powers. Beautiful and unbelievable, wonderful and frightening. A pleasure to read and a wonder to study. Of related study is Anthony Burgess' Enderby Trilogy, where the novel and Hogg are assimilated; the execution of the novel is very much in tune with the madness of James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner.

A Scottish Psycho

Another faustian tale from the turn of the nineteenth century, Confessions forms an interesting contrast with other works in the same vein, like The Monk of Matthew Lewis. The dualities of this novel go to extremes, with shadows of the shadows, but is richer in psychological insight than it is in critical morality.The first part of the novel sets the stage with an account of the tale from an objective and social view. Minor characters give their own perspective of the action, without dominating it into subjectivity. "Here's what happened, or at least how it seemed to the good folk who saw it happening." The second part, the actual confessions, is where the story becomes interesting - a first person account of a psychotic murderer, justifying his actions every step of the way. He walks us through the crimes with clear rationality, keenly sensible if we accept his misguided premises. The key to the illness reading, for me, came from his bafflement at the crimes committed where he was completely unconscious of what he was doing. This is no Faust, trading his soul for power. This is a man who has simply lost control of his reason. Reading the novel as a morality play reduces the impact - damn, that devil sure is a bad fellow. Reading it as a case study, a peek into the thoughts of a man who has genuinely lost his mind and personified his illness into an evil, immoral, silver-tongued changeling, makes Confessions a fascinating piece of work.My only complaint was the phonetic brogue which makes some small portions of the prose almost unreadable.

A Possessing Novel

James Hogg's "Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a claustrophobic, terrifying spectacle of a novel. First published anonymously in 1824, the novel centers around the manuscript of an obscure Scottish Laird who lived in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Robert Wringhim is a well-educated, but illegitimate child of the Laird of Dalcastle. He leaves the estate to live with his mother, also estranged from the estate. Raised by his adopted father, a zealous Calvinist preacher, Robert grows to despise his biological family. When, on his 18th birthday, God reveals through the preacher, that Robert is one of the elect, the true action of the novel begins.The novel has an unusual and provocative structure: an editorial recounting of the story envelops the text of Robert Wringhim's actual 'memoirs and confessions'. The novel's temporal structure hinges on the 1707 Act of Union which annexed Scotland to England, forming Great Britain. With the editorial apparatus (and its debt to an oral tradition), and Robert's first person manuscript, Hogg seems to question the methods by which history is written and passed down. Several versions of Robert's story, from himself, his contemporaries, and the 'editor' who lives over 100 years after the events gives a startling, disturbingly incoherent vision of history.This novel is great for its wranglings with the problems of reconciling money with morality, and religion with the law. Hogg's primary concern is with the religious issue of antinomianism - the notion that God's elect are free from the dictates of human law. Robert's election and subsequent relationship with the wildly mysterious, fantastically rendered Gil-Martin put antinomianism to the harshest test. "The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner" is a rather short novel which I recommend highly. It is an entertaining historical, religious, psychological rollercoaster. Its blend of sublimely dark humor and social comment is a high achievement in any century.

A Strange Case Indeed

Hogg's novel is about 150 years ahead of its time. Published in 1824, the work has everything readers of post-modern novels could ask for, including clustered narratives, self-reflexive point-of-view, unreliable narrators, unsympathetic-protagonist, etc. Hogg is engaging in a highly playful exercise, yet at the same time the novel can be read as an entirely chilling depiction of what may happen to the human psyche when it is given absolutely free-reign. The story takes place in Scotland in the early 18th century, a time of political and religious foment. It chiefly concerns the religious "progress" of Robert Wingham. Robert's mother is a religious enthusiast who has left the household of her husband, George Colwan, laird of Dalcastle, because he does not meet her stringent standards of pious behavior. Before she leaves, she delivers a son, whom Colwan names after him and names him his sole heir. A year after she has left she delivers another son, Robert, whom the editor-narrator who first tells the story is too polite to say is illegitimate, but it's evident by all appearances and intimations that Robert is the son of Lady Colwan and the Reverend Wringhim, a dour, intolerant, "self-conceited pedagogue," who is the polar opposite of the easy-going laird. Reverend Wingham undertakes the instruction of young Robert and eventually adopts him. Robert, like his father, is a cold fish, who abhors the presence of women and anything else that he thinks will lead him to sin. Young George, on the other hand is naturally open and fun-loving, engaging in the "normal" activities young men of the time preferred. This attitude piques the ire of Robert, who sees any activity that is not directly related to religion as frivolous. He starts showing up uninvited whenever and wherever George and his friends get together. When they try to play tennis, Robert stands in George's way and interferes with the game. The same thing happens when they play a rugby-like game on a field outside Edinburgh. Even after George loses patience and punches Robert , the younger brother keeps on insinuating himself, uninvited, every time George and his friends meet. When the Reverend Wingham learns that his precious boy has been roughed up, he incites his conservative faction to retaliate against the liberals with which George and his friends are in league. A full scale riot ensues, reminiscent of the opening scene of Romeo and Juliet. Neither the editor nor Wingham ever give full assent to the fantastic elements in the story. Events are depicted in as realistic a light as possible, which lends weight to the storyline and keeps things from drifting off into never-never land. Everything about this novel "works." The editor's framing narrative subverts Wingham's "confession" narrative at just the right points, so the subversion actually adds to the solidity and texture of the work as a whole and adds to its plausib

a chilling tale of fantacism

Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified sinner is the story of the illigitamate son of a Scottish laird who is convinced by the devil to act on his own spite and rage and commit murder -- but Hogg adds a clever twist (I don't want to spoil anything by saying what it is) that leaves the reader wondering...One of the great things about this book is that its serious subject matter is balanced by a dose of humor -- I was surprised to find myself giggling through the first fifty pages which tell of the laird's marriage to a reluctantly religious woman.This is a must-read for anyone interested in nineteenth-century fantasy, but its detailing of the making of a fanatic is still hauntingly relevent today...