From Jacobitism to Romanticism, The (re)invention of Scotland in visual and material culture (P01525)

? Credit Points : 20 ? SCQF Level : 11 ? Acronym : ACE-P-P01525

In recent years, literary historians and to a lesser extent, art historians, have written of(f) aspects of Scottish culture as part of a 'myth' fabricated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Perhaps most controversially for Scots, part of their national dress - the tartan kilt - has been (mis)understood as an English invention of the late eighteenth century.

This course aims to get to grips with the peculiarities and particularities of these so-called 'romantic myths' of Scotland as they were (re)invented in visual and material form. It will go beyond the theoretical framework of Roland Barthes' Mythologies to reinstate their antiquity and also their much-neglected basis in reality. We will examine a number of paintings by distinguished alumni of the Scottish School, including works by Henry Raeburn and David Wilkie. But the course privileges a thematic approach to these Scottish artists and their painted output rather than a biographical one. Our timeframe will be hinged on key historical events in Scotland's history: from the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions, to the visit of George 4th to Edinburgh in 1822 and on into the later nineteenth century when the 'land of cakes and whisky', the 'region of mist and snow' became the favoured retreat of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The visual and material culture generated in response to these historical events will be extended into that surrounding the literary phenomena that was the publication and illustration of Sir Walter Scott's poems and novels. Scott's many representations - in portraits, marble busts and sculptures and his monument in Princes Street - will be studied as part of the transformation of Scotland into 'Scott-land'.

Entry Requirements

? This course is not available to visting students.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

History of Art, (School of Arts, Culture and Environment, Schedule A)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : Postgraduate

? Delivery Period : Not being delivered

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 11 weeks

? Additional Class Information : Semester 1 or 2, at times to be arranged

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

It is intended that studends acquire a good knowledge and understanding of the material studied through preparing a series of short seminar presentations on selected topics, reading the texts recommended in the bibliography, week by week and engaging actively in general discussion during seminars. The students are urged to use archive, gallery as well as library sources and thus get used to documentary research and the analysis of primary sources from the beginning of the MSc degree. One-to-one tutorials are used to help them select the subject of the course essay and to monitor the progress of their research and thinking. The other purpose of these tutorials is to aid them make the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate study and to develop their self-confidence and sense of their potential contribution as art historians.