Talk:The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

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Unless someone can justify the inclusion of the uneccesary, unsourced and unsupported apologia for Calvinism against the author's supposed misinterpretation thereof, I'll just go ahead and wipe it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.212.133.209 (talk) 15:02, 15 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Plot Summary Needs tidying up, tone is far too informal and contains moronic asides.

It is incorrect to state that there are three narrators; there is an editor's prologue, the "confessions" themselves and then an editor's epilogue. Also, it may well be gothic in feeling and in plot, but it was probably too late to be included in the canon of "Gothic novels"; there should be some indication of this.

The spelling in this document is atrocious.

204.128.192.3 23:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC) J. Marcus Xavier[reply]

Re:

This is a critique of the book--not information about the book per se. (And it is POV). Must conform to NPOV policy.

I have taken the liberty to edit POVity. Would appreciate feedback on the changes as well.

--JJ

PS Please look and see if you can include the following information in order to expand the article:

"Confessions of a Justified Sinner was probably written and printed during the autumn of 1823 and spring of 1824. Hogg was then living at Altrive in Yarrow, Selkirkshire, a small farm he held on a rent-free life-tenancy, thanks to the kindness of the Duke of Buccleuch.

Hogg's imagination seems to have been caught by the exhumation of a suicide's corpse on a neighbouring farm. He describes this in a letter dated 1 August 1823 and contributed to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for that month under the title of “A Scots Mummy”. With a number of strategic modifications the letter appears within the final section of Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in June 1824.

The novel apparently takes the familiar form of a first-person narrative from a manuscript or printed original discovered by an editor and embedded in his own account of its finding and significance. (This convention is parodied by Jane Austen, for example, in the heroine's night-time retrieval of farrier's and laundry bills in Northanger Abbey.) The Editor's narrative, however, does not confine itself to an explanation of the circumstances leading up to the discovery of the manuscript, which, in this case, succeeds rather than precedes the core narrative. The Editor's narrative begins in a pseudo-antiquarian style that on one level gently mocks the opening of the Waverley Novels of Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), and then quickly turns into a grotesque and exuberant account of a wedding that might have been written by Tobias Smollett (1721-71)."

Fight Club

Just wondering if Chuck Palahniuk ever acknowledged the influence of this book. I will do some digging Tigerboy1966 (talk) 22:28, 31 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

General need for revision

While the Confessions is notoriously difficult to categorise, let alone summarise, there are several parts of its current entry that do not appear to sit well and/or could do with revision. For example that 'The narrative is set against the antinomian societal structure flourishing in the borders of Scotland in Hogg's day.' seems to me simply not true, as there's no antinomian societal structure flourishing in the borders in Hogg's day. Thomas Boston, the former minister of Ettrick had some involvement in the Marrow Controversy however that was several years before 'Hogg's day' and not part of any 'societal structure'. The description of Gil-Martin as a 'demonic' character seems a little misleading and, whether or not it 'may be a reference to the Gaelic word for a fox (itself contentious), that arguably doesn't belong in the introduction. Similarly, 'told, for the most part, from the point of view of its criminal anti-hero' seems misleading, firstly, because the Editor's Narrative is almost as long as the Confessions itself (about 40:60) and, secondly, because Robert is a bit more complicated than that - (he is never convicted of any crime). While I might try to chisel away at some of this myself over time, the thoughts of others maybe following this page on how the work can be better presented would be most welcome. Cellarius77 (talk) 14:26, 3 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]