The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

Andrew Smith’s statement, referring to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, can also be applied to James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Both works of later-Romantic Gothic, these novels deal with the social impact of their protagonists’ ‘selfhood’, or ‘inner life’, rather than how the outward sublime influences the ‘inner self’. Instead of seeking ‘transcendence’ in sublime nature, Victor Frankenstein and Robert Wringhim aim to transcend their social and spiritual positions through, respectively, scientific and religious pursuits. In doing so, however, they are confronted with ‘another version’ of themselves in the form of a double: the Creature to Frankenstein, and Gil-Martin to Wringhim. ‘Anxiety about the…

Representations of masculinity in Fight Club and The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner dissertation proposal. The main focus of my dissertation will be on representations of masculinity in Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club and James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. The aim of the project is to be able to compare and contrast the representations of masculinity in both texts and to be able to determine whether they are inaccurate or whether they…