Citizen of the World or Native Heath - Rob Roy as a test case for Scott's view of the Enlightenment

Prof. Murray Pittock

Thursday 16th June 2016

Summary of the Talk:

Main Themes:

  • Tension between Enlightenment Universalism and Romantic Localism: Scott’s Rob Roy illustrates the clash between Enlightenment ideals of progress, rationalism, and borderless commerce, and the Romantic celebration of locality, history, and personal identity.
  • Frank Osbaldistone as Enlightenment Man: A classic Enlightenment narrator—rational, stadial (believing in stages of civilisation), and confident in his cultural superiority. But his perspective proves limited and naïve.
  • Rob Roy as a Subversive Figure: He undermines Enlightenment assumptions—portrayed with animalistic and ‘noble savage’ tropes, but ultimately shown to have international awareness, honour, and dignity.
  • Stadial Theory: The Enlightenment’s four-stage model of civilisation (hunter-gatherer, pastoral, agricultural, commercial) informs the narrative but is tested and subverted throughout the novel.
  • First-Person Narrative Irony: Frank's narration is framed with self-importance, but his misunderstanding of people, especially Rob Roy and Diana Vernon, exposes the limits of Enlightenment thinking.
  • Women in the Novel: Diana Vernon is presented as more perceptive, learned, and emotionally honest than Frank. Her insights critique patriarchy, commerce, and the suppression of women's agency.
  • Commerce vs Honour: Scott contrasts commercial credit (often unreliable) with Highland honour (Rob Roy keeps his word), showing the cracks in Enlightenment claims to moral superiority.
  • Locality as Identity: Rob Roy’s famous line—“My foot is on my native heath, and my name is MacGregor”—embodies the Romantic emphasis on place, memory, and resistance to universalist reduction.


Interesting Points Worth Highlighting

  1. The Enlightenment Ideal is Problematised:
  2. Frank assumes Highland society is primitive, yet Rob Roy proves more informed, honourable, and cosmopolitan.
  3. Stadial theory itself is shown to be both a tool of understanding and a form of prejudice.
  4. Scott's Narrative Technique:
  5. Use of a fallible, first-person narrator (Frank) allows Scott to critique Enlightenment thinking from within.
  6. Frank’s misjudgements are not just comic—they’re ideological.
  7. Role of Women:
  8. Diana Vernon and Helen MacGregor offer powerful counterpoints to male-centric narratives.
  9. Diana explicitly challenges the reduction of history to propaganda (Shakespeare is criticised!) and likens women’s roles to ancient Spartan slaves.
  10. Commerce as Colonial Tool:
  11. Frank wants Rob’s sons to join the British army, displacing Highlanders into colonial service.
  12. Rob, more strategically, prefers the continental option—suggesting political subversion through transnational alliances.
  13. Satirical Touches:
  14. Rob Roy is, at various times, likened to a goblin, an orangutan, a classical hero, and finally Robin Hood—highlighting the Enlightenment’s discomfort with what it can’t categorise.
  15. Scott’s Historical Irony:
  16. The oak wood deal (a commercial transaction) symbolically links the Jacobite cause with economic betrayal.
  17. Jarvie, the Glaswegian merchant, represents a bridge between two worlds—but one built on shaky assumptions.
  18. Modern Relevance:
  19. Pittock closed by suggesting the Enlightenment vs Localism debate is unfolding again today—with globalisation and resurgent nationalism mirroring Scott’s concerns.


Introduction by Prof. Peter Garside:

Is with great pleasure that for my first act as incoming Chair of the Club I’m able to introduce Professor Murray Pittock as this evening’s speaker. Before outlining Murray’s multiple achievements, I hope you won’t mind my indulging in a small personal anecdote, if only to illustrate where we’ve come from. I first fully met Murray at a Hogg Conference at Bowhill in 1989, when he was near the start of his career. The colloquium was organized by Douglas Mack and David Hewitt was also there, both of them on the cusp of commencing the publication of their monumental editions of Hogg and Scott respectively. If memory serves me correctly it was then that David Hewitt invited myself, Murray, and Douglas one evening to a bothy that he had access to on the Abbotsford estate. I was not drinking, so had the privilege of being something of a fly on the wall (or even impartial observer) on the occasion. Subsequently I’ve likened it to the scene in Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra where Anthony, Octavius Casar, and others meet up on Pompey’s galley to divide the world between them (as one of its so-called pillars is carried off in his cups a bystander, having been told that he represents a third of the world, wryly observes that ‘The third part, then, is drunk’). Not that there were any scenes of drunkenness in the bothy. The analogy I’m reaching for rather is the three ‘three pillars’ part, since it’s amazing what that trio in the bothy have subsequently achieved in restoring and revaluating Scottish literature, our present speaker not least through his work on Burns, Hogg, Allan Ramsay and others, as well as in more broadly redefining important aspects of Scottish cultural history.

 

Murray is now Bradley Professor of Literature and Pro Vice-Principal at the University of Glasgow, with responsibility for the Kelvin Hall development and research partnerships working with a range of external bodies. He has previously held chairs at the universities of Manchester (where he was the first chair of Scottish Literature at an English university) and Strathclyde, as well as visiting appointments at a number of overseas institutions including Yale, New York University, Notre Dame, Prague, and South Carolina. He is honorary adviser in Scottish History to the National Trust for Scotland, and his books include Material Culture and Sedition (2013), Scottish and Irish Romanticism (2008), Celtic Identity and the British Image (1999), Inventing and Resisting Britain (1997), The Myth of the Jacobite Clans (1995, 1999, 2009) and The Invention of Scotland (1991, likewise twice republished). He has also single-handedly edited The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe (2007, paperback 2014), and his next book, Culloden, is due out in July and will feature at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 22 August. His present funded projects include the first scholarly edition of The Scots Musical Museum (due in 2 volumes from Oxford University Press in 2017) and a full-length study of Edinburgh in the First Age of Enlightenment: How the City Changed Its Mind, 1680-1750. 

Murray Pittock MAE FRSE is Bradley Professor and has been in senior leadership roles at the University of Glasgow since 2008: currently he is Pro Vice-Principal. He also serves as Chair of the Governance Board of the Scottish Council on Global Affairs, is co-Chair of the Scottish Arts and Humanities Alliance, Chair of Trustees of the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures, a Trustee of the National Trust for Scotland and a board member of NISE.eu which brings together research on national identity from 50 research institutes across Europe.

Synopsis: The lecture addresses how-perhaps more than any other of his novels- Scott’s Rob Roy interrogates the stadial history model that Scott inherits from the Scottish Enlightenment, both by demonstrating that locality changes personality and that women are in many ways marginalized by the new world of politeness and sentiment that the Enlightenment did so much to build. Being a ‘Citizen of the World’ is a grand claim to universal understanding, but it is shown to be flawed by the specific demands of history and place.

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