The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner in The Roundtable

Apr 16, 2018 Elise rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, 1800s, spooky, read-in-2018

A very entertaining and still-applicable look at fanaticism. These early gothic novels are usually amateur hour, but Hogg has created something so much more sophisticated. We get two versions of the story: The first section is the confessions' editor trying to put together a factual account of events, which counterbalances the insanity of the second part, the titular justified sinner's diary. I was worried that the satire of Calvinism would go over my head, but Hogg makes clear the basic precept ...more

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Sep 13, 2019 Irene rated it liked it

Even though I find most 18th century novels to be rather wordy and a bit heavy-handed with the moral lesson, I did not dislike this one. This is a parable of the danger of self-righteousness and the doctrine of predestination as understood by most Calvinists of that era. A young man is raised in a strict Calvinist home in Scotland, taught to trust in his own election and to despise the sinful world. He is befriended by a mysterious )demonic) lad who is able to use the rhetoric of his own religio ...more

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Aug 07, 2014 Wendy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 1001-books, blooms-western-canon, gothic, metafiction, nyrb

"I said I was a poor student of theology, on my way to Oxford. They stared at one another with expressions of wonder, disappointment, and fear. I afterwards came to learn that the term theology was by them quite misunderstood, and that they had some crude conceptions that nothing was taught at Oxford but the black arts, which ridiculous idea prevailed over all the south of Scotland."

Apparently the author, James Hogg, was just a poor Scottish shepherd in the late 18th C who taught himself how to "I said I was a poor student of theology, on my way to Oxford. They stared at one another with expressions of wonder, disappointment, and fear. I afterwards came to learn that the term theology was by them quite misunderstood, and that they had some crude conceptions that nothing was taught at Oxford but the black arts, which ridiculous idea prevailed over all the south of Scotland."

Apparently the author, James Hogg, was just a poor Scottish shepherd in the late 18th C who taught himself how to read and write, hobnobbed with the likes of Sir Walter Scott and Wordsworth, wrote this rather mind-boggling critique of Calvanism and predestination for which he got in a bit of trouble, and accidentally fell through the ice while curling, which eventually killed him. A meta-James Hogg also appears briefly at the end of this novel in the form of a homely shepherd who gamely dodges requests to help one of the many narrators dig up a body.

Despite the heavy religious allegory/parable (or is this just a ghost story?) this was a surprisingly entertaining read--and certainly easier to read than Sir Walter Scott. The main story-in-a-story revolves around a young man persuaded by an angel/demon/hallucination/ghost/alter-ego to commit murder of "enemies of heaven" on the grounds that he is predestined by God to go to heaven, therefore nothing he does in life can change where he ends up in the afterlife. Of course, if some heavenly being flatters you with tales like this, how do you know they are really from where they say they are from? And what if you're just going mad?

Unlikely as it may seem given the subject matter, Hogg never strays too far from snarky underhanded narration and touches of slapstick. One of the more hilarious scenes (which still manages to wring empathy from the reader) involves the titular Sinner tangled like a fly in a vitriolic weaver's loom. The opening, in which a pious young woman is wed to a wastrel nobleman, is also comedically tragic, and doesn't seem to carry the usual moral message we might expect from something written at the time. As a self-taught country man, the author brings skepticism to excess money, power, self-righteousness, and also to narrow-minded superstition. ...more

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Jan 11, 2014 Kai Coates rated it liked it

Shelves: group-the-readers-review, group-bookish, w14-bookish-challenge

James Hogg published The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner in 1824 and I was surprised by how fresh his writing remains. He starts the novel with an editor's account of the plot, complete with intrigue and murder. The main text consists of the "memoirs" of a man, raised by Calvinists who believed in predestination, who in turn believes since he is one of the chosen few, he can do no wrong. Hogg examines the ideas of sin and salvation. When can we justify murder? Most people w ...more

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