Midsummer Night Dreams And Related Poems (The Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition Of The Collected Works Of James Hogg)

Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems (The Stirling / South Carolina Research Edition of the Collected Works of James Hogg)

From the Back Cover Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems comprises ten of Hogg's poems which, in very different ways, explore the visionary and supernatural, and one writer's portrayal of them, echoing the subject and title of Shakespeare's famous play. Chief among these poems is The Pilgrims of the Sun, a visionary journey which seeks to demonstrate Hogg's command not only of his native Scottish tradition of poetry but also of English and even European traditions, including those of Milton and Pope, Dante and Byron. Its counterpart is the hellish visionary journey of the weirdly brilliant 'Connel of Dee'. In another poem Hogg reflects upon the carnage of 'The Field of Waterloo'. He recounts the departure of the fairies from Scotland in 'The Gyre Caryl', and challenges the Enlightenment dismissal of the supernatural in 'Superstition'. From his dramatic sketch 'The Haunted Glen' to his commemoration of the famous comet of 1811, and from the plaintive balladry of 'The Mermaid' to the rumbustious comic delusions of 'The Powris of Moseke', Hogg substantiates in full his vaunted claim to be 'King o' the mountain and fairy school' of poetry. This is the first complete edition of Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems since the appearance of Hogg's Poetical Works of 1822. It provides a carefully corrected and fully annotated text of all ten poems with Hogg's own notes to The Pilgrims of the Sun. It has a full editorial apparatus, and a supplementary essay on Hogg and Otherworld Journeys from Dante to Byron. This collection is comprised of ten of Hogg's poems which, in very different ways, explore the visionary and supernatural, and the writer's portrayal of them - echoing the subject and title of Shakespeare's famous play.Included among the poems are: 'The Pilgrims of the Sun', which seeks to demonstrate Hogg's command not only of his native Scottish tradition of poetry but also of the English tradition of Milton and Pope; the weirdly brilliant 'Connel of Dee'; 'The Gyre Caryl' in which Hogg recounts the birth of Heavenly Grace and the departure of the fairies from Scotland; and 'Verses Addressed to the Right Honourable Lady Anne Scott of Buccleuch'.Taken together the ten poems of Midsummer Night Dreams and Related Poems substantiate Hogg's vaunted claim to be 'King o' the mountain and fairy school' of poetry. About the Author James Hogg was a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist who wrote in both Scots and English. He is best known for his novel The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.The late Jill Rubenstein was Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, and the editor of James Hogg's Anecdotes of Scott among other scholarly works relating to Scott, Hogg, and their contemporaries.Gillian Hughes is Advisory Editor to The New Edinburgh Edition of the Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. She was editor and/or general editor for many volumes in the Stirling/South Carolina Hogg edition, founding editor of the journal Studies in Hogg and his World, and is the author of James Hogg: A Life (Edinburgh University Press, 2007). Her current projects include an edition (co-edited with Peter Garside) of the Shorter Verse of Walter Scott.Meiko O'Halloran is a Lecturer in English Literature at Newcastle University. She contributed an essay to the Stirling/South Carolina Edition volume of The Queen's Wake, and is currently preparing a monograph called Hogg's Kaleidoscopic Art.