Imploding the Nation: Aesthetic Conflict in Tales of the Wars of Montrose

Abstract

The destructive internal dynamics of the family turned against itself, which Hogg explores in the Confessions, is also a major preoccupation in his final collection, Tales of the Wars of Montrose, published in three volumes in March 1835, eight months before he died. It received mixed reviews and remains one of Hogg’s most fascinating, but neglected and understudied works.1 Despite much critical attention to Hogg’s handling of historical fiction in his other works and several thought-provoking reassessments of his role in the rise of the short story,2 Gillian Hughes is still the only critic to have given Hogg’s last collection of tales substantial critical attention. Building on Hughes’s work, in this chapter, I examine Tales of the Wars of Montrose (hereafter Montrose) as a work which exemplifies Hogg’s radical kaleidoscopic literary aesthetic of sudden shifts, jarring juxtapositions and disintegrating perspectives — and speaks strongly to its historical moment. In Part I, I situate Montrose in the uneasy cultural climate of the mid-1830s and examine Hogg’s conception of the work as part of a literary culture of recollection, before considering the significance of the famous military strategist and turncoat, James Graham, fifth Earl and first Marquis of Montrose, as an organising concept for Hogg’s collection of tales.