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Murray Pittock

University of Glasgow, English Literature, Faculty Member

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Murray Pittock MAE FRSE is Bradley Professor and Pro Vice-Principal at the University of Glasgow, where he has held senior roles at Dean to Vice-Principal level since 2008. He directs the University's Early Career Development Programme, chairs the VR/XR Strategy Group, leads on a number of MoUs and strategic partnership developments and chaired the Kelvin Hall development. Outside the University, he is on the Board of the National Trust for Scotland and also acts as the Trust's Scottish History Adviser. Cited as 'Scotland's leading public intellectual' (Notre Dame 2014), Murray has appeared on the media in 55 countries. He is currently General Editor of the Edinburgh Collected Works of Allan Ramsay and is writing The Global History of Scotland for Yale.

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Papers by Murray Pittock

Allan Ramsay: Romanticism and Reception

Studies in Scottish literature, 2020

John Law's Theory of Money and its roots in Scottish culture

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Nov 30, 2004

This paper seeks to place the well-known lineaments of Law's System in France within the context ... more This paper seeks to place the well-known lineaments of Law's System in France within the context not only of his earlier writings on the Scottish economy but also in the dimension of his lived experience as a 17th-century Scot, the son of a goldsmith-banker, and a man acutely conscious both of the history of his country's unstable monetary policy, and also of the final crisis into which it was lurching in his own day.

Henry Hunt’s White Hat: The Long Tradition of Mute Sedition

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Jun 30, 2019

, being welcomed to the platform with the airs of 'See the Conquering Hero Comes', 'God Save the ... more , being welcomed to the platform with the airs of 'See the Conquering Hero Comes', 'God Save the King' and 'Rule Britannia'. 'God save the King' was played with a particular reference beyond that of loyalty, for Hunt had refused to 'stand and uncover' for the anthem in Manchester's Theatre Royal that January. As in more visible features of the giant meeting that day, the music alluded to the radical purpose of the assembly while lying beyond the reach of prosecution under British treason and sedition legislation, which depended on language, whether printed or spoken. The subject of this essay is the mutebut similarly unprosecutable sedition of colour in clothing to express radical views, and in one article of clothing in particular: Hunt's white hat. 1 Henry Hunt, an agitator who was radical candidate for Westminster in 1818, was already notorious for his capacity to draw large crowds to hear him speak. On this occasion, his white hat, for which he was already known, was central to the wide range of symbolic allegiance to the radical cause on show: as James Epstein suggests, 'it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the emblems and banners carried into Manchester on 16 August 1819', which included 'numerous caps of liberty on poles ringing the hustings, as if imparting apotropaic protection to the meeting'. In the midst of this tableau, Hunt's removal of his white hat was the signal for his speech to begin. As Samuel Bamford recalls, 'Mr Hunt, stepping towards the front of the stage, took off his white hat, and addressed the people'. 2 Hunt's speech was interrupted by the charge of the yeomanry that precipitated the outrage of Peterloo, and his white hat 'was staved in by a sword and became the symbol of

Introduction: Allan Ramsay's Future

Studies in Scottish literature, 2020

The W. Ormiston Roy Memorial Lecture: Who Wrote the Scots Musical Museum? Challenging Editorial Practice in the Presence of Authorial Absence

Studies in Scottish literature, 2016

Networks, Narratives and Nations

Networks, Narratives and Nations

Do narratives make nations, and if so, did networks make this happen? The notion that national an... more Do narratives make nations, and if so, did networks make this happen? The notion that national and other group identities are constructed and sustained by narratives and images has been widely postulated for several decades now. This volume contributes to this debate, with a particular emphasis on the networked, transnational nature of cultural nation-building processes in a comparative European and sometimes extra-European context. It gathers together essays that engage with objects of study ranging from poetry, prose, and political ideas to painting, porcelain, and popular song, and which draw on examples in Icelandic, Arabic, German, Irish, Hungarian, and French, among other languages. The contributors study transcultural phenomena from the medieval and early modern periods through to the modern and postmodern era, frequently challenging conventional periodizations and analytical frameworks based on the idea of the nation-state.

The Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns: Volume II and III: The Scots Musical Museum

The Scots Musical Museum is perhaps the core canonical collection of Scottish song, with over 200... more The Scots Musical Museum is perhaps the core canonical collection of Scottish song, with over 200 of its 600 songs claimed for Robert Burns. This is the first research edition of the Scots Musical Museum in its entirety in over two centuries, and the first ever edition of the first edition of any kind, unearthing hundreds of previously unacknowledged variants between the first and 1803 editions. It will claim that up to fifty songs should be removed from the Burns canon. It is a landmark text for understanding the history and development of Scottish song and music. A full and detailed introduction sets out the social, textual, musical and historical context in which Robert Burns and James Johnson worked, while extensive notes on the songs provide a detailed history and context of each one, and a brief critical analysis of some of the most famous of these songs. There is a comprehensive glossary based, where available, on contemporary dictionary definitions and ample appendices. The ...

The Naming of Characters in Scott and Stevenson

Notes and Queries, 1995

Loyalty and Identity

Poems and Festivals, Art and Artefact and the Commemoration of Robert Burns, c .1844– c .1896

Scottish Historical Review, 2014

The following article examines the major Burns festivals of the nineteenth century, particularly ... more The following article examines the major Burns festivals of the nineteenth century, particularly the Ayr Festival of 1844, in the context of the wider creation of cultural memory through the monumental celebration of national heroes in these years. It argues both that what we now think of as Burns’ literary reputation was substantially created by iconic objects, celebrations and events, rather than literary criticism, and that the cultural memory of Burns was ultimately beyond the control of those who sought to stage-manage it. Given the centrality of Burns in Victorian Scotland, both conclusions have much wider implications both for literary canon formation and banal manifestations of cultural and national identity.

Scottish sovereignty and the union of 1707: Then and now

National Identities, 2012

This article discusses the history of Scottish sovereignty as a component of Scottish identity. T... more This article discusses the history of Scottish sovereignty as a component of Scottish identity. The argument is that certain aspects of Scottish sovereignty were preserved by the union, and that these have often remained latent until the devolution settlement. The new political landscape in the UK has contributed to a redevelopment of ideas of British parliamentary sovereignty, which have served to render these elements of preserved Scottish sovereignty active, and this new state of affairs is reflected in the findings of the Calman Commission. ...

The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature

The processes of geographical change here explained are apparent, for the late eighteenth century... more The processes of geographical change here explained are apparent, for the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century respectively, in the 'Old' and New statistical accounts of Scotland, works which amount to national geographical self-portraits. Both are part, however, of a longer-run tradition of geographical enquiry in Scotland. Geographical descriptions of the nation, only partially or never realised, were undertaken in 1708, 1721-44, 1757 and 1781. The particular mapping project that was the Military Survey of Scotland (1747-54), an exercise in political control after Culloden, was followed by the work of estate surveyors and, in turn, by maps and plans of farms and new policies as the rhetoric of Improvement became inscribed on the land. In the cities especially, a new type of Scot emerged, the self-styled 'private teacher of geography': men like Robert Darling, who, in Edinburgh's Ramsay's Land in 1776 and again in 1793-4, 'teacheth Youth Writing, Book-keeping, Mathematics and geography, and Gentlemen to Measure and Plan their own estates'. Ebenezer MacFait, another such in late Enlightenment Edinburgh, taught geography to Walter Scott. Robert Burns took what he termed 'My knowledge of ancient story' from geography books, including the Brechin-born William Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, first published in 1770. Geography was taught in the universities: by mathematicians like Colin MacLaurin, by natural philosophers like Thomas Reid and by natural historians like Robert Jameson. If, then, we can locate geography in the Scottish Enlightenment, it is also possible to see the Enlightenment as both concerned with matters of geography-with the cultural status of the Highlands, with potato yields and with soil chemistry, for example-and itself geographically different. In Glasgow, for example, the Enlightenment had its own distinctive character based on the city's industrial and American-oriented commercial growth, the dynamism of the evangelicals and the status of the merchant classes. In Aberdeen, by contrast, the Enlightenment was distinguished by the town's European outlook, apparent both in philosophical concerns and in the town's trading links, by explicit interests in rhetoric and the Scots language and by the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid and his circle. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Scotland's geographical self-awareness was furthered by the work of formal survey projects: the Ordnance Survey with its hesitant beginnings in Scotland in 1809; the Geological Survey of the northwest Highlands between 1883 and 1907; the British-wide Linguistic and Ethnological Surveys of the 1880s and 1892-9 respectively, and the 1907 Pigmentation Survey, which aimed to document the racial make-up of the nation by measuring head shape and skin colour. Individual Scots at home and overseas likewise promoted the geographical sciences as a contribution to Empire: John Murray on HMS Challenger, W. S. Bruce on the Scotia in the 1902-4 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, and, from his Outlook Tower in Edinburgh, Patrick Geddes emphasised geography as a means to local knowledge, national understanding and global citizenship.

Decadence and the English tradition

The thesis sets out to do two things. It seeks first of all to describe the revival of interest i... more The thesis sets out to do two things. It seeks first of all to describe the revival of interest in the Caroline era which defines the nature of an "English Tradition" in the Eighteen Nineties. Secondly, in doing so it seeks to reappraise three significant poets of that era, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, and Francis Thompson, in terms of their participation in this revival. The first chapter, "Craving Viaticum", deals with the general background of the Eighteen Nineties period. It suggests that the Symbolist movement equates with the Decadent one in a more direct way than has often been allowed, and deals with the era's enthusiasm for nostalgia and past ages as part of its reaction against current society. It also explores the period's allegiance to hero-figures. The second chapter, "The French Connection: Pater's Part", deals with Walter Pater, and evaluates him in terms of his art and criticism, suggesting how these develop from a nostalgic desire to recreate past ages in the image of his present ideals. The more exaggerated claims made by critics of his work for the influence of French writers on him are questioned, and Pater's relation to the "English Tradition" is discussed. In the third chapter, "The French Connection: Other Approaches", the tendentiousness of those critics who attempt to define the entire Decadent era in Britain in terms of French influences is discussed and exposed.

Robert Burns Beyond Text: Treasure of the Month Exhibition

Material Culture and Sedition, 1688–1760

Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print will feature work that d... more Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print will feature work that does not fit comfortably within established boundaries-whether between periods or between disciplines. Uniquely, it will combine efforts to engage the power and materiality of print with explorations of gender, race and class. By attending as well to intersections of literature with the visual arts, medicine, law and science, the series will enable a large-scale rethinking of the origins of modernity.

Crown Culture and Counter-Culture

Inventing and Resisting Britain, 1997

Although the increase in capital crimes in pursuit of the protection of property arguably had a b... more Although the increase in capital crimes in pursuit of the protection of property arguably had a bark worse than its bite (for example, in the 1590s as many had been executed in one year in Essex as in the whole of the Home Counties in the mid-eighteenth century), there was still a marked shift of legal focus in tandem with the ideological centrality of property in political and, given the effect on the living standards of the clergy, religious, culture. Although the property rights proclaimed and defended by the British Government after 1714 were vulnerable and of doubtful legitimacy, the defensiveness of the Whig ascendancy over the next 46 years was almost certainly a political mistake. Sir Robert Walpole in particular, throughout more than 20 years in power, played up the Jacobite theme to encourage Whig solidarity and paranoia. As a result, it has been argued that the Tories were driven, through exclusion, to be a Jacobite party.

Hogg?s Gothic, the Transgression of Genre and a Scottish Romanticism

El Cami cap a la independencia? Biblioteca d'autors Escocesos

Sources and Dates for the Jacobite Song II

Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association, 2005

No abstract available

What happened at Culloden and what happened next?

No abstract available

Allan Ramsay: Romanticism and Reception

Studies in Scottish literature, 2020

John Law's Theory of Money and its roots in Scottish culture

Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Nov 30, 2004

This paper seeks to place the well-known lineaments of Law's System in France within the context ... more This paper seeks to place the well-known lineaments of Law's System in France within the context not only of his earlier writings on the Scottish economy but also in the dimension of his lived experience as a 17th-century Scot, the son of a goldsmith-banker, and a man acutely conscious both of the history of his country's unstable monetary policy, and also of the final crisis into which it was lurching in his own day.

Henry Hunt’s White Hat: The Long Tradition of Mute Sedition

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Jun 30, 2019

, being welcomed to the platform with the airs of 'See the Conquering Hero Comes', 'God Save the ... more , being welcomed to the platform with the airs of 'See the Conquering Hero Comes', 'God Save the King' and 'Rule Britannia'. 'God save the King' was played with a particular reference beyond that of loyalty, for Hunt had refused to 'stand and uncover' for the anthem in Manchester's Theatre Royal that January. As in more visible features of the giant meeting that day, the music alluded to the radical purpose of the assembly while lying beyond the reach of prosecution under British treason and sedition legislation, which depended on language, whether printed or spoken. The subject of this essay is the mutebut similarly unprosecutable sedition of colour in clothing to express radical views, and in one article of clothing in particular: Hunt's white hat. 1 Henry Hunt, an agitator who was radical candidate for Westminster in 1818, was already notorious for his capacity to draw large crowds to hear him speak. On this occasion, his white hat, for which he was already known, was central to the wide range of symbolic allegiance to the radical cause on show: as James Epstein suggests, 'it would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of the emblems and banners carried into Manchester on 16 August 1819', which included 'numerous caps of liberty on poles ringing the hustings, as if imparting apotropaic protection to the meeting'. In the midst of this tableau, Hunt's removal of his white hat was the signal for his speech to begin. As Samuel Bamford recalls, 'Mr Hunt, stepping towards the front of the stage, took off his white hat, and addressed the people'. 2 Hunt's speech was interrupted by the charge of the yeomanry that precipitated the outrage of Peterloo, and his white hat 'was staved in by a sword and became the symbol of

Introduction: Allan Ramsay's Future

Studies in Scottish literature, 2020

The W. Ormiston Roy Memorial Lecture: Who Wrote the Scots Musical Museum? Challenging Editorial Practice in the Presence of Authorial Absence

Studies in Scottish literature, 2016

Networks, Narratives and Nations

Networks, Narratives and Nations

Do narratives make nations, and if so, did networks make this happen? The notion that national an... more Do narratives make nations, and if so, did networks make this happen? The notion that national and other group identities are constructed and sustained by narratives and images has been widely postulated for several decades now. This volume contributes to this debate, with a particular emphasis on the networked, transnational nature of cultural nation-building processes in a comparative European and sometimes extra-European context. It gathers together essays that engage with objects of study ranging from poetry, prose, and political ideas to painting, porcelain, and popular song, and which draw on examples in Icelandic, Arabic, German, Irish, Hungarian, and French, among other languages. The contributors study transcultural phenomena from the medieval and early modern periods through to the modern and postmodern era, frequently challenging conventional periodizations and analytical frameworks based on the idea of the nation-state.

The Oxford Edition of the Works of Robert Burns: Volume II and III: The Scots Musical Museum

The Scots Musical Museum is perhaps the core canonical collection of Scottish song, with over 200... more The Scots Musical Museum is perhaps the core canonical collection of Scottish song, with over 200 of its 600 songs claimed for Robert Burns. This is the first research edition of the Scots Musical Museum in its entirety in over two centuries, and the first ever edition of the first edition of any kind, unearthing hundreds of previously unacknowledged variants between the first and 1803 editions. It will claim that up to fifty songs should be removed from the Burns canon. It is a landmark text for understanding the history and development of Scottish song and music. A full and detailed introduction sets out the social, textual, musical and historical context in which Robert Burns and James Johnson worked, while extensive notes on the songs provide a detailed history and context of each one, and a brief critical analysis of some of the most famous of these songs. There is a comprehensive glossary based, where available, on contemporary dictionary definitions and ample appendices. The ...

The Naming of Characters in Scott and Stevenson

Notes and Queries, 1995

Loyalty and Identity

Poems and Festivals, Art and Artefact and the Commemoration of Robert Burns, c .1844– c .1896

Scottish Historical Review, 2014

The following article examines the major Burns festivals of the nineteenth century, particularly ... more The following article examines the major Burns festivals of the nineteenth century, particularly the Ayr Festival of 1844, in the context of the wider creation of cultural memory through the monumental celebration of national heroes in these years. It argues both that what we now think of as Burns’ literary reputation was substantially created by iconic objects, celebrations and events, rather than literary criticism, and that the cultural memory of Burns was ultimately beyond the control of those who sought to stage-manage it. Given the centrality of Burns in Victorian Scotland, both conclusions have much wider implications both for literary canon formation and banal manifestations of cultural and national identity.

Scottish sovereignty and the union of 1707: Then and now

National Identities, 2012

This article discusses the history of Scottish sovereignty as a component of Scottish identity. T... more This article discusses the history of Scottish sovereignty as a component of Scottish identity. The argument is that certain aspects of Scottish sovereignty were preserved by the union, and that these have often remained latent until the devolution settlement. The new political landscape in the UK has contributed to a redevelopment of ideas of British parliamentary sovereignty, which have served to render these elements of preserved Scottish sovereignty active, and this new state of affairs is reflected in the findings of the Calman Commission. ...

The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature

The processes of geographical change here explained are apparent, for the late eighteenth century... more The processes of geographical change here explained are apparent, for the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century respectively, in the 'Old' and New statistical accounts of Scotland, works which amount to national geographical self-portraits. Both are part, however, of a longer-run tradition of geographical enquiry in Scotland. Geographical descriptions of the nation, only partially or never realised, were undertaken in 1708, 1721-44, 1757 and 1781. The particular mapping project that was the Military Survey of Scotland (1747-54), an exercise in political control after Culloden, was followed by the work of estate surveyors and, in turn, by maps and plans of farms and new policies as the rhetoric of Improvement became inscribed on the land. In the cities especially, a new type of Scot emerged, the self-styled 'private teacher of geography': men like Robert Darling, who, in Edinburgh's Ramsay's Land in 1776 and again in 1793-4, 'teacheth Youth Writing, Book-keeping, Mathematics and geography, and Gentlemen to Measure and Plan their own estates'. Ebenezer MacFait, another such in late Enlightenment Edinburgh, taught geography to Walter Scott. Robert Burns took what he termed 'My knowledge of ancient story' from geography books, including the Brechin-born William Guthrie's Geographical Grammar, first published in 1770. Geography was taught in the universities: by mathematicians like Colin MacLaurin, by natural philosophers like Thomas Reid and by natural historians like Robert Jameson. If, then, we can locate geography in the Scottish Enlightenment, it is also possible to see the Enlightenment as both concerned with matters of geography-with the cultural status of the Highlands, with potato yields and with soil chemistry, for example-and itself geographically different. In Glasgow, for example, the Enlightenment had its own distinctive character based on the city's industrial and American-oriented commercial growth, the dynamism of the evangelicals and the status of the merchant classes. In Aberdeen, by contrast, the Enlightenment was distinguished by the town's European outlook, apparent both in philosophical concerns and in the town's trading links, by explicit interests in rhetoric and the Scots language and by the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid and his circle. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Scotland's geographical self-awareness was furthered by the work of formal survey projects: the Ordnance Survey with its hesitant beginnings in Scotland in 1809; the Geological Survey of the northwest Highlands between 1883 and 1907; the British-wide Linguistic and Ethnological Surveys of the 1880s and 1892-9 respectively, and the 1907 Pigmentation Survey, which aimed to document the racial make-up of the nation by measuring head shape and skin colour. Individual Scots at home and overseas likewise promoted the geographical sciences as a contribution to Empire: John Murray on HMS Challenger, W. S. Bruce on the Scotia in the 1902-4 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition, and, from his Outlook Tower in Edinburgh, Patrick Geddes emphasised geography as a means to local knowledge, national understanding and global citizenship.

Decadence and the English tradition

The thesis sets out to do two things. It seeks first of all to describe the revival of interest i... more The thesis sets out to do two things. It seeks first of all to describe the revival of interest in the Caroline era which defines the nature of an "English Tradition" in the Eighteen Nineties. Secondly, in doing so it seeks to reappraise three significant poets of that era, Ernest Dowson, Lionel Johnson, and Francis Thompson, in terms of their participation in this revival. The first chapter, "Craving Viaticum", deals with the general background of the Eighteen Nineties period. It suggests that the Symbolist movement equates with the Decadent one in a more direct way than has often been allowed, and deals with the era's enthusiasm for nostalgia and past ages as part of its reaction against current society. It also explores the period's allegiance to hero-figures. The second chapter, "The French Connection: Pater's Part", deals with Walter Pater, and evaluates him in terms of his art and criticism, suggesting how these develop from a nostalgic desire to recreate past ages in the image of his present ideals. The more exaggerated claims made by critics of his work for the influence of French writers on him are questioned, and Pater's relation to the "English Tradition" is discussed. In the third chapter, "The French Connection: Other Approaches", the tendentiousness of those critics who attempt to define the entire Decadent era in Britain in terms of French influences is discussed and exposed.

Robert Burns Beyond Text: Treasure of the Month Exhibition

Material Culture and Sedition, 1688–1760

Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print will feature work that d... more Palgrave Studies in the Enlightenment, Romanticism and Cultures of Print will feature work that does not fit comfortably within established boundaries-whether between periods or between disciplines. Uniquely, it will combine efforts to engage the power and materiality of print with explorations of gender, race and class. By attending as well to intersections of literature with the visual arts, medicine, law and science, the series will enable a large-scale rethinking of the origins of modernity.

Crown Culture and Counter-Culture

Inventing and Resisting Britain, 1997

Although the increase in capital crimes in pursuit of the protection of property arguably had a b... more Although the increase in capital crimes in pursuit of the protection of property arguably had a bark worse than its bite (for example, in the 1590s as many had been executed in one year in Essex as in the whole of the Home Counties in the mid-eighteenth century), there was still a marked shift of legal focus in tandem with the ideological centrality of property in political and, given the effect on the living standards of the clergy, religious, culture. Although the property rights proclaimed and defended by the British Government after 1714 were vulnerable and of doubtful legitimacy, the defensiveness of the Whig ascendancy over the next 46 years was almost certainly a political mistake. Sir Robert Walpole in particular, throughout more than 20 years in power, played up the Jacobite theme to encourage Whig solidarity and paranoia. As a result, it has been argued that the Tories were driven, through exclusion, to be a Jacobite party.

Hogg?s Gothic, the Transgression of Genre and a Scottish Romanticism

El Cami cap a la independencia? Biblioteca d'autors Escocesos

Sources and Dates for the Jacobite Song II

Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association, 2005

No abstract available

What happened at Culloden and what happened next?

No abstract available