Dr. Linda Tym |
January - August 2012 | |
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Linda Tym has been awarded a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at IASH and is also the STAR (Scotland's Transatlantic Relations) Project Officer. Her research project is entitled: “Shifting Paradigms: Religious Revision in the work of James Robertson, John Burnside, and Alice Thompson.” "In this Postdoctoral research project, I investigate the dialogue between Scottish religious discourse and literary practice. My study examines the specific ways that the Calvinistic and Catholic religious past haunts contemporary Scottish fiction, often exemplified through reference to the established kirk and ritual as well as to the individual’s spiritual experience. Scottish literature frequently interrogates the Christian doctrines that have been prominent in Scottish religious history; however, literary criticism has tended to diminish the religious aspect of these works. My study explores the deliberate suppression of the religious past that haunts Scottish fiction and erupts in diverse ways. Using psychoanalytic theories, such as Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok’s theories of introjection, incorporation, and the transgenerational phantom, I consider the effects of this undisclosed memory of religion. Like memory, belief is subjective and often problematic: it may be consciously or unconsciously transferred. Multifaceted and diverse, belief inescapably marks both the individual and community as it is transferred; however, the refusal to acknowledge the loss of religious faith within society indicates a problematic form of memory. Specifically, I focus on the work of James Robertson, John Burnside, and Alice Thompson to examine the portrayal and revision of Calvinist and Catholic belief in fiction."
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