Examining literary portrayals of David Rizzio from Romanticism to the contemporary period, this chapter contends that the Italian secretary has served as a constitutive ‘Other’ for Scottish national identity across different epochs. It highlights the formative role of the Romantic imagination—particularly in the works of Hogg, Scott, and Galt—in crafting a durable ‘Gothic palimpsest.’ Within this framework, Rizzio is alternately idealized as a celestial, effeminate artist and demonized as a monstrous, Catholic conspirator. The chapter concludes by tracing the persistence of this palimpsest through the 20th century and its ultimate deconstruction in recent fiction, culminating in Denise Mina’s revisionist novella Rizzio.
Romantic to contemporary mythscapes: the entangled otherness of David Rizzio in Scottish literature
Carla Sassi
In corso di stampa
Abstract
Examining literary portrayals of David Rizzio from Romanticism to the contemporary period, this chapter contends that the Italian secretary has served as a constitutive ‘Other’ for Scottish national identity across different epochs. It highlights the formative role of the Romantic imagination—particularly in the works of Hogg, Scott, and Galt—in crafting a durable ‘Gothic palimpsest.’ Within this framework, Rizzio is alternately idealized as a celestial, effeminate artist and demonized as a monstrous, Catholic conspirator. The chapter concludes by tracing the persistence of this palimpsest through the 20th century and its ultimate deconstruction in recent fiction, culminating in Denise Mina’s revisionist novella Rizzio.
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