Romantic to contemporary mythscapes: the entangled otherness of David Rizzio in Scottish literature

This chapter examines the literary afterlives of David Rizzio, the Italian secretary to Mary Queen of Scots, in Scottish literature from the Romantic period to the present day. Despite his status as a minor character in most works, Rizzio's story has proven remarkably resilient in Scotland's national imagination, functioning as what Duncan Bell terms a "mythscape"—a discursive realm where national myths are forged and contested. The analysis traces how Romantic-era representations by James Hogg, Walter Scott, and John Galt constructed Rizzio as an irreconcilable Catholic/Italian Other, using Gothic conventions to reinforce Protestant Scottish identity. Modern and contemporary treatments reveal a bifurcation: while popular culture perpetuates Romantic clichés, later works by Liz Lochhead, Muriel Spark, and Denise Mina increasingly deconstruct these myths, re-humanising Rizzio and critically engaging with Scotland's complex negotiation of ethnic, religious, and national identity within the British state.