Reinterpretations of James Hogg: His Bloody Project and The Testament of Gideon Mack

James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner(1824) is often mentioned as an ambiguous work that deals with religious mania and split personality. Also, his story becomes more like open puzzles in crime fiction through gothic and metafictional techniques. Beneath his complicated contents and forms, however, we need to find Hogg's political and cultural intentions. From a long time ago, Scottish mysticism has been suppressed by the government and authentic religion. His intentional use of antinomianism is a pretext to address the independent and undaunted spirit of Scottish people whose faith is close to fatalism. The reinterpretations of his work by contemporary novelists reveal the author's original intentions well.