2026/05/26 by Xi Zhang · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · #Short Stories in Global Literature #American and British Literature Analysis #Modern American Literature Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/0013838x.2026.2678862
openalex publication_date 2026/05/26 · openalex created_date 2026/05/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This article reads The Heart of Mid-Lothian through logistics as an eighteenth-century coordination of passage, custody, delay, convoy, and documentary authorisation. It argues that Scott makes regulated passage, rather than movement in the abstract, a primary engine of plot. The Porteous Riot becomes a contest over urban throughput at the Netherbow Port; Caird’s cove and the Whistler episode show how local seizure is converted into Atlantic labour transfer through a precarious chokepoint; Richmond’s postern reveals sovereign mercy as spatially and socially mediated access; and warrants, petitions, and broadsides act as portable authorities whose timing determines whether legal violence can be interrupted. These scenes turn circulation into a narrative problem of unequal access, delay, and exposure. Order in the novel depends on gates, escorts, documents, and permissions, yet those same arrangements repeatedly fray, stall, or turn violent.