Restless for the Future: Eschatology and Evangelical Time in Ulster-Scots Writing and Culture

Death has been a major focus of Ulster-Scots Presbyterian writing, from the eighteenth century to the present day. Eschatological, apocalyptic, and dispensational modes of thinking circulate, migrate, and manifest themselves in various expressions of Ulster Protestant culture, both religious and secular. A futurist eschatology can be connected to the restlessness and motion characteristic of Ulster migrants to the New World. The Ulster Kailyard tradition demonstrates narrative examples of death-in-life that form the atmosphere of Presbyterian piety. Archibald McIlroy, Lydia Foster, and Florence Davidson offer an escape from the modern world through an embracement of death and future judgement. The discourse around the North West 200 road race also participates in a fascination with time and eternity, and identifies speed and death as central to Ulster identity. The novels of Jan Carson, following the tradition of Irish Protestant Gothic, articulate evangelical concepts of time and the embracement of death.