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Scottish Cultural Nationalism, 1760-1832

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SCOTTISH CULTURAL NATIONALISM, 1760-1832: THE HIGHLANDIZATZON OF SCOTTISH NATIONAL IDENTITY A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Guelph by THERESA SOREL In partial fhlfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts June, 1997 OTheresa Sorel, 1997 i~auvi nui uriut y uuiiuuirqrr .iriu-.- -.- TH of Canada du Canada Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques 395 Wellington Stree~t 395, rue Wellingtca Ottawa ON KIA ON4 OaawaON KtAON4 Canada Canada The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distriiute or sell reproduire, prêter, disûiiuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/^ de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. The author ret=rins ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts from it Ni la thése ni des ehtssubstantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation- ABSTRACT SCOTTISH CULTURAL NATIONALISM, 176001832: THE HiGHLANDIWI"I'0N OF SCOTTISH NATIONAL IDENTITY Theresa Sorel Advis or: University of Guelph, 1997 Professor R. Sunter This thesis is an investigation of the 'highlandization' and romanticization of Scottish national identiw in James Macpherson's The Poens of Ossian (1760-1763),Tobias Smollett's The Expedition of Humphry CZinker (Vil), Samuel Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotlund (1775), James Boswell's Journal of a Tour with Samuel Johnson, LLD. (17851, and Walter Scott's The Heart of Midothian (1818). The Highlands were used by these wrîters to represent what the perceived as Scottishness. However, it was a mythologized, romantic Highlands they constructed, which only has a loose comection to the 'real' Highlands. The mythical image of the Highlands, which was mostly constructed by Lowland Scottish writers and English travellers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gradually became equated with all of Scotland. This thesis is dedicated to Judy Briand, who fist instilled in me a love of history. 1would like to thank my advisors, Dr. R. Sunter, Dr. C. Kerrigan, and Dr. E. Ewan for their invaluable support and who helped guide me in the right direction. 1 would also like to thank the staff of Rare Books, McLaughh Library, and Michael Hall, the curator of the Slide library, Department of Fine Art, for their help and assistance. An especial th& to my mother, Linda Sorel, who helped proofFead my thesis. And hally, 1 am indebted to my family and friends, David, Linda, and Evan Sorel, J. Keeping, Emily Ferguson and Natalie Coulter for their emotionai support, who helped keep me sane. TABLE OF CONTENTS introduction 1-22 Chapter 1: Ossian, Primitivism, and Eighteenth-Century Society. 23-49 Chapter II: The Expedition of Humphry Clinker: Scotophilia and Scotophobia. 50-72 Chapter III: Boswell and Johnson's Highland Tour, 73-101 Chapter TV: Scott and The Head of Midlothian: Scottish History and the Romance of the Highlands. 102131 Conclusion 132x35 INTRODUCTION 1 INTRODUCTION Scottish cultural nationalism of the late eighteentldearly nineteenth century reveals both a process of romanticization and 'highlandization'. Since the Iate eighteenth century, the Highlands have had (and continue to have) a tremendous fascination and evocative apped for visitors (Lowland Scots and tourists alike). The romantic image of the Highlands has been constructed in the imaginations of mostly non-Highlanders. This image is one of poetic romance, ddsublimity, and picturesque beauty. Highlanders were imagined as possessing a heroic and poetic "Celtic spirit". Scottish writers of this period used the Highlands as a potent symbolic locus for representing Scottishness. This thesis dlexamine the role of James Macpherson's The Poems of Ossian (1760~1,Tobias Smollett's The Expedition ofHumphry Clinker (1771), Samuel Johnson and James Boswell's Highiand tour (1775 and 1785), and Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian (1818), in forining Scottish cultural nationalism, focusing on their perceptions of the HighIands. Although Scotland and England had been amalgamated for over half a century by the time of Macpherson and for over a century by the time of Scott, Scottish writers still exhibited a concern with the repercussions of the Union of 1707. Macpherson, Smollett, Boswell, and Scott were all engaged in determinhg what constituted Scottishness. Macpherson envisioned an ancient mythical Scottish past, glor-g the heroic martial spirit of the ancient Scots, the Caledonians. Smollett, Boswell, and Scott represented a Scottish national identity within a 2 wider British one, as well as portraying a mythical Highlands. Samuel Johnson, although an Englishman, went searching the Highlands and Hebrides, looking for the distinctively Scottish culture of the Highland clans. The time period 1760-1832 witnessed monumental changes worldwide, moving towards urbanization and industrialization and away from rural and traditional modes of life, what Jerome Blum characterized as a "switch Fom communalism with its collective controls to individualism with its private rights of property and its individual fkeedom of action".' Changes included an emphasis on rationality, progress, and modernity by intellectuals of the Enlightenment, contrasted with a burgeoning Romanticism and emphasis on the imagination, the emotions, and the past, and an increased historicity and sense of nationahW. Historical change was especially intensxed in Scotland. David Hume wrote in 1770 "1 believe this is the historical age and this the historical nati~n".~Scott wrote in his "Postscript which should have Been a Preface" to Waverley (1814) There is no European nation which within the course of half a cent- or little more, has undergone so complete a change as this Kingdom of Scotland". The effects of the insurrection of 1745,--the destruction of the patriarchal power of the heritable Jerome Blum cited in T. M. Devine, "Social Responses to Agrarian 'hprovement': The Highland and Lowland Clearances" in R. A. Houston and 1. D. Whyte, eds., Scottish Society 1500-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 148. Hume cited in Kenneth Simpson, The Protean Scott. The Crisis of Identity in Eighteenth Century Scottish Literature (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), p. 9. jurisdictions of the Lowland nobility and barons,-the total eradication ofthe Jacobite party . The gradua1 influx of weaïth and extension of commerce have since united to render the present people of Scotland a class of beings as different fkom their grandfathers as the existing English have f=om those of Queen Elizabeth's timem3 Despite the national partisanal enthusiasm of these comments, Scotland (especially the Highlands) was racked by great social and economic upheavd, witnessing the beginnings of industrialization in the Scottish Lowland cities, a rising population, new and more productive techniques in agriculture, technological advances in transportation, and the disintegration of the clan system and Highland way of life as a distinct culture &om Lowland Scotland. Nationalism suggests an intense love of one's country as well as one's language, culture, customs and institutions and has a powerful, emotional appeal. It has a dynamic power to intens* the raw emotions of a people. This national feeling consists of a sense of belonging to a community and an interrelatedness which is often based on a sense of uniqueness. Historically, literature has had a central role in forming national consciousness and ideology. Traditionally, the study of nationalism has begun with the very successfid revolutions in France and Arnerica in the late eighteenth century. Georg Lukacs writes of the awakening of national sensibility: "It was the French Revolution, the revolutionary wars and the rise and fall of Napoleon, Walter Scott, Waverley, or 'Tis Skty Years Since (London: Ward, Lock and Co., Limited, 18821, p. 465. 4 which for the &st time made history a mass e~tperience."~This precipitated a whole series of movements and national uprisings for political independence throughout Europe during the nineteenth century, "the age of nationalism". The liberal and democratic principles of the French Revolution inspired many nations and nations to be, as well as stirring up national feelings in a reactionary, conservative response to these democratic ideals. There was a general change in attitude towards the nation fi-om the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century, theories on the state were formulated by writers such as Rousseau and Montesquieu, defining the limits on the power of the monarch and government and securing civil rights for the people. However eighteenth-century nationalism was counter-balanced by Enlightenment humanism, a deep interest in not just national history but the history of human development, and by cosmopolitanism, an awareness of belonging to an international community which went beyond national borders, a "citizenry of the ~orld".~Nineteenth- century nationalism was directed more towards individual fieedom and the sovereignty of the nation-state, and by the latter half of the nineteenth century
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