This thesis examines what the word Scotland meant to Scottish people of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. The answer to this question is sought through analysing how Scottish nationhood was constructed through the interaction of various narratives each representing a particular notion of Scottishness, using sources such as Scottish chapbooks, Sir Walter Scott’s writings, academic historiography and the engravings distributed by the Royal Association of Promotion of Fines Arts in Scotland. While the chapbook representation of Scottishness was based on the dialectics of the nation versus tyranny embodied by civil liberty, religious freedom and loyalism, aiming at achieving different ends, each representation of Scottishness shared the common purpose of legitimising their intention of participating in British politics through their version of the language of the nation. In contrast to this particular version of Scottishness, what was constructed as the notion of Scottishness amongst Scott’s writings, academic historiography and engravings reflect the vision of their readers and viewers, mainly drawn from the landed elite and later from the Scottish bourgeoisie. For those readers and viewers, the notion of Scottish nationhood was used to legitimise the <i>status quo </i>of <i>de-facto</i> autonomy of Scotland within Britain self-governed by themselves. These differences and varieties in the construction of Scottish nationhood amongst these sources demonstrate the multiplicity of Scottishness which reveals the nature as well as class identity as fluid and situational. Such multiplicity can be understood in the relationship between nation and other identities, especially the dialectics of nation and class rather than by fixing national identity with a particular identity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:652871 |
| Date | January 2002 |
| Creators | Iwazumi, Kino |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/23061 |
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