Neil Gunn was one of the principal writers of the Scottish Literary Renaissance movement, the earlytwentieth century flowering of modernist literature in Scotland. Although some commentators have noticed the frequent mentions of psychoanalysis in his work, until now no wider study has been undertaken. In this thesis, I look at Gunn's interest in psychoanalysis in a number of different ways. This is down with the two-fold aim of first, providing a modern assessment of Gunn's work, and second, examining more broadly the history of modernism in Scottish literature. In the introduction, I propose an understanding of modernism based on the literary exploration of new theories of, in this case the mind. I argue that a complex understanding of the interplay of these new theories and literature serves better than a more simple concern with either intellectual developments or changes in literary form alone. In the first section, I look at Sun Circle and The Serpent in the light of psychoanalytic theories of 'primitive' psychology and the history of religion. In the second, I look at Highland River and The Silver Darlings in the light of Freudian and Jungian theories of personal development, regression, and childhood. In the third, I look at the way in which Gunn explores Freud's theories of the warring life- and deathinstincts in both The Shadow and The Lost Chart. I conclude by looking briefly at how Gunn's literary explorations of psychoanalysis link with the work of later writers such as Muriel Spark, Robin Jenkins, Alexander Trocchi, Alasdair Gray, Kenneth White and Alan Spence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:571688 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Keir, Kenneth J. |
| Publisher | University of Aberdeen |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://digitool.abdn.ac.uk:80/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=194785 |
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