The Highland Clearances in Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean’s Poetry

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to study the importance of the Highland Clearances as a specific historical event that left a great impact on the collective Scottish memory and the successive cultural production. It has focussed on the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid and Sorley MacLean showing the effect of the Highland Clearances on their poetry. This dissertation investigates both poets’ attempt of presenting the Highlands in a different way from previous writers’ attempts. It has analysed the early history of Scotland in order to depict the development of the Scottish nationalism and the English colonial rhetoric and politics towards Scotland. Passing through some of the main events of Scotland, such as the Union of the Scottish and English crowns with king James of 1603, the Union of Parliaments in 1707 and the Jacobite rebellions, it has given a boarder scope of the Scottish conflicts before the Clearances. It has also looked through the events of the Highland Clearances with a postcolonial approach, showing aspects of the internal colonisation of the English rule over U.K. and how this issue is presented in the poetry of MacDiarmid and MacLean.