Echoes of the Highlands: Exploring Acoustic Perception in Sorley MacLean and Norman MacCaig's Poetry of Place

Abstract

This dissertation conducts an eco-acoustic examination of the Scottish poetry of place, focusing on the manifestations of literary soundscapes in the works of Sorley MacLean and Norman MacCaig, with the aim of gaining a deeper comprehension of the cultural and literary significance of acoustic perception in shaping their art and their attitude towards the environment. Through a combination of interdisciplinary research methods and the close textual analysis of a curated selection of poems, this study adopts an ecocritical approach to investigate how the two poets have revived the rich tradition of poetry of place by capturing the essence of the Scottish landscape through the meticulous arrangement of rhythms and sounds in their verses. A critical exploration of MacLean and MacCaig’s sensitivity to auditory perception ultimately provides crucial insight into the cultural, historical, and emotional dimensions of the Scottish soundscapes they invoke, while emphasising the pivotal role of the interplay of sounds, environmental consciousness and language in creating a more intimate sense of place. By embracing the principles of acoustic ecology within the realm of literary studies, this dissertation not only adds to the research on the poetry of Sorley MacLean and Norman MacCaig by offering a renewed viewpoint of the poets’ work, but it also seeks to attract academic attention to the broader role of literary soundscapes in environmental literature, a field that remains largely unexplored in the discipline.