Reacreatin' Scotland : the poetry and prose of Hugh MacDiarmid

• Main Author: Cameron, Audrey
• Published: University of Aberdeen 1996
• Subjects: 820.90091; Literature
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.483981

This thesis explores the major stages of MacDiarmid's work, examining MacDiarmid's relationship with Scotland through his prose, poetry, and political activities. The introduction looks at the history of critical responses to MacDiarmid's work and explores the ways in which MacDiarmid's work has found itself at the centre of Scottish literary studies while it sits at the margins of the wider literary canon. It suggests that it is necessary to look again at the ways in which MacDiarmid engaged with the idea of Scotland throughout his career. Chapters Two, Three, and Four focus on the early period of his work (to <I>Drunk Man</I>). Chapter Two traces the development of his commitment to Scots and suggests that Drunk Man uncovers many of the contradictions which underlie 'A Theory of Scots Letter'. Chapter Three looks more specifically at the ways in which MacDiarmid images Scotland through his early work, focusing on the contrast between his commitment to an ideal Scotland and rejection of contemporary reality. Chapter Four explores the relationship between politics and literature in his early work and points to the ways in which the tensions of his later work are rooted in this early period. Chapters Five, Six and Seven move onto his middle period (from <I>Cenrastus </I>to <I>Stony Limits</I>). Chapter Five examines the ways in which the linguistic approach of this key phase comes out of his early work and looks forward to his final experimentations. Chapter Six explores his reinvention of an ideal Scotland in the Gaelic idea. Chapter Seven reads the political poems of the early thirties as an attempt to resolve the tensions between politics and poetry. The thesis concludes with a survey of his final poems and reveals the ways in which they combine his linguistic, cultural, and political aims in a vision of impossible desire.