Scotland, Britain, Empire : Writing the Highlands, 1760-1860 / Kenneth McNeil.

This work examines representation of the Scottish Highlands in the Romantic and early Victorian periods, the call for preserving the Scottish national identity while being part of the British union.

"Native tongue": Ossian, national origins, and the problem of translation -- Roby Roy and the King's visit: modernity and the nation-as-tribe -- Britain's "Imperial man": Walter Scott, David Stewart, and Highland masculinity -- "Petticoated devils": Highland soldiers, martial races, and the Indian mutiny -- "Not absolutely a native nor entirely a strange": Anne Grant, Queen Victoria, and the Highland travelogue.

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"Scotland, Britain, Empire takes on a cliche that permeates writing from and about the literature of the Scottish Highlands. Popular and influential in its time, this literature fell into disrepute for circulating a distorted and deforming myth that aided in Scotland's marginalization by consigning Scottish culture into the past while drawing a mist over harsher realities." "Kenneth McNeil invokes recent work in postcolonial studies to show how British writers of the Romantic period were actually shaping a more complex national and imperial consciousness. He discusses canonical works - the works of James Macpherson and Sir Walter Scott - and noncanonical and nonliterary works - particularly in the fields of historiography, anthropology, and sociology. This book calls for a rethinking of the "romanticization" of the Highlands and shows that Scottish writing on the Highlands reflects the unique circumstances of a culture simultaneously feeling the weight of imperial "anglobalization" while playing a vital role in its inception."--Jacket.

Description based on print version record.