Description
Book SynopsisActs of Union explores the political relationship between Scotland and England as it was negotiated in the literary realm in the century after the 1707 Act of Union. It examines Britain, one of the precursors to the modern nation, not as a homogeneous, stable unit, but as a dynamic process, a dialogue between heterogeneous elements. Far from being constituted by a single Act of Union, the author contends, Britain was forgedin all the variant senses of that wordfrom multiple acts of union and dislocation over time.
Accordingly, each of the first five chapters focuses on a discursive encounter between a Scottish and an English writer. Chapter 1 examines the political debate between Daniel Defoe and Lord Belhaven concerning the Act of Union. Chapter 2 considers how Tobias Smollett and Henry Fielding used the novel form to highlight their concerns regarding the state of the nation after the 1745 rebellion. Chapter 3 analyzes the debate between James Macpherson and Samuel Jo
Table of Contents
Introduction 1. Writing the nation in 1707: Daniel Defoe, Lord Belhaven and the 'vast conjunction' of Britain 2. Narrating the '45: Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett and the pretense of fiction 3. Origin of the specious: James Macpherson, Samuel Johnson and the forging of the nation 4. The poetry of nature and the nature of poetry: Robert Burns and William Wordsworth 5. Citing the nation: Thomas Percy's and Walter Scott's minstrel ballads Conclusion: Runes of empire: Scotland and the margins of English literature;' Notes Bibliography Index.
