Emblems of Scotland in Alasdair Gray’s Fiction

Abstract

DOI 10.18522/1995-0640-2021-3-102-113

Alasdair Gray is one of the most influential post-war Scottish writer along with Muriel Spark, Robin Jenkins, and James Kelman. He is wellknown not only as a contemporary novelist, intellectual, and esthete but also as a political activist and a Scottish independence supporter. Although his novels are written exclusively in English, they are characterized with a strong national flavor and are inspired by the ideas of the eminent Scottish scientists, philosophers, and community leaders. The article dwells on the analysis of Scottish national emblem in Alasdair Gray’s fiction. This emblem manifests itself through female nation figures, which were first used in Scottish nationalist discourse by Hugh MacDiarmid and Lewis Grassic Gibbon during the period of Scottish Literary Renaissance. One of the most recurrent themes in Alasdair Gray’s fiction are female suffering and entrapment, which serve as political allegories of the national inferiority complex («Scottish cringe») and subordinate position within the United Kingdom. Thus, the writer strives to include Scotland into the post-colonial framework. In order to re-imagine Scottish nation figure Alasdair Gray addresses both the literary tradition and the latest feminist ideas of his time. Unlike other contemporary Scottish writers who tend to present this figure as a passive victim of political injustice, Alasdair Gray intentionally makes her initiative and active non-victim. She is also constructed as a female monster, which alludes to discrepancy between country’s rich history and its «young» parliament.

Key words: Scotland, nationalism, national identity, female nation figures, Scottish literature, Alasdair Gray, Scottishness.