Island of bliss amid the subject seas : Anglo-Scottish conceptions of Britain in the eighteenth century

Abstract

The object of this study is to analyse the range of literary representations of Britain and Britishness produced by Anglo-Scottish writers in the eighteenth century. It challenges prevailing conceptions of British nationalism in this period as either a straightforward synonym for English cultural norms and practices, or alternatively, as a single unified and unifying representation of the nation. The collocation Anglo-Scots refers to those writers who inherited a distinctive Scottish institutional and educational background, but emigrated to England for the purposes of their own professional advancement. The four writers the study concentrates upon are: James Thomson, Tobias Smollett, James Macpherson, and James Boswell.

The thesis argues, firstly, that these writers should be considered as formulating a distinct cultural tradition of literary representation within the eighteenth century; and secondly, that all produce images of British which reflect the cultural pressures they themselves encountered in the Hanoverian state. The images they produce consequently attempt either to resist, mediate, or transcend such national and cultural antagonisms. The study suggests, furthermore, that while the cultural images which these writers employ are diverse, they should also be considered as a forming a narrative in which a literary conception of Britain develops from writer to writer.

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