Highlanders and Maritimers in Alistair MacLeod’s “Clearances”
This paper examines how Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod, in his latest short story entitled “Clearances”, attempts to reconnect the twentieth-century maritime culture of Cape Breton, Canada, to an idealized Scottish past that dates back to the eighteenth-century clearances of the Highlands. Along w...
Shranjeno v:
| izdano v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/etudesecossaises, |
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| Glavni avtor: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jezik: | Anglais |
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Études écossaises
2017
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| Online dostop: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Izvleček: | This paper examines how Canadian writer Alistair MacLeod, in his latest short story entitled “Clearances”, attempts to reconnect the twentieth-century maritime culture of Cape Breton, Canada, to an idealized Scottish past that dates back to the eighteenth-century clearances of the Highlands. Along with No Great Mischief, the only novel he published in his lifetime, his short stories tackle the themes of displacement, forced migration and collective memory. After focusing on the role played by the Atlantic Ocean in his short stories as a reminder of historical and cultural displacement, this study will explore how MacLeod’s “Clearances” reconstructs a forgotten line of filiation between Cape Breton and the Highlands that sends characters and readers back and forth in time. MacLeod’s purpose to emphasize the prime importance of local culture is twofold: his stories not only serve to resist oblivion, they also express a refusal to surrender to the powerful pressures of a present-day process of globalization that challenges and threatens the survival of local identities. |
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