Thomas Pringle: la poesia migrante scozzese

Migrant Scottish Poetry

End of the Scottish nation state (the independence of Scotland)

1603: the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England (James VI of Scotland became King James I of England and Scotland).

1707: Union of Parliaments: birth of GB → this was supported by the majority of Scots, especially the lawlanders, who were very much attached to their traditions. There was an attack by the part of the people who were against this: Jacobites (1715 + 45-46) → they were suppressed very violently or forced to go and work in the colonies as indentured servants. The Scottish system was affected so much by the Jacobites rebellions.

18^th and 19^th centuries: highlanders were forced to new activities. A lot of them went to the colonies. Some kind of diaspora. A sort of internal colonialism was happening. – Post colonial discourse can be applied to the part of Scotland that suffered for this situation, the celtic Scotland: Highlands + Northern Island.

Thomas Pringle (1789-1834)

Temporary diaspora & migrancy, experience of the exotic, "The violent Arcadia" and Negative Sublime, Contact zone.

Theme of the exotic → in the romantic period, most of the ideas concerning the exotic were imagined. Pringle promotes the idea of an actual experience of the exotic. Idea of the negative sublime → ex. African desert → some kind of waste land. Idea that maybe the intervention of man may be good. The poem becomes a contact zone: encounter of different cultures!

Pringle was a colonizer in Africa, but he participated in the campaign for the abolishment of slavery in the colonies. Actually, the Scottish people were very active in this campaign. He wrote a lot of articles and poems on this issue.

1820-1826: he lived in Africa → settlement with all his family, in a border zone: Zuurveld. He was there because he wanted to make money: they had financial help. When he was there, he was a settler but also a defender of the rights of those people. We see a translation of his own world into this new environment. Very clear in his poems: pastoral tradition applied to describe the local landscape. The domestic and the foreign are always in contact! They both coexist in his life and his poems. → confrontation with the other!

(Confrontation with the Other: Dutch-Afrikaans Boers and black population). He also makes use of terms of the local language. In his poems, he transposes the domestic onto the African exotic, and the two cultures come together. Attempt to duplicate the familiar => transculturation! He describes the foreign and exotic from the perspective of the familiar and domestic.