Научная статья на тему 'THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH LITERATURE IN THE POETRY OF THE SCOTTISH EMIGRANTS OF THE USA IN THE XIXTH CENTURY'

THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH LITERATURE IN THE POETRY OF THE SCOTTISH EMIGRANTS OF THE USA IN THE XIXTH CENTURY Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
SCOTLAND / ENGLAND / XIX CENTURY / POETRY / EMIGRATION / ШОТЛАНДИЯ / АНГЛИЯ / XIX В / ПОЭЗИЯ / ЭМИГРАЦИЯ

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Velilaeva L.R.

The article analyzes the English and Scottish historical and literary traditions that are relevant for the Scottish emigrant poets of the XIXth century, as well as the correlation of their work with the literary tastes of the readership. The Scottish literary tradition had much less influence than the English literary tradition, but it was she who formed the basic characteristics of Scottish emigration poetry: folklore, patriotism, historicism, mythogenicity. Genre-style preferences, versification technique are largely determined by the influence of English literature. However, the Scottish emigration poetry, despite the influence of various literary traditions, remained a rather distinctive and isolated phenomenon.

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Текст научной работы на тему «THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH LITERATURE IN THE POETRY OF THE SCOTTISH EMIGRANTS OF THE USA IN THE XIXTH CENTURY»

DOI: https://doi.org/10.18454/RULB.2020.23.3.30

ТРАДИЦИИ АНГЛИЙСКОЙ И ШОТЛАНДСКОЙ ЛИТЕРАТУРЫ В ПОЭЗИИ ШОТЛАНДСКИХ

ЭМИГРАНТОВ США XIX В.

Научная статья

Велилаева Л.Р. *

Крымский инженерно-педагогический университет имени Февзи Якубова, Симферополь, Россия * Корреспондирующий автор (lilivelilaeva[at]yandex.ru)

Аннотация

В статье проанализированы английские и шотландские историко-литературных традиции, актуальные для шотландских поэтов-эмигрантов XIX в., а также корреляции их творчества с литературными вкусами читательской аудитории. Шотландская литературная традиция уже имела гораздо меньшее влияние, чем английская литературная традиция, но именно она сформировала базовые характеристики шотландской эмиграционной поэзии: фольклорность, патриотизм, историзм, мифогенность. Жанрово-стилевые предпочтения, верификационная техника определены во многом влиянием английской литературы. Однако шотландская эмиграционная поэзия, не смотря на влияние различных литературных традиции, оставалась явлением достаточно самобытным и изолированным.

Ключевые слова: Шотландия, Англия, XIX в., поэзия, эмиграция.

THE TRADITIONS OF ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH LITERATURE IN THE POETRY OF THE SCOTTISH

EMIGRANTS OF THE USA IN THE XIXTH CENTURY

Research article

Velilaeva L.R. *

Crimean Engineering and Pedagogical University, Simferopol, Russia * Corresponding author (lilivelilaeva[at]yandex.ru)

Abstract

The article analyzes the English and Scottish historical and literary traditions that are relevant for the Scottish emigrant poets of the XIXth century, as well as the correlation of their work with the literary tastes of the readership. The Scottish literary tradition had much less influence than the English literary tradition, but it was she who formed the basic characteristics of Scottish emigration poetry: folklore, patriotism, historicism, mythogenicity. Genre-style preferences, versification technique are largely determined by the influence of English literature. However, the Scottish emigration poetry, despite the influence of various literary traditions, remained a rather distinctive and isolated phenomenon.

Keywords: Scotland, England, XIX century, poetry, emigration.

Introduction

Scottish emigration of the XIXth century - one of the key phenomena in the history, culture and literature of not only Scotland, but also the United States. As a result of this emigration, a group of Scottish emigrational poets emerged in literature (both Scottish, American and world), whose work has become an independent segment in Scottish-American literature.

The Scottish literary process in the United States of the XIXth century, which was very lively in practice, was poorly provided with adequate literary criticism. English criticism and literary criticism also showed little interest in the literature of their diasporas [2].

The poetry of Scotland began to lag behind the dominant tendencies of English continental (especially French) poetry gradually. As Scottish literary critics note, the poets of Scotland in the second half of the XVIIth-XIXth centuries no longer belonged to the clan nobility, or to the higher clergy, or to the top of the legal class (as was the case in previous centuries, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance). Accordingly, not only the level of their education decreased, but also the scale of their sociocultural thinking [8, P. 539-684], [10, P. 33-70].

The religious situation has changed in Scotland just as much. Protestantism, as a leading religious trend, has become much more zealous in combating the remnants of paganism in Scottish life than Catholicism did. Catholics had at least 1000-1200 years of experience in adapting Celtic pagan traditions.

One of the consequences of this struggle was the rejection of the Celtic mythopoetic heritage by the Protestant poets of Scotland. It included national and regional myths, legends and traditions. Among other characters, Protestantism had to abandon the figures of the poets-soothsayers. Among the Celtic tribes, those acted as advisers and singers, the deeds of leaders, kings, their squads or the exploits of entire tribal associations.

However, Scottish poetry could not and did not want to suppress completely both the mythogenic and ethnogenic functions of the national singer-«bard». A poet, especially a regional one: «small-town» or rural, could sometimes be portrayed not without comic. (See, for example, the comic poems of R. Sampill (? 1595-? 1668) about Hubby Simson [9, P. 233-236] or J. Beatty (Beatty) (1735-1803) about Alexander Ross [9, P. 279 -282]). But still, even in these poems, the poet remains a chronicler, judge and «glorifier» of his land.

Were our authors able to perceive even such - fragmentary preserved - metropolitan traditions? We believe they were capable - and for several reasons.

Some of them were taken to emigration by their families, while they themselves were still young children. In general, the most common age of the XIXth century Scots emigrant (among our poets) is 20-30 years. The next most frequent age is 15-20 years [1], [5].

From these data, it can be concluded that young emigrants managed to perceive «at home» at least that part of Scottish folklore and Scottish literature, which by the 1820s-1880s had sufficient popularity among a wide audience.

Scottish traditions. In Scotland, poetry, although after the reunification with England (1707) lost its former status and horizons, at the same time was able to retain some important functions by the XIXth century.

So, it preserved the functions of the chronicler of its homeland, as well as the moral judge for its fellow countrymen. True, having lost its statehood, it was forced to reduce the national scope of its artistic thinking. The poets of Scotland of the XVIIth-XVIIIth centuries are no longer chroniclers of military campaigns and heroic deeds of their fellow tribesmen. The patriotic history acquires a memorial character in the poetic texts of these centuries. The glorious past is opposed to the poor present. However, historicism and patriotism do not completely disappear. They are present in the plots of historical ballads, and in the caustic assessment of modernity in satirical pamphlets, Scottish landscapes, often acting as national «open-air» museums.

The same can be said about «national morality» as a distinctive feature of Scottish poetry of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, which passed as a tradition into the XIXth century. The Reformation and Puritanism significantly changed the moral orientations of Scottish society. The Counter-Reformation broke (or at least undermined) these moral foundations. Scottish poetry briefly but emphatically described the three main transformations that the religious-political shift of 1660-1745 brought into the moral life of the Scots: «<...> kaad doun Woman frae the throne and skies, / And even frae the chair, / Hapt her beautie in a dow disguise / And sat her on the fluir <...>» (T. Scott, Fergus [9, P. 492]. The first transformation is the abolition of the Catholic cult of the Mother of God and, more broadly, of the saints. The religious consciousness of man has lost its divine intermediaries, «their» characters in the region beyond the grave, which sharply increased his human scale, but also his personal, social and moral responsibility. The Scots could not abandon the traditional veneration of saints - first of all, «nationally oriented» saints, as Apostle St. Andrew the First-Called (since ancient times considered the patron of Scotland) or Queen Margaret of Scots (the first proper Scottish canonized Saint, wife of Malcolm IV, the last king of the second Scottish the Canmore Dynasty (1058-1286)).

The Scots did not want to part with the cult (no longer church, but secular) of Queen Mary I Stuart (1542-1587). It is noteworthy that during the lifetime of Queen Mary Stuart, the attitude towards her in Scotland was more negative than positive. She could not be forgiven for her semi-French origin and purely French upbringing, French manners brought to her homeland, love affairs and illegitimate children, and most importantly, the absence of truly national state interests. However, after her execution by her sister / (cousin) /rival Elizabeth I Tudor, the image of Mary quickly becomes the image of a political victim. In this vein it will be interpreted by R. Burns (1759-1796) in Lament of Mary, Queen of Scots, on the Approach of Spring [6, P. 185-187].

Scottish poetry on everyday topics also showed particular attention to the puritanical «female» tradition. The matriarchal tradition here, too, has remained little amenable to new trends. The centuries-old types of women - heads of the clan, fortune tellers and masters of the elements, remained albeit not realities, but symbols of the latest Scottish poetry. Such is the mistress of the Auchtermuchty estate, plowing the field on two fours of oxen (The Wife of Auchtermuchty [9, p. 74-79]). The same is the mistress of Usher's Well estate, who raised three sons-heroes and is able to conjure winds and showers (The Wife of Usher's Well [9, p. 226-227]); and even the heroine of the relatively late (XVIIIth century) folk ballad Tak 'Your Auld Cloak About Ye: also the mother of a large family («lads and bonnie lasses ten» [9, P. 245] and «gudeman»[9, P. 246]).

All these features of metropolitan literature became the cultural baggage of the Scottish emigrants of the USA in the XIXth century, the cultural background of their texts.

Prof. Tom Scott put it aphoristically: the poetry of Scotland, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (XIV-XVI centuries) «embracing the Universe», in the next two centuries (XIV-XVIII) «shrank to a vegetable garden with cabbage» (kailyard). The European-minded poet-bard was replaced by the provincial «noble-rhyming» (poetaster) [9, P. 40]. Opposing him, prof. M.A. Novikova put forward a different idea. The poets of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries have undeniably become less «global» and more «regional». However, they have preserved (albeit in a truncated form) both the folklore, mythopoetic heritage of Scotland, and the legacy of «scholarly», «book» literature [6, P. 134].

Traditions of English Literature. The attitude of Scotland (and therefore of the Scottish poets) towards England has always been socially and ethnically complex. At the beginning of proper Scottish and English history (V-VIII centuries AD), both the Celts-Scots and the Germanic Anglo-Saxons were alien ethnic groups on the British Isles. The predecessors of the Anglo-Saxons in the territories of the future England were the Celts-Britons; the predecessors of the Scots on the lands of the future Scotland were the semi-Celts-Picts (who early mixed with some pre-Celtic population) [4].

The first states of the Scots and Anglo-Saxons were also formed almost simultaneously (VIII-IX centuries), but separately. Borderlands (for example, Northumbria) became the subject of first disputes, then mutual raids, then wars. In the Anglo-French (so-called Hundred Years) War (1337-1453), Scotland played on the side not of neighboring England, but of continental France.

The Scottish heirs to the throne (for example, the future James I Stuart (1394-1437)) or even kings were repeatedly imprisoned by England and given only for huge ransoms. Oliver Cromwell's army occupied Scottish lands and placed English garrisons there. The English Queen Elizabeth I Tudor for the first time in European history legally, after a public trial, executed the Scottish Queen Mary I Stuart. It should come as no surprise that throughout the Middle Ages England was called in Scotland the Auld Enemie, and the union with France was called the Auld Alliance [69]. As a result, only those ethnic Scots who either could not or did not want to consider themselves Scots began to be related to the English literature (and wrote in English) (examples are William Drummond (Drummond, 1585-1649) or James Thomson (Thomson, 1700-1748)). The exceptions were authors who wrote in English not poetry, but prose (for example, Sir Walter Scott), or, in addition to poetry, also drama (for example, Lord George Gordon Byron) [11]. The rest of the Scottish metropolitan poets were familiar with English literature, but interacted with it not in general, but very selectively: using only those traditions that were closer to them and / or their national audience.

So, in the verses of the Scots there are no direct references to English sentimental poets. At the same time, heightened «compassion», touching love situations and / or landscapes-meditations clearly appeared in them not without the influence of the English tradition. For example, In the Grampian Mountains by J. Kennedy is clearly projected onto the lyrical landscapes of R. Gray:

Sometimes by rocky heights they stray'd, Sometimes by deep and ferny glade, And sometimes on by pathways green, Along the bank of deep ravine, While far beneath, in headlong force, Some mountain torrent cleav'd its course, And woke the echoes from their sleep <.. .> [7, P. 81-82].

The freedom-loving themes and civic pathos of the poets of the Scottish emigration are embodied, among other things, by means developed by English (and continental) romanticism (D.C. McCallum, Soldier's Song of Freedom; P. McPherson, Dark Culloden Day; W. Anderson, Scotland Forever and Old Glory).

Similarly, the religious sentiments of Scottish emigrants rely on the stylistic and versification resources of medieval spiritual lyrics, including English (J. Lyon, Confidence in God; A. McLachlan, God; D. M. Henderson, A Charity Sermon, etc.).

Conclusions

Without accepting unconditionally any of the literary trends of: neither Scottish (too regional for the US diaspora), nor English (for the same diaspora — too modernist and / or individualistic), Scottish emigrants thereby fell out of the sphere of increased attention as British, and American criticism. To a large extent, they turned out to be locked in the circle of their communities, national and / or religious.

Such (at least relative) isolation not only did not correspond to, but directly contradicted the personal creative and social aspirations of the Scottish poets in the United States. They made vigorous efforts to ensure that their work did not lose access to either the national or even the cross-cultural worldview.

Конфликт интересов Conflict of Interest

Не указан. None declared.

Список литературы / References

1. Велилаева Л. Р. Шотландские поэты США XIX в. : социокультурный статус и его поэтическая реализация / Л. Р. Велилаева // Филологические науки. Вопросы теории и практики. Тамбов : Грамота, 2016. - № 7(61). Часть 2. - С. 13-15.

2. Велилаева Л. Р. Эмиграционный и метрополийный дискурсы шотландской поэзии XIX века : монография / Л. Р. Велилаева. Симферополь : ИП Хотеева Л.В., 2019. - 172 с.

3. Зверева Г. И. История Шотландии: учеб. пособие для вузов по спец. «История» / Г. И. Зверева. - М. : Высш. школа, 1987. - 208 с.

4. Мак-Кензи А. Кельтская Шотландия / А. Мак-Кензи; пер., науч. ред., вступ. ст. С.В. Иванов. - М. : Вече, 2008. - 336 с.

5. Новикова М. А. Писательская биография как интержанр и интертекст переводной антологии/хрестоматии (к постановке проблемы) / М. А. Новикова, Л. Р. Велилаева // Переводческий дискурс : междисциплинарный подход / Материалы II Всероссийской научно-практич. конференции. Симферополь : ИТ «АРИАЛ», 2018. - С. 414-419.

6. Шотландии кровавая луна: Антология шотландской поэзии (с XIII-го века до века XX-го) / М. А. Новикова (сост., пер., комм.). - Симферополь : СОНАТ; Крымский Архив, 2007. - 320 с.

7. Kennedy J. Among the Grampian Hills / The Scottish and American poems of James Kennedy. - New York : J.S. Ogilvie Publishing Co., 1920. - 247 p.

8. Millar J. H. A Literary History of Scotland / J. H. Millar. - London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1903. - 703 p.

9. Scott T. The Penguin book of Scottish Verse / Tom Scott // intro. and ed. T. Scott. - London : Penguin, 1976. - 519 p.

10. The Edinburg History of Scottish Literature. Enlightenment, Britain and Empire / ed. by Brown I., Clancy O., Manning S. - Edinburg University Press, 2007. - In 3 vol. - Vol. 2. - 390 p.

11. The Norton Anthology of English Literature / ed. by Abrams M.H. - New York: W.W. Norton&Company, 1993. -2586 p.

Список литературы на английском / References in English

1. Velilaeva L. R. Shotlandskie pojety SShA XIX v.: sociokul'turnyj status i ego pojeticheskaja realizacija [Scottish poetry of the USA of the XIXth century : social-cultural status and its poetical realization] / L. R. Velilaeva // Filologicheskie nauki. Voprosy teorii i praktiki [Philological Sciences. Questions of theory and practice]. - Tambov : Gramota, 2016. - № 7(61). Chast' 2. - P. 13-15. [in Russian]

2. Velilaeva L. R. Jemigracionnyj i metropolijnyj diskursy shotlandskoj pojezii XIX veka: monografija [Emigrational and Mother-land discourse of Scottish emigrational poetry of the XIXth century / L. R. Velilaeva. Simferopol' : IP Hoteeva L.V., 2019. - 172 p. [in Russian]

3. Zvereva G.I. Istorija Shotlandii [History of Scotland]: ucheb. posobie dlja vuzov po spec. «Istorija» / G. I. Zvereva. -M.: Vyssh. shkola, 1987. - 208 p. [in Russian]

4. Mak-Kenzi A. Kel'tskaja Shotlandija [Celtic Scotland] / A. Mak-Kenzi; per., nauch. red., vstup. st. S.V. Ivanov. - M.: Veche, 2008. - 336 p. [in Russian]

5. Novikova M. A., Velilaeva L. R. Pisatel'skaja biografija kak interzhanr i intertekst perevodnoj antologii/hrestomatii (k postanovke problemy) [Writer's biography as intergenre and intertext of translated anthology (to the problem statement) / M. A. Novikova, L. R. Velilaeva // Perevodcheskij diskurs : mezhdisciplinarnyj podhod [Translational discourse : interdisciplinary approach] / Materialy II Vserossijskoj nauchno-praktich. konferencii. Simferopol': IT «ARIAL», 2018. - P. 414-419. [in Russian]

6. Shotlandii krovavaja luna: Antologija shotlandskoj pojezii (s XIII-go veka do veka XX-go) [Scottish Bloody moon: Anthology of Scottish Poetry (from XIIIth till XXth centuries] / M.A. Novikova (sost., per., komm.). - Simferopol': SONAT; Krymskij Arhiv, 2007. - 320 p. [in Russian]

7. Kennedy J. Among the Grampian Hills / The Scottish and American poems of James Kennedy. - New York : J.S. Ogilvie Publishing Co., 1920. - 247 p.

8. Millar J. H. A Literary History of Scotland / J. H. Millar. - London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1903. - 703 p.

9. Scott T. The Penguin book of Scottish Verse / Tom Scott // intro. and ed. T. Scott. - London : Penguin, 1976. - 519 p.

10. The Edinburg History of Scottish Literature. Enlightenment, Britain and Empire / ed. by Brown I., Clancy O., Manning S. - Edinburg University Press, 2007. - In 3 vol. - Vol. 2. - 390 p.

11. The Norton Anthology of English Literature / ed. by Abrams M.H. - New York: W.W. Norton&Company, 1993. -2586 p.

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