scotland, wars, violence, Fleshmarket, Edinburgh, The Battle of Culloden, MacDonald, David Morier, identity, scottish, Nicola Morgan
Scotland has often been portrayed as an unstable nation in the midst of violent conflicts both before and after the Acts of Union in 1707. This set of documents consists of two literary works and a pictorial work, spanning the period following the said Acts of Union, from 1746 to 1895, which is no exception to the country's score of wars. The three of them focus on the impact of wars and violence in Scotland, on both the assailants and the victims' relationships, with the central theme of Love and Friendship in the field of study on the encounter with alterity in this particular context. Document A is an excerpt from Nicola Morgan's Fleshmarket (2016) in which a young boy named Robbie was left to look after his sister (Essie) and himself in the seedy part of Edinburgh in 1828 when their father and mother died. In this extract, Robbie sends Essie home to try to get into a building that seems to hide a suspicious and improper activity. The second document, entitled "The Battle of Culloden," is an oil on canvas by David Morier (1746) depicting, as its name indicates, the battle of Culloden, between the Jacobite army and the Hanoverian forces. The last document is an extract from Lilith, a fantasy novel by George MacDonald, published in 1895. It tells the story of Mr. Vane, a librarian who is visiting a parallel universe. In this excerpt, Mr. Vane comes back to a woman he once met and tries to separate facts and fiction as she tells him what happened to him and how she feels about their relationship. All three documents question how human beings cope with events such as wars and brutality, in other words, how they affect their relationships and the impact they have on their lives. Indeed, in this set of documents, various representations of violence are brought forward, affecting the lives of ordinary citizens and "attackers" around the notions of domination and who is in power, leading to a situation of uncertainty as caught between evasion and entrapment.
[...] This has consequences for such violence and uncertain status lead to evasion and/or entrapment: human beings seeking their humanity as a way to compensate, to escape through fiction in various media, thus blowing a wind of change, both in their feelings and relationships, as well as in the history of their country. Put differently, these three documents allow to question how to maintain one's humanity during times of war, how to deal with one's life and relationships in such a context as it is often difficult to know where one's place is. [...]
[...] In other words, if it were not for violence and its consequences, he would have remained calm. As a reversal of roles, the narrator seeks humanity in the readers as he describes the living conditions of the sibling, playing with the readers' feelings of pity and compassion, especially through his skinny and ill-looking sister, portrayed as a child whose joy and innocence have been stolen (ll. 5-7). Besides, there are various references to animals, as a way of pointing out that they live as animals even though they are not ("sharing a building with pigs, and rats" l. [...]
[...] About the theme of violence The impact of violence is actually depicted in this historical account, for the battle at the bottom of the painting seems to have an impact on the dark and cloudy weather at the top, as if the raging storm on the ground had been reflected in the sky. This leads to the changes brought about by such violence and how it affects and modifies anyone or anything under its yoke. In document it is through narrative strategy, that is, the omniscient point of view and zero focalization that readers can account for the accumulating anger of the main protagonist. [...]
[...] The question of Lilith's identity is at the heart of the plot itself and is expressed by Mr. Vane's position: stood" is repeated throughout the extract, pointing to his stillness as the character reflects on her true self and her true motives in an attempt to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. This stage of reflection and the attempt to determine one's identity is followed by the need to assert or reaffirm one's position. In fact, in document Lilith hogs the conversation, for she is almost delivering a monologue if it is for a one-line intervention of the main character. [...]
[...] Another way to deal with violence is to try to escape through the chosen media. What is interesting to note here is that the iconographic document works as a euphemism of war while not made up of words and softens violence, while one might think that visual violence would have more impact than words that call for imagination. In fact, the scene is almost a poetic portrayal of the battlefield, for there is no blood and the style is refined, while wars are supposed to be bloodsheds. [...]
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