Abstract
Drawing on the works of Czech and international structuralism, my talk outlines a future research project which focuses on the heath or the moor as a literary topos, i.e. a recurring and transforming stylisation of a place which retains the sediments of previous stories in which it appeared, together with its various functions. Since much of European literature which features these landscapes operate under the direct or indirect influence of James Macpherson's 1760s Ossianic publications, the talk opens with some observations on his Fragments of Ancient Poetry.
After a brief tour of literary heaths ranging from Macbeth to Wuthering Heights and The Hound of the Baskervilles, I will comment on the works of Steen Steensen Blicher, a Danish admirer and translator of Macpherson. The poetry and fiction set in his native Jutland draw on Ossianic literature in order to present a particular vision of the local heaths, which was in turn followed by other Danish writers.
This mapping of terrain will be concluded by some observations on these topoi in the novel Deireadh an Fhoghair (The End of Autumn, 1979) by Scottish Gaelic author Tormod Caimbeul (Norman Campbell) who inventively combines the traditional associations of the moor with lived experience and intimate knowledge and a tendency to present it as a vibrant and diverse ecosystem. The exploration of the layered meanings and associations of the heath and the moor in literature, visual arts, and cultural consciousness opens up potential for current environmental perspectives, and for considering the ways in which these landscapes are perceived, inhabited, used, and marketed in Scotland and beyond.