A Highland Tour of Victorian Travel Writing: Ten Voices on Scotland

Dimitrios Kassis

oct 2023 · Cambridge Scholars Publishing

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During the first quarter of the eighteenth century, Scotland was persistently viewed as a peripheral region, inhabited by savage Highlanders, epitomising the sublime and the grotesque as well as the distance of the Scottish Other from civilised Europe. However, the rediscovery of the Ossianic tradition, the Scottish link to the Norman invasion and the increasing appeal of Scottish historical narratives to the average Victorian set the pattern for the reconstruction of a literary utopia. Facing the risk of racial segregation due to their Celtic background, a significant number of Scottish writers and theorists succumbed to the rising Anglo-Saxonism, seeking every means to prove their Anglo-Saxon background at the expense of their Celtic roots.

This volume includes a set of travel narratives and essays on Scotland, covering a period of more than two centuries (1722-1907). The travellers who flocked to Scotland were either driven by literary aspirations, or were on a mission to explore the country’s wild inhabitants, the Highlanders. In their attempt to define Scottish identity in accordance with the cultural, ideological and political standards of the English, Scottish and American travel writers often adhered to the Othering of the Scottish people, promoting images of backwardness and the sublime.

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Dimitrios Kassis holds a PhD from the Faculty of English Studies of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, where he also earned a master’s degree in translation studies. He also holds bachelor’s degrees in French, German, Spanish and Italian literatures. He received a master’s degree in education studies from Roehampton University, UK. He speaks 24 foreign languages and his academic interests are connected with travel literature, translation and language studies. He has published nine monographs, and is currently working as an appointed English teacher in the public sector.