What a Romantic (Movement!)

Since coming to Scotland, I’ve understood the Romantics - Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and the gang - in a way like never before. Though not all of the Romantics lived or worked in Scotland, that type of wild, rugged beauty was certainly reflected in their writings. My two modules for this semester (Scottish Fiction and Development of the Novel) are incredibly appropriate to my own experiences, putting the study in study abroad! For an instance, in Scottish Fiction we’ve just finished reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped! Wouldn’t you know that David Balfour, the protagonist, traversed the exact landscape I drove across yesterday? Wild!

Way back last year when I applied for this program, I said that my goal for the semester was to immerse and engage in my host country as it relates to literature. Even though I’ve only actually been here (surprisingly!) three weeks, I know that these initial inklings are only going to grow in clarity. Even as a reader, and as a writer, I’ve felt so compelled to become more prolific in my work. May this vigor with which I’m approaching my academic and personal work endure!

In the same vein of connecting the scholastic to the individual, a brief conversation today made me think about how the gap between American and British history should, actually, be a very small one. A few of my classmates and I were chatting after our lecture about the rich heritage of this island and how so many aspects of history are integrated into daily British life (I’ve written about this in a previous post.). My classmate from Cumbria asked why I kept using the third person in reference to history. “It’s your history too, right?” he asked. I had no answer. I suppose I’ve always held British history and American history in two separate hands. They’ve never been one and the same. Thinking in terms of a more global community, I suppose that the history of the United Kingdom and the history of the United States are more closely connected than I ever realized. Naturally, some elements uniquely belong to one country or another - Americans can never claim a genuine castle and Brits can never claim Manifest Destiny – but many of our historic moments are completely interwoven. Although I still don’t have the audacity to tout Scottish heritage (I wouldn’t dare!) or adopt an English accent, I am comforted to think that the history which surrounds me every day is a little bit of my history as well.

Thoughts expressed and a Samuel Richardson novel to finish, I’m off to another evening in New Hall. Cheers!