The significance of ancestral islands : Highland Scottish and regional identity in the works of Margaret Laurence and Alistair Macleod

The process of negotiating personal identity in a Canadian context is a complex one. It inevitably draws on many sources for identity markers, two of which include identification with a particular region and identification with a particular ethnic heritage. This thesis explores the constructed identities found in the fiction of two contemporary Canadian authors, Margaret Laurence and Alistair MacLeod, by focussing on the regional and ethnic identities represented in their texts. Laurence and MacLeod share an interest in a particular ethnic identity; the legacy of the Scottish Highlands figures prominently in most of their fictional works. But whereas Laurence explores this Highland heritage in fiction set primarily in western Canada, MacLeod explores a similar motif in short stories set in the Atlantic Provinces. Their similar tendencies to explore Highland Scots heritage in specific regional settings have, however, resulted in very different critical approaches to their works. Critics tend to read MacLeod's explorations of the Highland motif as a function of his regionalist bent, while they see Laurence's explorations of the same heritage as a function of a nationalist bent, despite the strong regionalist elements of her work. This thesis compares the ways in which Highland Scots heritage functions as a source of cultural identity in Laurence's final novel, The Diviners, and MacLeod's collected short fiction. It explores the tensions within and between the regional identities 'that arise out of this identification with the Highland Scots tradition in these texts and seeks to compare their respective regional visions as they are represented in relation to the Canadian nation.