Ian Macpherson's Writing of the Disaster

The Scottish Renaissance novelist Ian Macpherson is rarely considered within either Scottish or British contexts. This discussion of his novels demonstrates that they simultaneously serve both as reworkings of the pastoral tradition and as documents of what Maurice Blanchot calls the disaster. Offering a close reading of the novels themselves, focusing on Macpherson’s final novel, Wild Harbour, as well as a comparison with the more celebrated work of D.H. Lawrence, this article argues that Macpherson deserves significant reappraisal as both exemplars of the Scottish Renaissance tradition and as philosophically-engaged approaches to modernity.