The representation of England and Scotland in The expedition of Humphry Clinker

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the representation of England and Scotland in the novel The expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), by the Scottish writer Tobias Smollett. Written in epistolary form, the novel narrates the impressions of a Welsh family about the cities they visit during a trip through Great Britain. Thus, the letters of the novel allow us to know the England and Scotland in the eighteenth century through a variety of perspectives. Despite the union of the parliaments of Scotland and England in 1707, the idea of “British” in the period in which the novel was produced was closely tied to English culture and language, and because of that the Scots were seen as inferior to the English. It is therefore worth noting how, by contrasting cities in England and Scotland, Smollett intends to subvert the prejudices and misconceptions directed at the Scots that were so common in the novels produced in England, unifying the idea of Scots to that of British.