Introduction

Abstract

Seamus Heaney reminds us that the old BBC ‘wireless’ used to put out a ‘Regional Weather Forecast’ as a kind of minor prelude to the more exalted and more widely respected ‘General Weather Forecast’, but that this distinction no longer exists. We are all regionalists now. In letters, as in meteorological forecasts, the implicit subordination of local to national has been eroded: ‘We turn on our radios and wait. All around there is good writing, but where,’ asks Heaney, ‘is the great carrying voice of the definitive centre?’

The first International Conference on the Literature of Region and Nation was held at the University of Aberdeen from 19 to 23 August 1986. Speakers, who came from a variety of countries, spoke on topics which were largely of their own choosing; no attempt was made to impose a particular theme or approach. The present volume records the proceedings of the Conference only in the sense that it publishes all the plenary session papers and a selection of the shorter ones. (A complete list is given in the Appendix, pp. 253–4.) This Introduction was not part of the Conference as such: it is a personal view of some of the topics raised, drawing mainly on the papers printed here, but it would not necessarily command the assent of all the contributors. The literature of region and nation provokes controversy, and, though the Conference itself was conducted in the friendliest possible atmosphere, unanimity is hardly to be expected, or perhaps to be desired. I have attempted to trace figures in the Conference carpet which others might not have found there, and though I express views which have been prompted and modified by the wealth of different ideas put forward at the Conference, the responsibility for what follows is entirely my own.