No historical figures appear in The Pirate, and there are no
historical events, but it is still an historical novel because it
dramatises those 'corners of time' where an old era is coming to an
end, and a new is beginning. The novel is set in Orkney and
Shetland in 1689, and for the northern isles the 'Glorious
Revolution' actually means the beginning of the cultural dominance
of Scotland and the advent of English power. Scott draws heavily on
the diary he kept on his tour round the lighthouses of Scotland in
1814. In both the diary and the novel he weighs the real need to
improve the agricultural methods of this barely subsistence economy
against the force of tradition and the human cost of rapid change.
The plot hinges on an illicit relationship, and is driven by dark
men twisted by their criminality, an obsessed woman searching for
her lost son, and the murderous rivalry of two young men - a family
tale which illustrates the uses and abuses of traditional lore, as
well as Scott's extraordinary grasp of the literature of the north.
General
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