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Topic outline

 

  • Time: 15 hours
    Level: Advanced

 
 

Introduction

  • Introduction Resource
  • This unit begins by locating debates about what literature is for in the context of Scotland in the 1930s. There follows a part-by-part textual analysis of Sunset Song in the light of these concerns. Finally,...
 

1 Contexts

 

2 Prelude of Sunset Song

  • 2.1 Activity 4 Resource
  • Now read the Prelude in your copy of Gibbon's Sunset Song, ‘The Unfurrowed Field’ (pp. 1–24), bearing in mind the same two questions.
  • 2.2 Language Resource
  • The language of the Prelude of Sunset Song is in the idiom of north-east rural Scotland. Both the main narrative voice and the dialogue of the characters are in Scots idiom, and dialogue is distinguished...
  • 2.3 The representation of rural Scotland Resource
  • The representation of rural Scotland in the Prelude of Sunset Song is assembled by the narrator describing the different farms and tenants in Kinraddie. The diversity of the characters described, combined...
  • 2.4 A comparison of Sunset Song and its literary predecessors Resource
  • In terms of language and the representation of rural Scotland, compare Sunset Song with its literary predecessors, Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush and The House with the Green Shutters.
 

3 ‘Ploughing’

  • 3.1 The use of ‘you’ Resource
  • Gibbon uses the narrative device of flashforward, or prolepsis, at the start of each of the four main parts of the novel. ‘Ploughing’ starts in June 1912 with Chris on the hillside next to the loch and...
  • 3.2 The roles of sex and the church Resource
  • Gibbon's description of Kinraddie in the Prelude refers matter-of-factly to sex – recall the ‘courtship’ of Ellison and Ella White. In ‘Ploughing’ sex acquires both a more central and a more complicated...
 

4 ‘Drilling’

  • 4.1 Points of view Resource
  • At the start of ‘Drilling’, in June 1913, Chris is on the hill with the Standing Stones and the loch; she is looking down on Kinraddie and pondering events of the previous year. The death of her mother...
  • 4.2 The decline of small-farming communities Resource
  • The supper following the threshing of Chae's harvest is one of many passages in ‘Drilling’ that describe the working lives of Kinraddie's peasant farmers. There are acutely observed details of the harvest...
 

5 'Seed-time’

  • 5.1 Overview Resource
  • The longest of the four main parts of Sunset Song, ‘Seed-time’ commences with Chris in April 1914 once again on the hillside with the Standing Stones and the loch, reflecting on the events that have occurred...
  • 5.2 The tension between Scots and English Resource
  • Gibbon develops the tension between Scots and English in ‘Seed-time’, both in describing the evolving identity of the character Chris, and in dramatising the economic and cultural resonances of the respective...
  • 5.3 The use of songs Resource
  • The conflict between tradition and modernity in Kinraddie is also registered subtly at the level of popular culture. Songs enjoy substantial prominence in Sunset Song, especially at Chris's wedding.
 

6 ‘Harvest’

  • 6.1 Overview Resource
  • Whereas the time covered in each of the first three parts is roughly one year (winter of 1911 to June 1912 in ‘Ploughing’; June 1912 to August 1913 in ‘Drilling’; September 1913 to April 1914 in ‘Seed-time’),...
  • 6.2 Reverend Gibbon's sermons Resource
  • Reverend Gibbon's sermons during the war continue in the pattern of his opportunistic sermon on the Song of Solomon that won him the posting to Kinraddie in the first place. Gibbon's sermons are reported...
  • 6.3 Chae's reaction to the destruction of the wood Resource
  • In ‘Harvest’, Gibbon describes how the precarious peasant economy of the prewar years is transformed by profiteering interests from both within and beyond Kinraddie. In the second passage from Activity...
  • 6.4 Ewan's return to Blawearie Resource
  • In the third passage from Activity 15, Ewan's return to Blawearie after his military training is described from Chris's point of view by the internal focalisation of her thoughts and fears. On the eve...
  • 6.5 Chae recounting news of Ewan's death Resource
  • The fact of Ewan's death is suggested in the first paragraph of ‘Harvest’ (p. 181), so the arrival of the telegram informing Chris of his death in France (p. 233) is no surprise. Chris's own initial shock...
 

7 Epilude

  • 7.1 Overview Resource
  • The Epilude – also subtitled ‘The Unfurrowed Field’ – returns to the gossipy folk voice of the Prelude and describes how the Kinraddie community fared in the final years of the war and its immediate aftermath....
  • 7.2 Gibbon and the forgotten histories of Scotland's poor Resource
  • An important motivation at the core of Gibbon's writing, closely connected to his political commitment, is his desire to rescue the forgotten, unrecorded histories of Scotland's poor.
  • 7.3 ‘The Flowers of the Forest’ Resource
  • Gibbon's final engagement with Scottish history in Sunset Song is expressed in the conclusion of the novel with the piper McIvor playing ‘The Flowers of the Forest’. I want to end this section by thinking...
 

8 Debates

  • 8.1 General Resource
  • Both Gibbon's manifesto in the Left Review and the text of Sunset Song give us a strong sense of how he might answer the question ‘What is literature for?’ This does not constitute the full picture, however,...
  • 8.2 Reviews of the first edition Resource
  • Read the five short reviews of the first edition of Sunset Song (and Gibbon's response to one of them) and answer the following questions:
  • 8.3 Criticisms of Sunset Song Resource
  • The most severe criticisms of Sunset Song by some distance were in the anonymous reviews of the Scottish provincial newspapers like the Fife Herald and Journal, which complained bitterly about the excessive...
  • 8.4 Praise for Sunset Song Resource
  • Gibbon is in fact substantially correct in his blistering ‘response’ to the Fife Herald and Journal when he declares that Sunset Song received ‘much acclaim … from the entire Press in Scotland and England’....
  • 8.5 Anti-capitalist propaganda or work of literary value Resource
  • It is clear that none of these reviewers, even the most sympathetic of them, shared Gibbon's commitment to writing that conveys ‘explicit or implicit [anti-capitalist] propaganda’. For them, the qualities...
  • 8.6 Sunset Song: nationalist or socialist novel? Resource
  • There were in fact several critics of Sunset Song in the 1930s who gave extended consideration to the novel's potential to serve an instrumental social/political function; it is to two of these that we...
  • 8.7 Sunset Song in schools and on film Resource
  • These differences of opinion between Gunn, Barke and Gibbon, expressed in the most polemical and intemperate of terms, were never resolved in the 1930s. Certainly no critical consensus was ever reached...
 

9 Video activities

  • 9.1 Introduction to the video Resource
  • Watch the introductory video clip below.
  • 9.2 Meet the critics Resource
  • There are four critics who all contribute their thoughts on the debates in the following sections. Read the brief biography for each critic, then watch as they describe how they first encountered Sunset...
  • 9.3 The debates Resource
  • In the following activities are video clips associated with five debates. For each, first watch the clips of key scenes from BBC Scotland's 1971 production of Sunset Song, where available, then watch each...
  • 9.4 Debate 1: use of female protagonist Resource
  • In the BBC video clip below, Chris Guthrie reflects on the conflict between her Scots and English selves. The four critics then identify different aspects of how her character represents a new departure...
  • 9.5 Debate 2: use of language Resource
  • The four critics address Gibbon's use of Scots in Sunset Song and discuss how his language in the novel both challenges and extends literary possibilities.
  • 9.6 Debate 3: politics in the novel Resource
  • The BBC video clips illustrate when Gibbon's own political commitments seem closest to the novel's surface: Chris and Ewan at Dunnottar Castle and Reverend Colquohoun's final sermon. The critics then highlight...
  • 9.7 Debate 4: representation of Scotland Resource
  • In the BBC video clip Chris sings ‘Flowers of the Forest’, her signature song in the novel. The critics then discuss different ways of understanding Gibbon's relationship to the song, and to Scottish culture...
  • 9.8 Debate 5: the novel today Resource
  • The four critics reflect on their own continuing affection for the novel, and consider its relevance at the close of the 20th century.
 

References and Acknowledgements

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