Murdo MacDonald > Quotes

“Scott's description of the stag in The Lady of the Lake, is much more challenging than the image of Landseer's Monarch of the Glen. He refers to the 'antlered monarch of the waste', a far more appropriate creature of the upper reaches of Glen Artney where Canto I of The Lady of the Lake begins. The problem is that Scott and Landseer have become too closely associated; they have become a conjoined stereotype of the Highlands from which neither can escape. That is not such a problem for Landseer; indeed, without his association with Scott he would be much less known today. But it is a problem for Scott and the Highlands, because Landseer's image of The Monarch of the Glen has been visually conflated with Scott's literary work in the minds of so many.”
― Murdo MacDonald, Literary Tourism, the Trossachs and Walter Scott

“It is too simple to say that if you avoid kitsch you avoid empire but it is a good start. It is more accurate to say that while kitsch does not necessarily imply empire it is one of its accompaniments.”
― Murdo MacDonald, Ruskin's Triangle

“That notion that any aspect of knowledge, culture, or society benefits from the illumination of all other aspects is key to Davie’s thinking; for him the task of education was to facilitate that process. The social approach to knowledge that took for granted the role of the wider community in the process of establishing and maintaining bodies of knowledge also implied for Davie that within universities different disciplines should be juxtaposed for mutual illumination, and that a key role for the discipline of philosophy was to enable such juxtaposition to be understood.”
― Murdo MacDonald