Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things: stitching together a nation through history and metafiction

Adopting a postmodernist approach, this dissertation aims to investigate how Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things is relevant to the modern conception of nationhood. The first chapter will present a general analysis of postmodernism, considering its controversies, interpretations and multiple analysis. It then explores its contradictory relations with history and time, foregrounding a study on Neo-Victorianism, historiographic metafictions and Victorian Studies. In the second chapter, the focus shifts on Scottish literature, from Muir’s “Scottish predicament” to postmodern debates. From a general overview, it will be considered Alasdair Gray’s contribution as a politically active Scottish writer. The last chapter specifically deals with his novel Poor Things, offering national allegorical readings through the analysis of the protagonist’s grotesque body.