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Kailyard and Scottish Literature
For more than a century, the word 'Kailyard' has been a focal point of Scottish literary and cultural debate. Originally a term of literary criticism, it has come to be used, often pejoratively, across a whole range of academic and popular discourse. Historians, politicians and critics of Scottish film and media have joined literary scholars in using the term to set out a diagnosis of Scottish culture. This is the first comprehensive study of the subject. Andrew Nash traces the origins of the Kailyard diagnosis in the nineteenth century and considers the critical concerns that gave rise to it. He then provides a full reassessment of the literature most commonly associated with the term – t...
Beyond Scotland
Scottish creative writing in the twentieth century was notable for its willingness to explore and absorb the literatures of other times and other nations. From the engagement with Russian literature of Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Morgan, through to the interplay with continental literary theory, Scottish writers have proved active participants in a diverse international literary practice. Scottish criticism has, arguably, often been slow in appreciating the full extent of this exchange. Preoccupied with marking out its territory, with identifying an independent and distinctive tradition, Scottish criticism has occasionally blinded itself to the diversity and range of its writers. In stressing ...
The Genius of Scotland
The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834 explores the wide-ranging reception history of Robert Burns by examining the sources of his reputation as the ‘Genius of Scotland’ in the Scottish Enlightenment and beyond. Evaluating his changing stature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the book investigates the figure of Burns as a ‘cultural production’ that was constructed by warring cultural forces in the literary marketplace. The critical promotion of Burns as the ‘Heaven-taught ploughman’ greatly influenced his legacy as a labouring-class ‘genius’ and national icon, both of which relied on blatant censorship and distortion of his biography and works. The Genius of Scotland debunks both the hagiographic and vituperative representations of the poet from this period, revealing not only how (and why) he was culturally produced as a national ‘genius’ but also how the process continues to influence our understanding of Burns into the present day.
Pointed Encounters
Pointed Encounters establishes the literary significance of representations of dance in poetry, song, dance manuals, and fiction written between 1750 and 1830. Presenting original readings of canonical texts and fresh readings of neglected but significant literary works, this book traces the complicated role of social dancing in Scottish culture and identifies the hitherto unexplored motif of dance as an outwardly conforming, yet covertly subversive, expression of Scottish identity during the period. The volume draws upon diverse yet mutually revealing texts, from traditional dance and music to Sir Walter Scott and contemporary Scottish women novelists, to offer students and scholars of Scottish and English literature a fresh insight into the socio-cultural context of the British state after 1746.
Scotland in Europe
"If there is ocht in Scotland that’s worth ha’en / There is nae distance to which it’s unattached" – Hugh MacDiarmid A realignment of Scottish literary studies is long overdue. The present volume counters the relative neglect of comparative literature in Scotland by exploring the fortunes of Scottish writing in mainland Europe, and, conversely, the engagement of Scottish literary intellectuals with European texts. Most of the contributions draw on the online Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation. Together they demonstrate the richness of the creative dialogue, not only between writers, but also between musicians and visual artists when they turn their attention to literature. The contributors to this volume cover most of Europe, including the German-speaking countries, Scandinavia, France, Catalonia, Portugal, Italy, the Balkans, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia. All Scotland's major literary languages – Gaelic, Scots, English and Latin – are featured in a continent-wide labyrinth that will repay further exploration.
Ethically Speaking
As politics and cultures interact within an increasingly diverse Scotland, and differences in values become more evident across generations, the need for clear understanding and cooperation within and between communities becomes a pressing issue. This relates both to local and larger concerns: language, violence, morality, gender and sexuality, education, ethnicity, truth and lies. The chapters gathered here focus on significant Scottish writers of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, (Edwin Morgan, A.L. Kennedy, Liz Lochhead, John Burnside, Jackie Kay, Robin Jenkins, Muriel Spark, William McIlvanney, Ali Smith, James Kelman and others) and the communities described are certa...
The Scottish Sixties
Although a number of publications have appeared in recent years marking the importance of the ‘swinging sixties’, many tend to be personally reflective in nature and London-centric in their coverage. By contrast, The Scottish Sixties: Reading, Rebellion, Revolution? addresses this misrepresentation and in so doing fills a gap in both Scottish and British literary and cultural studies. Through a series of academic analyses based on archival records, ephemera and work produced during the 1960s, this volume focuses uniquely on Scotland. In its concern with some of the key figures of Scottish cultural life, the book considers amongst other topics the implications of censorship, the role of little magazines in shaping cultural debates, the radical nature of much Scottish literature of the time, developments in the avant-garde and the role of experiment in theatre, film, TV, fine art and music.
"Joyous Sweit Imaginatioun"
This volume gathers together essays on Scottish literature, diverse in historical period, mode, and form in honour of Professor R.D.S. Jack, Professor Emeritus of English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. Chronologically, the collection sweeps from the early middle ages to the early twentieth century, from Robert Henryson to J.M. Barrie, conveying a sense of the shifting and subtle identities and continuities of Scottish literary traditions across the centuries, and opening up, through a distinctive and unusual range of writers and texts, unfamiliar aesthetic, cultural, and linguistic landscapes. Unusual and wide-ranging in subject and scope, the volume explores Scottish medieval ro...
Scottish Literature of the South Seas
This volume explores how Scottish writing about the Pacific, by Robert Louis Stevenson and other prominent Scots, generates a cultural examination of Scotland and its place in the British-colonial hierarchy.
Langage Cleir Illumynate
Drawn from papers given at an international conference held in 1999, this collection of essays offers new perspectives on Scots poetry of the late Middle Ages and early modern period. It includes essays on major poets, such as John Barbour, Robert Henryson, David Lyndsay and William Drummond; it also considers less famous writers such as John Bellenden and John Stewart of Baldynneis. Across these tightly focused essays, two themes predominate: the first is the imagined relationship between writer and reader, revealing a consistent concern with interpretation in Older Scots writing; the second is the place of literary influence, whether that too is Scots or from beyond Scotland’s borders. This volume will be of interest to all academics and students with an interest in Older Scots writing; it will also have some appeal for scholars working in late medieval and early modern literature more generally.
