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This is the story of a literary marriage. It tells of the partnership between Edwin and Willa Muir, two intellectuals from small town Scottish backgrounds and their discovery of Europe in the years after the first and second world wars. It tells us about the cultural, social, and political issues of those dynamic and difficult years and much else, in intimate detail, about their own personal struggles. Edwin Muir was to become a leading poet in the twentieth century Scottish literary renaissance, but to make a living the couple also worked as translators of modern German literature, including key works by Hermann Broch and, most famously, Franz Kafka. They were intimate with many of the lead...
Young Elizabeth Shand, newly married to the unstable but handsome Hector, finds herself in the social, intellectual and spiritual strait-jacket of small-town life early in the 20th century.
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This is the story of a literary marriage. It tells of the partnership between Edwin and Willa Muir, two intellectuals from small town Scottish backgrounds and their discovery of Europe in the years after the first and second world wars. It tells us about the cultural, social, and political issues of those dynamic and difficult years and much else, in intimate detail, about their own personal struggles. Edwin Muir was to become a leading poet in the twentieth century Scottish literary renaissance, but to make a living the couple also worked as translators of modern German literature, including key works by Hermann Broch and, most famously, Franz Kafka. They were intimate with many of the lead...
This volume gathers together some of the real and the imagined lives of Willa Muir, one of the finest and fiercest intellectuals of her generation. Her writing is rich with paradox - although obsessively Scottish in subject and style, she resented Scotland; although a trenchant champion of feminism, she voluntarily sacrificed her identity to that of the 'poet's wife'; and although she was a committed reformer, she never aligned herself with any political or ideological movement. These passionate dichotomies are intertwined in her writing, giving a particular power to her fiction and non-fiction alike. This collection is the first publication to offer a sense of the diversity of Willa Muir's oeuvre. It makes possible the re-evaluation of her work and assures her of a deserved place in the Scottish literary canon.
Bella Caledonia: Woman, Nation, Text looks at the widespread tradition of using a female figure to represent the nation, focusing on twentieth-century Scottish literature. The woman-as-nation figure emerged in Scotland in the twentieth century, but as a literary figure rather than an institutional icon like Britannia or France's Marianne. Scottish writers make use of familiar aspects of the trope such as the protective mother nation and the woman as fertile land, which are obviously problematic from a feminist perspective. But darker implications, buried in the long history of the figure, rise to the surface in Scotland, such as woman/nation as victim, and woman/nation as deformed or monstro...
This book tells the remarkable stories of ten women whose inspirational lives and struggles exemplify the concerns and problems that other women have faced throughout the last two centuries. Each is the subject of a chapter devoted to her particular story and the times in which she lived. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed great changes in women's position in Scotland, and yet little is known about the achievements of the Scottish women who were the main agents of these changes. In presenting the life stories of ten women, William Knox provides evidence of the huge contribution made by women to the shaping of modern Scotland. At the same time he shows how the life histories of individuals can reveal previously dark corners of historical understanding and allow a more nuanced picture of Scottish society as a whole. Subjects include Jane Welsh Carlyle, brilliantly gifted, but married to the wayward and demanding Thomas, Sophia Jex-Blake, Scotland's first female doctor, and Mary Slessor,
Franz Kafka, the author has very nicely narrated the story of Gregou Samsa who wakes up one day to discover that he has metamorphosed into a bug. The book concerns itself with the themes of alienation and existentialism. The author has written many important stories, including The Judgement, and much of his novels Amerika, The Castle, The Hunger Artist. Many of his stories were published during his lifetime but many were not. Over the course of the 1920s and 30s Kafkas works were published and translated instantly becoming landmarks of twentieth-century literature. Ironically, the story ends on an optimistic note, as the family puts itself back together. The style of the book epitomizes Kafkas writing. Kafka very interestingly, used to present an impossible situation, such as a mans transformation into an insect, and develop the story from there with perfect realism and intense attention to detail. The Metamorphosis is an autobiographical piece of writing, and we find that parts of the story reflect Kafkas own life.