Along with his contemporaries Edwin Morgan and Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean is recognised as one of the most important Scottish poets of the twentieth century. Born at Oscaig on the island of Raasay in 1911, MacLean was greatly influenced by Gaelic tradition and by contemporary cultural and political ideas from around the world. In many ways he brought Scottish Gaelic poetry into the modern era, and he is a key figure in modern Scottish literature. MacLean's poetry ranges beyond Scotland to confront European and world events and politics. This book offers a detailed study of MacLean's poems, providing insight into the context of his work. It also includes close readings of selected poems that best represent his key themes and ideas. Emma Dymock's SCOTNOTE study guide is ideal for senior school pupils and students of all ages as a general introduction or as a starting point for more in-depth study.

The twentieth-century Scottish renaissance - the literary and artistic revival which followed the end of the First World War - advanced a claim for a distinctive Scottish identity: cultural, political and national. Unlike earlier nineteenth-century Celtic revivals, this renaissance was both outward-looking and confidently contemporary; it embraced continental European influences as well as those of Anglophone writers such as Eliot, Joyce, Pound and Lawrence, and contributed to the development of what we now call modernism. This collection of essays, from fourteen scholars, illustrates the strongly international and modernist dimension of Scotland's interwar revival, and illuminates the relationships between Scottish and non-Scottish writers and contexts. It also includes two chapters on the contribution made to this revival by Scottish visual art and music. These essays are based on papers originally presented at the 38th ASLS Annual Conference, 'Scottish and International Modernism', held at the University of Stirling, 6-7 June 2009.

Born in Tayport, Fife, on 5 June 1913, Douglas Young was one of the most charismatic and distinguished Scots of his day. Described by Nigel Tranter as a 'Poet, scholar, author, linguist, raconteur and fighter of causes', he was a genuine polymath, an intellectual giant, and his range of interests was exceptional. A brilliant Classical scholar, who studied and later taught Latin and Greek, he had a great facility for languages. Above all he was fluent in 'Lallans' or Lowland Scots, in the tradition of Burns, Scott and Stevenson. Young was one of the leading 'Scottish Renaissance' poets or 'neoLallans Makars', and his two notable volumes of his poetry were Auntran Blads: an outwale of verses (1943) and A Braird O Thristles (1947), included here. Among the mighty coterie of post-MacDiarmid makars, Douglas Young stands out as an individual voice. To their common mission of restoring the Scots tongue as a fully-developed poetic language, he brings his formidable erudition, his comprehensive knowledge of Scottish literature of all periods and his highly-polished prosodic technique. To a greater degree than almost any of his contemporaries, he succeeds in integrating words from the mediaeval period, from the era of Burns and from his own time and place into a consistent idiolect, which he employs for poetic statements that are often beautiful, often profound, and always thought-provoking. This new edition of his poetry will confirm his place as one of the central figures of the twentieth-century Scottish Renaissance. - J. Derrick McClure Even in the fifties when I was starting out through university politics, Douglas Young was a legend. For young minds, his two jail sentences for refusing conscription were a singular demonstration of moral courage and he paid the penalty of facing down the establishment by not being awarded the professorship his talents deserved. - Gordon Wilson, Former Chairman of the SNP and MP for Dundee East