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The 1820 Scottish Rising has been increasingly studied in recent
decades. This collection of essays looks especially at local
players on the ground across multiple regional centres in the west
of Scotland, as well as the wider political circumstances within
government and civil society that provide the rising's context. It
examines insurrectionist preparation by radicals, the progress of
the events of 1820, contemporary accounts and legacy
memorialisation of 1820, including newspaper and literary
testimony, and the monumental 'afterlife' of the rising. As well as
the famous march of radicals led by John Baird and Andrew Hardie,
so often seen as the centre of the 1820 'moment', this volume casts
light on other, more neglected insurrectionary activity within the
rising and a wide set of cultural circumstances that make 1820 more
complex than many would like to believe. 1820: Scottish Rebellion
demonstrates that the legacy of 1820 may be approached in numerous
ways that cross disciplinary boundaries and cause us to question
conventional historical interpretations.
This study examines the interface between some of the most authoritative Romantic writers and "Celticism", an emergent strand of cultural ethnicity during the eighteenth century. The collected essays examine engagement with Celtic culture by writers such as Blake, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron and Shelley, as well as engagement with the Romantic sensibility by those from "within" the Celtic nations of Britain. The collection, thus defines the differences between "Celtic" and "British" in the Romantic period.
Robert Louis Stevenson is one of the most important and influential
writers of the modern era, admired and emulated by authors across
the world from the 19th century to the present day. He also wrote
some of the most original stories, creating iconic characters who
have moved beyond the page to become parts of the language itself.
Gerard Carruthers' SCOTNOTE study guide provides an overview of
Stevenson's life and work, and focuses on three novels in
particular: The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Master
of Ballantrae, and The Ebb-Tide, each in it own way a story of good
and evil, and the conflicting impulses felt by the human spirit.
Suitable for senior school pupils and students at all levels.
Scotland's rich literary tradition is a product of its unique
culture and landscape, as well as of its long history of inclusion
and resistance to the United Kingdom. Scottish literature includes
masterpieces in three languages - English, Scots and Gaelic - and
global perspectives from the diaspora of Scots all over the world.
This Companion offers a unique introduction, guide and reference
work for students and readers of Scottish literature from the
pre-medieval period to the post-devolution present. Essays focus on
key periods and movements (the Scottish Enlightenment, Scottish
Romanticism, the Scottish Renaissance), genres (the historical
novel, Scottish Gothic, 'Tartan Noir') and major authors (Burns,
Scott, Stevenson, MacDiarmid and Spark). A chronology and guides to
further reading in each chapter make this an ideal overview of a
national literature that continues to develop its own distinctive
style.
A Companion to Scottish Literature offers fresh readings of major
authors and periods of Scottish literary production from the first
millennium to the present. Bringing together contributions by many
of the world’s leading experts in the field, this comprehensive
resource provides the historical background of Scottish literature,
highlights new critical approaches, and explores wider cultural and
institutional contexts. Dealing with texts in the languages of
Scots, English, and Gaelic, the Companion offers modern
perspectives on the historical milieux, thematic contexts and
canonical writers of Scottish literature. Original essays apply the
most up-to-date critical and scholarly analyses to a uniquely wide
range of topics, such as Gaelic literature, national and diasporic
writing, children’s literature, Scottish drama and theatre,
gender and sexuality, and women’s writing. Critical readings
examine William Dunbar, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Muriel Spark and Carol Ann Duffy, amongst others. With
full references and guidance for further reading, as well as
numerous links to online resources, A Companion to Scottish
Literature is essential reading for advanced students and scholars
of Scottish literature, as well as academic and non-academic
readers with an interest in the subject.
In our time, as in his own, Burns is encountered as recitation, on
stage and screen, in speeches, preeminently as song, and in the
drama and debates surrounding new discoveries and new editions.
Contributors to this imaginative new interdisciplinary collection
bridge the divide between performers and scholars, with readable
but authoritative short essays that will spark interest in all
Burnsians and open up new directions for Burns research.'Patrick
Scott, University of South CarolinaExamines representations of
Robert Burns and his work in a wide range of performance modesThis
book opens up fresh aspects of performance and performativity and
their impact on our perception of Robert Burns and his work.
Bringing together leading experts on music, song, drama, public
ceremonial and literature, it studies Burns as a performed and
performative construct. It explores ways in which he is encountered
as a living author, setting the popularity of his poetry and songs
in the context of his representation in popular culture.
Scotland, like so many other nations, has produced poetry that is
patriotic, that paints landscapes, people and situations, that
speaks to personal matters, and those equally everyday matters
pertaining to the mind and to the spirit. The Christian heritage of
Scotland has long been played out in verse, through Celtic
devotional works, Catholic works, Protestant works, and not
forgetting satires on the Puritanism in Scotland's post-Reformation
identity. Language and culture have been equally multifarious in
the nation so that three major languages: Scots, English and Gaelic
(examples of which are translated in this anthology) compete and
co-exist in poetry. The fifteenth century poet, William Dunbar,
joked that there was no music in hell except for the bagpipes, and
there speaks something of the historic lowland attitude to the
Gaidhealtachd (Gaelic speaking Scotland, principally the
highlands). Hostility and eventual harmony is a marker of the
Scottish highlands/lowlands divide as much as for that between
Scotland and England. Historic tension is not to be dismissed but,
certainly, the poetic palette of Scotland is one of multilingual
richness, and shows an enduringly high quality whatever the
cultural vicissitudes that play a part. The medieval Makars, most
prominently Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, are
often taken to represent a golden age when poetry in Scots ran the
full range of mood, mode and subject matter. If this has, perhaps,
never been bettered, the sixteenth century lyrics and sonnets of
Alexander Montgomerie, Alexander Scott and other poets around the
court of James VI, and the eighteenth century vernacular 'revival'
of Allan Ramsay, Alexander Ross, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns
represent at points equally brilliant periods; and the twentieth
century 'modern renaissance' of Hugh MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob and
William Souter proved that Scots remained a viable poetic currency,
as a living poet such as Tom Leonard continues to demonstrate.
Poetry in Gaelic too has its tradition of peaks where the flame
seems to burn more visibly at certain times than others. Alexander
Macdonald (Alasdair Mac Mhaghstir Alasdair), Rob Donn (Rob Donn
MacAoidh) and Duncan MacIntyre (Donnchadh Ban Mac an t-Saoir) make
the eighteenth century a high point in achievement, while Sorley
Maclean, George Campbell Hay and Iain Crichton Smith do similarly
for the twentieth century: the latter three, arguably, making
Gaelic verse the most able variety in Scotland during the last
sixty years. Historically as many successes are scored in Scottish
poetry in English. James Thomson, author of The Seasons, joins
James Macpherson translator/creator of the poetry of 'Ossian' in
promulgating works that are seminally iconic and influential right
across the artistic genres, painting and music as much as
literature, in western culture. The romantic, patriotic poetic
image of Scotland is sounded in English as much as in any other
language, as the writing of Walter Scott or Lady Nairne attests.
James (B.V.) Thomson, John Davidson, Edwin Muir, Norman MacCaig,
W.S. Graham, Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead, Kathleen Jamie and Don
Paterson are all deeply Scottish poets speaking through the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the worldwide audience that
exists for creative utterance that both emanates from but is never
limited by the particularity of place. Scotland's story is one that
is never certain, but, enduringly and importantly its poetry is.
This book is unashamedly aimed at a wider market than the ordinary
academic volume, as it seeks to extend the impact of the research
it contains, making it available to the worldwide community of
Burns enthusiasts, without compromising on scholarship.
Contributors have been selected not only for their academic rigour
and reputation, but also because of their ability to handle their
material with elegance and accessibility for the general reader.
They offer fresh insights for both academic and general readers,
not least through the volume's interdisciplinary approaches,
including a contribution from the great interpreter of Burns's
songs, Sheena Wellington. A key part of this volume's attraction
lies in the way it opens up fresh issues and aspects of performance
and performativity and their impact on our perception of Robert
Burns and his work.
The complexity of print culture in Britain between the seventeenth
and nineteenth century is investigated in these wide-ranging
articles. The essays collected here offer examinations of
bibliographical matters, publishing practices, the illustration of
texts in a variety of engraved media, little studied print culture
genres, the critical and editorial fortunes of individual works,
and the significance of the complex interrelationships that authors
entertained with booksellers, publishers, and designers. They
investigate how all these relationships affected the production of
print commodities and how all the agents involved in the making of
books contributed to the cultural literacy of readers and the
formation of a canon of literary texts. Specific topics include a
bibliographical study of Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and its editions
from its first publication to the present day; the illustrations of
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and the ways in which the
interpretive matrices of book illustration conditioned the
afterlife and reception of Bunyan's work; the almanac and the
subscription edition; publishing history, collecting, reading, and
textual editing, especially of Robert Burns's poems and James
Thomson's The Seasons; the "printing for the author" practice; the
illustrated and material existence of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley
novels, and the Victorian periodical, The Athenaeum. Sandro Jung is
Research Professor of Early Modern British Literature and Director
of the Centre for the Study of Text and Print Culture at Ghent
University. Contributors: Gerard Carruthers, Nathalie Colle-Bak,
Marysa Demoor, Alan Downie, Peter Garside, Sandro Jung, Brian
Maidment, Laura L. Runge.
The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Burns provides both a
comprehensive introduction to and the most contemporary critical
contexts for the study of Robert Burns. Detailed commentary on the
artistry of Burns is complemented by material on the cultural
reception and afterlife of this most iconic of world writers. The
biographical construction of Burns is examined as are his relations
to Scottish, Romantic and International cultures. Burns is also
approached in terms of his engagements with Ecology, Gender,
Pastoral, Politics, Pornography, Slavery, and Song-culture, and
there is extensive coverage of publishing history including Burns's
place in popular, bourgeois and Enlightenment cultures during the
late eighteenth century. This is the most modern collection of
critical responses to Burns from scholars from the United Kingdom
and North America, which, more than ever before, seeks to place
Burns as a 'mainstream' man of Enlightenment and Romantic impetus
and to explain the enduring and sometimes controversial fascination
for both the man and his work over more than two hundred years. Key
Features *Modern critical approaches to Burns: including readings
of biographical construction, gender and publishing and reception
history *Detailed discussion of the cultural afterlife of Burns
*Location of Burns in the Enlightenment and Romantic periods
*Entirely new readings of Burns's major poems
This volume of fourteen essays offers fresh insight into the life
and work of Muriel Spark (1918-2006), one of Scotland's most
internationally celebrated writers. Known for her cultural
cosmopolitanism and sharp wit, Spark was prolific as a novelist,
poet, short story writer, dramatist, and literary critic. The
Crooked Dividend provides a thorough overview of Spark's
multifaceted work and examines the cultural, literary, and personal
frameworks that shaped her writing. These essays contextualise
Spark within post-war British culture, analyse the influence of
longstanding Scottish literary traditions on her work, and explore
the full range of her literary output through topics such as
gender, religion, and politics. In a comprehensive examination of
her publications, archive material, and colourful career, this
volume celebrates and reaffirms Spark's international legacy.
James Bridie was one of the most influential British dramatists of
the 20th century. This new collection includes "The Sunlight
Sonata", "A Sleeping Clergyman", "Mr Bolfry", and "Daphne
Laureola", along with what is possibly Bridie's most famous work,
"The Anatomist": the tale of Dr. Knox and his relationship with
Edinburgh's notorious bodysnatchers, Burke and Hare. All the plays
are accompanied by extensive scholarly notes and a glossary.
Reliquiae Trotcosienses was one of Scott's last works, and, after
his death, was suppressed by his literary executor and his
publisher. Although extracts were published in 1889 and 1905, this
is the first complete edition, and has been edited from the
manuscript recently relocated in the library at Abbotsford, the
house near Melrose in the Scottish Borders which Scott built for
his library and museum. Reliquiae Trotcosienses (the relics of
Trotcosey) is a guide to Abbotsford and to its collections, and
illustrates in miniature all the different ways in which Scott
tried to recover the past: in building, in collecting, and in the
multiple acts of narration which invest objects with significance.
But it is simultaneously a work of fiction, which satirises the
impulses of antiquarian collection. Scott would not take himself
seriously, and through the learned buffoonery of this extraordinary
work he mocks the kind of activity in which he was engaged as
writer and collector.Yet this is also a personal, elegiac creation,
for the narrator as he approaches death recognises that the house,
its artefacts, and above all the writings will live on to mourn
their begetter: they are fragments shored against his ruin.
John Galt (1779-1839) was a contemporary of Sir Walter Scott and
Jane Austen, and a friend and biographer of Lord Byron. Although a
prolific writer, and much admired in his own lifetime, Galt has
never achieved comparable levels of literary fame, and his works -
poised between Enlightenment and Romanticism - are now often
overlooked. Yet his reputation has been slowly growing, and he has
attracted critical interest as both a political novelist and a
chronicler of Scottish life. This INTERNATIONAL COMPANION builds on
a steady stream of recent scholarship, and examines Galt's writings
in the social, economic, and religious contexts of their time.
This guide combines detailed literary history with discussion of
contemporary debates about Scottishness. The book considers the
rise of Scottish Studies, the development of a national literature,
and issues of cultural nationalism. Beginning in the medieval
period during a time of nation building, the book goes on to focus
on the 'Scots revival' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
before moving on to discuss the literary renaissance of the
twentieth century. Debates concerning Celticism and Gaelic take
place alongside discussion of key Scottish writers such as William
Dunbar, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Margaret
Oliphant, Hugh MacDiarmid, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway and Liz
Lochhead. The book also considers emigre writers to Scotland;
Scottish literature in relation to England, the United States and
Ireland; and postcolonialism and other theories that shed fresh
light on the current status and future of Scottish literature. Key
Features *Identifies the main trends in the emergence and
development of Scottish literature, situating them in historical
and cultural context *Discusses long-running debates about Scottish
language and national identity through detailed readings of authors
and texts *Introduces students to a variety of comparative and
theoretical approaches which further develop an understanding of
Scottish literature *Encourages reflection on questions of Scottish
nationalism, cultural politics, canonicity and the rise of Scottish
Studies
Those researching the history of political democracy in Scotland
will inevitably find that one name stands out from the crowd,
namely that of Thomas Muir of Huntershill. He was one of several
people tried in Scottish courts during the 1790s for the alleged
crime of 'Sedition', and four of the others share commemoration
with him on a large monument in Edinburgh, but somehow Muir seems
special. The way he used his trial as a platform to promote the
logic of 'an equal representation of the People in the House of the
People' was extremely dramatic and was fully reported at the time
both in newspapers and in several published editions of the trial
proceedings. Yet somehow historians have never been fully convinced
about Muir's claim to recognition. For some he represents a sour
note in the triumphant story of the Scottish Enlightenment, while
others have dismissed him as a failure in his own time, conceding
little consequence to the example he set for future generations.
Over the years there have been attempts to right what many people
regard as a grievous wrong, in this respect. This substantial and
insightful edited volume adds to the debate the views of Rhona
Brown, Gerard Carruthers, Tom Devine, Tom Dowds, Satinder Kaur,
Thomas Lemoine, David McVey, Don Martin, Gordon Pentland, Alex
Salmond, Beverley Sherry, Alex Watson, Jimmy Watson, and Ronnie
Young.
This book treats Burns’ work from the first publication of his
poetry in 178 to his song writing and collecting which predominated
in the 1790s. It encompasses discussion of Burns’ social and
religious satires, his political comment and his utterances on love
and gender. In line with modern Burns scholarship, this study reads
Burns’ against both his Scottish and British literary backgrounds
and emphasises, particularly, Burns’ construction of his poetic
persona. As a key element of this latter aspect, the treatment
considers Burns against his poetic space for himself as a Scot
makes him a crucial Enlightenment and proto-Romantic figure. The
book debunks the myth of Burns as ‘this heaven-taught
ploughman’, emphasising his very contemporary understanding of
the power of literature, and of the emotions as a vital part of
human intellect.
Literature and Union opens up a new front in interdisciplinary
literary studies. There has been a great deal of academic work-both
in the Scottish context and more broadly-on the relationship
between literature and nationhood, yet almost none on the
relationship between literature and unions. This volume introduces
the insights of the new British history into mainstream Scottish
literary scholarship. The contributors, who are from all shades of
the political spectrum, will interrogate from various angles the
assumption of a binary opposition between organic Scottish values
and those supposedly imposed by an overbearing imperial England.
Viewing Scottish literature as a clash between Scottish and English
identities loses sight of the internal Scottish political and
religious divisions, which, far more than issues of nationhood and
union, were the primary sources of conflict in Scottish culture for
most of the period of Union, until at least the early twentieth
century. The aim of the volume is to reconstruct the story of
Scottish literature along lines which are more historically
persuasive than those of the prevailing grand narratives in the
field. The chapters fall into three groups: (1) those which
highlight canonical moments in Scottish literary Unionism-John
Bull, 'Rule, Britannia', Humphry Clinker, Ivanhoe and England,
their England; (2) those which investigate key themes and problems,
including the Unions of 1603 and 1707, Scottish Augustanism, the
Burns Cult, Whig-Presbyterian and sentimental Jacobite literatures;
and (3) comparative pieces on European and Anglo-Irish phenomena.
English Romanticism and the Celtic World explores the way in which
British Romantic writers responded to the national and cultural
identities of the 'four nations' England, Ireland, Scotland and
Wales. The essays collected here, by specialists in the field,
interrogate the cultural centres as well as the peripheries of
Romanticism, and the interactions between these. They underline
'Celticism' as an emergent strand of cultural ethnicity during the
eighteenth century, examining the constructions of Celticness and
Britishness in the Romantic period, including the ways in which the
'Celtic' countries viewed themselves in the light of Romanticism.
Other topics include the development of Welsh antiquarianism, the
Ossian controversy, Irish nationalism, Celtic landscapes, Romantic
form and Orientalism. The collection covers writing by Blake,
Wordsworth, Scott, Byron and Shelley, and will be of interest to
scholars of Romanticism and Celtic studies.
Scotland's rich literary tradition is a product of its unique
culture and landscape, as well as of its long history of inclusion
and resistance to the United Kingdom. Scottish literature includes
masterpieces in three languages - English, Scots and Gaelic - and
global perspectives from the diaspora of Scots all over the world.
This Companion offers a unique introduction, guide and reference
work for students and readers of Scottish literature from the
pre-medieval period to the post-devolution present. Essays focus on
key periods and movements (the Scottish Enlightenment, Scottish
Romanticism, the Scottish Renaissance), genres (the historical
novel, Scottish Gothic, 'Tartan Noir') and major authors (Burns,
Scott, Stevenson, MacDiarmid and Spark). A chronology and guides to
further reading in each chapter make this an ideal overview of a
national literature that continues to develop its own distinctive
style.
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