The Cambridge Companion to Scottish Literature

by Edited by Gerard Carruthers , Liam McIlvanney

• ISBN13: 9780521189361
• ISBN10: 0521189365
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-12-24
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Chronology

Introduction

Scottish literature before Scottish literature

The Medieval period

Reformation and Renaissance

The aftermath of Union

Robert Burns

Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Scottish Canon: cosmopolites or narrow nationalists?

Scott and the historical novel

The Gaelic tradition

Scottish Gothic

Victorian Scottish literature

Robert Louis Stevenson

Hugh MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance

Popular fiction: detective novels and thrillers from Holmes to Rebus

Muriel Spark

The Glasgow novel

'What is the language using us for?': Modern Scottish poetry

The emergence of Scottish studies

Otherworlds: devolution and the Scottish novel

Scottish literature in diaspora

Index

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