Scottish Literature and Postcolonial Literature Comparative Texts and Critical Perspectives

by Gardiner, Michael; Macdonald, Graeme; O'Gallagher, Niall

• ISBN13: 9780748637744
• ISBN10: 0748637745
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-06-13
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Summary

This ground breaking collection of essays is the first full-length attempt to map out the relationship between Scottish literature and postcolonial studies. While Scottish involvement in the British Empire has made critics reluctant to read Scottish texts in a postcolonial context, the advent of devolution together with developments in Scottish writing itself have encouraged critics to look again. Here some of the leading figures in the field offer essays that compare Scottish writing with that from the postcolonial world and consider the light that might be shed upon Scottish literary studies by a postcolonial approach. The collection also considers the challenge that Scottish literature poses for the discipline of postcolonial studies itself.Key Features*Extended introduction exploring the relationship between Scottish literature and postcolonial literature, the history of Scottish writing and the British Empire, the development of Scottish postcolonial studies and the challenge posed to postcolonial studies itself by Scottish literature*21 essays by leading scholars in the fields of Scottish and postcolonial studies considering the work of Scottish authors from Robert Burns and Walter Scott to James Kelman and Alasdair Gray in contexts suggested by comparison with postcolonial writing and by postcolonial theory and criticism*Consideration of the insights offered to Scottish literary studies by the work of writers such as Alice Munro, Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong'o and by theorists of the postcolonial from Franz Fanon to Edward Said*Treatment of Scottish writing in Gaelic as well as consideration of non-Anglophone postcolonial literatures alongside postcolonial literatures in English

Author Biography

Michael Gardiner is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick.

Graeme Macdonald is Lecturer at the University of Warwick.

Niall O'Gallagher is Honorary Research Associate at the University of Glasgow.