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Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature
Books Received And Noted, Patrick Scott
Books Received And Noted, Patrick Scott
Studies in Scottish Literature
Brief notices of selected recent books in the general field of Scottish literary studies; short notice here need not preclude fuller review of some titles in future.
Contributors To Ssl 47.2
Studies in Scottish Literature
Brief biographical notes on contributors to SSL 47.2.
Preface To Ssl 47.2, Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells
Preface To Ssl 47.2, Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells
Studies in Scottish Literature
Introduces the issue contents and briefly describes plans for forthcoming issues, and notes the recent deaths of two longtime SSL contributors, Henry L. Fulton (1935-2021) and Edward J. Cowan (1944-2022).
Walter Scott At 250, Alison Lumsden, Kirsty Archer-Thompson
Walter Scott At 250, Alison Lumsden, Kirsty Archer-Thompson
Studies in Scottish Literature
This essay marking the 250th anniversary of Walter Scott's birth reflects on the current state of Scott studies, the scholarly directions in which it might develop, and ways in which the relevance of Scott’s work may be re-discovered and re-invigorated for contemporary audiences. In particular, it examines scholarly and critical attitudes to Scott's work over the past 50 years through papers given at the triennial international Scott conferences initiated in Edinburgh in 1971, alongside developments in public engagement at Abbotsford House and elsewhere during the 250th anniversary year.
Scott's Last Words, Peter Garside
Scott's Last Words, Peter Garside
Studies in Scottish Literature
Walter Scott’s dying words as recounted by J. G. Lockhart, widely accepted by in the Victorian period, have since been seen as largely fabricated. In 1938, H. J. C. Grierson blamed Lockahart’s “pious myth” on a “lady relative” of Scott’s anxious to deflect future detractors who might vilify Scott as irreligious. The concerened lady, unnamed by Grierson, was Mrs Harriet Scott of Harden, one of Scott’s first confidants, early adviser on literary matters, and later nearby neighbour at Mertoun House. Her positive influence on Scott, still underestimated, is hardly that of the “evangelical lady” featured regularly in post-Grierson Scott biographies. …
‘Co-Ainm Na Taca Seo An-Uiridh’: Dugald Macnicol’S Caribbean Lament For Argyll, Nigel Leask, Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh
‘Co-Ainm Na Taca Seo An-Uiridh’: Dugald Macnicol’S Caribbean Lament For Argyll, Nigel Leask, Peadar Ó Muircheartaigh
Studies in Scottish Literature
This article examines a Gaelic song written in 1816 in St. Lucia by a Scottish Gaelic-speaking army officer from Argyll, Dugald MacNicol (1791-1844), sketching MacNicol's life and military career in the Caribbean, in the Royal West Indian Rangers and later in the 1st Royals (Royal Scots Regiment), placing the song in relation to other Gaelic poems of emigration and exile, and printing a newly-edited text of MacNicol's song alongside the authors' English translation.
'A Quivering Quick-Sand': Romantic Border Aesthetics, David Stewart
'A Quivering Quick-Sand': Romantic Border Aesthetics, David Stewart
Studies in Scottish Literature
Examines Romantic and later treatments of the Solway's distinctive quicksands and bore-tides, from Anne Radcliffe and Allan Cunningham to Edwin Morgan, with special focus on Walter Scott's Solway novels, Redgauntlet and Guy Mannering.
David Lindsay And The Shape Of Inner Being, Eric Wills
David Lindsay And The Shape Of Inner Being, Eric Wills
Studies in Scottish Literature
Explores the influence of German Idealist philosophy, specifically Nietzsche and Hegel, in the work of the 20th century Scottish writer David Lindsay (1876-1945), now best-known for his novel A Voyage to Arcturus (1920) with primary attention to the role and character of symbolic imagery in Lindsay's stories, focusing on his novels Sphinx (1923) and Devil’s Tor (1932), and countering the broadly gnostic worldview sometimes attributed to him.
Preface To Ssl 47.1, Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells
Preface To Ssl 47.1, Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells
Studies in Scottish Literature
Introduces the issue contents, pays brief tribute to six long-time Scottish literature scholars who have recently died (Michael Timko, Priscilla Bawcutt, Greg Kratzmann, Robert Donaldson, Thorne Compton, and Dorothy McMillan), notes that the journal has now surpassed 400,000 article downloads, and describes plans for forthcoming issues.
Thomas Campbell, Joanna Baillie, And The New Monthly Magazine, Amy Wilcockson
Thomas Campbell, Joanna Baillie, And The New Monthly Magazine, Amy Wilcockson
Studies in Scottish Literature
Reports and transcribes (with illustration) a previously-unpublished letter dated December 2, 1820, to the Scottish poet and dramatist Joanna Baillie from Thomas Campbell, writing as the incoming editor of Colburn's New Monthly Magazine; discusses his role as editor, noting that Baillie's poem "To a Child" appeared in the next issue (and was reciprocated by Campbell's "To a Rainbow" in an anthology Baillie edited in 1823); and places the letter in the context of Campbell's busy professional and fraught family life.
Contributors To Ssl 47.1
Studies in Scottish Literature
Brief biographical notes on contributors to the current issue of the journal.
Moulding A Persona: The Life And Letters Of William Sharp And Fiona Macleod, Michael Shaw
Moulding A Persona: The Life And Letters Of William Sharp And Fiona Macleod, Michael Shaw
Studies in Scottish Literature
Discusses William F. Halloran's three-volume collected Life and Letters of the Scottish poet and critic William Sharp (1855-1905) and his literary alter ego “Fiona Macleod,” with primary attention to the third and most recent volume and to its significance for students of Scottish literature and the fin-de-siecle.
'This Prodigious Mass': The Eruption Of The Solway Moss In 1771, Alex Deans
'This Prodigious Mass': The Eruption Of The Solway Moss In 1771, Alex Deans
Studies in Scottish Literature
Describes the sudden bursting of the peat surface of the Solway Moss, above and west of the Esk River, and the destruction that followed, through initial reports from the Scots Magazine, the account by John Walker in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, and two accounts by Thomas Pennant, one before the disaster and a fuller one after, in his Tour in Scotland... in 1772 (1774).
From Skiddaw To Scruffell: Sightlines Over The Solway, Christopher Donaldson, Joanna Taylor
From Skiddaw To Scruffell: Sightlines Over The Solway, Christopher Donaldson, Joanna Taylor
Studies in Scottish Literature
Explores the geography, and literary antecedents, of William Wordsworth's poems about Robert Burns from the visit he and his sister Dorothy made across the Solway Firth to Dumfries and Ellisland in 1803, and discusses the link they made between the two mountains of Skiddaw in Cumberland and Curfell or Criffel on the Scottish side of the Firth.
The Natural-Supernatural Solway, Fiona Stafford
The Natural-Supernatural Solway, Fiona Stafford
Studies in Scottish Literature
Explores, through discussion of Burns's letters from Annan Water on the Solway, and in his poems, Burns's treatment of the supernatural, specifically his references to treatment of Kelpies, the mythical Scottish waterhorses seen in the destructive force of Solway tides and storms, carrying this forward to the work of Allan Cunningham, including his story “Judith Macrone, the Prophetess” (1821) and his poem "The Mermaid of Galloway" (1810).
Thomas Mcgrugar’S ‘Letters Of Zeno’: Patriotic Print & Constitutional Improvement In The Caledonian Mercury, 1782-1783, Alex Benchimol
Thomas Mcgrugar’S ‘Letters Of Zeno’: Patriotic Print & Constitutional Improvement In The Caledonian Mercury, 1782-1783, Alex Benchimol
Studies in Scottish Literature
Discusses a series of five newspaper letters by Thomas McGrugar (1751-1810), published in an Edinburgh newspaper the Caledonian Mercury, which urged increased representation of the Scottish burghs in the U.K. parliament, and argues that in them McGrugar used print culture to create an alternative political forum to existing political structures.
The Sobieski Stuarts And The Royal Lady’S Magazine: Some Newly-Attributed Tales, Craig Buchanan
The Sobieski Stuarts And The Royal Lady’S Magazine: Some Newly-Attributed Tales, Craig Buchanan
Studies in Scottish Literature
Identifies and describes19 previously unrecorded periodical tales, some in multiple parts, contributed to the Royal Lady's Magazine in 1831-34, by the prolific early Victorian Stuart pretenders John and Charles Sobieski Stuart, providing evidence for the attributions and the brothers' pen-names, and quadrupling their known literary output.
'I'M In Full Control': Muriel Spark's The Finishing School, Robert E. Hosmer
'I'M In Full Control': Muriel Spark's The Finishing School, Robert E. Hosmer
Studies in Scottish Literature
Discusses the special issues for reviewers treating an author's late work, analyzes Muriel's Spark's last novel, The Finishing School (2004) and its reception, and draws on correspondence in the Spark archives at the National Library of Scotland to document Spark's firm control over the text of her work.
Boswell’S 'The Cub' And The Shadow Of Augustan Satire, Robert G. Walker
Boswell’S 'The Cub' And The Shadow Of Augustan Satire, Robert G. Walker
Studies in Scottish Literature
Reassesses James Boswell's satiric poem, and self-portrait, "The Cub" (1762), and Boswell's known affinity for the writings of Sterne, arguing for a wider satiric context in early Augustan satiric poetry, in Pope and especially Swift, and analysing the poem's multiple shifts of satiric viewpoint and allusion.