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Contributors To Ssl 48:2

Studies in Scottish Literature

Brief biographical notes on contributors to the current journal issue.

Robert Burns To Maria Riddell, A Lost Burns Manuscript And A Victorian Facsimile, Patrick Scott, Ronnie Young

Studies in Scottish Literature

Reviews the textual history of Robert Burns's brief letter to Maria Riddell, in spring 1795, in Dumfries, mentioning the miniature portrait by Alexander Reid; notes that the manuscript, owned in the late 19th century by Dr Thomas C.S. Corry of Belfast, and later by John Gribbel of Philadelphia, cannot now be located; and describes and illustrates the facsimile made of it in 1864 for Vincent Brooks in the Autographic Mirror, now the only source of this letter manuscript available to the Glasgow editorial team for the forthcoming Oxford edition of Burns's Correspondence.

Preface To Ssl 48.2, Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the range of periods the journal covers, introduces current contents, pays brief tribute to the Hume scholar Donald T. Siebert and the Burns collector Frank R. Shaw, and alerts readers to editorial and publishing changes to be announced in the coming year.

Female Inheritance And Forged Documents: John Hardyng’S Use Of Scottish Materials In His Chronicle, Ryoko Harikae

Studies in Scottish Literature

In his Chronicle of John Hardyng (1st version, 1457; 2nd version, 1465), Hardyng shows that Scottish kings did homage to English kings, adding a map and an itinerary of Scotland. In support, Hardyng forged several documents, to prove Scotland's vassal status, which he submitted to the English government with his Chronicle. Hardyng's motive for the forgeries, their function or how they relate to the Chronicle text, or his intent in incorporating Scottish materials. This paper argues that Hardyng's description of Scotland, combined with his forged documents, was his response to finding Scottish historical materials contradicting his claim for English …

The Cultural Context Of The Aberdeen Candlemas Play, Roderick J. Lyall

Studies in Scottish Literature

Among the lost plays of medieval Scotland the Aberdeen Candlemas play is one of the most intriguing. Our knowledge of its content derives principally from two lists, dating from 1442 and 1505, dividing the roles between the burgh’s various gilds, although the fact that there was some form of dramatic element rather than merely a procession appears to be confirmed by the discovery in the Dean of Guild’s accounts for 1470-71 of a payment of 16d. to “ye men ye maid scafald to ye candilmes play.” This paper focuses on the presence in the cast of The Three Kings of …

Series Editors' Preface To Ssl 48.1, Patrick Scott, Tony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

A brief introduction with thanks to the guest editors, information about the cover illustration for the print issue, by John Duncan (1866-1945), and a note of plans for future issues.

Introduction: Scottish Cosmopolitanism At The Fin De Siècle, Matthew Creasy

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces the topic of the special issue, reviews recent accounts of cosmopolitanism and scholarship on the Scottish fin de Siècle, and discusses how the essays that follow contribute to revaluation of Scottish literary culture in this period.

Andrew Lang’S Discursive Cosmopolitanism In Longman’S Magazine, Linda K. Hughes

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the distinctive form and influence of Andrew Lang's series "At the Sign of the Ship," in Longman's Magazine, and explores Lang's range of Scottish and cosmopolitan references and perspectives.

The Influence Of Japan And India In The Circle Of Patrick Geddes, Murdo Macdonald

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the influence of Japanese art in Evergreen contributions by E.A. Hornel and Charles Mackie, the influence of Patrick Geddes's ideas in Japan, and Geddes's links with the early 20th century revival of interest in Hinduism and Indian art.

Contested Cosmopolitanism: William And Elizabeth A. Sharp’S Glasgow Herald Reviews Of The Paris Salons 1884-1900, Michael Shaw

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses William Sharp's attempt as a fin-de-siecle art critic to accommodate local particularism and national identity within his "outsider" cosmopolitanism, through his contributions to The Evergreen and the regular reviews he and his wife Elizabeth A. Sharp wrote of the Paris Salons for the Glasgow Herald, unsigned but identifiable through their correspondence, and argues that these reviews show how "the Sharps resisted the growing tendency to see the particular and the cosmopolitan as irreconcilable opposites."

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Small Nations Writ Large: Notions Of Cosmopolitanism In Fin-De-Siècle Scotland And Flanders, Koenraad Claes

Studies in Scottish Literature

Compares relations between cosmopolitanism and nationalism in Scotland and Belgium, through the Scottish critic William Sharp's response to the "Belgian Renascence," to the magazine La Jeune Belgique, to Flemish authors writing in French (notably the playwrights Van Lerberghe and Maeterlinck, the novelist Eekhoud, and the poet Verhaeren), contrasting that movement with the later pro-Dutch-language magazine Van Nu en Straks, and illustrating how the local and global overlapped in the rivalling cosmopolitanism of fin-de-siècle Belgium and the late-19th-century avant-garde.

Unionism, Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism: Ruraidh Erskine Of Marr At The Fin De Siècle, Alex Murray

Studies in Scottish Literature

Examines the works of Ruraidh Erskine of Marr within the context of fin-de-siècle literary and political cultures in Scotland and England, arguing that his journey from conservative unionist to radical nationalist (and back again) challenges existing models for reading cosmopolitanism.

Locating Scottish Cosmopolitanism In The Digital Archive, Alison Chapman

Studies in Scottish Literature

A reassessment of late nineteenth century Scottish cosmopolitan poets as represented in Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry (https://dvpp.uvic.ca/ ), focussing on the poems of John Davidson, William Sharp, Francis Annesley Brodie-Innes, and Violet Tweedale, and on the Scottish periodicals Good Words and Chambers’s (Edinburgh) Journal.

George Macdonald's Phantastes As A Bildungsroman Of Spiritual Reality, Hannah O'Malley

Senior Theses

George MacDonald's 1858 novel Phantastes is one of the first fantasy novels written for adults, but it has received little attention in part because of its confusing structure. I argue that Phantastes is best understood as a Bildungsroman, a novel of formation. While the Bildungsroman is usually a realist novel of commercial society, Phantastes’ fantasy elements allow the protagonist to grow up into a spiritual reality that contrasts with many commercial values. MacDonald uses the fantasy genre to show his protagonist's inner development as he learns humility, gains feminine and childlike virtues, and leaves behind the old self

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

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

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. …

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.

‘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.

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.

'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

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.

'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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

'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.