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2017

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Articles 1 - 30 of 264

Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles

Chaucer's Divided "I": Narrative Voice And Performance Dynamics In Late Fourteenth-Century English Literature, Isaac Mcduffie Dec 2017

Chaucer's Divided "I": Narrative Voice And Performance Dynamics In Late Fourteenth-Century English Literature, Isaac Mcduffie

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Throughout the twentieth century, various Chaucer scholars have worked to achieve the now-consensus opinion that Chaucer wrote his works expecting them to be both listened to within a group setting and read privately in an individual setting. These scholars have either assumed or expressly stated that the experience of listening to and reading Chaucer’s works would have been the same. This dissertation argues otherwise. I show that in the late fourteenth century, English vernacular was only starting to be understood as a written language, and this peculiar circumstance created tensions between both listening and reading modes of reception. Such tensions …

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Preface To Ssl 43:2, Patrick G. Scott, Anthony Jarrells Dec 2017

Preface To Ssl 43:2, Patrick G. Scott, Anthony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces the two special sections in this issue, on Scottish fiction and Burns bibliography, and briefly describes the range of other contributions, noting the wide international range of contributors.

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The Crème De La Crème: Old Favourites, New-Fangled Works, And Other Fictions, Willy Maley Dec 2017

The Crème De La Crème: Old Favourites, New-Fangled Works, And Other Fictions, Willy Maley

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces the SSL Debate, in which 18 contributors react to and add to the BBC Scotland poll on Scotland's Favourite Novel, discussing the purposes and limitations of various lists that have ranked recent Scottish fiction, and commenting briefly on the differences between this debate and the deliberations of a selection panel.

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A New Dimension Of Scottishness? Iain Banks, The Algebraist (2004), Martin Procházka Dec 2017

A New Dimension Of Scottishness? Iain Banks, The Algebraist (2004), Martin Procházka

Studies in Scottish Literature

Argues that Iain Banks's experimental science fiction, often disguised as the pop-culture genre of “space opera,” changes the frame of reference for Scottishness, linking it with a plurality of fictitious worlds, presenting the gradual erosion, subversion and deconstruction of the anthropomorphic perspective, to reveal the limitations of humanist ideologies.

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Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998), Marie Hologa Dec 2017

Jackie Kay, Trumpet (1998), Marie Hologa

Studies in Scottish Literature

Argues that Kay's acclaimed novel about a celebrated black jazz trumpeter, who is transgender, presents "an alternative construction of masculinity to the stereotypical Scottish 'hard man' of tartan noir, " dealing with "questions of identity that go beyond Scottishness," and unmasking "the emptiness of normative categories like gender, sexuality, ‘race’ and ethnic origins in a postmodern ... society."

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Willa Muir, Imagined Corners (1931), Timothy C. Baker Dec 2017

Willa Muir, Imagined Corners (1931), Timothy C. Baker

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Muir's novel (which came in 30th in the BBC poll), set in a small Scottish town and concerned with "'the ideology of Scotland,' and questions of class, religion, sexuality, politics, and education," as "indisputably a great novel, perhaps equalled in British fiction only by To the Lighthouse, and utterly unique in the Scottish canon,"

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Nan Shepherd, The Quarry Wood (1928), Carole Jones Dec 2017

Nan Shepherd, The Quarry Wood (1928), Carole Jones

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Shepherd's novel about an independent woman in north-east Scotland as "vivid in delineating its female central character, its local language, and what is undoubtedly a radical engagement with sexual politics," that "examines closely issues of sexual identity and gender relations, and ... comes to its own thoughtful conclusions on women's place in the world."

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Gavin Douglas's Aeneados: Caxton's English And 'Our Scottis Langage', Jacquelyn Hendricks Dec 2017

Gavin Douglas's Aeneados: Caxton's English And 'Our Scottis Langage', Jacquelyn Hendricks

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the Scots poet Gavin Douglas's translation of Virgil's Aeneid into Scots, and Douglas's treatment of his predecessor William Caxton's translation of Virgil into English, arguing that Douglas associates Caxton's English with a barbaric world of monsters and beasts, in contrast to Scots which is seen as expressing civilized classical values, and that Douglas's translation, by enhancing and showcasing the literary power of Scots for a wider audience, successfully resisted for at least forty years the linguistic standardization initiated by the burgeoning print industry.

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Tom Scott As Religious Poet: 'The Paschal Candill' In Context, Richie Mccaffery Dec 2017

Tom Scott As Religious Poet: 'The Paschal Candill' In Context, Richie Mccaffery

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the religious beliefs and writings of the Scottish poet Tom Scott (1918-1995), both as a continuing concern and during a period of explicitly Catholic belief in the 1950, examining in detail his Catholic poem 'The Paschal Candill' in relation to his much more widely-recognized political comments.

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'Not In Egerer'? (Some Of) What We Still Don't Know About Burns Bibliography, Patrick Scott Dec 2017

'Not In Egerer'? (Some Of) What We Still Don't Know About Burns Bibliography, Patrick Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Briefly reviews developments in Burns bibliography since J.W. Egerer's Bibliography of Robert Burns (1964), examines the kinds of material that Egerer aimed to include and exclude, and presents a series of brief case-studies illustrating the desirability of additional research, especially on early publication in non-book formats, for obtaining a fuller picture of Burns's textual history and readership.

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Gaelic Scotland And Post-Colonial Readings, Carla Sassi Dec 2017

Gaelic Scotland And Post-Colonial Readings, Carla Sassi

Studies in Scottish Literature

A review of Silke Strohe's book Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imagination: Anglophone Writing from 1600 to 1900 (2017), setting it in the context of Strohe's earlier work on Gaelic literature in the same period and of developments in the post-colonial theory as applied in interdisciplinary Scottish studies.

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Contributors To Ssl 43:2 Dec 2017

Contributors To Ssl 43:2

Studies in Scottish Literature

No abstract provided.

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Matthew Fitt, But N Ben A-Go-Go (2000), Caroline Mccracken-Flesher Dec 2017

Matthew Fitt, But N Ben A-Go-Go (2000), Caroline Mccracken-Flesher

Studies in Scottish Literature

Puts forward Fitt's "challenging, haunting novel," "a dystopian, coming of age, scientific-detective-police procedural-medical romance," written in "lyrical/acerbic Scots," as "thrawn, readable, un-put-down-able," and a "darkly plotted challenge to family dynamics."

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Robin Jenkins, The Thistle And The Grail (1954) With A Comment On Sunset Song, David E. Latane Dec 2017

Robin Jenkins, The Thistle And The Grail (1954) With A Comment On Sunset Song, David E. Latane

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Robin Jenkins's story of a Scottish football (soccer) team, Drumsagart Thistle, and its quest to win the Scottish Junior Cup, as "a marvelous compendium of Roy of the Rovers improbabilities, Our Town ethnography, critiques of gender relations, subtle and broad satire, and laugh outloud comedy."

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Towards A New Bibliography Of Robert Burns, Craig Lamont Dec 2017

Towards A New Bibliography Of Robert Burns, Craig Lamont

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces and describes the first phase of a new, free on-line resource from the University of Glasgow, A Bibliography of Robert Burns for the 21st Century: 1786-1802, based on fresh examination of multiple copies in several Scottish libraries, as well as in collections in the US and Canada, providing significantly-expanded entries for the early book-publication of Burns's poetry, and so allowing textual editors a more complete record of the textual history of Burns's work.

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An Ssl Research Symposium: Introduction: New Developments In Robert Burns Bibliography, Gerard Carruthers Dec 2017

An Ssl Research Symposium: Introduction: New Developments In Robert Burns Bibliography, Gerard Carruthers

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces four talks given at the National Library of Scotland on March 16, 2017, at a workshop on New Developments in Robert Burns Bibliography, jointly convened by Robert Betteridge of the National Library and by Prof. Carruthers, as general editor of the AHRC-funded project Editing Robert Burns for the 21st Century, arguing that "every bit as much as literary criticism or textual editing, bibliographical studies need generational renewal."

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Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1834), Kathryn Chittick Dec 2017

Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus (1834), Kathryn Chittick

Studies in Scottish Literature

Argues that Thomas Carlyle's fictional autobiography from the 1830s deserves recognition as one of the most experimental of Scottish novels and suggests some ways in which it anticipates a fictive self-consciousness often thought of as post-modern.

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Venturing A Little Further: Margaret Elphinstone, The Sea Road (2000), Matthew Wickman Dec 2017

Venturing A Little Further: Margaret Elphinstone, The Sea Road (2000), Matthew Wickman

Studies in Scottish Literature

Proposes that Margaret Elphinstone’s historical novel about Gudrid of Iceland, an eleventh-century female explorer of Greenland and North America, is "a novel for many seasons: the eleventh century, the early and late twentieth, and far into the twenty-first," judging it "one of the great Scottish novels about the unknown," and "perhaps the nation’s greatest contribution to the modern zeitgeist."

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Fresh Air: Michel Faber, Under The Skin (2000) With A Comment On Trainspotting, Tony Jarrells Dec 2017

Fresh Air: Michel Faber, Under The Skin (2000) With A Comment On Trainspotting, Tony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

Comparing Faber's treatment of the Scottish Highlands (his only novel set in Scotland) with a Highland incident in Welsh's Trainspotting, arguing that in Faber the Highlands are "not merely some representation of a romanticized past," but also "represent this present moment,... marked by the class conflicts and near political hopelessness" seen in Welsh, but also "a strong sense of beauty and an appreciation for the environment."

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Regaining Control: Jenni Fagan, The Panopticon (2012), Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon Dec 2017

Regaining Control: Jenni Fagan, The Panopticon (2012), Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses Fagan's groundbreaking novel about an Edinburgh teenager as "an important landmark of contemporary literature," "a performative act of resistance ... over the forces of oppression," and "an invitation to reconsider the ethics of our contemporary world."

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Scotland’S Top Ten & The Inadequacy Of A National Canon: Alasdair Gray’S Lanark (1981), Scott Lyall Dec 2017

Scotland’S Top Ten & The Inadequacy Of A National Canon: Alasdair Gray’S Lanark (1981), Scott Lyall

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the healthy overlap in the recent BBC Scotland poll on Scotland's Favourite Novel between popular appeal and critical recognition; judges Gray's Lanark as "Scotland's greatest modern novel," which "deserves to be much better known internationally," as "the outstanding postmodern challenge to the global conformism of capitalist hyper-individualism," laments that, despite their usefulness, such curated polls and lists are self-perpetuating, to the neglect of many distinctive Scottish novels, and concludes by asking "what would a truly uncurated top 30 look like?"

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Eric Linklater, Private Angelo (1946), Gill Plain Dec 2017

Eric Linklater, Private Angelo (1946), Gill Plain

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Linklater's novel about World War II in Italy as "a book that cherishes national difference while utterly condemning nationalism," "as much a book for 2017 as it was for 1946," and "a sharply observant satire dissecting the male vanity, national hubris and hypocrisy behind the 'logic' of war."

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James Robertson, The Fanatic (2000), Silvia Mergenthal Dec 2017

James Robertson, The Fanatic (2000), Silvia Mergenthal

Studies in Scottish Literature

Suggests that Robertson's first novel, chiefly concerned with 17th century Scotland, already shows the complex intertextual relationships with earlier Scottish works by Scott, Hogg, and Stevenson that marks his subsequent writing, and comments particularly on its question "What happens later?," in relation to the Scottish vote for political devolution in May 1997.

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James Robertson, Joseph Knight (2003), Ilka Schwittlinsky Dec 2017

James Robertson, Joseph Knight (2003), Ilka Schwittlinsky

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Robertson's novel, based on the true story of the Jamaican slave who in 1778 successfully asserted his freedom in the Scottish Court of Session, and the intertwined story of John Wedderburn, the Scottish plantation owner whose slave he had been, as "an eminently enjoyable historical novel which tackles a difficult subject matter [Scotland’s complicity in slavery and the slave trade] with astonishing humanity."

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Muriel Spark, The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), Katrin Berndt Dec 2017

Muriel Spark, The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), Katrin Berndt

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses Spark's well-known novel, recognizing its "curious amalgamation of acerbic humour, elegance of style, Calvinist spirit, and careful poignancy of plot development," but pointing also to "the pleasurable challenge" offered by its "charismatic" protagonist, Jean Brodie, "glamorous and romantic," "with a proud self-assurance rarely bestowed on female characters," which nonetheless "eludes everyone’s emotional grasp."

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Beattie's The Minstrel: A Missing Link In Scottish Poetry, Ian C. Robertson Dec 2017

Beattie's The Minstrel: A Missing Link In Scottish Poetry, Ian C. Robertson

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the Scottish poet James Beattie's poetry, especially his major work The Minstrel, and his shorter poem in Scots, "To Mr Alexander Ross," in terms of his connections, role and influence within the Scottish poetry and culture of the mid- to late 18th century, arguing that without taking into account Beattie's complex relationship to Scottish, and specifically Aberdonian, culture, the development of 18th century Scottish poetry between Ramsay and Burns cannot be adequately understood.

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The Scotch Bard And 'The Planting Line': New Documents On Burns And Jamaica, Clark Mcginn Dec 2017

The Scotch Bard And 'The Planting Line': New Documents On Burns And Jamaica, Clark Mcginn

Studies in Scottish Literature

Based on newly-identified documents, reexamines Burns's plan in 1786 to emigrate to Jamaica to take a job on a Scottish-owned slave plantation, and the timing and circumstances of his eventual decision to stay in Scotland, concluding that Burns "kept his options open to the last moment," and that the new documents might mean Burns "sought to prosper from chattel slavery," and "only dropped the opportunity because a better offer came along, not because of any moral scruples."

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Immigrant Communities, Cultural Conflicts, And Intermarriage In Ann Marie Di Mambro's Tally's Blood, Ian Brown Dec 2017

Immigrant Communities, Cultural Conflicts, And Intermarriage In Ann Marie Di Mambro's Tally's Blood, Ian Brown

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the stage history, structure and themes of Anne Marie Di Mambro’s play Tally’s Blood (1990), especially in terms of the cultural stresses on Italian immigrant families in Scotland in the 1930s and the impact on them of the Second World War.

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Writing On The Margins: Luke Sutherland, Venus As A Boy (2004), Manfred Malzahn Dec 2017

Writing On The Margins: Luke Sutherland, Venus As A Boy (2004), Manfred Malzahn

Studies in Scottish Literature

Recommends Sutherland's "epiphanic" short novel, which received rave reviews on publication, as a novel that should have been "an almost mandatory selection" for the BBC poll ballot, suggesting that it was excluded, not only because of length, explicit language, and violence, but because its island setting and depiction of "the fuzzy margins of sexual and racial identity" made it wrongly seem peripheral to the Scottish "mainland and mainstream."

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Burns And Chapbooks: A Bibliographer's Twilight Zone, Iain Beavan Dec 2017

Burns And Chapbooks: A Bibliographer's Twilight Zone, Iain Beavan

Studies in Scottish Literature

Based on records for 358 chapbooks containing material by Robert Burns, published in Scotland, England and Ireland, between the 1780s and the 1880s, provides statistical information on their distribution by date and place of publication, and discusses some of the special research issues raised by this publication format, especially relating to the attribution (and misattribution) of authorship.

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