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Full-Text Articles in Literature in English, British Isles

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?"


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."


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.


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."


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."


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.


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."


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.


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."


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.


Robert Burns In Print At The National Library Of Scotland, Robert Betteridge Dec 2017

Robert Burns In Print At The National Library Of Scotland, Robert Betteridge

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the early Burns editions now in the National Library of Scotland, compares the NLS holdings to those of other major UK research libraries, examines the limited role of the deposit privilege in bring early Burns editions to the Advocates' Library before the founding of the NLS, and provides examples of significant early editions that were subsequently acquired for the library by purchase and donation.


Digital Resources For Scottish Neo-Latin Literature, Ralph Mclean Dec 2017

Digital Resources For Scottish Neo-Latin Literature, Ralph Mclean

Studies in Scottish Literature

Provides an annotated guide to the Scottish neo-Latin texts and translations now available in two major digital projects, the Philological Museum (University of Birmingham) and Bridging the Continental Divide (University of Glasgow), with briefer notes on other related print and digital resources, commenting on the importance of fully-annotated editorial and translation projects now fewer students and researchers can tackle such texts in the original Latin.


Books Noted And Received, Patrick Scott Dec 2017

Books Noted And Received, Patrick Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Short reviews and brief notices of twenty-one recent books in Scottish literary studies.


'Upon The Decaying Kirk': A Footnote To Ane Dialogue, Jamie Reid Baxter Dec 2017

'Upon The Decaying Kirk': A Footnote To Ane Dialogue, Jamie Reid Baxter

Studies in Scottish Literature

Prints a short Scottish verse-fragment from the 1630s, "Upon the Decaying Kirk," and discusses its relation to an earlier, longer workAne Dialogue (1619: see SSL 43:1) and to presbyterian protests in the Edinburgh High Kirk against the introduction of episcopalianism under King Charles I.


Scottish Literature, Periodization, And The Liberal Arts Curriculum, Sharon Alker, Holly Faith Nelson May 2017

Scottish Literature, Periodization, And The Liberal Arts Curriculum, Sharon Alker, Holly Faith Nelson

Studies in Scottish Literature

Describes opportunities and approaches for teaching Scottish literature, chiefly of the 18th-20th centuries, in the undergraduate liberal arts curriculum and discusses how these relate to debates over periodization.


Barbour’S Black Douglas, David Parkinson May 2017

Barbour’S Black Douglas, David Parkinson

Studies in Scottish Literature

A detailed discussion of the representation and characterization of Sir James Douglas ("Black Douglas") in John Barbour's poem The Bruce, examining the ways in which Barbour's Douglas is shown not only as the flower of chivalry, but also as a Robin Hood-like denizen of the woods, and arguing that "in the most highly colored Douglas episodes, Barbour feints toward the outrageous and transgressive," while also experimenting with his poem's literary structure to incorporate disruption or incursions from a disorderly non-courtly world.


'A Thin And Tattered Veil': Lewis Grassic Gibbon And The Church Of Scotland, Ian Campbell May 2017

'A Thin And Tattered Veil': Lewis Grassic Gibbon And The Church Of Scotland, Ian Campbell

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the changes in Scottish religious practice and adherence from just before the First World War, through to the early 1930s, through the representation of the Church of Scotland in Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Scots Quair trilogy: Sunset Song (1932), Cloud Howe (1933), and Grey Granite (1934), with briefer comment on other writings by the same author writing as J. L. Mitchell. and a final comparison between Gibbon's portrayal of religious change and that in an earlier Scottish novel, John Galt's Annals of the Parish(1821).


Andrew Lang: A World We Have Lost, William Donaldson May 2017

Andrew Lang: A World We Have Lost, William Donaldson

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the career and wide-ranging accomplishments of the Scottish essayist, poet and critic Andrew Lang (1844-1912), author of Myth, Ritual and Religion (2 vols., 1887), arguing that Lang was "an original thinker with a powerful oppositional streak;" reviews his significance for late Victorian anthropology and the studies of religions (including psychical research), and on his work as a translator and classicist, reviewer, ballad scholar, biographer, and Scottish historian, as well as his contribution to children's literature; includes an assessment of a new 2-volume selection of Lang's writing; and concludes that Lang's "virtuosic range" and "slashing keenness of intellect" "contributed significantly …


'It Is To Pleasure You': Seeing Things In Mackenzie's 'Aretina' (1660), Or, Whither Scottish Prose Fiction Before The Novel?, Rivka Swenson May 2017

'It Is To Pleasure You': Seeing Things In Mackenzie's 'Aretina' (1660), Or, Whither Scottish Prose Fiction Before The Novel?, Rivka Swenson

Studies in Scottish Literature

Examines the early novelistic fiction, Aretina (1660), by the Scottish lawyer Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (1636-1691), and explores the ways in which it appeals to the senses, so that readers "flesh out the contours of contextualized character according to their own personal predilections."


The Romance Of Terror: Stevenson's Dynamiter And Verne's Submariner, David Robb May 2017

The Romance Of Terror: Stevenson's Dynamiter And Verne's Submariner, David Robb

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses Robert Louis Stevenson's co-authored novel The Dynamiters (More New Arabian Nights, 1885) in the context of late Victorian bombing campaigns and use of dynamite by Irish Fenians and anarchists, exploring the generic differences between Stevenson's use of romance and Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent (1907), with extensive comparison between Stevenson's dynamiter Zero and Jules Verne's Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869-1870).


Books Noted And Received, Patrick G. Scott May 2017

Books Noted And Received, Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

No abstract provided.


Contributors To Ssl 43:1 May 2017

Contributors To Ssl 43:1

Studies in Scottish Literature

No abstract provided.


Preface To Ssl 43:1, Patrick G. Scott, Tony Jarrells May 2017

Preface To Ssl 43:1, Patrick G. Scott, Tony Jarrells

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the interest of the editors in publishing articles on a wide range of Scottish authors, texts and periods.


Introduction: Scottish Literature And Periodization, Juliet Shields May 2017

Introduction: Scottish Literature And Periodization, Juliet Shields

Studies in Scottish Literature

Introduces a symposium on the mismatch between literary periodization developed for English literature and the configuration of Scottish literary history, with special discussion of how this issue has been treated in recent scholarship on Scottish romanticism.


Scots Take The Wheel: The Problem Of Period And The Medieval Scots Alliterative Thirteen-Line Stanza, Andrew W. Klein May 2017

Scots Take The Wheel: The Problem Of Period And The Medieval Scots Alliterative Thirteen-Line Stanza, Andrew W. Klein

Studies in Scottish Literature

Examines distinctively Scottish forms of the alliterative thirteen-line stanza, best known in standard English surveys from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and argues that the stanza has a longer, more varied, independent use in Scottish poetry that should not be treated primarily in terms of English parallels.


Sorley Maclean's Other Clearance Poems, Petra Johana Poncarová May 2017

Sorley Maclean's Other Clearance Poems, Petra Johana Poncarová

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the treatment of the Highland Clearances, specifically the clearances from his home-island of Raasay, in the work of the Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean (Somhairle MacGill-Eain, 1911-1996), not only in his best-known Clearance poem "Hallaig," but in his prose writings, his major early sequence An Cuilithionn (1939, but not fully published till 2011), and several important shorter poems, “Am Putan Airgid” (“The Silver Button”), “‘Tha na beanntan gun bhruidhinn,’” and (more fully) “Sgreapadal.”


Posthumous Preaching: James Melville's Ghostly Advice In Ane Dialogue (1619), With An Edition From The Manuscript, Jamie Reid Baxter May 2017

Posthumous Preaching: James Melville's Ghostly Advice In Ane Dialogue (1619), With An Edition From The Manuscript, Jamie Reid Baxter

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses the use of the dialogue in Renaissance Scotland, and explores the background, themes, and dramatic art of Ane Dialogue (1619), concerning the Five Articles of Perth (1618), and resistance to the church policies of King James VI & I; gives character-sketches of the four speakers, James Melville, William Balcanquhall, Archibald Johnstone, and John Smyth, and of their satiric target, the Edinburgh minister William Struthers; concludes by providing an annotated edition of the dialogue transcribed from the sole manuscript, National Library of Scotland, Wodrow Quarto LXXXIV, ff. 19-25.


Robert Burns's Hand In 'Ay Waukin, O': The Roy Manuscript And William Tytler's Dissertation (1779), Patrick G. Scott May 2017

Robert Burns's Hand In 'Ay Waukin, O': The Roy Manuscript And William Tytler's Dissertation (1779), Patrick G. Scott

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses Robert Burns's sources and manuscripts for his expansion of the song "Ay waukin, O," first published as song 213 in James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, III (1790); highlights an often neglected and misdated printed item, William Tytler’s Dissertation, as Burns's source for two of the four stanzas; considers the two full-length manuscripts, identifying one as being an Antique Smith forgery, and detailing the provenance and purpose, of the other, now at the Birthplace Museum; examines and reproduces the Roy manuscript and its pencilled additions; and so clarifies the relationship among the three genuine manuscripts to argue that …


Scotland And The Caribbean, Jo Durant Dec 2016

Scotland And The Caribbean, Jo Durant

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses (and summarizes) Michael Morris's recent book Scotland and the Caribbean, c. 1740-1833, concluding that it should be welcomed, not only as an introduction to specific writers, but as a good introduction to recent debates on the legacy of Caribbean slavery, as seen from a Scottish perspective.


Edinburgh Monuments, The Literary Canon, And Cultural Nationalism: A Comparative Perspective, Silvia Mergenthal Dec 2016

Edinburgh Monuments, The Literary Canon, And Cultural Nationalism: A Comparative Perspective, Silvia Mergenthal

Studies in Scottish Literature

Building on comparative studies of the "memory landscapes" of cities and monuments, describes three different monument series in Edinburgh, the Canongate Wall at the Scottish Parliament building at Holyrood, the flagstone quotations in Makar's Court near the Writers' Museum, and the grouped herms in the Edinburgh Business Park; discusses how the authors included in each series were selected and how each relates to the formal and informal Scottish literary canon; and briefly indicates what comparative scholarship suggests about the relation of such monuments to the development of cultural nationalism.