Gerard Carruthers – författare

Literature and Union opens up a new front in interdisciplinary literary studies. There has been a great deal of academic work--both in the Scottish context and more broadly--on the relationship between literature and nationhood, yet almost none on the relationship between literature and unions. This volume introduces the insights of the new British history into mainstream Scottish literary scholarship. The contributors, who are from all shades of the political spectrum, will interrogate from various angles the assumption of a binary opposition between organic Scottish values and those supposedly imposed by an overbearing imperial England. Viewing Scottish literature as a clash between Scottish and English identities loses sight of the internal Scottish political and religious divisions, which, far more than issues of nationhood and union, were the primary sources of conflict in Scottish culture for most of the period of Union, until at least the early twentieth century.The aim of the volume is to reconstruct the story of Scottish literature along lines which are more historically persuasive than those of the prevailing grand narratives in the field. The chapters fall into three groups: (1) those which highlight canonical moments in Scottish literary Unionism--John Bull, 'Rule, Britannia', Humphry Clinker, Ivanhoe and England, their England; (2) those which investigate key themes and problems, including the Unions of 1603 and 1707, Scottish Augustanism, the Burns Cult, Whig-Presbyterian and sentimental Jacobite literatures; and (3) comparative pieces on European and Anglo-Irish phenomena.

The Oxford Handbook of Robert Burns treats the extensive writing of and culture surrounding Scotland's national 'bard'. Robert Burns (1759-96) was a producer of lyrical verse, satirical poetry, in English and Scots, a song-writer and song-collector, a writer of bawdry, journals, commonplace books and correspondence. Sculpting his own image, his untutored rusticity was a sincere persona as much as it was not entirely accurate. Burns was an antiquarian, national patriot, pioneer of what today we would call 'folk culture', and a man of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. The Handbook considers Burns's reception in his own time and beyond, extending to his iconic status as a world-writer. Burns was important to the English Romantic poets, in the context of debates about Abolition in the US, in the Victorian era he was widely utilised as a model for different kinds of popular poetry and he has been utilised as a contestant in debates surrounding Scottish and, indeed, British politics, in peacetime and in wartime down to the present day. The writer's afterlife includes not only a large number of biographies but a whole culture of commemoration in art, architecture, fiction, material culture, museum-exhibition and even forged manuscripts and memorabilia as well as appearances, apparently, via Spiritualist seances. The politics of his work channel the fierce debates of late eighteenth-century Scottish ecclesiastical controversy as well as the ages of American, Agrarian and French revolutions. All of this ground is traversed in this Handbook, the largest critical compendium ever assembled about Robert Burns.

English Romanticism and the Celtic World explores the way in which British Romantic writers responded to the national and cultural identities of the 'four nations' England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The essays collected here, by specialists in the field, interrogate the cultural centres as well as the peripheries of Romanticism, and the interactions between these. They underline 'Celticism' as an emergent strand of cultural ethnicity during the eighteenth century, examining the constructions of Celticness and Britishness in the Romantic period, including the ways in which the 'Celtic' countries viewed themselves in the light of Romanticism. Other topics include the development of Welsh antiquarianism, the Ossian controversy, Irish nationalism, Celtic landscapes, Romantic form and Orientalism. The collection covers writing by Blake, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron and Shelley, and will be of interest to scholars of Romanticism and Celtic studies.

Scotland's rich literary tradition is a product of its unique culture and landscape, as well as of its long history of inclusion and resistance to the United Kingdom. Scottish literature includes masterpieces in three languages - English, Scots and Gaelic - and global perspectives from the diaspora of Scots all over the world. This Companion offers a unique introduction, guide and reference work for students and readers of Scottish literature from the pre-medieval period to the post-devolution present. Essays focus on key periods and movements (the Scottish Enlightenment, Scottish Romanticism, the Scottish Renaissance), genres (the historical novel, Scottish Gothic, 'Tartan Noir') and major authors (Burns, Scott, Stevenson, MacDiarmid and Spark). A chronology and guides to further reading in each chapter make this an ideal overview of a national literature that continues to develop its own distinctive style.

Scotland's rich literary tradition is a product of its unique culture and landscape, as well as of its long history of inclusion and resistance to the United Kingdom. Scottish literature includes masterpieces in three languages - English, Scots and Gaelic - and global perspectives from the diaspora of Scots all over the world. This Companion offers a unique introduction, guide and reference work for students and readers of Scottish literature from the pre-medieval period to the post-devolution present. Essays focus on key periods and movements (the Scottish Enlightenment, Scottish Romanticism, the Scottish Renaissance), genres (the historical novel, Scottish Gothic, 'Tartan Noir') and major authors (Burns, Scott, Stevenson, MacDiarmid and Spark). A chronology and guides to further reading in each chapter make this an ideal overview of a national literature that continues to develop its own distinctive style.

English Romanticism and the Celtic World explores the way in which British Romantic writers responded to the national and cultural identities of the 'four nations' England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The essays collected here, by specialists in the field, interrogate the cultural centres as well as the peripheries of Romanticism, and the interactions between these. They underline 'Celticism' as an emergent strand of cultural ethnicity during the eighteenth century, examining the constructions of Celticness and Britishness in the Romantic period, including the ways in which the 'Celtic' countries viewed themselves in the light of Romanticism. Other topics include the development of Welsh antiquarianism, the Ossian controversy, Irish nationalism, Celtic landscapes, Romantic form and Orientalism. The collection covers writing by Blake, Wordsworth, Scott, Byron and Shelley, and will be of interest to scholars of Romanticism and Celtic studies.

This book treats Burns’ work from the first publication of his poetry in 178 to his song writing and collecting which predominated in the 1790s. It encompasses discussion of Burns’ social and religious satires, his political comment and his utterances on love and gender. In line with modern Burns scholarship, this study reads Burns’ against both his Scottish and British literary backgrounds and emphasises, particularly, Burns’ construction of his poetic persona. As a key element of this latter aspect, the treatment considers Burns against his poetic space for himself as a Scot makes him a crucial Enlightenment and proto-Romantic figure. The book debunks the myth of Burns as ‘this heaven-taught ploughman’, emphasising his very contemporary understanding of the power of literature, and of the emotions as a vital part of human intellect.

Reliquiae Trotcosienses was one of Scott’s last works, and, after his death, was suppressed by his literary executor and his publisher. Although extracts were published in 1889 and 1905, this is the first complete edition, and has been edited from the manuscript recently relocated in the library at Abbotsford, the house near Melrose in the Scottish Borders which Scott built for his library and museum.Reliquiae Trotcosienses (the relics of Trotcosey) is a guide to Abbotsford and to its collections, and illustrates in miniature all the different ways in which Scott tried to recover the past: in building, in collecting, and in the multiple acts of narration which invest objects with significance. But it is simultaneously a work of fiction, which satirises the impulses of antiquarian collection. Scott would not take himself seriously, and through the learned buffoonery of this extraordinary work he mocks the kind of activity in which he was engaged as writer and collector.Yet this is also a personal, elegiac creation, for the narrator as he approaches death recognises that the house, its artefacts, and above all the writings will live on to mourn their begetter: they are fragments shored against his ruin.

This guide combines detailed literary history with discussion of contemporary debates about Scottishness. The book considers the rise of Scottish Studies, the development of a national literature, and issues of cultural nationalism. Beginning in the medieval period during a time of nation building, the book goes on to focus on the 'Scots revival' of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries before moving on to discuss the literary renaissance of the twentieth century. Debates concerning Celticism and Gaelic take place alongside discussion of key Scottish writers such as William Dunbar, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Margaret Oliphant, Hugh MacDiarmid, Alasdair Gray, Janice Galloway and Liz Lochhead. The book also considers émigré writers to Scotland; Scottish literature in relation to England, the United States and Ireland; and postcolonialism and other theories that shed fresh light on the current status and future of Scottish literature.Key Features*Identifies the main trends in the emergence and development of Scottish literature, situating them in historical and cultural context*Discusses long-running debates about Scottish language and national identity through detailed readings of authors and texts*Introduces students to a variety of comparative and theoretical approaches which further develop an understanding of Scottish literature*Encourages reflection on questions of Scottish nationalism, cultural politics, canonicity and the rise of Scottish Studies

The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Burns provides both a comprehensive introduction to and the most contemporary critical contexts for the study of Robert Burns. Detailed commentary on the artistry of Burns is complemented by material on the cultural reception and afterlife of this most iconic of world writers. The biographical construction of Burns is examined as are his relations to Scottish, Romantic and International cultures. Burns is also approached in terms of his engagements with Ecology, Gender, Pastoral, Politics, Pornography, Slavery, and Song-culture, and there is extensive coverage of publishing history including Burns's place in popular, bourgeois and Enlightenment cultures during the late eighteenth century.This is the most modern collection of critical responses to Burns from scholars from the United Kingdom and North America, which, more than ever before, seeks to place Burns as a 'mainstream' man of Enlightenment and Romantic impetus and to explain the enduring and sometimes controversial fascination for both the man and his work over more than two hundred years.Key Features*Modern critical approaches to Burns: including readings of biographical construction, gender and publishing and reception history*Detailed discussion of the cultural afterlife of Burns*Location of Burns in the Enlightenment and Romantic periods*Entirely new readings of Burns's major poems

A Companion to Scottish Literature offers fresh readings of major authors and periods of Scottish literary production from the first millennium to the present. Bringing together contributions by many of the world’s leading experts in the field, this comprehensive resource provides the historical background of Scottish literature, highlights new critical approaches, and explores wider cultural and institutional contexts. Dealing with texts in the languages of Scots, English, and Gaelic, the Companion offers modern perspectives on the historical milieux, thematic contexts and canonical writers of Scottish literature. Original essays apply the most up-to-date critical and scholarly analyses to a uniquely wide range of topics, such as Gaelic literature, national and diasporic writing, children’s literature, Scottish drama and theatre, gender and sexuality, and women’s writing. Critical readings examine William Dunbar, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark and Carol Ann Duffy, amongst others. With full references and guidance for further reading, as well as numerous links to online resources, A Companion to Scottish Literature is essential reading for advanced students and scholars of Scottish literature, as well as academic and non-academic readers with an interest in the subject.

This book is unashamedly aimed at a wider market than the ordinary academic volume, as it seeks to extend the impact of the research it contains, making it available to the worldwide community of Burns enthusiasts, without compromising on scholarship.Contributors have been selected not only for their academic rigour and reputation, but also because of their ability to handle their material with elegance and accessibility for the general reader. They offer fresh insights for both academic and general readers, not least through the volume’s interdisciplinary approaches, including a contribution from the great interpreter of Burns’s songs, Sheena Wellington.A key part of this volume’s attraction lies in the way it opens up fresh issues and aspects of performance and performativity and their impact on our perception of Robert Burns and his work.

Examines representations of Robert Burns and his work in a wide range of performance modesExamination of representation of Robert Burns and his work in a wide range of performance modesAnalysis of 'Robert Burns' as a cultural performance rising from different representations of his work by different editors, composers, writers, performers and film-makersFresh detailed studies of Burns as a performed and performative construct, exploring ways in which he is encountered as a living authorContributions by leading experts in music, drama, film and history as well as literaturePerspectives on Burns songs offered by musical experts and leading performersThis book opens up fresh aspects of performance and performativity and their impact on our perception of Robert Burns and his work. Bringing together leading experts on music, song, drama, public ceremonial and literature, it studies Burns as a performed and performative construct. It explores ways in which he is encountered as a living author, setting the popularity of his poetry and songs in the context of his representation in popular culture. A key part of this volume's attraction lies in the way it opens up fresh issues and aspects of performance and performativity and their impact on our perception of Robert Burns and his work.

Scottish Stories is a treasury of great writing from a richly literary land, where the short story has flourished for over two centuries. Here are chilling supernatural stories from Robert Louis Stevenson, Eric Linklater and Dorothy K. Haynes; side-splittingly funny stories from Alasdair Gray and Irvine Welsh; a stylish offering from urban realist William McIlvanney. Iain Crichton Smith evokes the Gaelic-speaking highlands, George Mackay-Brown the Orkney islands, Andrew O'Hagan working-class Glasgow; while Leila Aboulela, originally from Sudan, ponders the relations between colonizers and colonized from her home in Aberdeen. Though there is no one 'Scottishness' that binds the authors together, writes editor Gerard Carruthers, each has a Scottish footprint or accent. And perhaps more importantly, all are masters of their form.

Scotland, like so many other nations, has produced poetry that is patriotic, that paints landscapes, people and situations, that speaks to personal matters, and those equally everyday matters pertaining to the mind and to the spirit. The Christian heritage of Scotland has long been played out in verse, through Celtic devotional works, Catholic works, Protestant works, and not forgetting satires on the Puritanism in Scotland's post-Reformation identity. Language and culture have been equally multifarious in the nation so that three major languages: Scots, English and Gaelic (examples of which are translated in this anthology) compete and co-exist in poetry. The fifteenth century poet, William Dunbar, joked that there was no music in hell except for the bagpipes, and there speaks something of the historic lowland attitude to the Gaidhealtachd (Gaelic speaking Scotland, principally the highlands). Hostility and eventual harmony is a marker of the Scottish highlands/lowlands divide as much as for that between Scotland and England. Historic tension is not to be dismissed but, certainly, the poetic palette of Scotland is one of multilingual richness, and shows an enduringly high quality whatever the cultural vicissitudes that play a part. The medieval Makars, most prominently Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas, are often taken to represent a golden age when poetry in Scots ran the full range of mood, mode and subject matter. If this has, perhaps, never been bettered, the sixteenth century lyrics and sonnets of Alexander Montgomerie, Alexander Scott and other poets around the court of James VI, and the eighteenth century vernacular 'revival' of Allan Ramsay, Alexander Ross, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns represent at points equally brilliant periods; and the twentieth century 'modern renaissance' of Hugh MacDiarmid, Violet Jacob and William Souter proved that Scots remained a viable poetic currency, as a living poet such as Tom Leonard continues to demonstrate. Poetry in Gaelic too has its tradition of peaks where the flame seems to burn more visibly at certain times than others. Alexander Macdonald (Alasdair Mac Mhaghstir Alasdair), Rob Donn (Rob Donn MacAoidh) and Duncan MacIntyre (Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir) make the eighteenth century a high point in achievement, while Sorley Maclean, George Campbell Hay and Iain Crichton Smith do similarly for the twentieth century: the latter three, arguably, making Gaelic verse the most able variety in Scotland during the last sixty years. Historically as many successes are scored in Scottish poetry in English. James Thomson, author of The Seasons, joins James Macpherson translator/creator of the poetry of 'Ossian' in promulgating works that are seminally iconic and influential right across the artistic genres, painting and music as much as literature, in western culture. The romantic, patriotic poetic image of Scotland is sounded in English as much as in any other language, as the writing of Walter Scott or Lady Nairne attests. James (B.V.) Thomson, John Davidson, Edwin Muir, Norman MacCaig, W.S. Graham, Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead, Kathleen Jamie and Don Paterson are all deeply Scottish poets speaking through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the worldwide audience that exists for creative utterance that both emanates from but is never limited by the particularity of place. Scotland's story is one that is never certain, but, enduringly and importantly its poetry is.

Those researching the history of political democracy in Scotland will inevitably find that one name stands out from the crowd, namely that of Thomas Muir of Huntershill. He was one of several people tried in Scottish courts during the 1790s for the alleged crime of 'Sedition', and four of the others share commemoration with him on a large monument in Edinburgh, but somehow Muir seems special. The way he used his trial as a platform to promote the logic of 'an equal representation of the People in the House of the People' was extremely dramatic and was fully reported at the time both in newspapers and in several published editions of the trial proceedings. Yet somehow historians have never been fully convinced about Muir's claim to recognition. For some he represents a sour note in the triumphant story of the Scottish Enlightenment, while others have dismissed him as a failure in his own time, conceding little consequence to the example he set for future generations. Over the years there have been attempts to right what many people regard as a grievous wrong, in this respect.This substantial and insightful edited volume adds to the debate the views of Rhona Brown, Gerard Carruthers, Tom Devine, Tom Dowds, Satinder Kaur, Thomas Lemoine, David McVey, Don Martin, Gordon Pentland, Alex Salmond, Beverley Sherry, Alex Watson, Jimmy Watson, and Ronnie Young.