Suzanne Gilbert – författare

Heroic, radical and at times hilarious, Queen Hynde is Ossian with jokes; but Hogg's epic has serious purposes in mind. Its picture of the ancient Scottish past has much in common with stories of King Arthur and Camelot; and Queen Hynde aspires to emulate Paradise Lost as a Christian epic.

Hogg grew up in rural Ettrick Forest in a notable family of tradition-bearers, and in his first major poetry collection The Mountain Bard of 1807 he claims his rightful position at the centre of that culture. Whereas Scott collected the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border Hogg was the sole author of The Mountain Bard. He learned to negotiate the erudite print culture of Edinburgh with the literary ballad, sometimes helped and sometimes hindered by his powerful friend, shifting the shape of his earlier manuscript and periodical poems accordingly. Then in 1821, when he was an established literary man, he published a revised edition in keeping with his new professional status as Author of The Queen’s Wake. The present edition prints together, for the first time, the surviving pre-1807 versions of poems included in The Mountain Bard, the full 1807 collection, and the complete 1821 version. The Introduction (besides giving a full history of this complex, changing work) places it firmly within the eighteenth-century antiquarian projects of ballad-collecting and the intellectual currents of Romanticism, in particular the literary vogue for the ballad shown in works such as Lyrical Ballads (1798) by Wordsworth and Coleridge. Available in Paperback:The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified SinnerThe Shepherd’s CalendarTales of the Wars of MontroseThe Three Perils of WomanWinter Evening TalesAnecdotes of ScottThe Queen's WakeAltrive TalesAlso Available in Hardback:A Queer BookThe Shepherd’s CalendarThe Three Perils of WomanTales of the Wars of MontroseLay SermonsQueen HyndeAnecdotes of ScottThe SpyThe Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified SinnerThe Jacobite Relics of Scotland (First Series)The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (Second Series)Winter Evening TalesThe Queen's WakeAltrive TalesThe Collected Letters of James Hogg, Volume 1, 1800-1819

This collection of essays explores the historical importance and imaginative richness of Scotland’s extensive contribution to modes of traditional culture and expression: ballads, tales and storytelling, and song. Its underlying aim is to bring about a more dynamic and inclusive understanding of Scottish culture. Rooted in literary history and both comparative and interdisciplinary in scope, the volume covers the key aspects and genres of traditional literature, including the Gaelic tradition, from the medieval period to the present. Key theoretical and conceptual issues raised by the historical analysis of Scotland’s rich store of ballad, song, and folk narrative are discussed in separate chapters. The volume also explores why and how Scottish literary writers have been inspired by traditional genres, modes, and motifs, and the intermingling of folk and literary traditions in writers such as Burns, Scott, and Hogg. It also uncovers the folkloric and mythopoetic materials of early Scottish literature, and the vitality of neglected aspects of Scottish popular culture. Key FeaturesExplores the cultural meanings of 'tradition' and 'living tradition' and the roles of historical and modern informants, storytellers, and singersExamines the relationship between the oral and the literary in Scots, Gaelic, and EnglishDraws on a wide range of examples including: Francis J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads; The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection; the waulking song; Gaelic folktale; the traditions of Fionn mac Cumhail; the songs of Anna Gordon Brown; ballads from Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border and James Hogg's Jacobite Relics; and material from George Campbell Hay, Sorley Maclean and Hamish HendersonGuides readers through some of the key theoretical and conceptual issues in the fieldInclusive of Gaelic, Scots and English traditionsBroad historical coverage from late medieval to the contemporary