Beyond Scotland: New Contexts for Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature

Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature

by Gerard Carruthers (Editor), David Goldie (Editor), Alastair Renfrew (Editor)

Scottish creative writing in the twentieth century was notable for its willingness to explore and absorb the literatures of other times and other nations. From the engagement with Russian literature of Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Morgan, through to the interplay with continental literary theory, Scottish writers have proved active participants in a diverse international literary practice. Scottish criticism has, arguably, often been slow in appreciating the full extent of this exchange.

Preoccupied with marking out its territory, with identifying an independent and distinctive tradition, Scottish criticism has occasionally blinded itself to the diversity and range of its writers. In stressing the importance of cultural independence, it has tended to overlook the many virtues of interdependence. The essays in this book aim to offer a corrective view. They celebrate the achievement of Scottish writing in the twentieth century by offering a wider basis for appreciation than a narrow idea of 'Scottishness'. Each essay explores an aspect of Scottish writing in an individual foreign perspective; together they provide an enriching account of a national literary practice that has deep, and often surprisingly complex, roots in international culture.

268 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2004

About the author

Gerard Carruthers holds the Francis Hutcheson Chair of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow.

He is General Editor of the Oxford University Press Edition of the Works of Robert Burns and has published fifteen books and over one hundred academic articles and essays. He works on literature from the 1690s to the 20th century, with particular interests in the long eighteenth-century in Scotland, textual editing and book history. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.