The International Companion to Nineteenth-Century Scottish Literature Quotes

“The cause of the protagonist's spiritual crisis in these novels originates in the unloving and unlovely severity of various forms of Presbyterianism. In A Son of the Soil, the Church of Scotland's harshly judgemental and emotionally sterile tendencies are displayed in parishioners' right right to object to 'sitting under' a minister who does not meet their approval. During a minister's probationary period the congregation can object 'to his looks, or his manners, or his doctrines, or the colour of his hair'.”
― Juliet Shields, The International Companion to Nineteenth-Century Scottish Literature

“Buchan's less polemical evaluation of 1932, with its focus on the historical context of Scott's writing, recognised the author's virtues, but did little to change the narrative of his limitations. Beside the reminder that the author 'knew his native land as no Scotsman had ever known it before', the insight that Scott's popularity and its international extent 'has had a paralysing effect' on his critical study sounded no warning to critics determined to mark themselves separate from Scotland's supposed cultural and literary provincialism.”
― Caroline McCracken-Flesher, The International Companion to Nineteenth-Century Scottish Literature