Modern Scottish Culture

This book provides an overview of Scottish culture from the time of union with England and Wales up to and through the moment of devolution to the present.

Scotland's culture is vigorous and vibrant, energised by questions of history and identity, by interpretations of the past and by the possibilities for the future. At this key moment, earlier identities are being re-examined and re-presented, and personal and cultural histories are being redefined and reconsidered in contemporary life and literature. It is these themes of re-examination, re-presentation, redefinition and reconsideration that the eleven essays in this volume explore. Together, they show how the multifarious roots embedded in contemporary Scottish life and letters bear fruit - often in surprising ways - and how the re-creation and reimagination of Scottish culture, its identities and its tropes, are being developed by a range of leading Scottish writers.

A major reconsideration of our understanding of the development of Scottish culture from the Enlightenment to the present day.

In the late medieval and early modern periods, Scottish latinity had its distinctive stamp, most intriguingly so in its effects upon the literary vernacular and on themes of national identity. This volume shows how, when viewed through the prism of latinity, Scottish textuality was distinctive and fecund. The flowering of Scottish writing owed itself to a subtle combination of literary praxis, the ideal of eloquentia, and ideological deftness, which enabled writers to service a burgeoning national literary tradition.

Offering a perspective on Scottish culture, this work presents images of the Scottish city, Jacobitism, tradition and the development of modern philosophy, the distinctiveness of Scottish education, and the Scottish enlightenment.

An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.

Draws together contributions from the leading researchers to provide a contemporary evaluation of tartan and tartanry.

Originally published in 1978, this book explores the relationship between the Gaelic and English spheres of life, from the life of the bilingual Gael, in the confrontation of Highland and Lowland Scotland and the literary expressions of these. It is argued that the picture of Gaelic society that is popularly accepted does not owe its form to any simple observation, but to symbolic and metaphorical requirements imposed by the larger society. Beginning with the birth of the Romantic movement and moving on to modern Gaelic literature and anthropological studies, aspects of the relationship of a dominant to a ‘minority’ culture are raised. The racial stereotypes of Celt and Anglo-Saxon that were widely accepted in the 19th Century are also discussed, and the understanding of how a dominant intellectual world has used Gaelic society in the process of seeking its own definition is pursued through a study of the concepts of ‘folklore’ and the ‘folk’.