Prizing Scottish Literature

This history of the Saltire Society Literary Awards demonstrates the significance the awards have had within Scottish literary and cultural life. The book explores how the prizes have influenced understandings of Scottish literature over eight decades and explores what they reveal about the wider mechanisms of how literary prize culture functions in the UK today.

From Treasure Island to Trainspotting, Scotland's rich literary tradition has influenced writing across centuries and cultures far beyond its borders. Here, for the first time, is a single volume presenting the glories of fifteen centuries of Scottish literature. In Scotland's Books the much loved poet Robert Crawford tells the story of Scottish imaginative writing and its relationship to the country's history. Stretching from the medieval masterpieces of St. Columba's Iona - the earliest surviving Scottish work - to the energetic world of twenty-first-century writing by authors such as Ali Smith and James Kelman, this outstanding account traces the development of literature in Scotland and explores the cultural, linguistic and literary heritage of the nation. It includes extracts from the writing discussed to give a flavor of the original work, and its new research ranges from specially made translations of ancient poems to previously unpublished material from the Scottish Enlightenment and interviews with living writers. Informative and readable, this is the definitive single-volume guide to the marvelous legacy of Scottish literature.

This is the fourth book in a Saltire series examining the significance of Scottish history, philosophy and the Scots language. Here, the Distinguished Italian academic Carla Sassi examines Scotland's literature from the earliest times to the late 20th century and offers new and fascinating insights into the nature of nationhood and identity, and the way in which these are reflected in, and the inspiration for, literary output at various periods. The major historical influences are covered including relations with England, religious division, enlightenment philosophy and the Union of 1707, but Professor Sassi also examines Scotland's role in the British imperial adventure and the impact on literature of the coloniser / colonised experience. She makes a special study of the contribution of women writers and the writers of the 20th century 'Renaissance' and concludes with speculation on the future of 'Scottish' literature in a post-modern Scotland exposed to global cultural influences and living in the new political world heralded by the restoration of the Holyrood Parliament. Carla Sassi is Associate Professor of English literature at the University of Verona. She specialises in Sc

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 emigre 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.

Modern Irish and Scottish Literature: Connections, Contrasts, Celticisms explores the ways Irish and Scottish literatures have influenced each other from the 1760s onwards. Although an early form of Celticism disappeared with the demise of the Celtic Revivals of Ireland and Scotland, the 'Celtic world' and the 'Celtic temperament' remained key themes in central texts of Irish and Scottish literature well into the twentieth century. Richard Barlow examines the emergence, development, and transformation of Celticism within Irish and Scottish writing and identifies key connections between modern Irish and Scottish authors and texts. By reading works from figures such as James Macpherson, Walter Scott, Sydney Owenson, Augusta Gregory, W. B. Yeats, Fiona Macleod, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Hugh MacDiarmid, Sorley MacLean, and Seamus Heaney in their political and cultural contexts, Barlow provides a new account of the characteristics and phases of literary Celticism within Romanticism, Modernism, and beyond.

In almost a century since the First World War ended, Scotland has been transformed in many rich ways. Its literature has been an essential part of that transformation. The third volume of the History, explores the vibrancy of modern Scottish literature in all its forms and languages. Giving full credit to writing in Gaelic and by the Scottish diaspora, it brings together the best contemporary critical insights from three continents. It provides an accessible and refreshing picture of both the varieties of Scottish literatures and the kaleidoscopic versions of Scotland that mark literary developments since 1918.

This Guide examines the critical construction of the genre of 'contemporary Scottish literature' and assesses the critical responses to a wide range of contemporary Scottish fiction, poetry and drama. The Guide is structured thematically with each chapter addressing a specific area of debate within the field of contemporary Scottish Studies.