Scottish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion(Edinburgh Companions to the Gothic)

Interrogates the Gothic in relation to Scotland, ‘Scottishness’, British Gothic, cultural and national boundaries, and issues of identity Written from various critical standpoints by internationally renowned scholars, Scottish Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion interrogates the ways in which the concepts of the Gothic and Scotland have intersected and been manipulated from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. This interdisciplinary collection is the first ever published study to investigate the multifarious strands of Gothic in Scottish fiction, poetry, theatre and film.  Its contributors — all specialists in their fields — combine an attention to socio-historical and cultural contexts with a rigorous close reading of works, both classic and lesser known, produced between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries. Key Features  Offers the first critical collection devoted to the topic of the Scottish Gothic as it is manifested across centuriesRe-ignites ongoing debates about the relationship between Scotland and the Gothic, Scotland and Romanticism, Scotland and the Enlightenment, and the role of the Gothic in relation to national identity issuesConsiders issues of religion, politics, history, and culture/cultural identity in Scottish Gothic texts across centuries against the backdrop of the Act of Union and the process of devolution/independencePresents fresh readings of established, overlooked, and recent Scottish Gothic works across a variety of cultural and literary forms

Table of Contents:
Borderlands of Identity and the Aesthetics of Disjuncture: An Introduction to Scottish Gothic (Carol Margaret Davison and Monica Germanà) ‘The Celtic Century’ and the Genesis of Scottish Gothic (Nick Groom) The Politics and Poetics of the ‘Scottish Gothic’ from Ossian to Otranto and Beyond (Carol Margaret Davison) Robert Burns and the Scottish Bawdy Politic (Hamish Mathison) Scottish Gothic Drama (Barbara A. E. Bell) Gothic Scottish Poetry (Alan Riach) Calvinist and Covenanter Gothic (Alison Milbank) Gothic Scott (Fiona Robertson) Gothic Hogg (Scott Brewster) ‘The Singular Wrought Out into the Strange and Mystical’: Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Transformation of Terror (Robert Morrison) Gothic Stevenson (Roderick Watson) J. M. Barrie’s Gothic: Ghosts, Fairy Tales, and Lost Children (Sarah Dunnigan) The ‘nouveau frisson’: Muriel Spark’s Gothic Fiction (Gerard Carruthers) Scottish Gothic and the Moving Image: A Tale of Two Traditions (Duncan Petrie) New Frankensteins; or, the Body Politic (Timothy C. Baker) Queer Scottish Gothic (Kate Turner) Authorship, ‘Ghost-filled’ Islands, and the Haunting Feminine: Contemporary Scottish Female Gothic (Monica Germanà)

About the Author :
Carol Margaret Davison is Professor and Head of the Department of English Language, Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. She is the author of History of the Gothic: Gothic Literature 1764-1824 (2009) and Anti-Semitism and British Gothic Literature (2004), and has published on a wide variety of Gothic-related authors and topics. She is currently at work on a casebook of criticism of the British Gothic, 1764-1824, and an edited collection of critical essays devoted to the topic of the Gothic and death. Monica Germanà is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Westminster. Her research concentrates on contemporary British literature, with a specific emphasis on the Gothic and gender. Her publications include Scottish Women’s Gothic and Fantastic Writing (Edinburgh University Press, 2010) and Ali Smith: New Critical Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2013) co-edited with Emily Horton. She is currently working on a new monograph called Bond Girls: Body, Dress, Gender (Bloomsbury).

Review :
As an introduction to Scottish Gothic it is accessible and forward-looking, incorporating challenging critical analysis and lively survey overviews, and covering an impressive range of writers and texts. Scottish Gothic is the first book-length survey of a distinctive cultural phenomenon: the association of Scotland with an undead past, perverse psychology, and uncanny states of being. Ranging from eighteenth-century origins to the present, the volume features contributions from some of the leading scholars in their fields.