Writing Scottishness: Literature and the Shaping of Scottish National Identities(26 ASLS Occasional Papers)

Scotland’s sense of national identity and cultural distinctiveness has long been articulated through its literature. These fourteen essays explore literary manifestations of Scottishness and examine the political, religious and cultural complexities, as well as the cross-national transfer of ideas, that have shaped Scottish writing and performance through the centuries. By analysing the works of canonical writers such as Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson alongside sometimes marginalised figures, including Gaelic-language poets and women novelists, this volume offers a comprehensive and diverse understanding of writing Scottishness. The collection draws not only on Scottish texts but also Scottish song culture, cinematic adaptations and literary walking trails to shed new light on the nation’s negotiation of its identity through its cultural creations.

Table of Contents:
Introduction (Clarisse Godard Desmarest) 1. Inscribing Scottishness in Language, Space, and Performance since the Seventeenth Century (Ian Brown) 2. Lethington, Marie Maitland, and the ‘Maitland Quarto’: Memorialisation and Performance in Times of ‘Troubill’ for Scotland (Pamela King) 3. Translating Identities: Tracing the Transfer of a Scottish Origin Myth from Scotland to France c. 1519 (Bryony Coombs) 4. ‘Losing its religion’? Scottish Literature and Confessional Identity (Gerard Carruthers) 5. Collective Identities and the Other in Scottish Jacobite Songs (Kristel van Soeren) 6. Napoleon and Ossian: Celtomania and the Construction of French Nationhood (Clarisse Godard Desmarest) 7. Transatlantic ‘Scott-land’: Re-locating the Late Waverley Novels within a Transatlantic Discussion (Pauline Pilote) 8. Questions of Identity on the Stevenson Trail in Scotland (Lesley Graham) 9. The Safe Nationalisms of Hugh MacDiarmid and Compton Mackenzie (Béatrice Duchateau) 10. Situating the Gael in Scottish Landscapes: Self-Identity and Change in Twentieth-Century Gaelic Poetry (Emma Dymock) 11. Critiquing Scotland’s Clever Clocks and MacGrundies: Willa Muir’s Nationalist Feminism (Emily L. Pickard) 12. ‘This is Scotland, by Christ!’: Cultural Nationalism and National (Re)Branding in the Cinematic Adaptations of Irvine Welsh (Anne-Lise Marin-Lamellet) 13. George Davie’s Democratic Intellect in Context (Robert Anderson) 14. Writing Scottishness in Post-imperial, Post-devolution Theatre: a Conversation (Peter Arnott and Ian Brown) Notes on contributors Index