The Modern Scottish Literary Renaissance

Citation

Watson R (2009) The Modern Scottish Literary Renaissance. In: Brown I & Riach A (eds.) The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature. Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 75-87. http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748636945

Abstract
This chapter discusses the cultural politics of identity in the early twentieth century Scottish literary renaissance. It looks at the paradoxes contained in what might seem like an essentialist argument for 'Scottish' difference at political, cultural and psychological levels, while the literary work produced by its leading exponents actually problematises the very concept of a stable identity in the first place.

Keywords
Hugh MacDiarmid; Bergson; elan vital; the 'Caledonian antisyzygy'; Annals of the Five Senses; Muir; Scott and Scotland; Lewis Grassic Gibbon; Nan Shepherd; Neil Gunn; Modernism (Literature) Scotland; Scottish literature 20th century

People

Professor Rory Watson

Emeritus Professor, English Studies