The Scottish Invention Of English Literature

The Scottish Invention of English Literature explores the origins of the teaching of English literature in the academy. It demonstrates how the subject began in eighteenth-century Scottish universities before being exported to America and other countries. The emergence of English as an institutionalised university subject was linked to the search for distinctive cultural identities throughout the English-speaking world. This book explores the role the discipline played in administering restraints on the expression of indigenous literary forms, and shows how the growing professionalisation of English as a subject offered a breeding ground for academics and writers with an interest in native identity and cultural nationalism. This book is a comprehensive account of the historical origins of the university subject of English literature and provides a wealth of new material on its particular Scottish provenance.

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.

Based on The Cambridge history of English literature.

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.

The History begins with the first full-scale critical consideration of Scotland's earliest literature, drawn from the diverse cultures and languages of its early peoples. The first volume covers the literature produced during the medieval and early modern period in Scotland, surveying the riches of Scottish work in Gaelic, Welsh, Old Norse, Old English and Old French, as well as in Latin and Scots. New scholarship is brought to bear, not only on imaginative literature, but also law, politics, theology and philosophy, all placed in the context of the evolution of Scotland's geography, history, languages and material cultures from our earliest times up to 1707.

Throughout the nineteenth century Scotland was transformed from an agricultural nation on the periphery of Europe to become an industrial force with international significance. A landmark in its field, this volume explores the changes in the Scottish book trade as it moved from a small-scale manufacturing process to a mass-production industry. This book brings together the work of over thirty leading experts to explore a broad range of topics that include production technology, bookselling and distribution, the literary market, reading and libraries, and Scotland's international relations.

Between 1707 and 1918, Scotland underwent arguably the most dramatic upheavals in its political, economic and social history. The Union with England, industrialisation and Scotland's subsequent defining contributions throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the culture of Britain and Empire are reflected in the transformative energies of Scottish literature and literary institutions in the period. New genres, new concerns and whole new areas of interest opened under the creative scrutiny of sceptical minds. This second volume of the History reveals the major contribution made by Scottish writers and Scottish writing to the shape of modernity in Britain, Europe and the world.

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.

Discussing English, American, Irish, Australian, and other writings, Crawford concentrates on Scottish literature, which furnishes the most extended and acute model of a culture concerned to maintain and develop its own identity while engaging with England's linguistic and political dominance. Starting with the eighteenth-century 'Scottish invention of English Literature', Crawford traces in Boswell, Burns, and others the evolution of a distinctively British Literature. This process culminated in Scott who, with Carlyle, encouraged nineteenth-century American writing and left rich legacies both to anthropology and to the literary Modernism of Eliot, Pound, Joyce, and MacDiarmid. This essentially provincial phenomenon of Modernism underwrites even Larkin, as well as such sophisticated post-British 'barbarian' poets as Heaney, Harrison, Dunn, Murray, and Walcott