The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Scottish Literature

Edited by Ian Brown and Alan Riach

This volume considers the major themes, texts, and authors of Scottish literature of the twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Contributors identify the contexts and impulses that led Scottish writers to adopt their creative literary strategies. Moving beyond traditional classifications, the volume draws on recent critical approaches to introduce new perspectives on Scottish literature since 1900. Its innovative thematic structure ensures that the most important texts or authors are interpreted through a variety of lenses, whether via empire, renaissance, war and postwar, literary genre, generation, and resistance. In order to provide thorough coverage, these thematic chapters are accompanied by chronological "Arcade" chapters that outline the contexts of literature by decade and by "Overview" chapters that trace developments in theater, language, and Gaelic literature across the century. Taken together, this volume provides a thorough and thought-provoking account of the century's literature.

Related Subjects

• European and British Literature
• Literary Criticism and Theory

Series

• Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature

About the Author

Ian Brown is a freelance scholar and arts and education consultant. Founding editor of the International Journal of Scottish Theatre, he has been professor of drama, dean of arts, and director of the Scottish Centre for Cultural Management and Policy at Queen Margaret University College and, before that, drama director of the Arts Council in England. Alan Riach holds the Chair of Scottish Literature at Glasgow University and previously was associate professor and pro-dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. He is the general editor of the Collected Works of Hugh MacDiarmid and the author of Representing Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and Iconography and Hugh MacDiarmid's Epic Poetry.

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