Inspiring Views from «a' the airts» on Scottish Literatures, Art and Cinema

Klaus Peter Müller / Ilka Schwittlinsky / Ron Walker (eds.)

Inspiring Views from “a’ the airts” on Scottish Literatures, Art & Cinema

The First World Congress of Scottish Literatures in Glasgow 2014

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: World Congress of Scottish Literatures (1st : 2014 : Glasgow, Scotland) |

Müller, Klaus Peter, 1950- editor. | Schwittlinsky, Ilka, editor. | Walker, Ron, 1955- editor.

Title: Inspiring views from “a’ the airts” on Scottish literatures, art & cinema :

the First World Congress of Scottish Literatures in Glasgow, 2014 / Klaus Peter Müller,

Ilka Schwittlinsky, Ron Walker (eds.).

Description: Frankfurt am Main ; New York : Peter Lang, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016045741 | ISBN 9783631672853

Subjects: LCSH: English literature—Scottish authors—History and criticism—Congresses. | Scottish literature—History and criticism—Congresses. | Motion pictures—Scotland—History and criticism—Congresses | Arts, Scottish—Congresses.

Classification: LCC PR8511 .W67 2014 | DDC 820.9/9411—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016045741

Cover Image:

Many thanks to Dr Craig Lamont of Glasgow University

for permission to use his logo design for

the First World Congress of Scottish Literatures on this book's cover.

ISSN 1430-9572

ISBN 978-3-631-67285-3 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-653-06902-0 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-70501-8 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-70502-5 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-06902-0

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Frankfurt am Main 2017

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About the editors

Klaus Peter Müller has been the Chair of English at Mainz University, focusing on British and media studies, translation studies, especially literary and media translation, investigating the links between these fields, narration, our understanding of reality and history, and the cognitive sciences.
Ilka Schwittlinsky is a Lecturer at Mainz University. Her research interests are Scottish literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, national identity and memory. Ron Walker is a Lecturer in the British Studies Department at the Germersheim faculty of the University of Mainz in Germany. He is a graduate of the universities of Stirling and Edinburgh in Scotland.

About the book

Where do Scottish literatures, art, and cinema stand today? What and how do Scottish Studies investigate? Creative writers and scholars give answers to these questions and address vital concerns in Scottish, British, and European history from the Union debate and the Enlightenment to Brexit, ethnic questions, and Scottish film. They present new insights on James Macpherson, Robert Burns, John Galt, J. M. Barrie, Walter Scott, James Robertson, war poetry, new Scottish writing, and nature writing. The contributions highlight old and new networking and media as well as the persistent influences of the past on the present, analyzing a wide range of texts, media and art forms with approaches from literary, cultural, media, theatre, history, political, and philosophical studies.

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Table of Contents

Murray Pittock

Preface

Klaus Peter Müller / Ron Walker

Inspiring Views from “a’ the airts”: Intriguing Foci on Current and Future Research

I. Creative Writers’ Views on (Scottish) Literature, Poetry & History

James Robertson

Shall there be a Scottish Literature?

Henry Marsh

The Interface between Poetry and History

II. Scottish Art & Scottish Cinema: The Problem of Survival, Remote Reading, the Gothic, and Many Paradoxes

Murdo Macdonald

James Macpherson’s Ossian and European Art

John Caughie

Early Cinema in Scotland: Film and Literature

Duncan Petrie

The Enduring Power of the Gothic in Contemporary Scottish Cinema

III. The Scottish Enlightenment: Media & Freedom

Alastair J. Mann

Ideologies Inked In: Scotland’s Culture of Print in the Union Debate of 1706

Andrew Hook

The Scottish Enlightenment: Home and Away←V | VI→

IV. Robert Burns: Commonplace Networking

Gerard Carruthers

Fraternal Claims: The Brotherhoods of Robert Burns

Nigel Leask

“Writing myself out”: Robert Burns and the Eighteenth-Century Commonplace Book Tradition

V. John Galt: Disturbing Omens and New Sociological Connections

Ian Duncan

Fictions of Clairvoyance: John Galt’s The Omen and George Eliot’s The Lifted Veil

Angela Esterhammer

Interpreting Galt’s Omen

Regina Hewitt

Scottish Literature and Utopian Theory: The Galt Connection

VI. J. M. Barrie: Surfaces and Hidden Layers

Kirsten Stirling

More Anon: Autobiography and Fiction in the Work of J. M. Barrie

VII. Scotland and War: British Homogeneity vs Scottish Particularity

David Goldie

“I may claim thee for my ain”: the Scottish Voice in First World War Poetry

Roderick Watson

“No gods and precious few heroes”: Writing War 1939–45

Silvia Mergenthal

Scots at War, or Private Mucklewame’s Lower Dorsal Curve: Ian Hay’s The First Hundred Thousand←VI | VII→

VIII. New Scottish Writing: Collaborative, Connective, Emergent & Engaging

Robert Morace

Mapping Post-Devolution Scottish Fiction

Jeanne Schaaf

The Strange Redoing of Popular Storytelling: a Study of David Greig’s The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart

Len Wanner

Partners in Crime? Cross-Examining Scotland’s Two Most Famous Serial Killer Novelists

IX. Views Presented by the University of Mainz ‘Scottish Studies Centre’ Germersheim

Klaus Peter Müller

(Scottish) History in Scottish Novels: Theory, Practice, Agency

Miriam Schröder

New Scots’ Views on Scotland: The Narratives of Scottish Ethnic Minorities

Ron Walker

Being of a Spiritual Nature: the Natural, the Supernatural, the Land and the Mountain

Contributors

Index

←VII | VIII→ ←VIII | 1→

Murray Pittock (Glasgow)

Preface

The first World Congress of Scottish Literatures was held at the University of Glasgow on 2–5 July 2014, bringing together expertise in Scotland’s literatures from across the world. It was both an auspicious place and an auspicious time for such a development. Scottish Literature was maturing and coming of age with a much more sophisticated engagement with theoretical, historical and textual editing than had been the case in an earlier defensively identitarian era, and 2014 was of course the date of Scotland’s referendum on independence, a political debate unthinkable to earlier generations of Scottish literature scholars. Glasgow was also the right place. As Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Arts and the convenor of the conference committee, I had also championed the introduction of Scottish Studies (including the Scots language) into the Curriculum for Excellence nationwide and initiated the Scottish Studies Global research theme in 2010. By 2014, no institution in the world held more research income for Scottish Studies than the University of Glasgow, and this had been recognized in the Scottish Parliament, with Joan McAlpine MSP placing motion S4M-00598 before Holyrood in support of our global ambitions in Scottish Studies. Having co-organized the Scottish Romanticism in World Literatures conference in Berkeley in 2006 with Ian Duncan, a conference which was in so many ways a prelude to the Congress, I was aware of some of the issues and opportunities. Not least of these was the wonderful awareness and recognition that occurred when colleagues working on Scottish authors and contexts in countries or institutions without recognized Scottish Studies courses met those who had spent their lives in that environment. In 2006, a huge amount of intellectual energy had been released in this way; the same was to happen in 2014.

The idea for the Congress itself came about in a pub in Maynooth in 2010, during the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures conference. In conversation, Ian Brown, Gerard Carruthers and myself came to the view that a similar conference should take place in the field of Scottish literatures. Matters developed from there: a conference committee←1 | 2→ was formed and an international advisory board. As with the 2006 conference, the organizers took the view that there should be active shaping of the programme and that specific panels should be invited to be formed by nominated convenors to ensure diversity and spread. This worked well enough, but what we did not anticipate was the huge scale of demand. Only one Call For Papers was issued, but the committee ended up with a waiting list of getting on for 100, only 20–30 of whom could be in the end accommodated. Some 250 scholars registered for the four day Congress: as many as we could take in the booked accommodation. They came from every continent (apart from Antarctica!), but the demand was such that 400–500 delegates might well have been possible. Scottish Literature had become a global industry.

Our arrangements for the Congress respected that. In the era of global universities, trans-national education and an international student experience, it was important that – held in Glasgow or not – the first World Congress demonstrated support across the globe not just from delegates, but from partners; and at home, not just from the University of Glasgow, but from the country: Team Scotland. In Scotland, the Association for Scottish Literary Studies sponsored Congress events; the Universities’ Committee of Scottish Literature offered a prize for the best paper by a graduate student (it went to a student from UC Berkeley) and the Scottish Historical Review Trust sponsored a plenary lecture. Abroad, the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL), the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society and the Robert Burns World Federation supported the Congress, while UC Berkeley, Mainz, Charles University, Prague, Otago, Simon Fraser and the University of South Carolina all acted as partner institutions, contributing to the Congress with (often outstanding) papers from their own graduate students. The College of Arts provided two Commonwealth Games 2014 studentships for any student from a Commonwealth country outwith the UK undertaking a taught postgraduate programme in 2014–15 in any aspect of Scottish Studies. In recognition of Glasgow’s status as a UNESCO World City of Music, in the case of one of these studentships, preference was given to students with a particular interest in Scottish music. The studentships consisted of a 75 % waiver of the overseas fee otherwise due for studying at Glasgow.←2 | 3→

The Congress was arranged under four themes: Authors; Theory; Gaelic, Medieval, Musical and Artistic Scotland; and Scotland in Global Culture (for more detail see www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/arts/research/scottishstudiesglobal/iassl/worldcongressofscottishliteratures/). While Gaelic was not as well represented as the organizers would have liked (and tried hard to achieve), in every other respect the Congress was overwhelmingly rich in the cutting edge of international scholarly discourse. A performance of Scottish song with Kirsteen McCue and David Hamilton and a reception in Special Collections heightened the appeal of what was a most convivial affair. The Congress received media coverage from BBC Radio Scotland, The Herald and The Scotsman.

We received the support of the Scottish Government and the University community to its fullest extent. Michael Russell MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education, opened the conference for the government with a brilliant and wide ranging discussion of our literature which overwhelmed some international delegates, who were most unused to hearing politicians speak with passion, authority and expertise on the arts. Sir Kenneth Calman, Chancellor of the University and former head of the National Health Service in both Scotland and England represented the University of Glasgow: a most distinguished specialist, Sir Kenneth had himself studied for a postgraduate degree in the representation of medicine in Scottish literature. The opening plenary, by James Robertson, distinguished novelist and advocate of Scots, was enormously uplifting, acute and original. It opens the book that follows.

It was important that an event on this scale generating this level of interest should not simply be a one-off, but that arrangements should be made for a continuation of the global connectivity in Scottish Literature revealed by the Congress. Before the Congress took place, the conference committee had gone through the process of forming the International Association for the Study of Scottish Literatures as a Scottish registered charity (SC044410), and IASSL acquired its initial membership through a small element in the Congress registration fee. Its office-holders were nominated ahead of the Congress AGM: they come from New Zealand, Canada, the US, Italy, Iceland, the Czech Republic and Taiwan as well as the UK. Leith Davis at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Vancouver, volunteered to hold the←3 | 4→ second Congress on 21–25 June 2017, which will be open to all members of IASSL (see http://navsa.org/2016/01/18/cfp-world-congress-of-scottish-literatures-dialogues-and-diasporas-1012016/). It is expected that Charles University, Prague, will hold the third Congress in 2020.