Devolving English Literature

Robert Crawford

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2000

Devolving English Literature

Robert Crawford

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474465939

Overview
Contents

About this book

This widely-praised book looks at the rise and fall of 'Britishness' in literature over the last three centuries. Arguing that for much of its history the subject of 'English Literature' has been bound up with an assumed English cultural centre, Devolving English Literature examines the literary construction and questioning of a British (rather than simply English) literary identity. Surveying eighteenth and nineteenth-century writers, including Robert Burns, James Boswell, Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle, Robert Crawford remaps literary history. He argues that Scottish and non-metropolitan authors left a crucial legacy to American literature, to the developing subject of anthropology, and to twentieth-century Modernism. In the work of T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Hugh MacDiarmid and other Modernists there persist vitally 'provincial' as well as national elements. These continue to nourish the verse of sophisticated post-British 'barbarian' poets such as Seamus Heaney, Tony Harrison, Douglas Dunn, Les Murray, and Derek Walcott. More than that, they are bound up with the contemporary literature and politics of Britain after devolution.

This second edition contains a substantial new chapter, 'Waving Citizens', which looks particularly at Scottish writing in the light of the political events that saw the establishment of a national Parliament in Edinburgh in 1999. Topics considered range from Walter Scott and European union to Trainspotting and right-wing politics. This new chapter argues for the need to read Scottish literature in ways that alert us not just to its political significance, but also to the breadth of its tonal spectrum, so that Muriel Spark and Kathleen Jamie are as much part of a redefined Scottish literary identity as are Irvine Welsh and James Kelman.

Praise for the first edition:

'A stunning book: original, extraordinarily wide-ranging, coherent, reflective, and strongly argued.' - Susan Staves,

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Scottish Invention of English Literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
2. British Literature Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	45
3. Anthropology and Dialect Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
4. Anthologizing America Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	176
5. Modernism as Provincialism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	216
6. Barbarians Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
Waving Citizens: An Afterword Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	306
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	341

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 352
Keywords: Literary Studies

eBook

Published: February 7, 2022
ISBN: 9781474465939