Representing Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and Iconography

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiv

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2. The World of Things Undone

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Introduction: The Terms of the Question

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 3-31

   3. Shakespeare and Scotland

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 32-52

   4. Foundational Texts of Modern Scottish Literature

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 53-72

3. Lost Worlds and Distant Drums

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 73-73

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   2. Walter Scott and the Whistler: Tragedy and the Enlightenment Imagination

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 75-87

   3. Treasure Island and Time: Childhood, Quickness and Robert Louis Stevenson

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 88-100

   4. In Pursuit of Lost Worlds: Arthur Conan Doyle, Amos Tutuola and Wilson Harris

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 101-119

4. The Theatre of Infinity

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 121-121

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   2. The International Brigade: Modernism and the Scottish Renaissance

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 123-159

   3. Nobody’s Children: Orphans and their Ancestors in Popular Scottish Fiction after 1945

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 160-194

   4. It Happened Fast and it was Dark: Cinema, Theatre and Television, Comic Books

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 195-222

5. Conclusion: The Magnetic North

   1. Conclusion: The Magnetic North

      • Alan Riach

      Pages 223-244

6. Back Matter

   Pages 245-280

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This fascinating new study is about cultural change and continuities. At the core of the book are discrete literary studies of Scotland and Shakespeare, Walter Scott, R.L. Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, the modern Scottish Renaissance of the 1920s and more recent cultural and literary phenomena. The central theme of literature and popular 'representation' recontextualises literary analysis in a broader, multi-faceted picture involving all the arts and the changing sense of what 'the popular' might be in a modern nation. New technologies alter forms of cultural production and the book charts a way through these forms, from oral poetry and song to the novel, and includes studies of paintings, classical music, socialist drama, TV, film and comic books. The international context for mass media cultural production is examined as the story of the intrinsic curiosity of the imagination and the intensely local aspect of Scotland's cultural self-representation unfolds.

• Comic
• culture
• drama
• English literature
• film
• Imagination
• literary studies
• mass media
• media
• novel
• poetry
• Renaissance
• Robert Louis Stevenson
• television
• William Shakespeare
• British and Irish Literature
• media research

'This is a remarkable book in its diversity of subjects... but its strength is the provocation of thought in new directions.' - Glasgow Sunday Herald

'...as an overview of a wide period, tied together historically and conecptually, it thoroughly justified its wide ambition and should be vital to anyone in Scot Lit.' - Michael Gardiner, Scottish Studies Review

'...a thought-provoking discussion of a central issue in post-Union cultural history, that of the conflicting, stereotyped or idealised representation(s) of Scotland's stateless nationhood...The first book-length inquiry on this subject and the most challenging, so far, in terms of both the variety and the number of 'texts' analysed - mainly literary, but also filmic, musical and visual...' - Carla Sassi, Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies

ALAN RIACH is a poet and Head of the Department of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. Formerly Associate Professor of English 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 co-editor of MacDiarmid's New Selected Letters and Selected Poems). He has four books of poems, including Clearances, First & Last Songs, and This Folding Map. He has also broadcast on radio in New Zealand, and lives in Scotland.

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