JournalTOCs

Studies in Scottish Literature
Number of Followers: 5

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 0039-3770
Published by U of South Carolina

[4 journals]

Contributors to SSL 48:2
- Abstract: Brief biographical notes on contributors to the current journal issue.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:56:10 PDT
Books Received and Noted
- Authors: Patrick Scott
  Abstract: Brief reviews or notices of some recent books about Scottish literature, Scottish writers, and related topics.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:56:07 PDT
‘Scoto-Shamanistic’: The Collected Works of Kenneth White
- Authors: Richie McCaffery
  Abstract: A review-essay discussing the work and influence of the expatriate Scottish poet and cultural theorist Kenneth White, based on vols 1-2 of the new Edinburgh University Press edition of White's Collected Works, edited by Cairns Craig (2021, paperback 2023), placing White in a line of Scottish polymath internationalist writers, from Buchanan and Urquhart, through Miller and Carlyle, to Geddes and MacDiarmid.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:56:02 PDT
A New Study of Cunningham Graham
- Authors: Carla Sassi
  Abstract: Surveys the steady growth of interest in the Scottish fin-de-siècle writer, adventurer, socialist M.P., and nationalist leader R. B. Cunninghame Graham (1852-1936), and reviews Lachlan Munro's "timely and important study" R. B. Cunninghame Graham and Scotland: Party, Prose, and Political Aesthetic (Edinburgh University Press, 2022), judging it an "inspiring and innovative investigation," and suggesting that Cunninghame Graham's "construction and performance of his identities as a writer, adventurer, politician and activist should indeed be seen as an artistic expression in its own right."
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:57 PDT
Scott’s Reparative Land Ethic
- Authors: Nigel Leask
  Abstract: A review essay discussing Susan Oliver's "important and convincing" book Walter Scott and the Greening of Scotland: Emergent Ecologies of a Nation (Cambridge University Press, 2021), noting Scott's land ethic and active role in managing his estate at Abbotsford and in afforestation, and suggesting that Oliver's book presents "a cumulative literary history of Scotland’s ecologies," so that Scott's poetry and novels "assume a new relevance for 21st century readers".
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:53 PDT
Burns and Jean Armour, Ellisland, 1788: A Letter Fragment in the Roy
Collection
- Authors: Patrick Scott
  Abstract: Describes and illustrates a two-sided fragment of Robert Burns's letter from Ellisland to his wife Jean Armour, in Muchline, from September 12, 1788, concerning her move to join him, and news for his brother Gilbert. Only four letters from Burns to Jean are now known; the main body of this letter was printed by Waddell in 1869, and was later recorded in the Honresfield Collection (now the Blavatnik-Honresfield Collection), but this section, now in the G. Ross Roy Collection at the University of South Carolina, was snipped off by the then-owner Mary MacLaughlan Nicolson for a collector before Waddell saw it and has not previously been known to Burns's editors.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:49 PDT
Burns and the Altar of Independence: A Question of Authentication
- Authors: Patrick Scott et al.
  Abstract: Describes and illustrates the only known manuscript of Robert Burns's short 'Poetical Inscription for an Altar to Independence'; notes ongoing disputes over the authenticity of several other of Burns's political poems from the 1790s; traces the manuscript's provenance from the Kern sale in 1929 (when it was cataloged as genuine) to Sotheby's in 1982 (when it was cataloged as a forgery), to its current location in the J.M.Shaw Collection, Florida State University Libraries, where more recent internal records catalogue it as authentic; points out evidence confirming its authenticity; and provides the first collation of the manuscript against the text published by James Currie in 1800.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:46 PDT
Robert Burns to Maria Riddell, a Lost Burns Manuscript and a Victorian
Facsimile
- Authors: Patrick Scott et al.
  Abstract: Reviews the textual history of Robert Burns's brief letter to Maria Riddell, in spring 1795, in Dumfries, mentioning the miniature portrait by Alexander Reid; notes that the manuscript, owned in the late 19th century by Dr Thomas C.S. Corry of Belfast, and later by John Gribbel of Philadelphia, cannot now be located; and describes and illustrates the facsimile made of it in 1864 for Vincent Brooks in the Autographic Mirror, now the only source of this letter manuscript available to the Glasgow editorial team for the forthcoming Oxford edition of Burns's Correspondence.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:42 PDT
Liz Lochhead and the Fairies: Context and Influence in Grimm Sisters and
Dreaming Frankenstein
- Authors: William Donaldson
  Abstract: Examines the Scottish poet Liz Lochhead's period of North American travel and her response to American second-wave feminist poetics, particularly to the anthology No More Masks! (1973) and the poetry of Adrienne Rich and Anne Sexton, the treatment of myth by J.G. Frazer and Robert Graves, and the perspective on Scottish fairy tales offered by folklorists, to explore Lochhead's creative reworking of both fairy tale and classical myth in her collections Grimm Sisters (1981) and Dreaming Frankenstein (1984).
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:37 PDT
A History of the Scottish P.E.N. Organization, Part 1: 1927-1949
- Authors: Dr Helen Stoddart
  Abstract: The first article in a two-part series charting the history of Scottish PEN, from its founding in 1927, through political struggles in the 1930s, and at the international congress in Edinburgh in 1934, over issues of intellectual freedom and the rise of Hitler, till the need to reestablish the organization after World War II, exploring Scottish PEN's relationship to the 20th century Scottish Renaissance movement, and examining the roles in Scottish PEN of H.J.C. Grierson, C.M. Grieve (Hugh MacDiarmid), Helen Cruikshank, William Power, Willa and Edwin Muir, and many others.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:33 PDT
Walter Scott, the Two Sicilies, and Events ‘of Recent Date’
- Authors: Graham Tulloch
  Abstract: Traces Walter Scott's interest in Sicily and Naples through his earlier writing up to his travels to both in 1831-1832, discusses his treatment of Neapolitan history and politics in essays in 1816 and 1829, especially his accounts of Joachim Murat (1767-1815), king of Naples from 1808-1815, and in Masaniello, leader of the popular rising in 1647-48, and suggests how these interests connect to Scott's unfinished short novel Bizarro, written in 1832 but first published in 2008, so unavailable to earlier Scott scholars.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:28 PDT
Robert Watson’s Lectures at St. Andrews: Logic, Rhetoric and
Metaphysics
- Authors: Rosaleen Greene-Smith Keefe
  Abstract: Examines the contributions to rhetoric of Robert Watson (1730'-1781), Professor of Logic, Rhetoric, and Metaphysics at the University of St. Andrews from
  1756-1778, and Principal from 1778-1781, based on surviving manuscript sources at St Andrews, and demonstrates the philosophic diversity in rhetorical theory at this time, showing differences among the Scottish literati on the epistemology of language and the origin of grammar, identifying some contrasts and connections between Watson and his near contemporaries Adam Smith, Hugh Blair, and George Campbell, and suggesting his distinctive place in the development of 18th century rhetoric and the history of English studies.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:23 PDT
Appendices to Inglis, Octonaries: Titles and Dedications from other MSS,
MSS Containing the ‘G.D.’ and ‘Velde’ Sonnets, Who Was ‘G.D.’'
- Authors: Jamie Reid Baxter
  Abstract: Three Appendices to the preceding article on Esther Inglis's Octonaries: (1) transcribe the Titles and Dedications in other manuscripts; (2) record the five MSS containing the ‘G.D.’ and ‘Velde’ Sonnets discussed in the article; and (3) review possibilities for the identity of 'G.D.', proposing that it was George Douglas, a gifted vernacular poet and translator of Boethius.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:18 PDT
Esther Inglis, Octonaries: Textual Notes and Glosses
- Authors: Jamie Reid Baxter et al.
  Abstract: These notes record variant readings from two further manuscripts of Esther Inglis's Octonaries, Folger MS V.a.92, and New York Public Library Spencer Coll. MS. 14, collated against the text transcribed in the preceding item, Folger Library, MS V.a.91. The notes also indicate the places where the order of the octonaries varies between manuscripts and also include a few glosses on Scots words likely to be unfamiliar to non-Scottish students or scholars.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:14 PDT
Esther Inglis, Octonaries, upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World,
edited from Folger MS V.a.91
- Authors: Jamie Reid Baxter et al.
  Abstract: This article provides the first-ever printed text of the poem-sequence discussed in the preceding article, Octonaries, upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the Worlde (1600), by the Franco-Scottish poet and calligrapher Esther Inglis (1571-1624). The text given here has been transcribed from one of two manuscripts of the Octonaries in the Folger Library, MS V.a.91. Variant readings from two further manuscripts, Folger MS V.a.92, and New York Public Library Spencer Coll. MS. 14, along with some glosses, are given in the following section. .
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:09 PDT
Esther Inglis: A Franco-Scottish Jacobean Writer and her Octonaries upon
the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World
- Authors: Jamie Reid Baxter
  Abstract: This article draws attention to the hitherto ignored poetry of the Franco-Scottish Jacobean calligrapher and limner, Esther Inglis (c.1570 -1624). Inglis is the subject of a fast growing body of published scholarship, but though she left a small body of original prose and verse, she has been given no place in Scottish literature. The article falls into six sections. The substantial first section notes first that to date, there has been a tendency to shy away from dealing with her as a writer, and that Inglis’s formative Scottish background has been largely ignored. The second section looks at Inglis and her family in Edinburgh, as well-integrated Huguenot bourgeois immigrants. The short third section considers Inglis’s spiritual reading material, and the lengthier fourth contextualises and then analyses the three commendatory sonnets that preface several of her productions. The short fifth section briefly survey Inglis herself as an author, and the sixth introduces the fifty Octonaries upon the Vanitie and Inconstancie of the World, which are currently known in only three manuscripts she created before 1610. The article itself is followed by the first-ever printed text of Inglis's Octonaries, textual notes with variats among the three manuscripts, and three appendices.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:05 PDT
The Cultural Context of the Aberdeen Candlemas Play
- Authors: Roderick J. Lyall
  Abstract: Among the lost plays of medieval Scotland the Aberdeen Candlemas play is one of the most intriguing. Our knowledge of its content derives principally from two lists, dating from 1442 and 1505, dividing the roles between the burgh’s various gilds, although the fact that there was some form of dramatic element rather than merely a procession appears to be confirmed by the discovery in the Dean of Guild’s accounts for 1470-71 of a payment of 16d. to “ye men ye maid scafald to ye candilmes play.” This paper focuses on the presence in the cast of The Three Kings of Cologne and of St .Helen and St. Bride. The first two point towards Aberdeen’s commercial connections with the Rhineland and the possible influence of John of Hildesheim’s Historia Trium Regum, while the inclusion of St. Bride brings a Celtic dimension, relating not only to Brigid’s Irish origins and the popularity of her cult in Scotland, but perhaps also to a tradition associating her (or a namesake) with the foundation of the church at Abernethy, and a further link with St. Duthac of Tain. The play therefore unites two aspects of late medieval Aberdeen, Celtic roots and Continental cultural perspectives.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:55:00 PDT
Female Inheritance and Forged Documents: John Hardyng’s Use of Scottish
Materials in his Chronicle
- Authors: Ryoko Harikae
  Abstract: In his Chronicle of John Hardyng (1st version, 1457; 2nd version, 1465), Hardyng shows that Scottish kings did homage to English kings, adding a map and an itinerary of Scotland. In support, Hardyng forged several documents, to prove Scotland's vassal status, which he submitted to the English government with his Chronicle. Hardyng's motive for the forgeries, their function or how they relate to the Chronicle text, or his intent in incorporating Scottish materials. This paper argues that Hardyng's description of Scotland, combined with his forged documents, was his response to finding Scottish historical materials contradicting his claim for English sovereignty over Scotland. Hargyng's forged documents rebutted a discourse tracing through holy women a hereditary for Scottish kings to the English crown.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:54:55 PDT
Anonymity with Intent' 'We lordis hes chosin a chiftane
mervellus'
- Authors: Janet Hadley Williams
  Abstract: This paper considers an anonymous, untitled poem, opening “We lordis hes chosin a chiftane mervellus,” known in only one text, in the Bannatyne Manuscript (fols 78v–79r), among “ ballatis full of wisdome and moralitie.” Its enigmatic nature and place among the moral ‘ballatis’ have gone largely unstudied. Focus on the author’s identity (with William Dunbar seen as likely) has excluded the interesting question of possible deliberate anonymity. The poet’s Franco-Scots linguistic agility, and careful play of political interests (Scottish, French and English) are striking, the more so because, unusually, “We lordis” can be dated with some precision to a period within the minority of James V (1513–c. 1526/28). Through “We lordis,” written when government leadership was contested and loyalties were constantly shifting, we can study closely and fruitfully the connections that a poem might make and the poetic methods that were judged most useful to further those objectives.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:54:50 PDT
‘How the erde is of a figure round’: Mapping Space in the Buik of
Alexander the Conqueror
- Authors: Katherine H. Terrell
  Abstract: Discusses the image of the world, the concept of a mappamundi, and comments on particular regions and countries, in Gilbert Hay's poem The Buik of Alexader the Conquerour, to argue that Alexander’s mapping, like his military campaigns, reconfigures space as territory that is amenable to exploitation, and that Hay's poem, the only Alexander poem to mention Scotland, shows an historical process, the "translatio imperii," "that will eventually circle back around to a Britain (and a Scotland) no longer imbued with treachery, but ready to assume power."
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:54:46 PDT
Introduction: the Alabama Conference on Medieval & Renaissance Scottish
Literature: Reframing and Mediation
- Authors: Tricia A. McElroy et al.
  Abstract: Introduces the broader theme of the 16th International Conference on Medieval & Renaissance Scottish Language and Literature, held at the University of Alabama in 2021, and comments briefly on the four papers that follow.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:54:41 PDT
Preface to SSL 48.2
- Authors: Patrick Scott et al.
  Abstract: Discusses the range of periods the journal covers, introduces current contents, pays brief tribute to the Hume scholar Donald T. Siebert and the Burns collector Frank R. Shaw, and alerts readers to editorial and publishing changes to be announced in the coming year.
  PubDate: Mon, 12 Jun 2023 05:54:38 PDT