Ethically speaking : voice and values in modern Scottish writing / edited by James McGonigal and Kirsten Stirling.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

McGonigal, James.

Stirling, Kirsten.

Series:

Scottish cultural review of language and literature ; v. 6.

Scottish cultural review of language and literature ; 6

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English literature--Scottish authors--20th century--History and criticism.

English literature.

Scottish literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Scottish literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (251 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Rodopi, 2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

As politics and cultures interact within an increasingly diverse Scotland, and differences in values become more evident across generations, the need for clear understanding and cooperation within and between communities becomes a pressing issue. This relates both to local and larger concerns: language, violence, morality, gender and sexuality, education, ethnicity, truth and lies. The chapters gathered here focus on significant Scottish writers of the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, (Edwin Morgan, A.L. Kennedy, Liz Lochhead, John Burnside, Jackie Kay, Robin Jenkins, Muriel Spark, William McIlvanney, Ali Smith, James Kelman and others) and the communities described are certainly Scottish, but the issues raised are universal. Questions are asked about the relationship of the individual to others, and therefore, on a larger scale, about the means through which any community is both constructed and sustained: linguistically, spiritually, ethically. If their multiple voices evoke a "zigzag of contradictions", it is at any rate a creative zigzag which discovers, or uncovers, many contradictory aspects of life in modern Scotland that should particularly be brought to light in a re-emergent nation. Ethically speaking, Scottish writers point out the need to attend to many different narratives and retellings, in order that Scots might live more honestly and clear-sightedly with themselves and with the wider world.

Contents:

Contributors

James MCGONIGAL and Kirsten STIRLING: Introduction

John CORBETT: "Nae mair pussyfuttin. Ah'm aff, Theramenes": Demotic Neoclassical Drama in Contemporary Scotland

Kirsten STIRLING: "Lying is good like this": The Collaborative Lie in the Early Fiction of A.L. Kennedy

Gerard CARRUTHERS: The Relativity of Experience in William McIlvanney's The Kiln

Anne-Kathrin BRAUN-HANSEN: Resignifying HiStories: The Subversive Potential of Revision in Liz Lochhead's Poetry

Ingibjörg ÁGÚSTSDÓTTIR: Ethics of War in the Fiction of Robin Jenkins

Jordana BROWN: Finding Her Religion: The Search for Spiritual Satisfaction in Alan Warner's Morvern Callar

Suhayl SAADI: Songs of the Village Idiot: Ethnicity, Writing and Identity

Edwin MORGAN in Conversation with James MCGONIGAL: Gay Writing in Scotland: An Interview with Edwin Morgan

Kirsty WILLIAMS: "A Different Kind of Natural": The Fiction of Jackie Kay and Ali Smith

Scott BREWSTER: Beating, Retreating: Violence and Withdrawal in Iain Banks and John Burnside

Beth DICKSON: "Pathetic Reminders"? The Idea of Education in Modern Scottish Fiction

James MCGONIGAL: Translating God: Negative Theology and Two Scottish Poets

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

94-012-0347-4

1-4294-5645-0

OCLC:

85846715

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789401203470 DOI