Catholic and Protestant Sensibilities in Scottish Literature

Abstract

This chapter examines Calvinist and Catholic sensibilities in the work of four Scottish writers from the late Victorian period to the twenty-first century. Selected texts from the works of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94), Robin Jenkins (1912–2005), George Mackay Brown (1921–96), and Muriel Spark (1918–2006) are discussed as, variously, examples of Presbyterian atheism or agnosticism, Catholic devotion, and writing informed by the folkloric and supernatural inflections of the Scottish literary tradition. These works, authors, and theological perspectives are not read as inimical or unrelated to one another, but as part of the wider currents of faith and scepticism within Scottish writing.