Review: Scotland in Europe

Abstract

Professor Jack and Dr Tom Hubbard have collected seventeen essays by various Scottish and international academics relating to Scotland's literary interactions with Europe through the centuries. Hubbard's introduction sets the framework provided by the work done over the last ten years by BOSLIT (Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation), which itself grew out of his experience in the Scottish Poetry Library where a lack of records about translation of Scottish poetry into other languages was evident. The remit for these essays is cultural on a wider basis than poetry or literature alone, covering music and film for instance. He makes clear the need for providing resources to study Scottish literature in Europe to those wanting to do so, and reciprocally, for us in Scotland to learn more about the cultures which are translating us. 'At the beginning of the twenty-first century we have a renewed Scotland and a renewed Europe but we have much to learn about how we got there. Learn in Scots and Scottish English means both to learn and to teach.' Scottish literature has been subsumed within British literature for most of the twentieth century, and it is partly through seeking identification with other minority language cultures and small nations in Europe that it has gradually been able to distinguish itself. Yet it is largely Germany which has demonstrated the greatest interest in specifically Scottish literature over the centuries, and little Portugal which has had the least contact.