SARAH M. DUNNIGAN, C. MARIE HARKER and EVELYN S. NEWLYN (eds), Woman and the Feminine in Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing. Pp. xxx +238. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. 47.50. (ISBN 1 4039 1181 9) * MANFRED GoRLACH, A Textual History of Scots. Pp. xiv +324. Heidelberg: C. Winter, 2004. 27.00 (ISBN 3 8253 1073 6)

Abstract

WOMEN AND THE FEMININE is a volume of considerable value with significance beyond the burgeoning field of research into early women's literature to which it most obviously belongs. It is an ambitious undertaking, bringing together fifteen essays on gender in Scottish literature from c.1380 to 1750. The collection responds to the linguistic richness of Scotland during this period, covering texts written in English, Lowland Scots, and Gaelic, as well as in Latin and French. It also charts original archival research and testifies to the sophistication of Scots literary culture, which, as one of the volume's editors observes, is often overlooked in mainstream studies of the Renaissance in the British Isles. Given its depth of enquiry and historical sweep the collection perhaps risks losing coherence. However, Dunnigan's introduction strenuously and justifiably defends its unity and importance. She describes the focus of the volume as ‘medieval and early modern Scottish women as the subjects of writing’ (xiv), ‘subject’ here including the feminine as a metaphor or theme. However, ‘subject’ also includes women as creative literary consciousnesses, as writers, but as Dunnigan's own essay on Anna Hume's translation of Petrach's first three Trionfi shows, also as bold and imaginative readers of authoritative texts.