This article explores the creative processes of writing popular biography, from the first hand perspective. It examins their similarities to, and differences from, writing academic history or fiction. Henderson focusses on her recent book exploring the biographies, and connections, between Jean Gordon and Mary Queen of Scots, Daughters of the North. She explains how and why she made particular choices in writing about Scottish history, culture, music, literature and art.

The article discusses the representation of infanticide in selected Scottish and Polish ballads. The analysis aims to compare Scottish and Polish law and literature. The selected texts show that, despite different cultural settings, there are many similarities in depicting infanticide. In both Polish and Scottish literature, the law is a tool of oppression and revenge used against women. Another function of the law is to deter potential female perpetrators from killing their babies. Some ballads portray the changes in the law that happened in the 19th century.

Kirkyard Romanticism: Death, Modernity and Scottish Literature in the Nineteenth Century by Sarah Sharp (review)

Abstract: This article re-examines Iain Crichton Smith’s Consider the Lilies (1968) through the lens of postcolonial theory, situating the novel within historical debates on the Highland Clearances and their representation in Scottish literature. While earlier criticism has often treated the Clearances in predominantly socio-economic terms, this study foregrounds their colonial dimension, drawing on Gaelic perspectives and theories of internal colonialism. It shows how Crichton Smith depicts dehumanisation, internalised oppression, and cultural marginalisation, while also portraying the resilience of Mrs Scott and Donald Macleod. By combining postcolonial frameworks with Gaelic cultural contexts, the article argues that Consider the Lilies functions as a counter-narrative to the rhetoric of ‘improvement’, reframing the Clearances as an act of cultural erasure within a wider colonial project. The essay’s contribution lies in grounding theoretical models in close reading, highlighting the novel’s symbolic dimensions, and clarifying its significance for understanding both mid-twentieth-century Scottish identity and the enduring resilience of Gaelic culture.

Kirkyard Romanticism: Death, Modernity and Scottish Literature in the Nineteenth Century by Sarah Sharp (review)

Scottish Literary Review

The 1930s was a significant period in Scotland. There were a large number of writers who contributed to what was sometimes referred to as ‘the Scottish Literary Renaissance’ and there were important political developments, not least the establishment of the National Party of Scotland, which ultimately became the modern Scottish National Party. Accompanying these developments, a number of journals and magazines were circulating, one of which – the Claymore – was specifically aimed at young Scottish boys and had a stated aim of strengthening their sense of national identity. This paper describes the context in which the Claymore operated, discusses the content of the magazine and its impact, and describes the later adventures of its founders.

ABSTRACT As an example of world literature, the frequently adapted Alexander Romance offers a valuable way to elaborate upon recent interest in the medieval globe. The two surviving Scottish Alexander romances, The Buik of Alexander (c.1438) and The Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour (c.1499), engage with the dynamics of translatio in multiple senses. The poems surprisingly promote a specific global vision of world government as a solution to the antagonistic claims of premodern sovereignty discourse. These Scottish texts question premodern sovereignty’s narratives of political recognition through recognition scenes, including a literal view of the “litill quantetie” [small size] and “figure round” [spherical form] of the planet, as part of broader vision of global justice, common citizenship, and the “intercommunal” nature of the Earth. Together the poems show how early Scottish literature was not restricted to “proto-nationalistic” assertions of sovereign independence as well as how literary texts could “translate” and critique dominant political discourse. The article concludes by calling for global sovereignty studies as an interdisciplinary subfield of early global studies, combining the recovery of diverse premodern visions of our planet with historical understandings of sovereignty within and beyond Europe.

Grounded in solid archival research and threaded through with energising injections of new theoretical perspectives on literary history, The International Companion to Scottish Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century (2021) brings a necessary resetting of the national(ist) baseline that characterises much critical discourse on the literary offshoots of the (Scottish) Enlightenment. The volume’s consistent and innovative attention to the interconnectedness of the core and the (semi)periphery, or of the national and the transnational in the multiply mediated, cross- generic, non-homogeneous bodies of literature produced across (and beyond) Scotland in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is proof of the mobilisation of a responsive and adjustable analytical dispositif that may generate further (re)perspectivisations in the future.

Modern Irish and Scottish Literature: Connections, Contrasts, Celticisms by Richard Alan Barlow (review)

While critical celebrations of the stylistic and thematic diversity of contemporary Scottish fiction are commonplace, few critics have attended to the implications of that diversity for formal analysis, and for a broader understanding of Scottish literature itself. This article establishes a model of the Scottish network novel, which provides an opportunity to reconsider the relations between essentialist and open-ended critical approaches, and to place a diverse set of texts in relation and generate new insights. Following a survey of the current critical field, the article introduces its model through examples from well-known texts by Jackie Kay, James Kelman, and Ali Smith, before turning to case studies featuring works by Leila Aboulela, Douglas Bruton, Linda Cracknell, David Keenan, Jon McGregor, and Maggie O’Farrell. By emphasising the importance of multivocal narration and nonlinear temporality in these texts, as well as a focus on everyday labour and repetition, the article suggests that networks are both a dominant theme and structure within the novels themselves, and provide a transformative way to consider them together without being limited by pre-existing formulations of ‘Scottishness’.

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Abstract: The aim of this paper is to shed light on Joe Pieri (1918–2012) and Anne Pia (1950–) as key figures of Italian Scottish migration literature. Although they have been neglected by academic criticism, their commitment to representing their transnational identities, as well as the ‘process of becoming’ of their community members, now deserves full recognition. Time and memory are central themes in their writings. Isle of the Displaced: An Italian-Scot’s Memoirs of Internment in the Second World War (1997) and Language of My Choosing: A Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot (2017), Pieri’s and Pia’s respective first memoirs, both revisit the horrors of the Second World War while maintaining strong ties to the present. Pieri includes a detailed description of Île Sainte-Hélène today, while Pia reflects on immigration as a ‘pilgrimage’ and expresses gratitude to Scotland as an inclusive, multiethnic country. Their works affirm that the hardships of their early lives were pivotal in shaping their complex identities. Belonging to different historical periods and endowed with unique sensitivities, Pieri and Pia also represent the earliest stages and latest trends of Italian Scottish migration literature. After analysing these memoirs – especially their relationship between past and present – the article concludes with Pia’s Magnacioni … My Food, My Italy (2023). A ‘Te Deum’ of Italian culture, this hybrid work confirms that time, self-reflection, and writing are distinctive features of this under-researched branch of the Italian diaspora in Anglophone countries.

Abstract: Sixteenth-century Scottish literature suffers from the superimposition of a European periodisation that sorts ill with its historical circumstances, and from the centripetal force of Tudor culture. Thus, in the perception of literary historians, it is often reduced to a marginal phenomenon, drawing its force solely from receptivity and imitation. Yet its ‘Auld Alliance’ with France, its trading routes with Scandinavia, and its significant importation of printed books from the Low Countries, meant that continental ideas and influences reached Scotland directly rather than via its southern neighbour. The often-lamented marginal position of Scottish early modern literature was also the key to its insatiable exploration of continental models and its development of forms, such as the sonnet, once they had long exhausted their vitality in Italy or France. By speaking from the margins, within, as it were, its own cultural time-zone, through its exploration of continental models and its development of forms that had long exhausted their vitality elsewhere, Scotland transformed this marginal space into a locus of discussion, and proposed an alternative model of literary development, based on a network of translation, coterie literature, cooperation and exchange.

Scottish Literary Review

в данной статье поводится сравнительный лингвокультурологический анализ стихотворения шотландского поэта Роберта Бернса "My heart's in the Highland" на русский язык. При анализе были использованы переводы С.Я. Маршака и Г. Тележко. Перевод стихотворных текстов представляет особый интерес, поскольку при работе с произведениями необходимо не только сохранить их смысл, но и передать эмоциональное настроение и мелодику оригинального текста. Роберт Бернс является национальным поэтом Шотландии и в своих произведениях он старался передать национальный дух народа в романтике сентиментализма. Отражение культурных и исторических предпосылок, предшествующих написанию произведения, передача эстетической атмосферы стихотворения, составляет сложную задачу для переводчиков. В исследовании приводятся два варианта перевода: классический перевод С.Я. Маршака и перевод современного автора Г. Тележко, а также дается подстрочный перевод, выполненный автором статьи. Для выполнения более полного сравнительного анализа приводится краткая историческая и биографическая справка, анализируются способы перевода, использующиеся для передачи смысловой нагрузки и эстетического наполнения стихотворения. В заключении приводятся выводы, полученные после изучения эмпирического материала. Материал данного исследования может использоваться в педагогической деятельности, при изучении шотландской литературы и страноведения. this article is a comparative linguocultural analysis of the Scottish poet Robert Burns' poem “My heart's in the Highland” in Russian. Translations by S.Ya. Marshak and G. Telezhko were used in the analysis. Translation of poetic texts is of special interest, because when working with works it is necessary not only to preserve their meaning, but also to convey the emotional mood and melody of the original text. Robert Burns is the national poet of Scotland and in his works he tried to convey the national spirit of the people in the romanticism of sentimentalism. It is a challenge for translators to reflect the cultural and historical background that preceded the writing of the work and to convey the aesthetic atmosphere of the poem. The study presents two versions of the translation: the classical translation by S.Ya. Marshak and the translation by the contemporary author G. Telezhko, as well as a word-for-word translation by the author of the article. In order to perform a more complete comparative analysis, a brief historical and biographical note is given, and the methods of translation used to convey the semantic load and aesthetic content of the poem are analysed. The conclusion contains the conclusions obtained after studying the empirical material. The material of this study can be used in pedagogical activities, in the study of Scottish literature and country studies.

This paper examined the portrayal of the working class in Irvine Welsh's novels, focusing primarily on "Trainspotting." The analysis explored the ways in which Welsh's depiction of the working class challenged traditional literary representations of this demographic and highlighted the socioeconomic and political issues faced by the group. Additionally, the paper discussed the impact of Welsh's work on contemporary Scottish literature, arguing that his novels had a significant influence on the development of a more diverse and nuanced representation of working-class life in literature. Ultimately, this study showed that Welsh's writing contributed to a more accurate and empathetic portrayal of the working class in contemporary Scottish literature, paving the way for greater representation and understanding of this important demographic. This paper aimed to explore the portrayal of the working class in Irvine Welsh's novels, with a particular focus on "Trainspotting," and its impact on contemporary Scottish literature. Through a close analysis of the representation of the working-class characters in Welsh's work, this paper argued that Welsh's depiction of the working class not only challenged the mainstream cultural stereotypes but also reflected the reality of working-class life in Scotland. Furthermore, the paper explored how Welsh's unique voice and narrative style contributed to a reinvigoration of Scottish literature, and how his work influenced other writers to represent working-class experiences in their own work.

Scottish Literary Review

Folklore, Ethnology, Antiquarianism, Robert Burns, Scottish literature, Scottish poetry, Scottish song, Scottish music, Robert Cleghorn, Cultural History, Scottish history, Caledonian Mercury, Kingsknow, Redford, Saughton, George Thomson, Ann Hunter, Vocal music.

William McGonagall, Dundee, Macbeth, Theatre Royal, Folklore, Ethnology, Drama, Scottish poetry, Scottish literature, Performance, William Shakespeare, Scottish History, Regional studies, Local studies, Celebrity