The Literary Politics of Scottish Devolution: Voice, Class, Nation - Hardcover

Hames, Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1474418139 ISBN 13: 9781474418133

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2019

Synopsis

Provides a cultural history and political critique of Scottish devolution
Provides the first critical history of Scottish devolutionOffers the first multidisciplinary study of (UK or Scottish) devolution: engaging extensively with the work of historians, sociologists, political scientists and cultural theoristsCombines close attention to political and electoral factors with cultural issues and developments Draws on political theory which illuminates devolution from outside its terms
This book is about the role of writers and intellectuals in shaping constitutional change. Considering an unprecedented range of literary, political and archival materials, it explores how questions of ‘voice’, language and identity featured in debates leading to the new Scottish Parliament in 1999. Tracing both the ‘dream’ of cultural empowerment and the ‘grind’ of electoral strategy, it reconstructs the influence of magazines such as Scottish International, Radical Scotland, Cencrastus and Edinburgh Review, and sets the fiction of William McIlvanney, James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, A. L. Kennedy and James Robertson within a radically altered picture of devolved Scotland.

About this title

About the Author

Scott Hames is Senior Lecturer in Scottish Literature at the University of Stirling, and author of The Literary Politics of Scottish Devolution (EUP, 2020), which draws extensively on post-1960s magazines and their debates. With Malcolm Petrie, he led the AHRC-funded Scottish Magazines Network on which this book is based. With Eleanor Bell, he co-founded the International Journal of Scottish Literature. He has edited or co-edited closely related volumes on Scottish Writing After Devolution (EUP, 2022), Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence (Word Power, 2012) and The Edinburgh Companion to James Kelman (EUP, 2010).

From the Back Cover

Provides a cultural history and political critique of Scottish devolutionThis book is about the role of writers and intellectuals in shaping constitutional change. Considering an unprecedented range of literary, political and archival materials, it explores how questions of ‘voice’, language and identity featured in debates leading to the new Scottish Parliament in 1999. Tracing both the ‘dream’ of cultural empowerment and the ‘grind’ of electoral strategy, it reconstructs the influence of magazines such as Scottish International, Radical Scotland, Cencrastus and Edinburgh Review, and sets the fiction of William McIlvanney, James Kelman, Irvine Welsh, A. L. Kennedy and James Robertson within a radically altered picture of devolved Scotland.Scott Hames is Lecturer in Scottish Literature at the University of Stirling.

Edition details

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1474418139
• ISBN 13: 9781474418133
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352