The Edinburgh Companion to Hugh MacDiarmid

by Scott Lyall (Editor), Margery Palmer McCulloch (Editor)

Overview

The only full-length companion available to this distinctive and challenging Scottish poet By using previously uncollected creative and discursive writings, this international group of contributors presents a vital updating of MacDiarmid scholarship. They bring fresh insights to major poems such as A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, To Circumjack Cencrastus and In Memoriam James Joyce, and offer new political, ecological and science-based readings in relation to MacDiarmid's work from the 1930s. They also discuss his experimental short fiction in Annals of the Five Senses, the autobiographical Lucky Poet, and a representative selection of his essays and journalism. They assess MacDiarmid's legacy and reputation in Scotland and beyond, placing his poetry within the context of international modernism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780748641895
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	05/16/2011
Series:	Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Scott Lyall is Lecturer in Modern Literature at the Edinburgh Napier University.

Margery Palmer McCulloch is Senior Research Fellow in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and Notes viii

Series Editors' Preface x

Brief Biography of Hugh MacDiarmid xi

Introduction Scott Lyall Margery Palmer McCulloch 1

1 MacDiarmid and International Modernism Roderick Watson 6

2 MacDiarmid's Language Dorian Grieve 23

3 C. M. Grieve/Hugh MacDiarmid, Editor and Essayist Alan Riach 36

4 Transcending the Thistle in A Drunk Man and Cencrastus Margery Palmer McCulloch Kirsten Matthews 48

5 MacDiarmid, Communism and the Poetry of Commitment Scott Lyall 68

6 MacDiarmid and Ecology Louisa Gairn 82

7 The Use of Science in MacDiarmid's Later Poetry Michael H. Whitworth 97

8 Hugh MacDiarmid's (Un)making of the Modem Scottish Nation Carla Sassi 111

9 Hugh MacDiarmid: The Impossible Persona David Goldie 125

10 Transatlantic MacDiarmid Jeffrey Skoblow 136

11 MacDiarmid's Ambitions, Legacy and Reputation Margery Palmer McCulloch 149

Endnotes 160

Further Reading 180

Notes on Contributors 187

Index 189