http://hdl.handle.net/1893/476 Electronic copies of Literature and Languages book chapters and sections. 2026-10-03T23:29:08Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/38058 Title: From Print-Culture to Parliament? Writing the ‘New Scotland’ into Reality Author(s): Hames, Scott Abstract: A cherished myth in devolved Scotland is that writers and artists were crucially responsible for the establishment of the new parliament. While there is some truth to this, understanding the full context requires looking beyond the literary texts typically viewed as pivotal in reviving national confidence. Alasdair Gray’s Lanark (1981) certainly impacted a small literary audience, but its status as a “national” novel emerged from broader print culture networks. To appreciate its political significance, we must consider magazines like Scottish International, which published extracts of Lanark in 1969, alongside cultural periodicals like Chapman and the Edinburgh Review, which integrated Gray’s political vision into their missions during the 1980s and 90s.This chapter considers a range of Scottish political writing that contributed to this process. Here, “political writing” refers not to grand rhetoric, but to the organised creation of a neo-national public that recognised itself. It encompassed literary novels, journalism, and philosophical essays, including Tom Nairn’s work and the Red Paper on Scotland, edited by Gordon Brown (1975). The Red Paper, published by the Edinburgh University Students Publication Board (EUSPB), was connected to numerous Edinburgh-based magazines and the literary publisher Polygon. By examining this network of magazines, campaign groups, and party factions (Labour and SNP), we can identify the discursive frameworks and political alliances that led to the Scottish Parliament’s establishment in 1999, tracing much of contemporary Scottish politics back to the writing, editing, and publishing efforts of prior decades. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37990 Title: Performance and Peacebuilding, between Consensus and Agonism: The Sejny Chronicles and Moush, Sweet Moush Author(s): Clarke, David; Czyżewska-Poncyljusz, Weronika; Parish, Nina Editor(s): Horvath, Christina; Rawski, Tomasz Abstract: This chapter investigates memory projects that make use of oral history for the development of theatrical performances. It shows how such projects can follow both consensus-driven and agonistic approaches to historical conflict, and asks what strategic value these differing approaches may have depending on the circumstances in which individual projects are carried out. The chapter analyses performance not simply as a theatrical text or the performance of that text for an audience, but as a collaborative process that can allow participants to work through historical antagonism. The authors analyse and compare two multidisciplinary projects involving theatre performances and oral histories as a means to address the complex, entangled memories and difficult histories of two borderland areas. Moush, Sweet Moush was a performance that emerged in 2011-2012 in the context of a broader, multi-phase reconciliation project between Armenia and Turkey. The performance involved young people exploring the everyday memories of two places: Moush, a town in Turkey from which Armenians fled during the Genocide, and villages in Armenia where those escaping the Genocide found refuge. The Sejny Chronicles is an ongoing theatre workshop and play, organised by the Borderland Foundation and performed by young people, aimed at rediscovering the rich multicultural history of Sejny located on the Polish/Lithuanian border using oral histories handed down by its residents. Through a series of interviews related to both case studies, the authors examine the philosophy that underpins these projects in relation to memory work, highlighting how consensus or agonism may emerge in such projects in response to local conditions and the needs of participants. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37840 Title: Thomas Gray and Oriental Scholarship Author(s): Williams, Kelsey Editor(s): Abbott, Ruth; Levinson, Ephraim Abstract: This chapter is a first exploration of Gray’s place in the world of Enlightenment oriental scholarship, examining his use of earlier writers, both Asian and European, the extent and limits of his linguistic abilities, and the results of his researches, encapsulated in densely argued geographies of western Asia and dozens of genealogical tables of Islamic rulers. In doing so, it makes a forceful argument for Gray’s role as an important but forgotten English orientalist in an era which was increasingly recognising the intellectual and cultural importance of the Islamic world. 2025-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/1893/37695 Title: The Students of the Scots College in Rome Author(s): Jackson Williams, Kelsey Editor(s): Amblard, Marion; Montegre, Gilles Abstract: First paragraph: Following the Reformation, Scottish Catholics were barred from attending universities in their own country. In response to this, and to the pressing need for missionary priests, the Scottish Catholic community founded a series of colleges on the continent: at Paris, Douai, Madrid, and, of course, Rome.1 A Scottish hospitium had existed in Rome since the middle ages, but it was not until 5 December 1600 that Clement VIII promulgated a bull establishing a national college for Catholic Scots there (Anderson: 1961, 9-11; McCluskey, 20). Founded on the same Counter-Reformation principles as the earlier and better-known German College, the Scots College has endured four centuries of vicissitudes, including its plunder and temporary closure during the Napoleonic wars, and remains one of the two survivals of this educational moment in the twenty-first century. 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z