Uninhabitable paradoxes? Existentialism and gender representation in the fiction of William McIlvanney

Abstract

First paragraph: "Why Mcllvanney?" This is a question which has constantly recurred during the writing of this thesis. Of all the major contemporary Scottish novelists, Mcllvanney is the one subjected to the least serious critical analysis: added to that, I can think of no other writer in the past thirty years who has maintained a dialogue with Marxism from his earliest work to the present day; who has reinvigorated the detective genre with genuine moral purpose; who has interrogated assumptions about gender and class representation throughout his work; and who has arguably been the most successful author in the past thirty years in making the Scottish novel a genuinely popular and vital part of contemporary Scottish culture.