Description:
A provisional re-mapping of Scotland's post-devolution literary culture, these fifteen essays explore how literature, theatre and visual art have both shaped and reflected the 'new Scotland' promised by parliamentary devolution. Chapters explore leading figures such as Alasdair Gray, David Greig, Kathleen Jamie and Jackie Kay, while also paying particular attention to women's writing by Kate Atkinson, A. L. Kennedy, Denise Mina, Ali Smith, Louise Welsh, and writers of colour such as Bashabi Fraser, Annie George, Tendai Huchu, Chin Li and Raman Mundair. Tracing continuities with 1990s debates alongside 'edges of the new' visible since Indyref 2014, these critics offer an in-depth study of Scotland's vibrant literary production in the period of devolution, viewed both within and beyond the frame of national representation.
Brief description: Marie-Odile Pittin-Hedon is Professor of British Literature at Aix-Marseille Université (AMU). Her research focuses on 20th- and 21st-century Scottish fiction. She is the author of The Space of Fiction: Voices from Scotland in a Post-devolution Age (2015), Alasdair Gray: Marges et Effets de Miroirs (2004) and has contributed a chapter to Alasdair Gray: Ink for Worlds, ed. Camille Manfredi (2014). She is also the editor of Women and Scotland: Literature, Culture, Politics (2020) and, with Camille Manfredi and Scott Hames, of Scottish Writing after the Devolution: Edges of the New (2022).
Review Quotes:
The through-line of Scottish Writing After Devolution is the combined 'crisis' and 'interregnum' of this period. But these essays don't hide in indeterminacy. They show Scottish literature and Scottish literary criticism breaking in dozens of directions - none too comfortable with the nation-lodestar at which they've often been pointed.
--Corey Gibson, University of Glasgow