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

Description

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. Contents Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: The Dream and the Grind 1. Chaps with Claymores to Grind: Literary and Political Nationalism 1967–79 2. Machine Politics of British Devolution 1967–79 3. The Scottish Dimension: Cultural and Constitutional Politics 1979–87 4. Claims of Right: Self-Determination and Consensus 1987–92 5. And the Land Lay Still: Curating Devolution with James Robertson 6. Language Nationalism and Vernacular Literary Space 7. Devolution and the Spectacle of Voice: Irvine Welsh, A. L. Kennedy, James Kelman Conclusion Bibliography Index