The Edinburgh Companion to Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid is widely considered the most significant Scottish poet since Robert Burns and the major literary force in twentieth-century Scottish culture. His poetry is both compelling in its intellectual challenge and captivating in its lyrical beauty. This book explores the principal thematic and aesthetic preoccupations in MacDiarmid's work, relating his poetry to key national and international concerns in modern culture and politics. It offers a vital updating of MacDiarmid scholarship through contributions by leading scholars of the modern period which provide a contextual and interpretive guide to this challenging writer. All of MacDiarmid's major poetic works are examined in addition to a representative selection of his diverse output in other genres, from journalism to shorter fiction, autobiography and political polemic. His poetry and his place in the cultural history of Scottish, British and international modernism will be contemporised through consideration of his significance from a European, transatlantic and ecological global perspective. This collection of essays on MacDiarmid will draw on the creative and discursive writings made newly available through the recent publication of previously uncollected work. Key features: Updates and internationalises MacDiarmid studies Provides informed analysis and contextualisation of MacDiarmid's poetry through close readings of texts Utilises recently published MacDiarmid material Contributes to a re-drawing of the map of international literary modernism

Scott Lyall is Lecturer in Modern Literature at Edinburgh Napier University, having taught previously at Trinity College, Dublin, and Exeter University. His Hugh MacDiarmid's Poetry and Politics of Place: Imagining a Scottish Republic was published by EUP in 2006. Margery Palmer McCulloch is Senior Research Fellow in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. She is co-editor of Scottish Literary Review. Her recent books include Modernism and Nationalism: Source Documents for the Scottish Renaissance, and Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918-1959: Literature, National Identity and Cultural Exchange, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2009.

AUTHOR-APPROVEDThe Edinburgh Companion to Hugh MacDiarmidEdited by Scott Lyall and Margery Palmer McCullochThe only full-length companion available to this distinctive and challenging Scottish poet.This international group of contributors presents a vital updating of MacDiarmid scholarship through the use of his previously uncollected creative and discursive writings. The authors 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 from The Raucle Tongue volumes. The contributors assess MacDiarmid's legacy and reputation in Scotland and beyond, and place his poetry within the context of international modernism.Key Featureso Links MacDiarmid's work and influence to recent writings on national identity, transnationalism, postcolonialism and modernity versus traditiono Provides close readings of the formal detail of texts and new readings in ecological and science-based contextso Contributes to a re-drawing of the map of literary modernismContributors include Louis Gairn (Helsinki), Alan Riach (Glasgow University), Carla Sassi (Verona University), Jeffrey Skoblow (Southern Illinois University), and Michael H. Whitworth (Oxford University).Scott Lyall is Lecturer in Modern Literature at Edinburgh Napier University; Margery Palmer McCulloch is Senior Research Fellow in Scottish Literature at Glasgow University.

Hugh MacDiarmid is widely considered the most significant Scottish poet since Robert Burns and the major literary force in twentieth-century Scottish culture. His poetry is both compelling in its intellectual challenge and captivating in its lyrical beauty. This book explores the principal thematic and aesthetic preoccupations in MacDiarmid's work, relating his poetry to key national and international concerns in modern culture and politics. It offers a vital updating of MacDiarmid scholarship through contributions by leading scholars of the modern period which provide a contextual and interpretive guide to this challenging writer. All of MacDiarmid's major poetic works are examined in addition to a representative selection of his diverse output in other genres, from journalism to shorter fiction, autobiography and political polemic. His poetry and his place in the cultural history of Scottish, British and international modernism will be contemporised through consideration of his significance from a European, transatlantic and ecological global perspective. This collection of essays on MacDiarmid will draw on the creative and discursive writings made newly available through the recent publication of previously uncollected work. Key features: Updates and internationalises MacDiarmid studies Provides informed analysis and contextualisation of MacDiarmid's poetry through close readings of texts Utilises recently published MacDiarmid material Contributes to a re-drawing of the map of international literary modernism

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