Louisa Gairn ‘This is the first book-length study of one of the great themes in modern Scottish writing. Lucid, sophisticated and internationally-minded, it is a landmark work.’ Robert Crawford, University of St Andrews ‘In this groundbreaking study, Louisa Gairn establishes for the first time the central place of ecological thinking in the Scottish tradition, from the integrated social vision of Patrick Geddes through MacDiarmid with his ‘earth lyrics’ to contemporary writers like Kathleen Jamie and John Burnside. This is one of those rare critical studies that offers close readings of great writers while sustaining a clear and tense focus on the immediacy of the world around us.’ Professor Alan Riach, Department of Scottish Literature, University of Glasgow This book presents a provocative and timely reconsideration of modern Scottish literature in the light of ecological thought. Louisa Gairn demonstrates how successive generations of Scottish writers have both reflected on and contributed to the development of international ecological theory and philosophy. Provocative re-readings of works by authors including Robert Louis Stevenson, John Muir, Nan Shepherd, John Burnside, Kathleen Jamie and George Mackay Brown demonstrate the significance of ecological thought across the spectrum of Scottish literary culture. This book traces the influence of ecology as a scientific, philosophical and political concept in the work of these and other writers and in doing so presents an original outlook on Scottish literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. In this age of environmental crisis, Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature reveals a heritage of ecological thought which should be recognised as of vital relevance both to Scottish literary culture and to the wider field of green studies. Louisa Gairn holds a PhD from the University of St Andrews and is a contributor to The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature, ed. Berthold Schoene (Edinburgh University Press, 2007). She lives and works in Edinburgh. ISBN 978 0 7486 3311 1 Cover image: Ripening Barley by Joan Eardley. Courtesy of The Scottish Gallery. © The Eardley Estate. Photography by John McKenzie. Cover design: Cathy Sprent Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk ECOLOGY AND MODERN SCOTTISH LITERATURE Louisa Gairn Edinburgh ECOLOGY AND MODERN SCOTTISH LITERATURE ECOLOGY AND MODERN SCOTTISH LITERATURE Louisa Gairn Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature [...]... between writers and localities include Robert Crawford Identifying Poets: Self and Territory in Twentieth-Century Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) 43 Robert Crawford, Devolving English Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000) and Scott Lyall, Hugh MacDiarmid’s Poetry and Politics of Place: Imagining a Scottish Republic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006) 44... Gunn and Lewis Grassic Gibbon (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1983) 45 Ian Campbell, Kailyard (Edinburgh: Ramsay Head Press, 1981) 46 Robert A Lambert, Species History in Scotland: Introductions and Extinctions Since the Ice Age (Edinburgh: Scottish Cultural Press, 1998); T C Smout, Nature Contested: Environmental History in Scotland and Northern Ireland since 1600 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, ... Nan Shepherd, Ian Hamilton Finlay and George Mackay Brown firmly at the centre of Scottish literary culture, showing how their work connects with international ecological theories and debates 4 Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature quite deliberately begins in the mid-nineteenth century, past the height of the Romantic period, and at a time when the environmental... John Muir, ‘Thoughts on the Birthday of Robert Burns’, cited by Graham White in, The Wilderness Journeys (Edinburgh: Canongate, 1996), p xviii 12 Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature 19 Cairns Craig, The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), p 117 20 Walter Scott, Waverley (London: Penguin, 1972), pp 144–5; Walter Scott, ‘The Lay... culture and environment are held together in a complex and delicate web’.39 8 Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature Despite White’s call for a ‘new grounding’, there have been few overtly ‘ecocritical’ approaches to Scottish literature. 40 Instead, it is Scotland’s creative writers who have led the way in developing such perspectives in their own work and on other Scottish writing In his essays and editorial... peripheral, are actually central and of international relevance, and questions the supposed division between Scottish rural and urban writing The search for ways of encountering and expressing the non-human 10 Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature world through poetry is central to the later work of Hugh MacDiarmid and to the geopoetic practice of Kenneth White, while the poetry and prose of Ian Hamilton... range of different and complementary perspectives’, and to recognise Scottish writers’ engagement with and contribution to critical theory.11 By asserting the importance of ecological concerns in Scottish writing, this book seeks to re-map Scottish literary culture according to a thematic perspective which has often been thought of as marginal to modern society Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature demonstrates... ‘The Land’ in Valentina Bold (ed.), Smeddum: A Lewis Grassic Gibbon Anthology (Edinburgh: Canongate Classics, 2001), pp 90–1 10 Kathleen Jamie, Findings (London: Sort of Books, 2005), p 126 11 Christopher Whyte, Modern Scottish Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), pp 8–9; Michael Gardiner, From Trocchi to Trainspotting: Scottish Critical Theory since 1960 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University. .. Edinburgh University Press, 2006) 12 Adrienne Scullion, ‘Feminine Pleasures and Masculine Indignities: Gender and Community in Scottish Drama’, Gendering the Nation: Studies in Scottish Literature (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995), p 202 13 Douglas Dunn, quoted in Sean O’Brien, The Deregulated Muse (Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 1998), p 65 14 Kathleen Jamie, quoted in Clare Brown and Don Paterson... describes as the first Scottish mountaineering club, with Veitch and another student in their days at Edinburgh University, but there were few broad-based outdoors organisations in Scotland at the time of this correspondence Naismith described mountaineering as ‘one of the most manly as well 22 Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature as healthful and fascinating forms of exercise’ and stolidly contended . Sprent Edinburgh University Press 22 George Square Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk ECOLOGY AND MODERN SCOTTISH LITERATURE Louisa Gairn Edinburgh ECOLOGY AND MODERN SCOTTISH LITERATURE ECOLOGY. LITERATURE ECOLOGY AND MODERN SCOTTISH LITERATURE Louisa Gairn Ecology and Modern Scottish Literature