Bella Caledonia

Woman, Nation, Text
Erscheinungsjahr 2008
ISBN: 978-90-420-2510-3
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 11, 136 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 227 g

Reihe: SCROLL: Scottish Cultural Review of Language and Literature

Bella Caledonia: Woman, Nation, Text looks at the widespread tradition of using a female figure to represent the nation, focusing on twentieth-century Scottish literature. The woman-as-nation figure emerged in Scotland in the twentieth century, but as a literary figure rather than an institutional icon like Britannia or France’s Marianne. Scottish writers make use of familiar aspects of the trope such as the protective mother nation and the woman as fertile land, which are obviously problematic from a feminist perspective. But darker implications, buried in the long history of the figure, rise to the surface in Scotland, such as woman/nation as victim, and woman/nation as deformed or monstrous. As a result of Scotland’s unusual status as a nation within the larger entity of Great Britain, the literary figures under consideration here are never simply incarnations of a confident and complete nation nurturing her warrior sons. Rather, they reflect a more modern anxiety about the concept of the nation, and embody a troubled and divided national identity. Kirsten Stirling traces the development of the twentieth-century Scotland-as-woman figure through readings of poetry and fiction by male and female writers including Hugh MacDiarmid, Naomi Mitchison, Neil Gunn, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Willa Muir, Alasdair Gray, A.L. Kennedy, Ellen Galford and Janice Galloway.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Engendering the Nation
Chapter One: Woman as Nation
Chapter Two: The Female Figure in the Scottish Renaissance
Chapter Three: The Female Nation as Victim
Chapter Four: The Monstrous Muse
Chapter Five: Women Writing Nation
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Kirsten Stirling teaches English literature at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She has a PhD from the University of Glasgow. Her two main areas of research specialization are twentieth-century Scottish literature and the poetry of John Donne.