Last modified: 31 Jul 2023 11:19
This course explores the ways in which place is negotiated in a range of Scottish texts. Looking at a selection of texts about rural, urban, and diasporic experience across the centuries, and including both canonical and lesser-known works, this course will acquaint students with key debates in the study of regional and national fiction. Place in these texts is something to be praised and scorned, embraced and abandoned, but always remains central in any discussion of individual and communal identities. Major themes and issues to be discussed include: the idea of ‘home’; the role of nostalgia and longing in Scottish fiction; the nature of community; the significance of emigration and displacement.
| Study Type | Postgraduate | Level | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Term | Second Term | Credit Points | 30 credits (15 ECTS credits) |
| Campus | Aberdeen | Sustained Study | No |
| Co-ordinators |
Sorry, we don't have a record of any course coordinators. |
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In a late poem Hugh MacDiarmid asks if Scotland is small and replies by saying that in spite of its land mass Scotland is, on the contrary, ‘multiform’ and ‘infinite’, incorporating within itself a diversity of ways of thinking about place and what this might mean. Looking at a selection of texts about rural, urban, and diasporic experience across the centuries, and including both canonical and lesser-known works, this course will acquaint students with key debates in the study of regional and national fiction. Place in these texts is something to be praised and scorned, embraced and abandoned, but always remains central in any discussion of individual and communal identities. Major themes and issues to be discussed include: the idea of ‘home’; the role of nostalgia and longing in Scottish fiction; the nature of community; the significance of emigration and displacement. The course will also examine the linguistic diversity that underpins so much of Scottish experience and which forms the basis for experimentation in its literature. There will be a particular focus on the North-east, the region in which the University of Aberdeen is located, and the course will also consider the ways in which literary heritage contributes to a complex understanding of nation and region in Scotland today. Authors to be discussed may include William Dunbar, Walter Scott, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Willa Muir, Nan Shepherd, George Mackay Brown and Leila Aboulela.
Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.
There are no assessments for this course.
There are no assessments for this course.
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