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Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism. Ed. Leith Davis, Ian Duncan & Janet Sorensen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. viii + 248 pp. £45. ISBN 0–521–83283–7, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 43, Issue 2, APRIL 2007, Page 194, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cql165
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Extract
This is a collection of thirteen essays covering major and minor Scottish authors in the period 1750 to 1830. The contributors include such established names as Cairns Craig, Susan Manning, Ina Ferris, Jerome McGann, John Barrell and Penny Fielding, as well as two of the editors (Ian Duncan and Leith Davis). The ambitious range of the contents has the drawback of some unevenness and, although several contributors do their best to attend to the theme of the book's title, the most coherent and vigorous effort to revalue Scottish Romanticism is the introduction, largely by Ian Duncan. The final four chapters, on Burns, songs and ballads, are the best group in the collection, in their attention to national and gender issues and Walter Scott, who is a strong presence throughout the volume. While it does not always succeed in its attempt to rethink British literary history, the book does assert a fresh relationship between the Enlightenment and Romanticism in Scotland and throws light on several writers, including Hume, Burns, Scott, Baillie and Anne Bannerman.
