Inspiring Views from "a' the airts'' on Scottish Literatures, Art & Cinema: The First World Congress of Scottish Literatures in Glasgow 2014 ed. by Klaus Peter Müller, Ilka Schwittlinsky, and Ron Walker (review)

This collection presents selected proceedings of the first World Congress of Scottish Literatures which took place at Glasgow University in 2014. While conference proceedings are usually edited by the local organisers, this particular volume was not edited from Glasgow, but by a team based at the Scottish Studies Centre at the Germersheim campus of Mainz University, Germany – a combination of forces which is in itself a fitting reflection of the truly international nature of the congress. That said, the size and scope of the conference made it impossible for a proceedings book to give more than a sample of the range of papers presented. The congress had around two hundred and fifty participants from five continents, with about one hundred and sixty papers by delegates from sixteen countries. The book presents twenty-two papers by contributors from six countries – still a respectable range, in a substantially sized volume. While literature was the congress's focal theme, there are also perspectives on other cultural forms such as cinema, art, and music, as well as on history.

After a preface by congress convenor Murray Pittock and an introduction by two of the editors (Müller and Walker), section one presents essays by creative writers. James Robertson's 'Shall There Be a Scottish Literature?' takes its cue from T. S. Eliot's Anglocentric piece 'Was There a Scottish Literature?' (1919) to provide a more Scotocentric reassessment, review developments in literature and attitudes which have occurred since then, and posit questions about the future. Henry Marsh's chapter explores the role of poetry and imagination in the understanding of history.

Section two explores connections between literature, art, and cinema. Murdo Macdonald illustrates the seminal influence which Macpherson's Ossian had on British and continental European art. John Caughie surveys representations of Scotland in early cinema. Information on lost films is reconstructed from marketing material and press accounts. He also discusses the role of literature and song, pre-modern images, and complexities of reception. More recent films are analysed in Duncan Petrie's 'The Enduring Power of the Gothic in Contemporary Scottish Cinema'. Section three considers the Enlightenment and political controversies in the eighteenth century and beyond. Alastair J. Mann takes a close look at the role of Scottish print culture in the Union debate of 1706. Andrew Hook first examines the changing fortunes of the Enlightenment in the study of Scottish history, before moving on to the influence of the Scottish Enlightenment in the USA, especially concerning debates about the right to establish militias, individual versus collective interests, gun laws, and the Second Amendment to the constitution.

The next sections focus on individual writers. Section four concentrates on Robert Burns. Gerard Carruthers discusses the Bard's male social and literary networks as 'spaces of creativity' (p. 139) and challenges some popular myths of Burns reception which overemphasise his demotic and radical credentials. Carruthers argues for a more complex reading that also acknowledges aristocratic, conservative, and opportunistic elements in the work of this upwardly mobile poet. Networking also plays a part in Nigel Leask's chapter, which draws on his work on the new Oxford edition to discuss Burns's manuscript volumes in relation to the 'commonplace book' tradition. Section five is about John Galt: Ian Duncan compares Galt's The Omen and George Eliot's The Lifted Veil with regard to the paranormal, psychological crisis, and fatalism. Angela Esterhammer foregrounds The Omen's emphasis on the unreliability of memory, narration, and interpretation which gives it an experimental, self-reflexive, and proto-(post-)modern character. Regina Hewitt analyses Bogle Corbet's and Lawrie Todd's concern with building viable social communities, and relates this...