Abstract

Abstract:

Connecting the interwar Scottish Literary Renaissance with the mid-century Scottish folk revival in a 'Long Renaissance', this essay seeks to establish the centrality of sensuality to the cultural nationalisms of a group of left-nationalist Scottish intellectuals. It focuses upon the writings of Edwin and Willa Muir, Naomi Mitchison and Hamish Henderson. For them, freely expressed sensuality was integral to authentic Scottish national identity. Henderson is the connector here, and, while his, often antagonistic, relationship with Hugh MacDiarmid has traditionally been viewed as the connection between these two movements, Henderson was also influenced by the works of other Scottish Literary Renaissance writers, in particular Willa Muir and Naomi Mitchison. The Muirs and Mitchison claimed that remnants of a native pre-Scottish Reformation sensual Scottishness had survived in rural Scotland via its folk culture, and Henderson took up this idea. By exploring this group's theories about sensuality and location through memoir, novels, poetry, and travelogue, we find that there was neither cohesive political nor cultural Scottish nationalisms during this time. In so doing, we may identify the cultural pre-history of the left-wing, post-Calvinist Scottish nationalisms that emerged during the late 1960s, and shaped modern Scottish nationalisms today.

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