Overview

This new issue of Scottish Literature's longest-running scholarly journal has contributions from a full range of historical periods, from mediaeval to modern, with articles on literature in Gaelic as well as in Scots and English. The issue opens with a symposium on changing attitudes to periodization, guest-edited and introduced by Juliet Shields, with contributions from Michael Newton (on periodization in Gaelic), Andrew W. Kein (medieval Scottish verse-forms), Rivka Swenson (Scottish prose fiction before the novel), Eric Jaccard (Scottish literature's global connections), and Sharon Alker and Holly Faith Nelson (on periodization in the liberal arts curriculum). Full-length articles in the issue include: David Parkinson, on Barbour's Black Douglas Jamie Reid Baxter, on James Melville and Ane Dialogue (1619) David Robb, on the Romance of Terror in Stevenson's The Dynamiter Ian Campbell, on Lewis Grassic Gibbon and the Church of Scotland Petra Johana Poncarova, on Sorley MacLean and the Clearances The issue concludes with an illustrated note on the manuscripts of Burns's song "Ay waukin O," a review-essay on a new Andrew Lang edition, and brief reviews or notices of other recently published books on Scottish literature.