Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1893/21768
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dc.contributor.authorSyme, Neil-
dc.date.accessioned2015-05-14T08:39:42Z-
dc.date.issued2014-
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1893/21768-
dc.description.abstractThis thesis addresses critical conceptions of Scottish literary development in the twentieth-century which inscribe realism as both the authenticating tradition and necessary telos of modern Scottish writing. To this end I identify and explore a Scottish ‘counter-tradition’ of modern uncanny fiction. Drawing critical attention to techniques of modal disruption in the works of a number of post-1970s Scottish writers gives cause to reconsider that realist teleology while positing a range of other continuities and tensions across modern Scottish literary history. The thesis initially defines the critical context for the project, considering how realism has come to be regarded as a medium of national literary representation. I go on to explore techniques of modal disruption and uncanny in texts by five Scottish writers, contesting ways in which habitual recourse to the realist tradition has obscured important aspects of their work. Chapter One investigates Ali Smith’s reimagining of ‘the uncanny guest’. While this trope has been employed by earlier Scottish writers, Smith redesigns it as part of a wider interrogation of the hyperreal twenty-first-century. Chapter Two considers two texts by James Robertson, each of which, I argue, invokes uncanny techniques familiar to readers of James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson in a way intended specifically to suggest concepts of national continuity and literary inheritance. Chapter Three argues that James Kelman’s political stance necessitates modal disruption as a means of relating intimate individual experience. Re-envisaging Kelman as a writer of the uncanny makes his central assimilation into the teleology of Scottish realism untenable, complicating the way his work has been positioned in the Scottish canon. Chapter Four analyses A.L. Kennedy’s So I Am Glad, delineating a similarity in the processes of repetition which result in both uncanny effects and the phenomenon of tradition, leading to Kennedy’s identification of an uncanny dimension in the concept of national tradition itself. Chapter Five considers the work of Alan Warner, in which the uncanny appears as an unsettling sense of significance embedded within the banal everyday, reflecting an existentialism which reaches beyond the national. In this way, I argue that habitual recourse to an inscribed realist tradition tends to obscure the range, complexity and instability of the realist techniques employed by the writers at issue, demonstrating how national continuities can be productively accommodated within wider, pluralistic analytical approaches.en_GB
dc.language.isoenen_GB
dc.publisherUniversity of Stirlingen_GB
dc.subjectScottish Literatureen_GB
dc.subjectLean Talesen_GB
dc.subjectAlan Warneren_GB
dc.subjectJames Kelmanen_GB
dc.subjectAli Smithen_GB
dc.subjectJames Robertsonen_GB
dc.subjectA.L. Kennedyen_GB
dc.subjectUncanny Literatureen_GB
dc.subjectModern Scottish Fictionen_GB
dc.subjectThe Accidentalen_GB
dc.subjectThere but for theen_GB
dc.subjectGideon Macken_GB
dc.subjectThe Fanaticen_GB
dc.subjectJames Hoggen_GB
dc.subjectMuriel Sparken_GB
dc.subjectConfessions of a Justified Sinneren_GB
dc.subjectRobert Louis Stevensonen_GB
dc.subjectJekyll and Hydeen_GB
dc.subjectMorvern Callaren_GB
dc.subjectThe Sopranosen_GB
dc.subjectThe Man Who Walksen_GB
dc.subjectThe Deadman's Pedalen_GB
dc.subjectThese Demented Landsen_GB
dc.subjectHow late it was, how lateen_GB
dc.subjectA Disaffectionen_GB
dc.subjectA Nightboilerman's Notesen_GB
dc.subjectCairns Craigen_GB
dc.subjectSo I am gladen_GB
dc.subjectTodoroven_GB
dc.subjectFreuden_GB
dc.subjectThe Uncanny Guesten_GB
dc.subjectWilliam Jamesen_GB
dc.subjectThe Varieties of Religious Experienceen_GB
dc.subjectUncanny Guesten_GB
dc.subjectJonathan Culleren_GB
dc.subjectScottish Realismen_GB
dc.subjectScottish Renaissanceen_GB
dc.subjectPost-1970s Scottish Fictionen_GB
dc.subjectKieron Smith, boyen_GB
dc.subjectJenni Faganen_GB
dc.subjectMonica Germanaen_GB
dc.subjectFrancis Russel harten_GB
dc.subjectMichael Billigen_GB
dc.subjectBanal Nationalismen_GB
dc.subjectLiterary Imaginaionen_GB
dc.subjectNational Imaginationen_GB
dc.subjectBenedict Andersonen_GB
dc.subjectEric Hobsbawmen_GB
dc.subjectKevin MacNeilen_GB
dc.subjectJohn Burnsideen_GB
dc.subjectScott Hamesen_GB
dc.subjectThe Professor of Truthen_GB
dc.subjectThrawn Janeten_GB
dc.subjectFarewell, Miss Julie Loganen_GB
dc.subjectSusan Bernsteinen_GB
dc.subjectDouglas Gifforden_GB
dc.subject.lcshScottish fiction 20th centuryen_GB
dc.subject.lcshAuthors, Scottish 20th centuryen_GB
dc.subject.lcshRealism in literatureen_GB
dc.titleUncanny Modalities in Post-1970s Scottish Fiction: Realism, Disruption, Traditionen_GB
dc.typeThesis or Dissertationen_GB
dc.type.qualificationlevelDoctoralen_GB
dc.type.qualificationnameDoctor of Philosophyen_GB
dc.rights.embargodate2025-11-30-
dc.rights.embargoreasonWorking on publishing a monograph.en_GB
dc.author.emailneilsyme@hotmail.comen_GB
dc.rights.embargoterms2025-12-01en_GB
dc.rights.embargoliftdate2025-12-01-
Appears in Collections:Literature and Languages eTheses

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