Ireland and Scotland: Literature and Culture, State and Nation, 1966-2000 (Oxford English Monographs)
By Ray Ryan  

While political connections between Ireland and Scotland have been vigorously promoted in recent years, Ray Ryan presents the first sustained, comparative study of literature and culture from both sites. Ryan's focus is on the Irish state and the Scottish nation. How does literature from the Republic create the cultural shape and personality of the Irish state? Through comparison with Scotland, a stateless nation, Ryan argues that crucial themes in Irish culture emerge with new force and clarity: themes such as Republicanism and colonialism, the city and rural divide, and the partition of the island into separate 'southern' and 'northern' spheres. Analysing a broad range of Irish and Scottish literary texts, Ryan shifts attention from the traditionally defined canon of Irish culture, and establishes the relevance of Scotland for any future discussion of Irish cultural contexts. Offering a radical intervention across a range of disciplines, this book is essential reading for all those working on Ireland, on Scotland, and on contemporary English and British culture.

Scotland has long had a romantic appeal which has tended to be focused on a few over-dramatized personalities or events, notably Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Highland Clearances-the failures and the sad - though more positively, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce have also got in on the act, because of their heroism in resisting English aggression. This has had its own satisfaction, and has certainly been very good for the tourist industry. But, fuelled by the explosion of serious academic studies in the last half-century, there has grown up a keen desire for a better-informed and more satisfying understanding of the Scottish past-and not only in Scotland.