Early Modern Scottish Literature Research Papers

A range of leading international scholars provide the reader with a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the extraordinary richness and diversity of Scotland’s poetry. Addressing Languages and Chronologies, Poetic Forms, and... more

The traffic of literary influence in the early-modern period has typically been perceived as flowing from England to Scotland. This article considers the courtly style of the Scottish reformation through consideration of the writings of... more

Title: The Impact of Latin Culture on Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing Editors: Alessandra F. Petrina & Ian M. Johnson In the late medieval and early modern periods, native tongues and traditions, including those of Scotland,... more

Title: The Impact of Latin Culture on Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing

Editors: Alessandra F. Petrina & Ian M. Johnson

In the late medieval and early modern periods, native tongues and traditions, including those of Scotland, cohabited and competed with latinitas in fascinating and inventive ways. Scottish latinity had its distinctive stamp, most intriguingly so in its effects upon the literary vernacular and on themes of national identity. The present book shows how, when viewed through the prism of its latinity, Scottish textuality was distinctive and fecund. The flowering of Scottish writing owed itself to a subtle combination of literary praxis, the ideal of eloquentia, and ideological deftness. This combination enabled writers to service a burgeoning national literary tradition, and to transcend the subject matter of nation through fruitful and energetic treatment of issues of universal appeal.

Table of Contents

Ian Johnson and Alessandra Petrina, Introduction: Scottish Latinitas

Part I: Re-writing the Classical and Medieval Legacy

Steven J. Reid, Classical Reception and Erotic Latin Poetry in Sixteenth-century Scotland: The Case of Thomas Maitland (ca. 1548-1572)

Kate Ash-Irisarri, Mnemonic Frameworks in The Buke of the Chess

Part II: Writing the Scottish Nation

Tommaso Leso, Defining Scottish Identity in the Early Middle Ages: Bede and the Picts

John Leeds, Universals, Particulars, and Political Discourse in John Mair’s Historia Maioris Britanniae

Elizabeth Hanna, A ‘Scottish Monmouth’? Hector Boece’s Arthurian Revisions

John Cramsie, Topography, Ethnography, and the Catholic Scots in the Religious Culture Wars: From Hector Boece’s Scotorum Historia to John Lesley’s Historie of Scotland

Alessandra Petrina, A View from Afar: Petruccio Ubaldini’s Descrittione del Regno di Scotia

Part III: The Vagaries of Languages and Texts

Ian Johnson, Reading Robert Henryson’s Orpheus and Eurydice: Sentence and Sensibility

Nick Havely, Seget’s Comedy: A Scots Scholar, Galileo, and a Dante Manuscript

Jeremy Smith, The Inventions of Sir Thomas Urquhart

Nicola Royan, Afterword

Little is known about George Herbert’s reception in Scotland in the late seventeenth century, a topic which has not been researched extensively. But Herbert’s poetic presence at that time in Scotland is illustrated by two manuscripts that... more

Early Modern Scottish Literature

Log In