For the last fifty years or so the standard critical view of Sir Walter Scott's fiction has been that, while paying full tribute to Scotland's heroic, ancient independence and romantic Jacobite past, his Scottish Waverley Novels ultimately present Scotland's future as nonetheless belonging within the peace, prosperity and progress of the United Kingdom and the British Empire. Julian Meldon D'Arcy's Subversive Scott radically revises this conventional evaluation of Scott's work and reveals that embedded in the Waverley Novels narratives are dissonant discourses and discreet subtexts which inspire far more subversive readings than hitherto perceived. Indeed, D'Arcy argues, there is considerable evidence in Scott's work to corroborate a claim that, despite his apparently politically correct fiction and lifestyle, his Waverley Novels contain undetected and underrated manifestations of Scottish nationalism which not only invoke sharp criticism of both the Union and English imperial policy, but also reveal his passionate concern, as a true Scotsman, with the issues of Scotland's national identity, dignity, and independence. Given the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, and Scotland's resurgent sense of political identity and relevance, D'Arcy's re-evaluation of the Waverley Novels is thus a fresh, timely and stimulating contribution to the study of Sir Walter Scott's fiction and politics.

Literature and Union opens up a new front in interdisciplinary literary studies. There has been a great deal of academic work—both in the Scottish context and more broadly—on the relationship between literature and nationhood, yet almost none on the relationship between literature and unions. This volume introduces the insights of the new British history into mainstream Scottish literary scholarship. The contributors, who are from all shades of the political spectrum, will interrogate from various angles the assumption of a binary opposition between organic Scottish values and those supposedly imposed by an overbearing imperial England. Viewing Scottish literature as a clash between Scottish and English identities loses sight of the internal Scottish political and religious divisions, which, far more than issues of nationhood and union, were the primary sources of conflict in Scottish culture for most of the period of Union, until at least the early twentieth century. The aim of the volume is to reconstruct the story of Scottish literature along lines which are more historically persuasive than those of the prevailing grand narratives in the field. The chapters fall into three groups: (1) those which highlight canonical moments in Scottish literary Unionism—John Bull, 'Rule, Britannia', Humphry Clinker, Ivanhoe and England, their England; (2) those which investigate key themes and problems, including the Unions of 1603 and 1707, Scottish Augustanism, the Burns Cult, Whig-Presbyterian and sentimental Jacobite literatures; and (3) comparative pieces on European and Anglo-Irish phenomena.

Friendship in the classical world was celebrated as among the highest human achievements: nothing was more likely to lead to the divine than looking for it in the eyes of a friend. In exploring the complexities of male-male relations beyond the simple labels of sexuality, Queer Friendship shows how love between men has a rich and varied history in English literature. The friend could offer a reflection of one's own worth and a celebration of a kind of mutuality that was not connected to family or home. These same-sex friendships are memorable because they give shape to the novels of which they are a part, and question the assumption that the love between friends is different from the love between lovers. Queer Friendship explores English literary friendship in three ways: the elegiac, the erotic, and the platonic, by considering a myriad of works, including Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Tennyson's 'In Memoriam A. H. H.', and Dickens' Great Expectations.

By Amos Vogel. Foreword by Scott MacDonald.

Scott's Books is an approachable introduction to the Waverley Novels. Drawing on substantial research in Scott's intertextual sources, it offers a fresh approach to the existing readings where the thematic and theoretical are the norm. Avoiding jargon, and moving briskly, it tackles the vexed question of Scott's 'circumbendibus' style head on, suggesting that it is actually one of the most exciting aspects of his fiction: indeed, what Ian Duncan has called the 'elaborately literary narrative', at first sight a barrier, is in a sense what the novels are primarily 'about'. The book aims to show how inventive, witty, and entertaining Scott's richly allusive style is; how he keeps his varied readership on board with his own inexhaustible variety; and how he allows proponents of a wide range of positions to have their say, using a detached, ironic, but never cynical narrative voice to undermine the more rigid and inhumane rhetoric. The Introduction outlines this approach and sets the book in the context of earlier and current Scott criticism. It also deals with some practical issues, including forms of reference and the distinctive use of the term 'Authorial'. The four chapters are designed to zoom in progressively from the general to the particular. 'Resources' explores the printed material available to Scott in his library and gives an overview of the way he uses it in his fiction. 'Style' confronts objections to the 'circumbendibus' Scott and shows how his Ciceronian style with its penchant for polysyllables enables him to embrace a wide range of rhetoric relayed in a detached but not cynical Authorial voice. 'Strategies' explores how he keeps his very wide audience on board by a complex bonding between characters, readers, and Author, and stresses the extraordinary variety of exuberant inventiveness with which he handles intertextual allusions. 'Mottoes' examines the most remarkable of Scott's intertextual devices, the chapter epigraphs, bringing into play the approaches developed in the previous chapters. The brief concluding 'Envoi' moves out again to the widest possible perspective, suggesting how readers should now be able to move on to, or return to, the novels and the critical conversation, with an appreciation of the central importance of the ludic for an appreciation of Scott in a world once again threatened by inhumane and humorless rigidities.

A survey of 25 major European novelists from Cervantes to Kundera, highlighting their contributions to the genre.

W. B. Yeats is usually seen as a great innovator who put his stamp so decisively on modern Irish literature that most of his successors worked in his shadow. R. F. Foster's eloquent and authoritative book weaves together literature and history to present an alternative perspective. By returning to the rich seed-bed of nineteenth-century Irish writing, Words Alone charts some of the influences, including romantic 'national tales' in post-Union Ireland, the poetry and polemic of the Young Ireland movement, the occult and supernatural novels of Sheridan LeFanu, William Carleton's 'peasant fictions', and fairy-lore and folktale collectors that created the unique and powerful Yeatsian voice of the decade from 1885 to 1895. As well as placing these literary movements in a vivid contemporary context of politics, polemic and social tension, Foster discusses recent critical and interpretive approaches to these phenomena. He shows that the use Yeats made of his predecessors during his apprenticeship, and the part that a self-conscious use of Irish literary tradition played in the construction of his path-breaking early work as he attempted to 'hammer his thoughts into a unity' made him an inheritor as much as an inventor.

A bestselling author in his own time and long after, Sir Walter Scott was not only a writer of thrilling tales of romance and adventure but also an insightful historical thinker and literary craftsman. Over the last two decades, scholars have come to see him as an important figure in Romantic-period literature, Scottish literature and the development of the historical novel. Walter Scott and Contemporary Theory builds on this renewed appreciation of Scott's importance by viewing his most significant novels - from Waverley and Rob Royto Ivanhoe,Redgauntlet, and beyond - through the lens of contemporary critical theory. By juxtaposing pairings of Scott's early and later novels with major contemporary theoretical concepts and the work of such thinkers as Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Žižek, this book uses theory to illuminate the complexities of Scott's fictions, while simultaneously using Scott's fictions to explain and explore the state of contemporary theory.

In The Cheerful Subversive’s Guide to Independent Filmmaking, celebrated Slamdance Film Festival co-founder Dan Mirvish offers a rich exploration of the process and culture of making low-budget, independent films. Once labelled a "cheerful subversive" by The New York Times, Mirvish shares his unfiltered pragmatic approach to scriptwriting, casting, directing, producing, managing a crew, post-production, navigating the film festival circuit, distributing your film, dealing with piracy and building a career. Readers will learn how to game the Hollywood system to their advantage, get their films accepted by respected festivals without going broke, and utilize a broad range of media and tactics to promote and distribute their work. A companion website features behind-the-scenes interviews and footage from Dan’s films, and much more. Learn everything you need to know to make, promote, and distribute your independent films, with time-tested lessons and practical advice on scriptwriting, casting and directing A-list actors, financing, producing, managing a crew, editing in post, creating visual effects on a budget, and successuflly navigating the film festival circuit Find out what it takes to become a true "cheerful subversive" and adopt new and innovative approaches to producing your films, discover hidden loopholes in the Hollywood system and festival scene, take advantage of a broad range of media formats to promote and distribute your indie films, and generally make bold moves in service of your creative work, all while staying flexible enough to pivot at a moment’s notice An extensive companion website features in-depth interviews with filmmakers, more than an hour of behind-the-scenes footage from Dan Mirvish’s films, festival resources, and much more

The wave of anti-authoritarian political activity associated with the term “1968” can by no means be confined under the rubric of “protest,” understood narrowly in terms of street marches and other reactions to state initiatives. Indeed, the actions generated in response to “1968” frequently involved attempts to elaborate resistance within the realm of culture generally, and in the arts in particular. This blurring of the boundary between art and politics was a characteristic development of the political activism of the postwar period. This volume brings together a group of essays concerned with the multifaceted link between culture and politics, highlighting lesser-known case studies and opening new perspectives on the development of anti-authoritarian politics in Europe from the 1950s to the fall of Communism and beyond.