Purchase

For Scotland, Hugh MacDiarmid defined an era. Outside of Scotland, critical theory has only recently developed in ways that can address the full range of his work and the complexities of his cultural position and analysis. Hugh MacDiarmid: Man and Poet reexamines these questions at the centennial mark, bringing together for the first time scholars, poets, and writers from Scotland, Ireland, England, and the United States.

The 333-page volume is divided into five sections: “Grieve and MacDiarmid: Portrait(s) of a Poet,” “In Memoriam Hugh MacDiarmid,” “ ‘The Company I’ve Kept’: Contexts and Intertexts,” “ ‘Whaur Extremes Meet’: The Work,” and “Bibliography,” an annotated bibliography of works by and about Hugh MacDiarmid, compiled by W. R. Aitken.

Examining MacDiarmid’s poetry, politics, and linguistic experimentation, this collection includes not only essays on the multiple facets of his work, but a wide range of theoretical perspectives. It thus helps to place MacDiarmid in twentieth century critical views and to define his position on the crux of modernism and post-modernism.

Contents

Grieve and MacDiarmid: Portrait(s) of a Poet

Deidre Chapman, “A Memoir”

Morag Enticknap, “A Memoir”

Naomi Mitchison, “MacDiarmid and the Scottish Renaissance”

In Memoriam Hugh MacDiarmid

Nancy Gish, “Interview with Norman MacCaig, November 12, 1979”

Nancy Gish, “Interview with John Montague 1980”

Nancy Gish, “Interview with Seamus Heaney 1980”

Donald Davie, “In a Year of the Olympics”

“The Company I’ve Kept”: Contexts and Intertexts

Alan Bold, “MacDiarmid and the Cairncross Connection”

Raymond Ross, “‘Oneness of Concept’: MacDiarmid and Empirio-Criticism”

Peter McCarey, “Lev Shestov and Hugh MacDiarmid”

Alan Riach, “Hugh MacDiarmid and Charles Olson”

“Whaur Extremes Meet”: The Work

Kenneth Buthlay, “Adventuring in Dictionaries”

Harvey Oxenhorn, “From Sangschaw to ‘Harry Semen’: The Poet’s Language and the Poet’s Voice”

Rena Grant, “Synthetic Scots: Hugh MacDiarmid’s Imagined Community”

Nancy Gish, “MacDiarmid Reading The Waste Land: The Politics of Quotation”

Roderick Watson, “Landscapes of Mind and Word: MacDiarmid’s Journey to the Raised Beach and Beyond”

Carl Freedman, “Beyond the Dialect of the Tribe: James Joyce, Hugh MacDiarmid, and World Language”

Stephen P. Smith, “Hugh MacDiarmid’s Lucky Poet: Autobiography and the Art of Attack”

Bibliography

W.R. Aitken, “A Bibliography of Hugh MacDiarmid”