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A History of Scottish Literature

A History of Scottish Literature: Episode 6: Sunset Songs

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Episode 6

Episode 6: Sunset Songs

Sunset Songs

BBC Radio Scotland - A History of Scottish Literature, Sunset Songs

Billy Kay celebrates the literary renaissance of MacDiarmid, Gibbon and Gunn.

Billy Kay traces Scottish literature from its origins to the present. He contrasts the sentimentality of the Kailyard school with the vigour of the Scottish Renaissance.

Our most popular novel, Sunset Song is an elegy for a rural way of life which died at the end of the Great War. We will explore its iconic significance with Billy Kay visiting the Lewis Grassic Gibbon Centre in the Mearns hamlet of Arbuthnott. The poet Hugh MacDiarmid had fought in the Great War and like many who returned home questioned why they had been fighting "for little Belgium's sake" when Scotland was a wasteland, culturally, economically and politically. The Scottish Literary Rennaissance was a catalyst for a cultural revival and a political awakening, with writers like MacDiarmid, Eric Linklater, Compton Mackenzie, Neil Gunn and and RB Cunninghame Graham involved in the founding of the National Party...the forerunner of the SNP. We will hear the voices of Gunn and MacDiarmid from the BBC archive talking of the spirit of renewal abroad.

We contrast the emerging vigour and realism of the 20th century with the parochial sentimental version of rural life depicted by the Kailyard school in the later 19th century - the author of The House with the Green Shutters hoped that his novel would "stick the kailyard like pigs" Alasdair Gray discusses the latter and acknowledges its influence in a "list of plagiarism" from his novel Lanark. Kay notes with humour that Gray's description of this influence is one he repeats exactly when he also acknowledges the influence of the play Hamlet by one William Shakespeare! Alasdair Gray and academics such as Alan Riach, Douglas Giffford and Alison Lumsden also recognise the crucial role of RL Stevenson in modernising literature in Scotland, America and the South Seas. We end with the lyrical tradition continuing with a group of women writers, as exemplified in the song Norland Wind by Violet Jacob.

BBC Radio Scotland

Billy Kay celebrates Scottish literature and its importance to national identity.

Billy Kay traces Scottish literature from its origins in Celtic myths to its role in creating national identity.

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