Drawn from papers given at an international conference held in 1999, this collection of essays offers new perspectives on Scots poetry of the late Middle Ages and early modern period. It includes essays on major poets, such as John Barbour, Robert Henryson, David Lyndsay and William Drummond; it also considers less famous writers such as John Bellenden and John Stewart of Baldynneis. Across these tightly focused essays, two themes predominate: the first is the imagined relationship between writer and reader, revealing a consistent concern with interpretation in Older Scots writing; the second...

Between 1400 and 1650, Scotland underwent a series of drastic changes, in court, culture, and religion. Renaissance and Reformation, the Union of the Crowns, and the Wars of the Three Kingdoms all wracked the nation, shifting and changing Scotland's established relationships with Europe, the Mediterranean world, and with England. This International Companion traces the impact of these sweeping historical developments on Scotland's literatures, in English, Gaelic, Latin and Scots, and provides a comprehensive overview to the major cultural developments of this turbulent age.

Prepared to honour the work of R. J. Lyall, this collection of essays offers new perspectives on the literature and culture of the reign of James VI, from his accession as an infant to the throne of Scotland, through the Union of the Crowns, to his final years as king of Great Britain. Its emphasis is on James’s reign as a whole, stressing the continuities in literary culture throughout the time of his rule, rather than the more familiar narrative of disjunction caused by his accession to the English throne in the 1603 Union of Crowns. In addition, the collection extends its focus beyond a...