Contemporary Scottish Gothic ― Mourning, Authenticity, and Tradition

Scotland has long been associated with Gothic literature. Looking at both familiar and neglected contemporary novels by writers including Alasdair Gray, James Robertson, Alice Thompson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh and many others, Contemporary Scottish Gothic shows how Scottish authors use Gothic elements in their work to highlight ideas of mortality, community, storytelling and authenticity. These novels challenge conventional divisions between the real and imaginary, the living and the dead, and the human and the animal. Reading these texts in relation to contemporary philosophy and a Scottish Gothic tradition including Walter Scott, James Hogg and Robert Louis Stevenson reveals the relation between tradition and innovation in recent fiction, and provides a new foundation for the study of Gothic literature and contemporary Scottish fiction.

Timothy C. Baker is Lecturer in Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen. He is the author of George Mackay Brown and the Philosophy of Community (2009), and has published extensively on Scottish and American literature.