Here is my PowerPoint presentation of the views expressed in Unstated: Writers on Scottish Independence (Word Power Books, 2012), a collection of essays by 27 poets, novelists and playwrights. I delivered it at the annual conference of DATE (The Danish Association of Teachers of English) in Esbjerg yesterday (28th February 2014).
The Spirit of Bannockburn
01 Saturday Mar 2014
Posted in Reviews
A review of three new books about Scotland in The New Statesman
Here is Kathleen Jamie’s poem commemorating the Battle of Bannockburn. It is now inscribed on the monument at the site.
James Robertson’s essay is now online.
Gerda Stevenson’s essay is also online.
Bannockburns: Scottish Independence
and Literary Imagination, 1314-2014
By Robert Crawford
Edinburgh University Press
Review by Fiona Watson
pp.18-19 of Northwords Now Issue 26, Spring 2014
Every nation needs its high-flyers, those who
soar above the mundane to provide the rest
of us with stimulation and inspiration. And
in this referendum year, Scotland surely
needs its novelists, playwrights and poets to
imagine the future, not least to enthuse, one
way or the other, the third of the electorate
who remain undecided. Quite rightly sensing
an opportunity, Robert Crawford explores
how much independence has mattered to
Scotland’s writers from the very moment of
Robert Bruce’s iconic victory 700 years ago.
One might presume, therefore, that the point
of the exercise is to show that the results have
shaped Scotland’s sense of identity and its
place in the world ever since.
In the earlier chapters/period, where one
can be reasonably comprehensive in analysing
the role of independence and freedom in
the nation’s psyche, this is indeed the clear
intention. In the Declaration of Arbroath,
Barbour’s Bruce and Hary’s Wallace, as well as
Scotland’s early historians, it is clear that they
are something of a national obsession, at least
among the educated elite. In the immediate
aftermath of the Union of 1707 when the
benefits of colonial trade were only trickling,
rather than flooding, north, these questions
remained (indeed, Scotland’s nobles, the very
ones still accused here of being bought and sold for English gold, tried very hard and only
narrowly failed to break the Union in 1713).
However, most Scots were soon enjoying
the benefits of Union and here I found the
plot beginning to unravel. It is one thing to
explore Robert Burns’ sympathies towards
Jacobitism, but quite another to claim that, in
evoking Bannockburn directly or indirectly,
he ‘performs the greatest service both to the
ideals of modern democracy and [my italics]
to the cause of Scottish independence.’ Firstly,
if the latter is true, then clearly the national
Bard had little or no impact on the national
psyche and to argue that he was merely ahead
of his time is determinist in a way that his
democratic aspirations, with the example of
the French and American revolutions before
him, is not. Secondly, Jacobitism cannot
be equated with Scottish independence; it
merely sought to replace one monarchical
dynasty with another. As acknowledged on
p.87, what concerned the Scots was not the
Union per se, but England’s domination of
it. This, though not fitting in with Professor
Crawford’s overtly nationalist agenda, has
profound resonances for today, when many
Scots would like to see a properly federal UK,
with each nation largely governing itself but
joining together far more equally on issues of
mutual interest.
I could go on, for much of the second
half of the book seems skewed to fit, without
much analysis of the extent to which the
chosen authors have proved influential.
But where this book really captured my
imagination was right at the very end, with a
beautiful and insightful analysis of the poetry
commissioned to commemorate the 700th
anniversary of Bannockburn. Here Professor
Crawford leaps off his soap box and soars,
showing, rather than insistently telling, that
Bannockburn and ideals of independence
and freedom are still thrillingly resonant in
the twenty-first century. But what they mean,
to both writer and reader, is hugely more
complicated and interesting than we mostly
find in the rest of this book.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/19/scottish-referendum-independence-uk-how-writers-vote