History and linguistics
Scotland's destiny was forged behind a wall, the one erected by Hadrian from 120 onwards to contain the Picts, whose rare inscriptions are still mostly indecipherable. In any case, history has remained fragmentary, based as it is on the works of a few missionaries who, in addition to their preaching duties, also had a duty to remember, such as Bede the Venerable, who did not fail to mention the original people in his seminal work, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, which he completed at the beginning of the 8th century, thus becoming one of the few recipients of this distant past.
The language was also uncertain, as the territory, though reputedly hostile, welcomed other cultures. In the monastery founded by the Irishman Colomba on the island of Iona to convert the peoples of the Dál Riata - a monastery that lasted long after the saint's death in the 6th century - it's hard to say exactly when Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic) became Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic). Although linguists still debate the issue, they agree that the first purely Scottish manuscript is The Book of Deer, which is thought to have been written in the 10th century, with later additions. Although many opuses have been lost, the archives have nevertheless kept track of the poems of Gillebríghde Albanach, a Scottish crusader who lived in the early 13th century.
However, it wasn't until the following century that the man who is truly considered the father of Scottish literature was born, Archdeacon John Barbour, a poet who in 1376 completed a mythical epic: Robert Bruce, King of Scotland. This historical and political narrative depicts in particular the Battle of Bannockburn, and while the author certainly took the time to investigate the exact course of events with reliable sources, he also uses a vernacular language specific to the Lowlands of Scotland under Viking influence, Scots, which he tends to fix in writing for the first time.
A few hundred years later, around 1477, another poetic and heroic work praised the exploits of the independence fighter William Wallace: The Actes and Deidis, attributed to a mysterious blind Harry, about whom little is known other than that he was part of the long oral tradition(beul-aithris) of the makars, the Scottish bards referred to by William Dubar in The Lament for the Makaris, composed at the very beginning of the 16th century. Literature was entering a golden age, translations were flourishing - most notably Gavin Douglas, who produced a Scots version of Virgil's Aeneid, L'Eneados, around 1513 - and manuscripts were better preserved, sometimes in veritable collections, linguistic goldmines, such as the one compiled by Seumas MacGriogain and known as Leabhar Deathan Lios Mòir(Book of the Dean of Lios Mòir).
This new development and interest facilitated the transmission of many of the writings of Robert Henryson, undoubtedly a teacher and certainly a resident of Dunfermline, and allow us to judge both his renown at the time and the finesse of his verve. The kings were also sensitive to the arts, like James VI, also a poet, who became a patron of the arts by encouraging the creation of the Castalian Band on the model of the French Pléiade. While the sparks that must surely have fanned their verbal jousting have disappeared just as much as their writing, we still have another important anthology, the so-called Bannatyne anthology, which summarizes the Scottish poets of the 15th and 16th centuries. Finally, the time is ripe for the birth of the famous Scottish ballads in the early 17th century. They still sing of traditional myths and legends, but are beginning to rhyme with a language that is gradually gaining ground, English.
Prestigious authors
In 1736, a man was born in Ruthven who was to have a far-reaching influence on the course of world literature, although his approach smacked of subterfuge. It all began with James Macpherson's love of collecting Gaelic manuscripts and translating them into English for his friend John Home, the author of the much-debated tragedy Douglas. Not yet 25, Macpherson announced that he had made an astonishing discovery: the epic of a 3rd-century bard, Ossian, inspired by the travels of the mythical hero Fionn Mac Cumaill. As soon as the translated version - Fingal, an ancient epic poem in six books - was published, doubts began to creep in among scholars, especially as the author refused to present the original manuscript. Whether his sources were fragmentary or largely figments of his imagination, his approach gave rise to Ossianism, a poetic movement that inspired many of the early Romantics, including Goethe, who made no secret of his enthusiasm for the work.
It was also a fertile period for Gaelic, which saw its first printed work, a dictionary drawn up in 1741 by the major poet Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, and Scots flourished under the pen of Robert Burns (1759-1796). His short life began in a family of peasant origin, an oscillation between the land and letters that he maintained until his 37th birthday, when death cut him short. He became a symbol of Scotland, and his legacy includes the old folk songs he collected and reworked, but above all a personal collection, Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, which he published in 1786. Also considered one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement, his songs are still sung today on festive occasions.
While poetry continued to make headway in the 18th century, another genre began to assert itself: the novel, thanks first and foremost to Tobias George Smollett (1721-1771), who also proved to be full of bite when it came to recounting his travels, and above all to an essential figure who hardly needs any introduction: Sir Walter Scott. Born in Edinburgh in 1771, he died in his beloved Abbotsford in 1832; between these two dates, he explored every facet of Scottish literature, becoming a poet in his early adulthood, adapting old manuscripts, then experimenting with the novelistic trend by anonymously publishing Waverley in 1805. A testament to its value, this text met with enormous success, even though it did not enjoy the fame of its author. Scott continued to explore the historical - and patriotic! -in so many publications that it might be worth starting with either his favorite, The Antiquary, or his most famous, Ivanhoe.
Another style takes over in the person of a character who is hard not to associate with his London address (221B Baker Street), even though his creator is Scottish. Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh on May 22, 1859. After whaling in Greenland, and before taking part in the Second Boer War as a doctor, the future Knight of the Most Venerable Order of St. John saw his first novel, A Study in Red, published in Beeton's Christmas Annual in 1887. It already featured Sherlock Holmes, who was inspired by a former teacher, Joseph Bell, if we are to believe the speculations of another great name in Scottish letters, Robert Louis Stevenson. Stevenson was also from Edinburgh, and nine years older than Conan Doyle. His suffering childhood had given him a taste for reading and still journeys, which would later not deter him from bohemian life or the desire to explore the world.
His account of the 230 km-long trail in the Cévennes region, which now bears his name, remains a classic for walkers. But Stevenson is of course also the author of Treasure Island, which he began to entertain his stepson, and of a fine corpus of short stories that are sometimes tinged with a touch of fantasy, which certainly didn't displease his near-contemporary, Peter Pan 's father, J.M. Barrie (1860-1937), who is often associated with Kayliard. At the dawn of the twentieth century, this school, sometimes judged to be excessively sentimental, or at any rate too idealistic, would provoke a veritable rejection. The time was ripe for massive urbanization, and the effects of galloping industrialization were already being felt. Modernist writers of the time were only too eager, albeit slightly behind their European peers, to describe reality, which would become all the more ferocious as the First World War approached.
This change of gear coincided not only with the publication of George Douglas Brown's uncompromising novel The House with the Green Shutters, but also with renewed interest in Scots-speaking writers, notably Hugh MacDiarmid (1892-1978), whose talent culminated in A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. Widely translated into French, his contemporary A. J. Cronin drew on his life to write his two greatest successes, La Citadelle and Les Années d'illusion (available from Livre de Poche), a process also used by the poet Edwin Muir (1887-1959). Surprisingly, the Scottish Renaissance also highlights the city of Glasgow, so much so that a literary school bearing its name could be mentioned as early as the 1920s, if we think of the work Open the Door! by Catherine Carswell (1879-1946), who is best remembered for her controversial biography of Burns. But it was 50 years later that Glasgow truly became the hub for writers determined to express themselves frankly, even if it meant taking on the language. In addition to the forerunner Alasdair Gray (1934-2019), author of the unclassifiable cult novel Lanark (Éditions Métailié), Iain Banks, John Burnside and Irvine Welsh, all born in the 50s, are also associated with Glasgow, as is Ian Rankin, who devotes himself to crime fiction, and Hal Duncan, who prefers science fiction. Glasgow is also the birthplace of two famous writers who share a love of France: essayist Kenneth White and crime writer Peter May.
