Neil M.Gunn: The Fabulous Matter of Fact (Modern Scottish Writers) - Softcover

Price, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0748605363 ISBN 13: 9780748605361

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 1994

Synopsis

This is a comprehensive study of all Gunn's extant novels (including an early unpublished example), and a detailed account of the literary context within which Gunn saw himself working. Close textual criticism is supplemented with reference to Gunn's poetry, short stories, essays and letters and many of his key sources are revealed. Price describes Gunn's early literary relationship with the Celtic Twilight writers of the late-19th century, and his subsequent strong influence from Proust and Eliot, and argues that Gunn was much more literarily conscious than has generally been believed. He considers Gunn's complex reation to World War II and his views on the nature of freedom, and traces Gunn's increasing interest in the limitatons and loci of human compassion in his later novels. Including plot summaries and a radical re-reading of the novels fron the mid-1940s onwards, this is a wide-ranging and approachable guide to work of Neil M. Gunn. It is intended for students of Scottish literature from sixth form upwards, as well as the general reader.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The twentieth-century novelist Neil M. Gunn is best remembered for his evocative accounts of Highland life as given in The Silver Darlings, Morning Tide and Highland River. In The Fabulous Matter of Fact, Richard Price goes beyond this starting point and provides the reader with both a comprehensive study of all Gunn's extant novels (including an early unpublished novel), and a detailed account of the literary context within which Gunn worked. Close textual criticism is enriched by references to Gunn's poetry, short stories, essays and letters, and many of his key sources and allusions are identified for the first time. Price explores Gunn's early literary relationship with the Celtic Twilight writers of the late nineteenth century, and his subsequent relation to the work of modernists such as Eliot and Proust, showing that Gunn was much more aware of literary movements than has been believed. Price also describes the historical context of the 1940s, focusing on Gunn's complex reaction to the war and his views on the nature of freedom, and he traces the extent, in Gunn's later novels, of his increasing interest in the limitations and loci of human compassion. Including useful plot summaries and a radical re-reading of the novels from the mid-1940s onwards, this is the most wide-ranging, approachable and informative guide to the work of Neil M. Gunn available.

About the Author:

Richard Price is a curator of Modern British Collections at the British Library.

About this edition

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0748605363
• ISBN 13: 9780748605361
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224