The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature, Volume 1: From Columba to the Union

The Edinburgh History of Scottish Literature #1

by Thomas Owen Clancy (Editor), Murray Pittock (Editor), Ian Brown (Editor)

The History begins with the first full-scale critical consideration of Scotland's earliest literature, drawn from the diverse cultures and languages of its early peoples. The first volume covers the literature produced during the medieval and early modern period in Scotland, surveying the riches of Scottish work in Gaelic, Welsh, Old Norse, Old English and Old French, as well as in Latin and Scots. New scholarship is brought to bear, not only on imaginative literature, but also law, politics, theology and philosophy, all placed in the context of the evolution of Scotland's geography, history, languages and material cultures from our earliest times up to 1707.

344 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Professor Thomas Owen Clancy is an American academic and historian who specializes in the literature of the Celtic Dark Ages, especially that of Scotland. He did his undergraduate work at New York University, and his Ph.D at the University of Edinburgh. He is currently at the University of Glasgow, where he was appointed Professor of Celtic in 2005.

In 2001, Clancy argued that St. Ninian was a Northumbrian spin-off of the name Uinniau (Irish St. Finnian), the Irish missionary to whom St. Columba was a disciple, who in Great Britain was associated with Whithorn. He argued that the confusion is due to an eighth century scribal spelling error, for which the similarities of "u" and "n" in the Insular script of the period were responsible.