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England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales might have been partners in an imperial project that required the projection of 'English Literature' as one of the defining elements of cultural superiority that justified the continuous extension of Empire throughout the nineteenth century, but they were also engaged in an internal struggle over the origins and the dynamics of that literature, and about the role of their national literatures within the consolidating discipline of English.
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― The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence
― The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence
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Since the success of the kailyard writers was comparatively short-lived, and their ambitions limited, it seems peculiar to non-Scottish readers that the persistence of the reaction to them was so intense that 'sentimentality' remains to this day a term of literary abuse to which no defence may be offered, and counter-kailyarders go to extraordinary lengths to eliminate from their work the least trace of theological light or metaphysical hope.
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― The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction
― The Great Shadow House: Essays on the Metaphysical Tradition in Scottish Fiction
