Karoline Szatek-Tudor

Janet Hadley Williams

Rosa E. Penna

In the summer of 2008, the twelfth in a series of biennial conferences on the Literature of Region and Nation was held at Aberdeen University in the North-East of Scotland. Over fifty scholars, representing no fewer than twenty different countries, convened for the occasion; and twenty-two of the papers presented are included in this volume. As at previous conferences in the series, the papers range widely in approach, in subject-matter and in geographical coverage: readers of this book will find explorations of literature from all five continents. The papers are arranged thematically: the central concepts of region and nation are examined in the first section; and subsequent sets of papers go on to consider literary and pictorial representations of places and peoples, literature of diaspora and exile (a keynote topic of the conference), the use of language (particularly non-standard languages) in literary texts, and artistic interactions between cultures. All the papers have been peer-reviewed, and some extensively revised. The collection demonstrates the vitality of scholarship in the field of regional literary studies.

Papers presented at the Twelfth International Conference on the Literature of Region and Nation (Aberdeen University, 30th July – 2nd August 2008)

"What Countrey’s This? And Whither Are We Gone?"

J. Derrick McClure

Fresche fontanis contains twenty-five studies presenting major new research by leading scholars in Scottish culture of the late fourteenth and fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. The three-part collection includes essays on the prominent writers of the period: James I, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, John Bellenden, David Lyndsay, John Stewart of Baldynneis, William Fowler, Alexander Montgomerie, Andrew Melville and Alexander Craig. There are also essays on the Scottish romances Lancelot of the Laik, Gilbert Hay’s Buik of King Alexander the Conquerour, The Buik of Alexander, Golagros and Gawain, and the comedic Rauf Coilyear, and the Scottish fabliau The Freiris of Berwick. Chronicles of Fordun, Bower, Wyntoun and Bellenden receive fresh attention in essays concerning Margaret of Scotland, and imperial ideas during the reign of James V. Essays on anthologies, family books, and collaborative compilations make another notable group, providing in-depth analysis, with findings not previously reported, of The Book of the Dean of Lismore, the Maitland Quarto manuscript and The Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum. These studies are enlarged by others on key contextualizing topics, including noble and royal literary patronage, early Scottish printing, performance, spectatorship, and translation. Together they make a significant contribution to a full understanding of the continuities and shifts in cultural emphases during this most imaginatively productive period.

Janet Hadley Williams

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