Randall Stevenson Knihy

Charting the evolution of literature since 1960, this volume examines the interplay between historical, social, and intellectual forces shaping literary change. It explores themes such as the impact of war, the decline of class influence, gender relations, and the rise of minority cultures, all contributing to the democratization of contemporary life. With clarity and engagement, it offers a comprehensive overview of an era that readers are beginning to understand, establishing a foundation for future discussions on late twentieth-century literature.

Literature and the Great War offers a fresh, challenging interpretation of the literature of the period, reappraising the settled assumptions through which war writing has come to be read in recent years.

The last two decades have seen a new renaissance in Scottish literary culture in which the Scottish novel has attained new heights of maturity, confidence and challenge. The Scottish Novel since the Seventies is the first major critical reassessment of the developments in this period.Ranging from the work of longer-established authors such as Robin Jenkins, Muriel Spark and William McIlvanney to the more recent experiments of Alasdair Gray, James Kelman and Janice Galloway, it provides a new critical focus on the intriguing relationship between continuity and innovation which characterises the novel's response to the complex changes in Scottish culture and society during the past twenty years. The contributors assess the work of an extensive number of writers in the context of a correspondingly wide range of issues: gender, postmodernism, political identity, archaism and myth, and the theme of disintegration. There are also chapters on the continuing growth of the 'Glasgow novel' and film adaptations.