ENGL 374(F) Scottish Fictions
The recent acclaim that greeted Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting has served many purposes, not least of which is both to draw attention to and temporarily obscure the tremendous burgeoning of contemporary Scottish fiction. Published in 1993, Trainspotting can be (but has not been) read as the perverse fulfillment of The Break-up of Britain, Tom Nairn's highly-regarded critique of the United Kingdom in which he predicted the fall of the "internal empire." In a world filled with drugs, popular culture, and a growing sense of Scotland as a postcolonial nation, Welsh stands at the forefront of a Scottish writing which is increasingly grappling with a range of difficult issues. Concerns such as the role of blacks in Scotland, the changing position of black women, relations with a "metropolitan" London (truly conceived of as hostile and anti-Scottish from the vantage point of Clyde or Edinburgh), relations with the newly-created European Union (seen in many anti-Anglo quarters as an effective counter to England's hegemony), the effects of Thatcherism (and Majorism) on the Scottish psyche, and the effects of deindustrialization have come to dominate the nation's writing in the past two decades or so. Anchored in and drawing on the popularity achieved because of Welsh's book and the movie, this course will explore all these issues in works such as Trainspotting, Amsterdam, The Trick is to Keep Breathing, The Bridge, and Busted Scotch. These works have all been produced by authors who are in serious conversation with a changing notion (and nation) of Scottishness, an identity that appears to be more fluid and in flux than could have been imagined when Nairn wrote his seminal work in 1981. The aim is to put the issues of nationalism and postcolonialism, drugs and morality, drugs and sexuality, masculinity and football, in conversation with each other. This course intends to offer an overview of the issues dominating the thinking and writing of Scots in our era, post-Thatcher/Major but still deeply cautious of Tony Blair's politics. Requirements: 15-20 pages of writing. Prerequisite: a 100-level English course, except 150 (formerly 103). Enrollment limited to 25.