Years ago – a decade we’re talking now – I wrote this article for Litro magazine about the representation of Scottish characters in English literature.
https://www.litromagazine.com/arts-and-culture/the-mystery-of-the-missing-scots/
Since then, there have been a few notable additions to the literary canon of Scottish literature. Shuggie Bain is perhaps the most obvious example. And yet; I feel like so many of the same issues that were true a decade ago remain the case. That characters who are not your “traditional stalwart middle class English hero” are confined to the margins or somehow “otherised”, as Edward Said might put it; where characters – especially rural, or working class characters – or people from regions or who speak on dialects – are kept apart from the pure pristine and proper standard English of Adam Smith.
Keen to hear what you fine folk think? Appreciate its not like the pressing issue right now but to me it speaks to a persistence among our literary , reading appetites of a sensibility or prejudice that can colour the way we view the world – and what stories we tell or discover in books.
by InstantIdealism