
Alasdair Gray
The Fiction of Communion
Gavin Miller(Author)
Rodopi (Publisher)
Published on 1. January 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
144 pages
978-90-420-1757-3 (ISBN)
Description
Alasdair Gray's writing, and in particular his great novel Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), is often read as a paradigm of postmodern practice. This study challenges that view by presenting an analysis that is at once more conventional and more strongly radical. By reading Gray in his cultural and intellectual context, and by placing him within the tradition of a Scottish history of ideas that has been largely neglected in contemporary critical writing, Gavin Miller re-opens contact between this highly individualistic artist and those Scottish and European philosophers and psychologists who helped shape his literary vision of personal and national identity. Scottish social anthropology and psychiatry (including the work of W. Robertson Smith, J.G. Frazer and R.D. Laing) can be seen as formative influences on Gray's anti-essentialist vision of Scotland as a mosaic of communities, and of our social need for recognition, acknowledgement and the common life.
Reviews / Votes
"extremely interesting [...] Reading Gray through Robert Graves's White goddess theories is especially revealing, as is Miller's keenness to view Gray through the prism of existentialism." The Scottish Review of Books, Vol. 2, No. 1More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Publishing group
Brill
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 220 mm
Width: 150 mm
Weight
254 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-420-1757-3 (9789042017573)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Content
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter One: Lanark, The White Goddess, and "spiritual communion"
Chapter Two: The divided self - Alasdair Gray and R.D. Laing
Chapter Three: Reading and time
Conclusion: How "post-" is Gray?
Bibliography, Index
Introduction
Chapter One: Lanark, The White Goddess, and "spiritual communion"
Chapter Two: The divided self - Alasdair Gray and R.D. Laing
Chapter Three: Reading and time
Conclusion: How "post-" is Gray?
Bibliography, Index