Naething Dauntit
The Collected Poems of Douglas Young
Published on 30. August 2016
Book
Hardback
410 pages
978-1-84622-062-3 (ISBN)
Description
Born in Tayport, Fife, on 5 June 1913, Douglas Young was one of the most charismatic and distinguished Scots of his day. Described by Nigel Tranter as a 'Poet, scholar, author, linguist, raconteur and fighter of causes', he was a genuine polymath, an intellectual giant, and his range of interests was exceptional. A brilliant Classical scholar, who studied and later taught Latin and Greek, he had a great facility for languages. Above all he was fluent in 'Lallans' or Lowland Scots, in the tradition of Burns, Scott and Stevenson. Young was one of the leading 'Scottish Renaissance' poets or 'neoLallans Makars', and his two notable volumes of his poetry were Auntran Blads: an outwale of verses (1943) and A Braird O Thristles (1947), included here. He died at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA, where he was Paddison Professor of Greek, on 24 October 1973.
Reviews / Votes
'My book of the moment is Naething Daunted: The Collected Poems of Douglas Young - a joy to re-discover this brilliant polymath who was also a leading light in the rise of modern Scottish nationalism. His poetry has echoes of French, Greek and German, but his Scots poems ding aw!' Billy Kay, scriever and broadcaster, in The Herald, November 26 2016; 'Among the mighty coterie of post-MacDiarmid makars, Douglas Young stands out as an individual voice. To their common mission of restoring the Scots tongue as a fully-developed poetic language, he brings his formidable erudition, his comprehensive knowledge of Scottish literature of all periods and his highly-polished prosodic technique. To a greater degree than almost any of his contemporaries, he succeeds in integrating words from the mediaeval period, from the era of Burns and from his own time and place into a consistent idiolect, which he employs for poetic statements that are often beautiful, often profound, and always thought-provoking. This new edition of his poetry will confirm his place as one of the central figures of the twentieth-century Scottish Renaissance.' J. Derrick McClure; 'Even in the fifties when I was starting out through university politics, Douglas Young was a legend. For young minds, his two jail sentences for refusing conscription were a singular demonstration of moral courage and he paid the penalty of facing down the establishment by not being awarded the professorship his talents deserved.' Gordon Wilson, Former Chairman of the SNP and MP for Dundee East.More details
Language
Other
Place of publication
Glasgow
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Zeticula Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
Black & white illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 27 mm
Weight
768 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84622-062-3 (9781846220623)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
The author, Douglas Cuthbert Colquhoun Young (1913-1973) was a Scottish poet, scholar, translator and politician. The editor, Emma Dymock, is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh where she teaches classes in Gaelic and Celtic literature and culture. She is co-editor of Scottish and International Modernisms: Relationships and Reconfigurations (2011), Lainnir a' bhuirn: Scottish Gaelic Literature in the Twentieth Century and Beyond (2011) and Caoir Gheal Leumraich/ White Leaping Flame: Sorley MacLean Collected Poems (2011). Her research interests centre on the Scottish Renaissance and the political and cultural intersections of the Scots and Gaelic poets. She is currently editing the Sorley MacLean - Douglas Young correspondence.