The Voice of the People
Hamish Henderson and Scottish Cultural Politics
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Edinburgh University Press
Published:18th Aug '17
Should be back in stock very soon
Reclaims Hamish Henderson from the marginalia of Scottish literary history. Provides a hitherto unexplored perspective on 20th~century Scottish cultural history. Situates Scottish literary and cultural debates in the broader context of intellectual and cultural developments in 20th-century Europe and the US. Directly tackles the question of national identity in 20,h-century Scotland.
Though Henderson is a major figure in Scottish cultural history, his reputation is largely maintained in anecdote and song. This study describes the ambitious moral-intellectual programme to reintegrate the artist in society at the heart of all of his endeavors.How might the alienation of the artist in modern Scotland be overcome? How do you incite a popular folk revival? Can a poet truly speak with the Voice of the people'? And what happens to the writer who rejects print culture in favour of becoming Anon? The life and times of polymath, scholar, author and folk- hero, Hamish Henderson (1919-2002), poses, and helps us to answer, these questions. This book examines his life-long commitment to finding a form of artistic expression suitable for post-war Europe. Though Henderson is a major figure in Scottish cultural history, his reputation is largely maintained through anecdotes and radical folk songs. This study explores his ideas in their intellectual, cultural and political contexts. It describes how all of his works - in war poetry, song collection, folklore scholarship, folksong revivalism, literary translation, and vicious public debates - reflect this desire to see the artist fully reintegrated in society.
‘This intellectually rigorous and stimulating book is unique, important, and ground breaking.’ -- Frank Bechhofer * Scottish Affairs *
This intellectually rigorous and stimulating book is unique, important, and ground breaking. -- Frank Bechhofer * Scottish Affairs *
Gibson's intention is admirable and the outcome is impressive. This is the most scholarly comprehensive assessment of Henderson's work as a poet, songwriter, cultural agent, protector and provocateur. -- Alan Riach * Scottish Literary Review *
Gibson's intention is admirable and the outcome is impressive. This is the most scholarly comprehensive assessment of Henderson's work as a poet, songwriter, cultural agent, protector and provocateur. -- Alan Riach * Scottish Literary Review *
‘the first critical monograph on the work of Hamish Henderson and its role in the 'cultural politics' of Scotland in the second half of the twentieth century, based nearly entirely on Henderson's writings, rather than the larger-than-life character of 'Hamish Mòr', the fondly remembered if sometimes slightly dishevelled 'father of the Scottish Folk Revival' and his legendary 'impromptu colloquia' in Sandy Bell's Bar… Corey Gibson shows him in all his dialectic tensions — of poet and songwriter, between oral and written traditions, as folklore scholar and folk revivalist, in the one role charting and analysing the folk revival while, in the other, simultaneously intervening in it, as a creative contributor and tireless promoter.’ -- Eberhard Bort, University of Edinburgh * The Bottle Imp *
The book is a bold statement. It is the benchmark further research on Hamish Henderson will be measured by. There is Henderson’s archive, now curated by the University of Edinburgh Library, with (among other items) Henderson’s notebooks and more than 10,000 letters. The acquisition of the archive in 2013 came too late for Gibson’s work on his thesis, but it is hoped that he and others will build on and further develop the concepts, ideas and theses put forward in this important and stimulating contribution to the debates anent the contemporary cultural history of Scotland. -- Eberhard Bort, University of Edinburgh * The Bottle Imp *
In his excellent book [...] Corey Gibson writes of the complex friendship and contested territories between Henderson and MacDiarmid. -- Alan Riach * The National *
In this acute, sympathetic, trenchant book, Henderson emerges as both a crucial figure in Scottish cultural politics and an internationally resonant intellectual. Modernist poet, folk revivalist, cultural collector, polemicist, impresario, thinker, comrade: Henderson contained multitudes. Gibson brilliantly tracks his multiple commitments and makes a strong case for him as a theorist and not only a collector of 'culture'. Henderson and his work have long been due a rich and full appraisal: here it is. -- Maureen N. McLane, New York University
ISBN: 9781474428491
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages