Search

The two Morvern Callars—Alan Warner's 1995 novel and Lynne Ramsay's 2002 film adaptation—are key contemporary Scottish texts yet represent two quite different moments in Scotland's recent cultural history. Warner's novel is decidedly devolutionary in its handling of Scotland and Scottishness. Although superficially faithful to its source text, Ramsay's film is actually far more faithful to its depoliticized—or differently politicized—early post-devolutionary moment. Examining the two Morvern Callars in light of Robert Stam's theory of adaptation helps us understand both their complex relationship and the ideological consequences of aesthetic choices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

James Robertson's well-deserved reputation as a historical novelist has obscured the role that the Gothic plays in his work. Manifesting itself in distinctively Scottish fashion, Robertson's Gothicism is tied to the 'broader national culture' in general and to post-devolutionary Scotland in particular. Not only does his transformation of the Gothic into the historical novel's uncanny other resist the modern novel's tendency towards increasing privatisation. It also results in work that diverges from much post-devolutionary Scottish fiction in that his stories and novels are, by virtue of the density of their Scottishness, deeply connected to the local and to folk culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]