Hugh MacDiarmid

Palmer McCulloch, M. (2014) Hugh MacDiarmid. In: Chinitz, D. E. and McDonald, G. (eds.) A Companion to Modernist Poetry. Series: Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture (88). Wiley Blackwell: Chichester, West Sussex, pp. 484-493. ISBN 9780470659816 (doi: 10.1002/9781118604427.ch40)

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Abstract

Until recently, MacDiarmid's poetry has received little consideration in the academic context of literary modernism. Yet his innovative revival of the Scots vernacular as a literary language for a modern poetry was part of a general movement in the early decades of the century to restore agency to poetic language. The emphasis on the importance of “sound” is significant in relation to the nature and success of MacDiarmid's Scots-language poetry. It has been observed that despite his claims for the innovative potentiality in the Scots vernacular, comparing it to Joyce's linguistic inventiveness in Ulysses, MacDiarmid was conservative in his linguistic practice. MacDiarmid spent the years from 1933 to 1942 on the small Shetland island of Whalsay. He had many bleak moments there but he also wrote and published a considerable amount of good poetry.

Item Type:Book Sections
Status:Published
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Palmer McCulloch, Dr Margery
Authors: Palmer McCulloch, M.
College/School:College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > Scottish Literature
Publisher:Wiley Blackwell
ISBN:9780470659816
Published Online:28 March 2014

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