Ebook: Edwin Muir: Poet, Critic and Novelist

Rather than emphasising the Christian, transcendental elements in Edwin Muir's writing, this critical study focuses on the 'single, disunited world' - a search for meaning and values in the unstable, mundane world. Taking the reader chronologically through all his major works, it analyses the significance of Muir's Orcadian background, the influence of German Romanticism on his early poetry, and his European interests in general. The stylistic maturity of his later poetry is given particular attention, as is the relevance of Scotland to his whole work. Although Muir has traditionally been seen as standing apart from MacDiarmid's 'Renaissance', this challenging new study shows how he did in his own way fulfil its aim by taking Scottish Literature and criticism back into the mainstream of European culture. Margery Palmer McCulloch is Senior Research Fellow in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. She is co-editor of Scottish Literary Review. Her recent books include Modernism and Nationalism: Source Documents for the Scottish Renaissance, and Scottish Modernism and its Contexts 1918-1959: Literature, National Identity and Cultural Exchange, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2009.