The Association for Scottish
Literary Studies



Edwin Muir Centenary Assessments

Edited by C. J. M. MacLachlan and D. S. Robb

Published in: Paperback, 146 pages. By: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, Aberdeen, 1990. Price: £8.00

ISBN 0 948877 09 X

The twelve papers in this volume were delivered at the Edwin Muir Centenary Conference 1987, held at St Andrews in Scotland in June of that year.

Three themes emerged strongly at the confernce. The first was the significance of Edwin Muir’s acquaintance with European literature and his debt in particular to contemporary German poetry. Obviously this was related to his work as a translator, and hence the second point, the literary importance of Muir’s wife Willa. Her support for Edwin, her collaboration with him in translation and her own achievement as a writer received new emphasis. Thirdly, the conference confronted the enigmatic connection in Muir’s work between the timeless and the particular, his universal themes and his own historical and literary background.

These three aspects of Muir and his work are amply represented in the essays collected here. They are arranged in such a way as to move from biographical considerations to questions of literary influence and outlook, with Professor Butter’s reappraisal of Willa Muir as centre and pivot. Framing the whole are the papers of Dr Bruce and Professor Wiseman, in which, as in June 1987, these leaders in the study and appreciation of the poet attempt to express the essence of Muir’s achievement and the urgency of his message for us all today.

CONTENTS

  1. The Integrity of Edwin Muir (George Bruce)
  2. Muir’s Orkney: The Place and the Idea (George Marshall)
  3. Edwin Muir: Some personal Recollections (Lillias Forbes)
  4. Edwin Muir and Scottish Nationalism (Murray Pittock)
  5. Translating Broch’s The Sleepwalkers – Ordeal and Reward (Elizabeth Huberman)
  6. Willa Muir: Writer (P. H. Butter)
  7. Edwin Muir, Calvinism and Greek Myth (Margery Palmer McCulloch)
  8. Muir and Scotland (P. H. Scott)
  9. Scott, Stevenson and Barrie: Edwin Muir’s Rejection of Prose Romance (William Ruddick)
  10. Edwin Muir as European Poet (Ritchie Robertson)
  11. Edwin Muir: The Untutored Mystic (N. D. O'Donoghue)
  12. The Buried Grace: Edwin Muir and Symbols of Transformation (Christopher Wiseman)

Last updated 19 February 2002.