Rejecting Limits and Opening Possibilities in the Works of Iain Banks

Authors

  • Olga Roebuck University of Pardubice

Keywords:

Scotland, cultural subversion, Scottishness, Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory, The Crow Road

Abstract

This text deals with the question of Scottish self-definition and also the escape from it. Scottish identity debate in 1980s and 1990s took on different forms and searched for other inspirations: outside Scotland or in dealing with identities traditionally overlooked due to the overall focus on national identity. This paper thus analyses the question of Scottishness through the subversive voice addressing the identities traditionally problematic in Scotland or even through individual self-definition as presented in Iain Banks’s novels The Wasp Factory (1984) and The Crow Road (1992).

References

Banks, Iain. The Wasp Factory. London: Abacus, 1990.

Banks, Iain. The Crow Road. London: Abacus, 1993.

Colebrook, Martyn and Katharine Cox. The Transgressive Iain Banks: Essays on a Writer beyond Borders. Jefferson and London: McFarland and Co., 2013.

Craig, Cairns. “Scotland and the Regional Novel.” In The Regional Novel in Britain and Ireland, edited by K. D. M. Snell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. 221–256.

Devine, Thomas Martin and R. J. Finlay. Scotland in the 20th Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997.

Finlay, R. J. A Partnership for Good: Scottish Politics and the Union since 1880. Edinburgh: Donald, 1997.

Gifford, Douglas. “Imagining Scotlands: The Return to Mythology in Modern Scottish Fiction.” In Studies in Scottish Fiction: 1945 to the Present, edited by Susanne Hagemann. Frankfurt Am Main: Lang, 1996. 17–49.

March, Cristie. “Bella and the Beast (and a Few Dragons, Too).” Studies in Contemporary Fiction 43.4 (2002): 323–349.

March, Cristie. Rewriting Scotland: Welsh, McLean, Warner, Banks, Galloway and Kennedy. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.

Nairn, Thom. “Iain Banks and the Fiction Factory.” The Scottish Novel Since the Seventies, edited by Gavin Wallace and Randall Stevenson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994. 127–135.

Whyte, Christopher. Gendering the Nation: Studies in Modern Scottish Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995.

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Published

2016-11-29

How to Cite

Roebuck, O. (2016). Rejecting Limits and Opening Possibilities in the Works of Iain Banks. American & British Studies Annual, 9, 44–54. Retrieved from https://absa.upce.cz/index.php/absa/article/view/2261

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Articles