Edinburgh University Press

Series: Edinburgh Companions to Scottish Literature

The Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh

Edited by Berthold Schoene

Juli 2010 · 176 S. · Geb. · 9780748639175 · GBP £ 65,00

Pb · 9780748639182 · GBP £ 16,99

The subcultural enfant terrible of devolutionary protest and rebellion, Irvine Welsh is now widely acknowledged as the founding father of a whole new tradition in post-devolution Scottish writing. The unprecedented worldwide success of Trainspotting, magnified by Danny Boyle’s iconic film adaptation, revolutionised Scottish culture and radically remoulded the country’s self-image from dreamy
romantic hinterland to agitated metropolitan hotbed. Although Welsh’s career is very much an ongoing phenomenon, his influence on contemporary Scottish literary history is already indisputable and enduring.
The Companion provides a thorough, up-to-date and critical evaluation of Welsh’s  work. New innovative readings address questions of class, subculture and drug use, nationhood, gender and narrative experimentation with reference to broader developments – such as devolution and globalisation – within contemporary Scottish, British and world culture.

Berthold Schoene is Professor of English and Director of the English Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The American Short Story since 1950

Kaisa Boddy

August 2010 · 172 S. · PB · 97807486327660 · GBP £ 14,99

This introduction to the modern American short story offers a reappraisal and contextualisation of a critically underrated genre during a particularly rich period in its history. It offers new readings of important stories by key writers from Flannery O’Connor to Donald Bartheleme, from Raymond Carver to Jhumpa Lahiri, and from Grace Paley to George Saunders. These readings are related throughout to the various contexts in which stories are written and published, including creative writing schools, story-writing handbooks, mass market and ‘little’ magazines. The first three chapters are roughly chronological, covering the major trends (such as realism, fabulism and minimalism) in short fiction from the 1950s to 2000. The fourth deals with the short story cycle in that period. The conclusion brings the discussion up to date with a discussion of recent trends and stories published in  the last few years.

Kaisa Boddy is a Lecturer in English at University College London. She is coeditor of The Virago Book of Twentieth-Century Fiction.