Scotland and the First World War: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Bannockburn [Hardcover]

What did war look like in the cultural imagination of 1914? Why did men in Scotland sign up to fight in unprecedented numbers? What were the martial myths shaping Scottish identity from the aftermath of Bannockburn to the close of the nineteenth century, and what did the Scottish soldiers of the First World War think they were fighting for? Scotland and the First World War: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Bannockburn is a collection of new interdisciplinary essays interrogating the trans-historical myths of nation, belonging and martial identity that shaped Scotlands encounter with the First World War. In a series of thematically linked essays, experts from the fields of literature, history and cultural studies examine how Scotland remembers war, and how remembering war has shaped Scotland.Gill Plain is professor of English at the University of St. Andrews.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Anniversary Culture and the legacy of Bannockburn
Gill Plain

Part I: Anniversary Culture

1. Missing Dates and Magic Numbers: Reflections on 1914
Fran Brearton

2. Bruce, Wallace and the Diminished Present, 1800-1964
Graeme Morton

Part II: Making the Myths of War and Nation

3. Men Brave And Strong: Bannockburn, the Auld Alliance and Scottish Martial
Identity in the Late Middle Ages
Michael Brown

4. Not my lands hills: War and the Problem of Scottish Homecoming
Caroline McCracken-Flesher

5. Medieval Battlefields and National Narratives, 1830-1918
Carol Symes

6. Bannockburn after Baston
Robert Crawford

Part III: Making the Memory of the First World War

7. The Spirit of the Crusaders: Scottish Peculiarities, British Commonalities and European Convergences in the Memorialisation of the Great War
Stefan Goebel

8. Buchan, Bannockburn and Beyond: popular histories of Scotlands martial past
Catriona M. M. Macdonald

9. lÓ9