Stroh has not only delivered an important postcolonial reading of cultural history but has also provided, through her careful study of a selection of texts, a blueprint to assist scholars of Gaelic culture and literature in taking this theory forward and employing it successfully in varied contexts. Furthermore, Stroh's research has ensured that Gaelic/Scottish postcolonial studies has a deserved place ... Read morein international postcolonial dialogues.
Scottish Literary Review Stroh's compelling book is an original intervention in the study of Scottish literature; more importantly, it complements and is in dialogue with a number of other contemporary works by major critics and literary historians in Ireland and Scotland. This is one of the most fascinating, multi-faceted and authoritative explorations of a neglected period (1600-1900) I know.
Alan Riach, author of Representing Scotland in Literature, Popular Culture and Iconography: The Masks of the Modern Nation Stroh engages with the contested question of whether postcolonial theory can be fruitfully applied to Scottish literary expressions and cultural encounters by outlining the fundamental concepts and applying them to the most fundamental fault-line in Scottish history, that between the Lowlands and Highlands. In revisiting familiar texts, such as Martin Martin's surveys of the Western Isles and Walter Scott's Waverley, and introducing ones less familiar today, she demonstrates convincingly and comprehensibly that the hallmarks of colonial discourse
Othering, civilizing missions, internalized stigmatization, and so on
abound in the ways in which anglophone authors represented their Gaelic subjects.
Michael Newton, author of Warriors of the Word and Seanchaidh na Coille / Memory-Keeper of the Forest Show Less