To What Extent Is Rankin’s Black and Blue an Accurate Depiction of Contemporary Scottish Life? Where Does It Coincide with Social and Political Reality, and Where Does It Diverge from It
080008781
Prof. Robert Crawford and
Prof. Don Paterson
6. To what extent is Rankin’s Black and Blue an accurate depiction of contemporary Scottish life? Where does it coincide with social and political reality, and where does it diverge from it?
Word count including footnotes but excluding front cover and bibliography - 2717
Word count including front cover, footnotes and bibliography - 3008 In Black and Blue Ian Rankin intertwines four different plots, and in doing so looks at the political, economical and social aspects surrounding living in Scotland during the mid 1990s. This essay will take into account these aspects and compare them with the depiction of contemporary Scottish life in Black and Blue in order to discern how accurate a picture Rankin depicts.
The quote from Burns, in the epigraph of Black and Blue, about the nation of Scotland being ‘bought and sold for English gold’ highlights straight away that the novel is going to be concerned with politics, and more specifically how some Scottish people feel about the British Union. During the late twentieth century there was a large amount of political thought surrounding the Union of England and Scotland and this resulted in an anti-English feeling among some people within Scotland. Hearn argues that there were a lot of anti-English groups operating in Scotland in the 1990s such as “Settler Watch” and “Scottish Watch”. In Black and Blue at the scene of a death, a tourist is described as being the one to have called the police. The distinction is made in the novel that the woman had an English accent (p.128). Rankin does this to highlight that many people in Scotland did not view the English as fellow countrymen, even though they are through the British union. English people in Rankin’s novel are instead shown as tourists. This type of feeling towards England can be seen as a common theme running through the Scottish nation at the time, as Black and Blue was written in the immediate years
Prof. Robert Crawford and
Prof. Don Paterson
6. To what extent is Rankin’s Black and Blue an accurate depiction of contemporary Scottish life? Where does it coincide with social and political reality, and where does it diverge from it?
Word count including footnotes but excluding front cover and bibliography - 2717
Word count including front cover, footnotes and bibliography - 3008 In Black and Blue Ian Rankin intertwines four different plots, and in doing so looks at the political, economical and social aspects surrounding living in Scotland during the mid 1990s. This essay will take into account these aspects and compare them with the depiction of contemporary Scottish life in Black and Blue in order to discern how accurate a picture Rankin depicts.
The quote from Burns, in the epigraph of Black and Blue, about the nation of Scotland being ‘bought and sold for English gold’ highlights straight away that the novel is going to be concerned with politics, and more specifically how some Scottish people feel about the British Union. During the late twentieth century there was a large amount of political thought surrounding the Union of England and Scotland and this resulted in an anti-English feeling among some people within Scotland. Hearn argues that there were a lot of anti-English groups operating in Scotland in the 1990s such as “Settler Watch” and “Scottish Watch”. In Black and Blue at the scene of a death, a tourist is described as being the one to have called the police. The distinction is made in the novel that the woman had an English accent (p.128). Rankin does this to highlight that many people in Scotland did not view the English as fellow countrymen, even though they are through the British union. English people in Rankin’s novel are instead shown as tourists. This type of feeling towards England can be seen as a common theme running through the Scottish nation at the time, as Black and Blue was written in the immediate years
Bibliography: Gardiner, Michael, Modern Scottish Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005) Harvie, Christopher, Scotland : A Short history, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) Paterson, Lindsay ,New Scotland, new politics?, (Edinburgh: Polygon at Edinburgh, 2001) Plain, Gill, ‘Concepts of Corruption: Crime Fiction and the Scottish ’State’’, in The Edinburgh companion to contemporary Scottish literature, ed Plain, Gill, Ian Rankin’s ‘Black and Blue’: A Reader’s Guide, (New York;London: Continuum, 2002) Nairn, Tom, The break-up of Britain: crisis and neo-nationalism, Third edition (Australia: Common Ground, 2003) Petrie, Duncan, Contemporary Scottish fictions : film, television and the novel, (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2004) Rankin, Ian, Black and Blue, (London: Orion Books, 1998) Rankin, Ian and Shields, Paula, ‘That Curmudgeonly, Old, Chain-Smoking Bugger Will Die Some Day’, Fortnight, No. 418 (Oct., 2003), pp. 24-25 Welsh, Irvine, Trainspotting, (Great Britain: Mandarin Paperbacks, 1996)