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Home / Publications / Books / Scotnotes Study Guides / Scotnote 23

Scotnote 23

Neil Munro’s
JOHN SPLENDID
& THE NEW ROAD

Ronald W. Renton

Published in: Paperback.
By: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 2007
Price: £5.95
ISBN 978-0-948877-80-3

Order from our bookshop


Neil Munro, although best known today for his humourous Para Handy stories, wrote several very fine historical novels exploring, and critiquing, Highland life and culture. 

Ronald Renton’s Scotnote examines two major works by Munro: John Splendid, set during the civil wars of the 17th century; and The New Road, set during the opening-up of the Highands by General Wade’s road-building programme, shortly before the Jacobite uprising of 1745. The historical, cultural and political backgrounds of each novel are discussed and contrasted. This guide is suitable for senior school pupils and students at all levels.

CONTENTS

  • Neil Munro – life and work
  • Neil Munro and the historical novel
  • John Splendid
    • Introduction
    • Historical background
    • Structure and plot summary
    • Themes and characters
    • Setting
    • Language and style
    • Local and literary influences
    • John Spendid’s place in Scottish Highland literature
  • The New Road
    • Introduction
    • Historical background
    • Structure and plot summary
    • Themes and characters
      1. Murder and mystery
      2. Disillusionment
      3. Regeneration
      4. The New Road
    • Setting
    • Language and style
    • Literary influences
    • The Search
  • Conclusion
  • Select bibliography
  • The works of Neil Munro

Primary Sidebar

Retrieving and Renewing: a poem for ASL

   Forget your literature? – forget your soul.
   If you want to see your country hale and whole
   Turn back the pages of fourteen hundred years.
   Surely not? Oh yes, did you expect woad and spears?
   In Altus Prosator the bristly blustery land
   Bursts in buzz and fouth within a grand
   Music of metrical thought. Breathes there the man
   With soul so dead—? Probably! But a scan
   Would show his fault was ignorance:
   Don’t follow him. Cosmic circumstance
   Hides in nearest, most ordinary things.
   Find Scotland – find inalienable springs.
  Edwin Morgan, 2004

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