When Thomas More sketched out his vision in the sixteenth century of a sun-struck island idyll bobbing away merrily in the Atlantic swell, he ignited a centuries-long quest in dreamers and seekers across the world: the search for Utopia. Some took the sun as their guide, heading south in their pursuit of perfection; others, seduced by wild Romantic mists, followed the whale road north and landed on Scotland’s shores, waiting for paradise to emerge from the haar.
In this new issue, we unroll Scotland’s literary map and set off in search of Utopia.
Editorial
Articles
- ‘Better to Create Your Own’: On the Legacy and Utopianism of Iain M. Banks’s Culture Series (Joseph S. Norman)
- ‘Class’d with Tasso and Guarini’: Allan Ramsay’s The Gentle Shepherd (Craig Lamont)
- ‘I am Iron Bard’: Edwin Morgan, Concrete Poetry and the Glasgow High Rises (Greg Thomas)
- Lunarians and Reformers: Mary Hamilton’s Utopian Writings (Nicole Pohl)
- The Islands Are Not Lost, The Compass Is (Kevin MacNeil)
Upon Another Point
- Myth and history: A story of ‘Ae Fond Kiss’ and other family mysteries (Thomas Fox Averill)