Alice Gibson

Alice’s project examines secular narratives from late-medieval Scotland which take their inspiration and source material from outwith Scotland itself, yet the texts are prepared for a uniquely Scottish audience. Part of this project will therefore investigate the demographic composition of readership in Scotland. Selected primary case studies include Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid and the anonymous romance Gologras and Gawane; through analysing the ways in which these authors wrote for a Scottish audience, the intellectual complexity of premodern literary communities in Scotland can be further understood. By considering the texts in their Scottish forms and in comparison with their sources, the ways in which Scottish readers and writers constructed themselves in both British and European contexts can thus be traced.