Older Scots: A Linguistic Reader

A full introduction to Older Scots language and literature, with a wide selection of copiously annotated texts from the period.

This book enables both students and more advanced scholars to develop a comprehensive understanding of Older Scots, the form of Scots which survives in records up to around 1700. It provides the means of understanding the language's essential characteristics, and enables readers to engage with the fascinating textual and linguistic problems which it presents. The volume contains an extensive set of annotated texts from the period, inviting closer engagement with the detail of the language, which are preceded by a comprehensive introduction to and discussion of the subject; it also looks at the linguistic detail (in the broadest sense) of the reception and afterlife of medieval andearly modern Scottish texts. Those interested in literary form in Older Scottish literature will find it a kit for stylistic analysis; book historians will appreciate the detailed studies of processes of production and reception, and be reminded of the importance of integrating disciplines such as textual criticism, codicology, paleography and philology; and for linguists, there is access to an unrivalled body of up-to-date textual information, previously hard to find in a single place.

Jeremy J. Smith is Professor of English Philology, University of Glasgow.