Introduction: Scottish Latinitas

The Introduction presents the book and explains its raison d’être by surveying the individual sections and their chapters, their inter-relations and the ways in which they respond to each other. It also brings out the central themes of the book by critiquing recent scholarship and highlighting common and distinctive strands emerging with added value from the individual contributions. There is also a descriptive account of the over-arching themes of the book and their articulation in three sections, as follows: Part I: Re-writing the classical and medieval legacy consists of exemplary instances of the re-writing of classical and medieval texts in Scotland, with particular attention being paid to the interest evinced by Scottish writers in the Troy legend. Part II: Writing the Scottish nation is about attempts to define the Scottish nation by both native and foreign writers. Part III: The vagaries of languages and texts is a sequence of case studies about how individual texts or manuscripts reached Scotland from abroad, and how they acquired further layers of meaning and significance in the processes of adaptation. Here, chronology is less important than the re-tracing of geographical and intellectual routes or the gradual rediscovery and redeployment of classical and/or of medieval Latin inheritances.