Rapt in Plaid: Canadian Literature and Scottish Tradition

John Walker is a professor of Spanish studies at Queen’s University.

Her pioneer work on children’s literature and the writings of Lucy
Maud Montgomery has earned Elizabeth Waterson a well-deserved reputation
as one of Canada’s shrewdest critics and scholars. Born and educated
in Montreal, she is now a professor emerita of English at the University
of Guelph. In Rapt in Plaid, a felicitous mixture of literary history,
modern criticism, and personal memoir, she sets out to demonstrate that
Canadian literature has been greatly influenced since the 19th century
by Scottish ideas, values, and culture. Individual chapters in this
eminently readable volume illustrate the literary connections between
Robert Burns and Milton Acorn, Sir Walter Scott and Timothy Findley,
John Galt and Sinclair Ross, Thomas Carlyle and Margaret Laurence,
Robert Louis Stevenson and Dennis Lee, J.M. Barrie and Lucy Maud
Montgomery, John Buchan and Hugh MacLennan, and, finally, Jane Duncan
and Alice Munro. Twenty-five pages of notes and a 26-page bibliography
round out this fine volume.