Cairns Craig


Robert Cairns Craig is a Scottish literary scholar, specialising in Scottish and modernist literature. He has been Glucksman Professor of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen since 2005. Before that, he taught at the University of Edinburgh, serving as head of the English literature department from 1997 to 2003. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2005.

Work

He was awarded a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1978 for his thesis W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and the Associationist Aesthetic.
He has published on authors including W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Iain Banks.
His 1984 book on Yeats, Eliot, and Pound was described by Seamus Deane as lacking a little clarity, panache and focus, but offering an "engrossing" exploration of the relationship between modernism and reactionary politics, which he links via memory, and particularly Archibald Alison's theory of associationism; Deane called it "a complicated story, illustrated by Craig with such well-chosen and well-timed quotations that it is difficult to resist."
In 1991 he wrote "Rooms without a view", an influential article attacking "heritage film".
The Modern Scottish Novel: Narrative and the National Imagination brought a "modern, inclusive, skeptical intelligence" to the question of Scottish literature.
He was general editor of the four-volume series History of Scottish Literature.
He has also been involved as editor or publisher with magazines including Cencrastus, Edinburgh Review and Radical Scotland.

Publications