Matthew McDiarmid, full name Matthew Purdie McDiarmid (25 June 1914–12 February 1996) was a Scottish literary scholar, essayist, campaigning academic and poet. He was a founding member of the

Association for Scottish Literary Studies The Association for Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS) is a Scottish educational charitable organization, charity, founded in 1970 to promote and support the teaching, study and writing of Scottish literature. Its founding members included the Sco ...

(1970) and the first president of the Robert Henryson Society which he also helped to found in 1993.

Career

McDiarmid was one of the leading members of a pioneering generation of Scottish academics who laboured and campaigned for a proper place for Scotland's literature in Scottish universities. At the opening of his career, no Scottish university had a dedicated professor of Scottish literature; by the time of his death, there were six. McDiarmid was born in

Barrhead Barrhead ( sco, Baurheid, gd, Ceann a' Bharra) is a town in East Renfrewshire, Scotland, southwest of Glasgow city centre on the edge of the Gleniffer Braes. At the 2011 census its population was 17,268. History Barrhead was formed when ...

in the West of Scotland and educated at the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

and

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the f ...

. His teaching career began with a post as assistant lecturer in English at the

University of Aberdeen The University of Aberdeen ( sco, University o' 'Aiberdeen; abbreviated as ''Aberd.'' in List of post-nominal letters (United Kingdom), post-nominals; gd, Oilthigh Obar Dheathain) is a public university, public research university in Aberdeen, Sc ...

in 1939. This was interrupted in 1941 for military service in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

as a

cryptographer Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

and was resumed in Aberdeen in 1945. For twelve years (1952–1964), McDiarmid lectured at

Queen's University, Belfast , mottoeng = For so much, what shall we give back? , top_free_label = , top_free = , top_free_label1 = , top_free1 = , top_free_label2 = , top_free2 = , established = , closed = , type = Public research university , parent = ...

. His teaching of literature, with its sensitivity to writers and traditions from all parts of the British Isles, was an important influence on the future Nobel Prize–winning poet

Seamus Heaney Seamus Justin Heaney (; 13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013) was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He received the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.

, one of his students during that period. He returned to Aberdeen University in 1964 where he remained until retirement in 1982.

Works

McDiarmid edited major canonical texts for the

Scottish Text Society The Scottish Text Society (STS) is a text publication society founded in 1882 to promote the study of Scottish literature. The Society publishes scholarly editions of important texts from the country's literary history, and has played a significa ...

: the works of

Robert Fergusson Robert Fergusson (5 September 1750 – 16 October 1774) was a Scottish poet. After formal education at the University of St Andrews, Fergusson led a bohemian life in Edinburgh, the city of his birth, then at the height of intellectual and c ...

(two volumes, 1954–1956) and

Hary Hary () is a commune in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. Population See also *Communes of the Aisne department The following is a list of the 799 communes in the French department of Aisne. The communes ...

's ''

Wallace Wallace may refer to: People * Clan Wallace in Scotland * Wallace (given name) * Wallace (surname) * Wallace (footballer, born 1986), full name Wallace Fernando Pereira, Brazilian football left-back * Wallace (footballer, born 1987), full name ...

'' (two volumes, 1968–1969), as well as producing the general introduction and full literary and historical notes for what is now the principal modern edition of Barbour's ''

Bruce The English language name Bruce arrived in Scotland with the Normans, from the place name Brix, Manche in Normandy, France, meaning "the willowlands". Initially promulgated via the descendants of king Robert the Bruce (1274−1329), it has been ...

'' (three volumes, 1980–1985). He also produced a version of Sir David Lindsay's '' Satire of the Three Estates'' (1967) and wrote commentaries on the Scottish

makar A makar () is a term from Scottish literature for a poet or bard, often thought of as a royal court poet. Since the 19th century, the term ''The Makars'' has been specifically used to refer to a number of poets of fifteenth and sixteenth cen ...

s, in particular

Robert Henryson Robert Henryson (Middle Scots: Robert Henrysoun) was a poet who flourished in Scotland in the period c. 1460–1500. Counted among the Scots ''makars'', he lived in the royal burgh of Dunfermline and is a distinctive voice in the Northern Renai ...

. Audio recordings of appraisals of medieval Scottish literature he made for the

Scotsoun Scotsoun is an audio archive of works of Scottish literature, mainly of poetry in the Scots language. The recordings were created over a period of thirty years by George Philp and Allan Ramsay and feature the voices of present poets in the langu ...

archive also exist. In the years of his retirement, Matthew McDiarmid produced two volumes of verse, ''Not in my Own Land'' (1984) and ''Love Tales of Early Japan and Early Scotland, and Other Poems'' (1991).

Career

Works

Notes

See also