Abstract
This essay discusses from his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802 etc) Walter Scott's version of the ballad "Thomas the Rhymer" (or "True Thomas") tracing the ballad's history within the social context of its reception, and then comparing Scott’s version with the orally-transmitted version "Thomas Rhymer and the Queen of Elfland",written down by Anna Gordon Brown in 1800, for differences both in wording and in punctuation choices as the “apologetic apostrophe,” to suggest how such textual traces show the changing relationship between textual form and textual function. [essay still in final proof stage]
Recommended Citation
Selfe, David
(2018)
"‘Such Editorial Liberties’: Scott and the Textual Afterlives of Thomas the Rhymer,"
Studies in Scottish Literature:
Vol. 44:
Iss.
2, 89–100.
Available at:
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol44/iss2/9