Professor David Parkinson

Walking Perth’s Past: The Muses Threnodie for New Audiences

This Visiting Fellowship has at its core the completion of a new scholarly edition for the Scottish Text Society of The Muses Threnodie (1638). This poem describes a series of walks out from the town of Perth, often past landmarks which remain significant features in the local landscape. This poem gives a rare and remarkable insight into the lives, amusements, and anxieties of the residents of early modern Perth. It provides valuable perspectives on how early modern Scots perceived their natural and built environments.

The edition will be designed as a reference tool to help modern audiences better understand how previous generations interacted with nature and architecture, and to inform local discussions about such interactions today. Considered more fully, this project will disseminate scholarship to a wider audience who might be surprised and pleased to find they have a use for it, indeed a stake in it.