SOURCE: "Is Man No More Than This? A Consideration of Edwin Muir's 'The Story and the Fable'," in Studies in Scottish Literature, Vol. XVII, 1982, pp. 13-22.

In the following essay, Dodd and Lapsley argue that the central concern of Muir's autobiography is neither self-reflection nor self-definition, but an inquiry into the definition of humanness.

In The Story and the Fable and in a letter written at the time of its composition, Edwin Muir poses a question which reveals the nature of his concern in the autobiography. His repeated question is neither the orthodox autobiographical 'Who am I?' nor the question John Ruskin asks himself in Praeterita when speaking of his desire for a vocation—"What should I be, or do?"¹ If the former indicates an anxiety about personal identity, and Ruskin's question involves a concern with self-definition in a social sense, Muir's question is of the very...