- Department of English
Youngstown State University
One University Plaza
Youngstown, OH 44555 - (330) 941-3642
Corey E. Andrews
Youngstown State University, English, Faculty Member
- Poetry, English, British Empire, Classics, Poetics, Caribbean History, and 58 moreScots in the British West Indies, Burns and Enlightenment, Burns and English Poetry, Robert Burns and Ireland, Burns and Romanticism, English Literature, Scottish Literature, 19th Century Scottish Literature, Robert Burns, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Digital Humanities, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Intertextuality, Labour Studies, Laboring-class poet, Work and Labour, Labour history, Labor History (History), Labor History and Studies, Laboring-class poetry, 18th Century Britain, British Literature, Post-Colonialism, Postcolonial Studies (Literature), Caribbean Literature, Postcolonial Studies, Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean, Politics and Post-Colonial Theory, Postcolonial Theory, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Postcolonialism and Literary Representations of the British Regions (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), Postcolonial Poetry, 18th Century British Literature, Anthropology of Alcohol, 18th and 19th Century, History of Alcohol and Drug Use, Scottish history (History), 19th Century British (Literature), 18th & 19th Centuries, Sociology of Scotland, Alcohol Studies, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Eighteenth-Century literature, Scottish History, Scottish Diaspora, 18th century British history and culture, Latin America and Caribbean, Caribbean Diasporas, Caribbean Slavery, Post-Colonial Theory, Latin American and Caribbean History, Scottish Enlightenment, Scottish Culture, Scottish Studies, Laboring class Writing, 18th century Poetry, Religion and Literature, and Ecocriticismedit
- I am a Professor of English at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio. My book Inventing Scotland's Bard: Th... moreI am a Professor of English at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio. My book Inventing Scotland's Bard: The British Reception of Robert Burns, 1786-1836 was published in 2022 by the South Carolina Scottish Literature Series and is available on Amazon. Inventing Scotland's Bard provides a detailed annotated bibliography of Burns's British reception history, offering the first such resource since J. Gibson's Bibliography of Robert Burns (1881).
My book The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834 was published in 2015 by Brill / Rodopi Press. I am currently working on a book-length project on critical and creative representations of Robert Burns, from 1828-2009.
I received my Ph.D. in Eighteenth-Century British Literature from Ohio University in 2000. My main research interest is eighteenth-century Scottish poetry, particularly the work of Robert Burns. I also specialize in Scottish Studies more generally, as well as issues related to labouring-class writers in the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries.edit
Inventing Scotland’s Bard sets out to map the first fifty years of critical reaction to the poems, songs and life of Robert Burns, from his first book Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) to the explosion of new biographical and... more
Inventing Scotland’s Bard sets out to map the first fifty years of critical reaction to the poems, songs and life of Robert Burns, from his first book Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) to the explosion of new biographical and editorial work in the 1830s. Designed initially as a supplement and companion to Corey E. Andrews’s interpretative study, The Genius of Scotland (2015), this new book stands independently as a reference tool on the Burns phenomenon. Year by year, for half a century, it provides publication details and informative annotations on a variety of newspaper articles, periodical reviews, biographical comment, and poetic responses to Burns and his work. The materials reflect a wide spectrum of opinions and critical perspectives, from contemporaries who encountered Burn when his work was first published to writers of the two succeeding generations. Readers will find here a fascinating record of how in these crucial decades critics and readers engaged with Burns’s poetry to construct a national and international icon.
Research Interests: Reception Studies, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, Bibliography, Scottish Studies, and 15 moreAudience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, English, Biography, Robert Burns, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, Literary History, Reception History, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Bibliographic Research, Annotated Bibliographies, Scottish Poetry, Scotland, 18c English and Scottish Literature, and Scottish Poetry, Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Philosophy
The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, focuses on the reception history of Robert Burns during and after his life, terminating in the life and career of “the Ettrick Shepherd” James Hogg. The concept... more
The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, focuses on the reception history of Robert Burns during and after his life, terminating in the life and career of “the Ettrick Shepherd” James Hogg. The concept of ‘genius’ is examined in depth, particularly its relation to issues of class and nation. For Burns, being characterized as a poetic ‘genius’ at first facilitated his success in finding audiences beyond his immediate locale in Ayrshire. The review penned by Henry Mackenzie in the Lounger encapsulated this aspect of Burns’s publicity, providing the catchphrase (‘the Heaven-taught ploughman’) that followed Burns throughout the rest of his career. While Mackenzie’s review proved initially useful by introducing the poet to wider audiences, it also severely limited Burns’s ability to participate fully in the literary field of his day. Most critics today recognize Burns’s great facility with mainstream poetic forms and modes and appreciate the dense allusiveness and intertextuality of his work. However, this book explores the reasons that this element of Burns’s verse was not appreciated by his critics and readers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, I examine the figure of Burns as both national icon and literary celebrity, fêted for his distinctiveness as a labouring-class ‘genius’ but also censored and judged for the putative transgressiveness of his life and work. The tension between approbation and moral condemnation expressed by Burns’s critics and readers culminated with the varying successes of James Hogg, for whom Burns’s legacy proved to be a difficult inheritance. I argue throughout the book that this process was directly tied to his reception history, which honed and refined Burns as a ‘cultural production’ that would meet the diverse needs of his national audiences. This resulted in considerable distortion of Burns’s biography, as well as critical diminishment for the scope and complexity of his poetry in both Scots and English. The simplification and distortion of Burns’s works and life story can still be felt in the present, as the book concludes with an assessment of the poet’s persona that was sanitized for public consumption in the nineteenth century and beyond.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, British Literature, Scottish Literature, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, and 73 moreEnglish Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, Reception Studies, Cultural Heritage, British History, Nineteenth Century Studies, Reception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, Material Culture Studies, Working Classes, Popular Culture, 18th Century Scottish Literature, 19th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Cultural Theory, Labour history, Eighteenth Century History, Identity (Culture), Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, Nationalism, English, Literary Canon, Culture, Working-Class Literature, Scottish Enlightenment, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, National Identity, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Labour Studies, 18th & 19th Centuries, Work and Labour, 19th Century (History), Literary History, Scottish history (History), Historical Analysis of Literary Reception, Nineteenth Century, History of Nationalism, Nineteenth Century Literature, Reception History, 19th Century British (Literature), Nations and nationalism, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Comparative Historical Analysis, Eighteenth Century, Working Class Studies, Littérature, Etudes de réception, Sociologie de la littérature et de la culture, Working-Class History, Literary Canon Formation, Scottish Highlands, Sir Walter Scott, Literary Theory and Criticism, Eighteenth Century Studies, Scottish Culture, Literature and History, Laboring-class poet, Laboring-class poetry, Scottish language and literature, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, 18c English and Scottish Literature, Robert Burns as Sentimentalist Poet, Robert Burns Poet, Laboring class Writing, Scottish Cultural Studies, Literary Theory Canon Studies, and Labouring-class Poetry
This work provides a critical analysis of a neglected yet vital element of Scottish literature in the 18th century, covering the crucial period from the Union of 1707 to the revolutionary turmoil of the 1790s. It examines the literary... more
This work provides a critical analysis of a neglected yet vital element of Scottish literature in the 18th century, covering the crucial period from the Union of 1707 to the revolutionary turmoil of the 1790s. It examines the literary output of several important clubs in eighteenth-century Scotland in an innovative fashion, offering the first book-length study of the club poetry of Scotland’s most significant eighteenth-century poets, Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, British History, and 34 moreEighteenth-Century literature, Literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Literary Criticism, Critical Social Theory, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, Nationalism, English, Scottish Enlightenment, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Burns and Enlightenment, Burns and Romanticism, Cultural Nationalism, National Identity, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Literary History, Scottish history (History), Critical and Cultural Theory, History of Nationalism, Burns and English Poetry, 18th Century, Nations and nationalism, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, 18th Century Britain, Scotland, Eighteenth Century Studies, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, and Robert Burns Poet
This chapter provides a survey of poems written in the Scots register, beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and concluding at the start of the nineteenth. Major and minor Scots poetry is assessed, with attention to formal and thematic... more
This chapter provides a survey of poems written in the Scots register, beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and concluding at the start of the nineteenth. Major and minor Scots poetry is assessed, with attention to formal and thematic continuities across the period. In particular, the Scots triumvirate of Allan Ramsay/Robert Fergusson/Robert Burns is examined in depth.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Eighteenth-Century literature, Eighteenth Century History, and 15 moreScottish Studies, Scottish History, English, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, 18th Century British Literature, Scottish Poetry, Seventeenth-Century British History and Culture, Scotland, Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Scots Language, Seventeenth century Scotland, and Scots Poetry
This chapter focuses on the Masonic experiences of Robert Burns, with attention to the history of the organization in Scottish culture and society. It presents a detailed analysis of the myths surrounding Burns and Freemasonry, finding... more
This chapter focuses on the Masonic experiences of Robert Burns, with attention to the history of the organization in Scottish culture and society. It presents a detailed analysis of the myths surrounding Burns and Freemasonry, finding that the poet was not a life-long advocate of the Craft.
Research Interests: Scottish Literature, British History, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, Scottish Enlightenment, and 15 moreRobert Burns, History of Sociability, Research into Freemasonry, Scottish history (History), Freemasonry (Literature), Sociability, Early Modern Scotland, Conviviality, Scottish Politics, Scotland, Fremasonry, Free masonry, Associationalism, Clubs, and British freemasonry
This chapter offers a pedagogical approach to eighteenth-century labouring class poetry in the college classroom, focusing on the poetic use of the georgic mode. It provides teaching models for the works of male and female labouring class... more
This chapter offers a pedagogical approach to eighteenth-century labouring class poetry in the college classroom, focusing on the poetic use of the georgic mode. It provides teaching models for the works of male and female labouring class poets of the period, such as Stephen Duck, Mary Collier, and James Grainger.
Research Interests: British Literature, English Literature, Teaching and Learning, Eighteenth-Century literature, Critical Pedagogy, and 15 moreEighteenth Century History, English, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Pedagogy, Georgics, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Teaching Strategies and Styles, Social Class, Stephen Duck, Working Class Studies, teaching Strategies, Eighteenth Century Poetry, Labouring-class Poetry, and Georgic mode
This short essay introduces the 2017 Scottish Forum session at the MLA Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, focused on the theme of Scottish Sociability: the Literature of Clubs and Associations.
Research Interests:
This chapter explores the socio-cultural influence of Henry Mackenzie's two periodicals "The Mirror" and "The Lounger" in Scotland during the 1770s-1780s. In particular, it explores the ways that the periodicals expressed aesthetic... more
This chapter explores the socio-cultural influence of Henry Mackenzie's two periodicals "The Mirror" and "The Lounger" in Scotland during the 1770s-1780s. In particular, it explores the ways that the periodicals expressed aesthetic principles surrounding "taste," linking their techniques to earlier English models like "The Tatler" and "The Spectator." The influence of Mackenzie's review of Robert Burns's poetry is also assessed.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, and 15 moreScottish History, English, Scottish Enlightenment, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Periodicals, Book Reviews, Scottish Poetry, Scotland, Scottish Culture, Literature and History, Eighteenth-century periodicals, History of Taste, Eigtheenth Century Studies, and Scots Poetry
This article examines the provenance of the poem "The Liberty Tree," a work frequently attributed to Robert Burns. It also examines the Scottish contexts surrounding the concept of liberty, as well as the revolutionary symbolism of... more
This article examines the provenance of the poem "The Liberty Tree," a work frequently attributed to Robert Burns. It also examines the Scottish contexts surrounding the concept of liberty, as well as the revolutionary symbolism of liberty trees.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, British History, Eighteenth-Century literature, British Politics, and 24 moreEighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, Politics, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, American Revolution, Liberty, Scottish Politics, American Revolutionary ideology, Mobs, Riots, and Revolutionary Crowds, Scotland, American Revolutionary War, Eighteenth Century Studies, Liberty and Equality, Early American History (colonial, revolutionary, and early republic), Eighteenth-Century British History and the American Revolution, Revolutionary War, Concepts of Liberty, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, Robert Burns as Sentimentalist Poet, and Robert Burns Poet
This essay explores the legacy of Robert Burns, particularly the powerful influence he exerted upon nineteenth-century Scottish labouring-class poets. The verse of these poets is assessed in this essay, with attention to their varying... more
This essay explores the legacy of Robert Burns, particularly the powerful influence he exerted upon nineteenth-century Scottish labouring-class poets. The verse of these poets is assessed in this essay, with attention to their varying efforts to achieve recognition in the literary marketplace, where powerful forces shape the processes of reception and influence.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, and 59 moreReception Studies, Nineteenth Century Studies, Reception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, Working Classes, 18th Century Scottish Literature, 19th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Critical Social Theory, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, Nationalism, English, Poetics, Working-Class Literature, Working Class Agency, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, British Romanticism, Robert Burns, Burns and Romanticism, Cultural Nationalism, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, National Identity, Critical Discourse Analysis, Public Reception, Labour Studies, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, 19th Century (History), Reception in popular culture, Literary History, Scottish history (History), Critical and Cultural Theory, Historical Analysis of Literary Reception, History of Nationalism, Reception History, 18th and 19th Century, 19th Century British (Literature), 18th Century, Nations and nationalism, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, 18th Century Britain, Comparative Historical Analysis, Working Class Studies, Littérature, Etudes de réception, Sociologie de la littérature et de la culture, Working-Class History, Eighteenth-Century British Literature, Working class culture, Laboring-class poet, Laboring-class poetry, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, Laboring class Writing, and Labouring-class Poetry
When Charles Churchill published “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, the controversial English poet, priest, and libertine was enjoying considerable personal and critical success; his association with John Wilkes and The North Briton gave... more
When Charles Churchill published “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, the controversial English poet, priest, and libertine was enjoying considerable personal and critical success; his association with John Wilkes and The North Briton gave him no small measure of notoriety, and the hefty profits brought in by poems like “The Rosciad” allowed him to pursue a very irreligious life of pleasure. However, as Robert Southey later remarked of Churchill, “no English poet had ever enjoyed so excessive and short-lived a popularity.” Indeed, after the appearance of the poet’s “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, Churchill witnessed the fall and arrest of his own compatriot Wilkes only three weeks after the resignation of the hated Scottish minister, Lord Bute. The trend continued into the next year, when Churchill followed the exiled Wilkes into France and there died unexpectedly, at the age of thirty-three. By the time of his death, Churchill had amassed an impressive body of work, ranging from topical satire of London entertainments to virulently anti-Scottish propaganda like “The Prophecy of Famine.” This essay examines the latter, in such long poems as “The Prophecy of Famine” and “The Ghost,” in order to determine sources for both Churchill’s Scottophobia and its attendant popularity with English readers in the early 1760s. In particular, Churchill’s use of the famine-stricken Highlander will be investigated, for it is my contention that this image crystallizes the poet’s obsessive hatred of all things Scottish. The stereotype of the Highlander as a rugged, aggressive, masculine warrior is converted by Churchill into a paradoxical image capable of inspiring simultaneous loathing and inadvertent sympathy in English readers; this resultant image, the Highlander as both ravenous and starved, is central to Churchill’s political strategy in poems like “Prophecy of Famine.” The Scot as Highlander is safely dispelled as a serious menace due to his starvation, yet he is retained as a threat on account of his purportedly natural Scottish avarice. Studying the reasons for Churchill’s successful use of this poetic image turned political icon is the primary aim of this essay.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, British History, Eighteenth-Century literature, and 29 moreLiterature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Critical Social Theory, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, Nationalism, English, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Cultural Nationalism, National Identity, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Literary History, Scottish history (History), Critical and Cultural Theory, 18th Century, Nations and nationalism, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, Scottish Highlands, Scotland, Eighteenth Century Studies, Eighteenth-century British history, and Ethnicity and National Identity
Scots were among the most widely-traveled people in eighteenth-century Britain, often recording their experiences of cross-cultural contact in their public and personal writing. The chapter will provide a detailed examination of the... more
Scots were among the most widely-traveled people in eighteenth-century Britain, often recording their experiences of cross-cultural contact in their public and personal writing. The chapter will provide a detailed examination of the response of Scottish women to West Indian slavery, a practice in which many Scots were deeply implicated. In particular, this chapter will discuss the Caribbean-Scottish relations explored in the travel accounts of two women: Janet Schaw (born ca. 1740) and Maria Ridell née Woodley (1772-1808). Based on her experiences in the West Indies in the 1770s, Schaw’s Journal of a Lady of Quality recounts the author’s personal contacts with West Indians and Scottish settlers. Not intended for publication, her journal explores the peculiarly Scottish dimension of West Indian life, seeking to clarify and defend the existing practice of slavery perpetrated by fellow Scots of “quality.” Schaw emerges in the Journal as an unwilling witness to slavery, a woman whose class status prevented her from establishing any sympathetic connection with the slaves she encountered. In this respect, Schaw’s Journal offers an alternative account of Caribbean-Scottish relations than has been typically expressed in the proto-abolitionist verse of her contemporary Scots. Two decades after Schaw’s Journal, Maria Riddell recorded her experiences as a young woman in the West Indies; her narrative Voyages to the Madeira and Leeward Caribbean Isles (1792) offers a much different viewpoint on the practice of slavery. Unlike the personal nature of Schaw’s Journal, Riddell sought to illustrate and assess life in the West Indies through a more “scientific” style of observation and description. This stylistic quality lends her Voyages a more distanced perspective on slavery, not yet presenting a fully-voiced critique of its practice but also disavowing the studied obliviousness of Schaw’s Journal. This chapter will examine this change in the perception of slavery from Schaw to Riddell, addressing the changing points of contact and departure in Caribbean-Scottish relations evidenced in the texts. It also offers the first critical analysis of Riddell’s Voyages, exploring in depth an important text that continues to be neglected in discussions of Scottish women’s travel literature. By examining the cross-cultural responses of Schaw and Riddell to life in the West Indies, the chapter will reveal the complex, often ambivalent reaction of Scottish women to Scotland’s role in a burgeoning British empire that was dependent upon slavery.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Travel Writing, and 48 moreWomen's Studies, Women's History, British History, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, Literary Criticism, British Politics, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Slavery, Scottish History, Nationalism, Women's Literature, English, History of Slavery, Abolition of Slavery, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Women, National Identity, Anti-slavery, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, British Empire, Slave Trade, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Postcolonialism and Literary Representations of the British Regions (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Caribbean Slavery, Seventeenth and eighteenth-century women writers, women moral philosophers, Sociology of Scotland, Travel Literature, 18th Century, Nations and nationalism, 18th Century Britain, Women and Culture, Eighteenth Century, Women and Gender Studies, Atlantic Slave Trade, Travel, Ecocriticism, travel writing, popular literature and culture, Travel writing, Caribbean literature and culture, Latin American narrative, Scotland, Middle Passage, Atlantic World Slavery, African Diaspora, Slavery and Medicine, Black Women's History, Violence Studies, Caribbean History, Literatures of Voyaging, Discovery, Travel & Colonialism, Ethnicity and National Identity, and Women's Travel Writing
This essay presents a detailed analysis of the works of three labouring-class poets who wrote in the "shadow" of Robert Burns: John Lapraik, David Sillar, and Janet Little. It assesses the influence of Burns upon their literary... more
This essay presents a detailed analysis of the works of three labouring-class poets who wrote in the "shadow" of Robert Burns: John Lapraik, David Sillar, and Janet Little. It assesses the influence of Burns upon their literary productions , finding that the "shadow" of Burns tended to diminish the works and reputations of his fellow labouring-class poets during this period.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Reception Studies, British History, and 35 moreNineteenth Century Studies, Reception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, Working Classes, 18th Century Scottish Literature, 19th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, English, Poetics, Working-Class Literature, Reception, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Scottish Culture, British Romanticism, Robert Burns, Burns and Romanticism, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Scottish history (History), Reception History, 18th and 19th Century, 19th Century British (Literature), 18th Century Britain, Working Class Studies, Littérature, Etudes de réception, Sociologie de la littérature et de la culture, Working-Class History, 18th century British history and culture, Working class culture, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, Robert Burns as Sentimentalist Poet, and Robert Burns Poet
The initial wave of celebrity surrounding Robert Burns’s print appearance in 1786 largely derived from the novelty of the poet’s class background. Dubbed the “heaven-taught ploughman” by Henry Mackenzie, Burns achieved sudden fame as an... more
The initial wave of celebrity surrounding Robert Burns’s print appearance in 1786 largely derived from the novelty of the poet’s class background. Dubbed the “heaven-taught ploughman” by Henry Mackenzie, Burns achieved sudden fame as an untaught prodigy whose inspiration came directly from nature and the folk culture which he represented in his person and work. Although even contemporary critics of Burns such as John Logan doubted the poet’s authenticity, much of Burns’s 1786 Kilmarnock edition employs content and imagery that bolsters the poet’s “heaven-taught” persona. However, close analysis of Burns’s work often reveals the use of distancing devices that separate the poetic speaker from the content. Nowhere is this use more apparent than in “Halloween,” a long, quasi-anthropological study of the Scottish folk traditions surrounding the holiday. At 252 lines (among the longer productions in Burns’s body of work), “Halloween” teems with rich, often confusing detail about folk customs and rites that is meticulously explained in footnotes. While they do clarify matters of content and style, Burns’s footnotes also underscore and in fact, embody the distance between the poem’s folk content and its educated, primarily urban audience. Not only does Burns’s use of academic discourse belie his folk authenticity but more significantly, it points to gaps in access to experiences that separated and differentiated classes. In this sense, the footnote serves as a bridge between whole “ways of life” (to use Raymond Williams’s term) that were being increasingly confounded in eighteenth-century Scotland. This chapter explains how Burns straddled and attempted to traverse this gap in his poem “Halloween,” looking particularly at how the footnote both affirms and alienates the content to which it is appended.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, Reception Studies, and 44 moreLiterature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Audience Studies, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Stylistics, English language, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Stereotypes, English, Formal Theory, Code-Switching, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Literary Theory, Scottish Culture, British Romanticism, Robert Burns, Burns and Enlightenment, Burns and Romanticism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Language, Literary Linguistics, Literary History, Sociology of Scotland, Critical and Cultural Theory, Psychology of Reception, Burns and English Poetry, Reception History, Scots, 18th Century, 18th Century Britain, Eighteenth Century, Identity, Dialect, Scottish Politics, Audience Research, Scotland, Metalanguage, and Style
This essay presents a critical appreciation of the work of J. DeLancey Ferguson, a noted Burns critic of the twentieth century.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, Intellectual History, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, and 27 moreReception Studies, Romanticism, Reception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Audience Studies, 19th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, British Politics, Scottish Studies, Political Culture, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, Enlightenment, Cultural Politics, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Literary Theory, Scottish Culture, Cultural Historical Activity Theory, Robert Burns, European Politics, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Reception in popular culture, Literary History, 18th Century Britain, and Eighteenth-Century British Literature
Accounts of Robert Burns's reading are well-documented in his correspondence, where he frequently attests to his enjoyment of three books in particular: John Moore's Zeluco and Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling and The Man of the... more
Accounts of Robert Burns's reading are well-documented in his correspondence, where he frequently attests to his enjoyment of three books in particular: John Moore's Zeluco and Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling and The Man of the World. These three Scottish novels recount the lives of vividly-imagined men whose actions affect those around them in dramatic fashion. Zeluco lies, deceives, and ultimately murders his lovers and family; the “Man of the World” Sindall behaves similarly, threatening the well-being of an innocent, virtuous family. At the other end of the spectrum, Harley (the lead of The Man of Feeling) weeps and emotes in vignette-like encounters with various scenes of suffering. Each of these characters holds clues to the exceedingly popular model of masculinity represented by the writing and reputation of Robert Burns. This essay examines the templates of masculinity embodied by Zeluco, Sindall, and Harley, in order to determine how and why they commanded such an influence on Burns's imagination. The characters' relation to late eighteenth-century ideals of politeness is also examined, in addition to the novels’ engagement with sentimental discourse. The essay offers an analysis of the combined influences of these three "men of feeling" on Burns, his writing, and his posthumous reputation.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, Reception Studies, and 30 moreReception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Audience Studies, Textual Scholarship, Literary Criticism, English language, Textual Criticism, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, English, Formal Theory, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Burns and Enlightenment, Burns and Romanticism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Literary History, Scottish history (History), Critical and Cultural Theory, Psychology of Reception, Reception History, 18th Century Britain, and 18th-Century Studies
This essay provides a brief account of the Burnsiana collections of John Dawson Ross, with particular attention to the popular cultural reception of Burns throughout the nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, Reception Studies, and 33 moreReception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Audience Studies, 19th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, British Politics, Scottish Studies, Political Culture, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, Politics, Nationalism, English, Cultural Politics, Reception, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Cultural Nationalism, European Politics, National Identity, Critical Discourse Analysis, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Reception in popular culture, Literary History, Critical and Cultural Theory, Historical Analysis of Literary Reception, Nations and nationalism, Reception (Literature), 18th Century Britain, and Scottish Nationalism
Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives... more
Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives transformed due to the success of their verse (Stephen Duck most famously), but most faded into literary obscurity. However, a substantial body of “work” poems was produced by a diverse group of poets throughout the century, each manifesting divergent concerns and attitudes about the experience of work. This chapter assesses the formal connections uniting this poetic genre, particularly the frequent use of such literary devices as ironic distancing, litotes, and mock-georgic description. Instead of solely classifying “work” poems on the basis of their subject matter, this chapter demonstrates that such poetry (indeed the genre itself) lends itself to sophisticated literary techniques often associated with other poetic genres. In this fashion the full measure of eighteenth-century working class poetry can be evaluated more fairly, particularly by analyzing the formation of a new genre designed expressly by the poets themselves. The chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate the connectedness, rather than the alienation, of working class poetry to the eighteenth-century British poetic tradition.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, and 67 moreReception Studies, Sociology of Work, Genre studies, Reception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, Working Classes, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Genre, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Labour history, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, English, Formal Theory, Poetics, Working Class Consciousness, E. P. Thompson and 'The Making of the English Working Class', Working-Class Literature, Working Class Agency, Reception, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Quality of Working Life, Gender and Work, Robert Burns, Critical Discourse Analysis, Public Reception, Georgic Literature, Labour Studies, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Georgics, Work and Labour, Social History, Genre Theory, Genre research, Reception in popular culture, Labor History and Studies, Literary History, Critical and Cultural Theory, Historical Analysis of Literary Reception, Genres, Eras, Reception History, 18th and 19th Century, Reception (Literature), 18th Century Britain, Comparative Labour Studies, Comparative Historical Analysis, Formal Poetics, Working Class Studies, Littérature, Etudes de réception, Sociologie de la littérature et de la culture, Working-Class History, 18th century British history and culture, Theories, Practices, Laboring-class poet, Laboring-class poetry, The Sociology of Social: Thinking, Laboring class Writing, Labouring-class Poetry, and Workingclass
This article focuses on the critical reception of Robert Burns from 1796 to 1828. It explores how the concept of genius influenced the perception of Burns as it was represented by critics and editors throughout the time period. Testimony... more
This article focuses on the critical reception of Robert Burns from 1796 to 1828. It explores how the concept of genius influenced the perception of Burns as it was represented by critics and editors throughout the time period. Testimony of Burns’s ‘genius’ in the early nineteenth century was entirely in line with critical responses to the poet’s works beginning in 1786. This essay provides a survey of these responses, revealing a consistent pattern of critical reception of Burns and his body of work. The primary critical approach to Burns’s work involved the application of ‘genius’ theory; the continuum of critical responses demonstrates the fluid nature of this concept throughout the late eighteenth and mid nineteenth centuries. However, attention to the poet’s reception history also shows that while the concept underwent significant moderation as an aesthetic category, its association with moral failings was almost uniformly expressed by Burns’s critics. The ties between genius and biography, particularly in Burns’s case, became increasingly knotted as later commentators attempted to understand the poet’s life and works. This essay demonstrates that the process of myth-building and moralizing surrounding Burns continued unabated through the nineteenth century, particularly as critics assayed the poet’s nationalist iconicity while attempting to diminish the relevance of moral failings wrought by his ‘genius’. Burns’s fame still highlights this tension between his undeniable poetic gifts and his messy personal life, between his poetic aspirations and his complicated desires.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, and 42 moreReception Studies, Reception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, 19th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Critical Social Theory, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, Nationalism, English, Poetics, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Literary Theory, Scottish Culture, British Romanticism, Robert Burns, Burns and Romanticism, Cultural Nationalism, Nineteenth Century British History and Culture, National Identity, Critical Discourse Analysis, Public Reception, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Reception in popular culture, Literary History, Scottish history (History), Critical and Cultural Theory, Historical Analysis of Literary Reception, History of Nationalism, Reception History, 18th and 19th Century, 19th Century British (Literature), Nations and nationalism, 18th Century Britain, Comparative Historical Analysis, and Littérature, Etudes de réception, Sociologie de la littérature et de la culture
The article discusses the promotion of poet Robert Burns as a national icon for Scotland after his death in 1796. It cites Burns' popular appeal to Scots of all classes, with special attention to his cultural value in nineteenth-century... more
The article discusses the promotion of poet Robert Burns as a national icon for Scotland after his death in 1796. It cites Burns' popular appeal to Scots of all classes, with special attention to his cultural value in nineteenth-century Scotland. As the nineteenth-century glorification of Burns waned, interest in his political views (and potential value) grew among many Scottish groups. In particular, the significance of politics assumed a primary role in critical and popular cultural analyses of the poet. Particularly in the new climate of devolution following the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, Burns represented different, often competing iconic meanings as various groups have sought to harness the power of his reputation to promote their interests. Nowhere has this process been more evident than in Burns’s relationship to politics; his endorsement or denunciation of radical politics in particular has continued to be a major bone of contention in discussions of his reputation. The article indicates the claim of ownership of Burns by the Scottish people continues to be a major feature of Scotland's relationship to Burns. It suggests that Burns' place in the literary field will be better understood and appreciated by recognizing the process by which he became a national icon.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, and 44 moreReception Studies, Reception Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, 19th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, British Politics, Critical Social Theory, Scottish Studies, Political Culture, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, Politics, Identity politics, Nationalism, English, Cultural Politics, Poetics, Reception, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Literary Theory, Scottish Culture, British Romanticism, Robert Burns, Cultural Nationalism, European Politics, National Identity, Critical Discourse Analysis, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Literary History, Sociology of Scotland, Scottish history (History), Critical and Cultural Theory, Historical Analysis of Literary Reception, History of Nationalism, Reception History, 18th and 19th Century, 19th Century British (Literature), 18th Century Britain, and Littérature, Etudes de réception, Sociologie de la littérature et de la culture
This short essay provides contextual background on Robert Burns's lyric, "Ae Fond Kiss," as well as critical analysis of the song.
Research Interests: Scottish Literature, English Literature, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, and 16 morePoetry, Literary Criticism, Scottish Studies, English, Poetics, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, British Romanticism, Robert Burns, Burns and Romanticism, Scottish music, 18th and 19th Century, Eighteenth-Century Music, Eighteenth Century, English Folk Songs, Singing, and Robert Burns and Jean Armour
This chapter focuses on the largely ignored issue of Burns’s critical practice. In his prose and letters, one can find wide-ranging discussions of poetry and song, along with detailed analyses of literary forms and modes. Burns’s critical... more
This chapter focuses on the largely ignored issue of Burns’s critical practice. In his prose and letters, one can find wide-ranging discussions of poetry and song, along with detailed analyses of literary forms and modes. Burns’s critical writings belie the deliberate oppositions of critic and poet and reveal a writer deeply invested in his craft, using critical axioms and sentimental topoi to refine his work. The tone and posture of much of Burns’s criticism is both brash and apprehensive; he critically values what he can creatively put into practice. For Burns, criticism was less about displaying correct learning or taste than on discovering sources for emulation. Successful emulation resulted from critical analysis and creative transposition, studying primary texts for sources, ideas, and strategies for future writing. Such a vigorous and surprisingly cohesive attitude about the craft of writing forms the heart of Burns’s criticism, an uncollected commentary randomly dispersed throughout his prose. This body of work also pointedly refutes his supposed ‘want of Learning’ and reveals a predominantly practical reader intrigued with the process of poetic creation.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Critical Discourse Studies, Reception Studies, and 24 moreEighteenth-Century literature, Literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Textual Criticism, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, English, Formal Theory, Poetics, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Literary Theory, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Rhetorical Criticism, Critical Discourse Analysis, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, 18th Century British Literature, Literary History, Critical and Cultural Theory, Reception History, 18th Century Britain, and Eighteenth Century
This article examines the wide-ranging Scottish poetic response to eighteenth-century slavery, particularly the use of sentiment as a literary strategy designed to provoke empathetic reactions from readers. The article covers the entirety... more
This article examines the wide-ranging Scottish poetic response to eighteenth-century slavery, particularly the use of sentiment as a literary strategy designed to provoke empathetic reactions from readers. The article covers the entirety of the eighteenth-century Scottish response, ending with Robert Burns's ambiguous poetic treatments of slavery. Because Scots were intimately involved at home and abroad in the discourse and practice of the slave trade, they were well-positioned to respond to its effects. Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, derived from the works of Smith, Francis Hutcheson, and Dugald Stewart, had laid the groundwork for literary works that stressed the importance of feelings in the individual’s response to the world. Observable phenomena became not just the source of sensory impressions but served to structure and relate experiences by means of empathetic sentimental responses. These responses could guide future actions by acting to promote the relief of suffering and dissipate the stimulus to the observer’s own pain. Based on the central premise of this model—‘ev’ry heart can feel’—much Scottish poetry from the eighteenth century sought to redress the sufferings of slaves by appealing to core emotions in its audience, producing as a result a body of political writing that powerfully imagined the painful experience of slavery.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, Economic History, World Literatures, Labor Economics, and 59 morePolitical Economy, English Literature, Reception Studies, Latin American and Caribbean History, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Transatlantic History, British Politics, Transatlantic relations, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Sentiment Analysis, Slavery, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, Politics, Identity politics, Nationalism, English, Caribbean Literature, History of Slavery, Latin America and Caribbean, Cultural Politics, Caribbean History, Poetics, Scottish Abolition of Black Slavery, Abolition of Slavery, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Caribbean Studies, Political History, Scottish Culture, Scottish Diaspora, Robert Burns, Cultural Nationalism, European Politics, National Identity, The Caribbean, British Empire, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Scots in the British West Indies, Caribbean Slavery, Literary History, Scottish history (History), History of Nationalism, 18th and 19th Century, Transatlantic Literature, Literature of the Anglophone Caribbean, Caribbean Diasporas, Transatlantic studies, Littérature, Etudes de réception, Sociologie de la littérature et de la culture, Moral Sentimentalism, History of senses and sensibility, Transatlantic Studies, Atlantic Studies, Slavery, and Eighteenth-century British history
Scholarly discussion of Thomson-Gale’s database Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO) has continued unabated since the recent publication of articles by Sayre Greenfield and Robert Hume in The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer. It... more
Scholarly discussion of Thomson-Gale’s database Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO) has continued unabated since the recent publication of articles by Sayre Greenfield and Robert Hume in The Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer. It is hard to argue against the merits of a revolutionary database like ECCO, but placing such primary importance on a proprietary database may have unexpected consequences for the field of eighteenth-century studies. If ECCO-based research truly assumes the stature and cachet described by Hume and Greenfield, it will come at a considerable cost. Hard-working scholars at non-ECCO institutions may find themselves increasingly blocked from presenting and publishing their work, and graduate students at such institutions may discover that they cannot compete in the job market without ECCO-based dissertations and training. However, scholars who haven’t “got ECCO” don’t necessarily have to admit defeat. In fact, such scholars might desire to create their own digital archives, producing searchable texts in a non-proprietary format for universal use. With the help of non-proprietary databases and the sharing of knowledge in digital formats, the future of eighteenth-century studies for those without ECCO may not be as dire as it appears.
Research Interests: Computing In Social Sciences, Arts And Humanities, Professions, Humanities Computing (Digital Humanities), Digital Libraries, Digital Humanities, Digital Curation, and 14 moreEighteenth-Century literature, Literature, Digital Media, Literary Criticism, Digital History, Digital Literature, English, Digital Culture, Electronic Literature, Digital Media & Learning, Digital Preservation, Pedagogy, 18th Century British Literature, and English and American Studies
An intriguing historical feature of the Scottish Enlightenment is the blend of philosophical and drinking clubs to which leading thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith belonged. Two leading clubs of the period, the Select Society and... more
An intriguing historical feature of the Scottish Enlightenment is the blend of philosophical and drinking clubs to which leading thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith belonged. Two leading clubs of the period, the Select Society and the Poker Club, are the primary focus of this essay; the clubs provided members with dramatically different types of social experience. For the Select, it was a space for formal debate of topical issues, while the Poker offered a venue for convivial sociability. This essay examines the significant intersections of polite culture and convivial enjoyment occurring in Edinburgh club life, in order to analyze the active negotiation of boundaries between polite and popular tastes. Of particular interest is how that negotiation was played out in the “drinking and thinking” lives of some of polite culture’s most eloquent arbiters.
Research Interests: History, Political Economy, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Political Behavior, and 49 morePolitical Theory, Social Identity, British History, British Politics, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Political Culture, Scottish History, Politics, Identity politics, Nationalism, Enlightenment, Alcohol Studies, Scottish Enlightenment, Political History, Cultural Nationalism, Intellectual History of Enlightenment, 18th Century Philosophy, National Identity, Drugs And Alcohol, History of Alcohol and Drug Use, 18th & 19th Centuries, Social History, 18th- and 19th-century philosophy, Social and Cultural History, 18th Century Enlightenment, Scottish history (History), Social and Political Philosophy, 17th- and 18th-century Philosophy, History of Nationalism, Social History of Medicine, Enlightenment Political Thought, 18th and 19th Century, Anthropology of Alcohol, European Enlightenment, Nations and nationalism, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, 18th Century Britain, Eighteenth Century, Ethnicity and Nationalism, • Enlightenments and Modernities, Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Conviviality, Eighteenth Century Radical Enlightenment, Alcohol, Alcohol and Drugs, Alcohol and Drug Studies, Alcohol Drinking, and History of Philosophy
Eighteenth-century Scottish poetry has often been regarded as the product of only three men, each greater than the last. This Scots triad—Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, and Robert Burns—has served as the de facto nationalist vanguard of... more
Eighteenth-century Scottish poetry has often been regarded as the product of only three men, each greater than the last. This Scots triad—Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, and Robert Burns—has served as the de facto nationalist vanguard of eighteenth-century Scottish poetry, defiantly opposing the forces of English assimilation provoked by the Union of 1707. In this scenario (and given the altogether slender opus of Scots poems in the eighteenth century), the abundance of English verse by the Scots triad may continue to provoke the nagging suspicion that perhaps eighteenth-century Scots really did have a cultural "inferiority complex." Critics contending with eighteenth-century Scottish poetry face an apparent impasse: either continue studying a relatively limited sampling of Scots or hybrid Scots poems or argue for the value of English verse by Scottish poets. The former task not only invites critical burnout, but also relies on dubious assumptions about the function of Scots in eighteenth-century Scotland. For many critics, forces of cultural imperialism bent on eradicating literary Scots and its practitioners are the sole culprit for the loss of a cohesive Scottish national identity after the Union. However, in a nation with a diverse linguistic inheritance in Gaelic, Scots, and English, poets such as Ramsay, Fergusson, and Burns explored the possibilities of English in the same manner they did Scots: through self-conscious imitation of existing literary models. Plainly put, Scottish poets wrote in English for specific reasons that are as reflective of their culture as their motives for writing in Scots.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, Ethnic Studies, English Literature, Eighteenth-Century literature, and 38 moreLiterature, Postcolonial Studies, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, Nationalism, English, Poetics, Literary Canon, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Literary Theory, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Post-Colonialism, Cultural Nationalism, National Identity, Nationalism And State Building, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Postcolonial Theory, 18th Century British Literature, Postcolonialism and Literary Representations of the British Regions (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), Literary History, Sociology of Scotland, Politics and Post-Colonial Theory, Postcolonial Studies (Literature), Postcolonial Poetry, History of Nationalism, Ethnic Identities, Nations and nationalism, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Post-Colonial Theory, Poetry and Poetics, Ethnicity and Nationalism, Scotland, and Ethnicity and National Identity
As universally known as the life of Robert Burns appears to be, the story of his involvement in numerous clubs and societies has remained surprisingly perfunctory and limited. However, any casual reader of Burns can attest to his genial... more
As universally known as the life of Robert Burns appears to be, the story of his involvement in numerous clubs and societies has remained surprisingly perfunctory and limited. However, any casual reader of Burns can attest to his genial sociability, an element of his character that he constantly satisfied during his life through joining or forming clubs of his own making. He was, to borrow a phrase, an eminently “clubbable” poet. Burns maintained his popular appeal in his club poetry and activity by adapting and transforming his persona from that of the “heaven-taught ploughman” to the bard, a poet who would speak for the nation through himself. More strongly than club poets before him, Burns tapped into the structures of feeling that shaped his culture and attempted to make sense of that culture by using and adapting the sentiment behind those structures. Despite its obscurity in his poetic oeuvre, Burns’s club poetry acted as a significant part of this nationalist project by representing the poet’s own bardic character as a source for national unification. In his club verse, Burns demonstrated a striking awareness of his role as a national bard; through self-representation, he offered his own popular character as a bard to members and citizens alike as an index for their shared national memory.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Political Theory, Eighteenth-Century literature, and 30 moreLiterature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, British Politics, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Sentiment Analysis, Political Culture, Scottish History, Politics, Nationalism, English, Cultural Politics, Poetics, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Political History, Scottish Culture, British Romanticism, Robert Burns, Burns and Romanticism, Cultural Nationalism, European Politics, National Identity, 18th Century British Literature, Literary History, Scottish history (History), History of Nationalism, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, Moral Sentimentalism, and History of senses and sensibility
The dilemma of Scottish national identity in the eighteenth century can be productively explored by looking at the imagined national community created in the wake of Scotland’s Union with England in 1707; specifically, this article... more
The dilemma of Scottish national identity in the eighteenth century can be productively explored by looking at the imagined national community created in the wake of Scotland’s Union with England in 1707; specifically, this article analyzes the function of the Scottish literary club as a site of national community. Focusing on the club activity of Scottish poet Allan Ramsay (1686-1758), it discusses his involvement from 1712 to 1715 with a literary and social club named the Easy Club; the poetry he produced for this club served to unify the group by representing its members as part of an imagined Scottish national community. The struggle over national representation occurring in the Easy Club and mirrored in its contemporary culture lay between Scottish imitation of present English culture or of its own national past. Ramsay resolved this conflict in his club verse by unifying club members through the construction of an imagined national community that extended from past Scottish heroes and authors into the lives of their present-day imitators in the club.
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, Social Theory, English Literature, Political Theory, and 32 moreSocial Identity, Eighteenth-Century literature, Literature, 18th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, Literary Criticism, British Politics, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Political Culture, Scottish History, Politics, Identity politics, Nationalism, English, Poetics, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Political History, Scottish Culture, Cultural Nationalism, European Politics, National Identity, 18th Century British Literature, Social History, Literary History, Scottish history (History), History of Nationalism, Nations and nationalism, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, 18th Century Britain, Conviviality, and 18th century British history and culture
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, British History, Eighteenth-Century literature, and 23 more18th Century Scottish Literature, Poetry, British Politics, Eighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, English, Poetics, Scottish Enlightenment, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, 18th & 19th Centuries, 18th Century British Literature, Sociology of Scotland, Scottish history (History), Eighteenth-Century literature and culture, 18th and 19th Century, 18th Century Britain, Eighteenth Century, and Poetry and Poetics
This article explores the influence of postmodern theories of cognitive mapping in urban space in Paul Auster's City of Glass. It provides an analysis of the figure of the flaneur in the novella, examining its relation to the literary and... more
This article explores the influence of postmodern theories of cognitive mapping in urban space in Paul Auster's City of Glass. It provides an analysis of the figure of the flaneur in the novella, examining its relation to the literary and theoretical representations of urban walkers in the works of Baudelaire and Michel de Certeau.
Research Interests: American Literature, Genre studies, Literature, The Novel, New York Downtown Writing, and 38 moreGenre, English, Literary Theory, Theory of the Novel, Twentieth Century Literature, Postmodernism, Detective Fiction, Postmodern Fiction, Postmodern Marxism, Fredric Jameson, Contemporary Literature, 20th Century American Literature, Genre research, American Novel, Twentieth-Century American Literature, Michel de Certeau, 20th Century American, Novel, Postmodernism (Literature), Postmodern Literature, Genres, Eras, Baudelaire, Postmodern Literary Theory and Popular Culture, Paul Auster, New York City Fiction, Cities, Postmodern novel, Charles Baudelaire, New York Studies, Bronx, Flaneur, The Novella, Theories, Practices, New York, The Sociology of Social: Thinking, and Ambulating
Research Interests: American Literature, British Literature, Scottish Literature, American History, Cultural History, and 15 moreAmerican Politics, English Literature, Nineteenth Century Studies, Poetry, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, English, Nineteenth Century United States, Poetics, Culture, Robert Burns, Social History, Book Reviews, Scotland, and The Life and Works of Robert Burns
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, British History, Eighteenth-Century literature, and 15 moreScholarly Editing, Literary Criticism, Scholarly Editions, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, English, British Eighteenth-Century Literature and Culture, Robert Burns, Book Reviews, Scottish Poetry, Scotland, Literary Theory and Criticism, Editing, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, and Editing of Correspondences
Research Interests: Scottish Literature, English Literature, Languages and Linguistics, Eighteenth-Century literature, Poetry, and 15 moreEnglish language, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, English, Poetics, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Robert Burns, Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Literature, Linguistics, English Grammar, Linguistic Theory, Book Reviews, Scottish Poetry, Language Use, and The Life and Works of Robert Burns
Research Interests: Scottish Literature, Irish Literature, History of Religion, Poetry, Audience and Reception Studies, and 15 moreScottish History, Poetics, Robert Burns, Robert Burns and Ireland, Irish History, Ireland, Book Reviews, Irish Poetry, Scottish Poetry, Scotland, Ulster Scots, Ulster, Irish Religion, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, and Robert Burns Poet
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, Reference, Eighteenth-Century literature, Poetry, and 15 moreEighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Scottish History, English, Poetics, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Book Reviews, Scottish Poetry, Scottish Culture, Literature and History, Handbook, Robert Burns Poet, Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, and Reference Materials
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, English Literature, Eighteenth-Century literature, Poetry, and 15 moreEighteenth Century History, Scottish Studies, Audience and Reception Studies, Scottish History, English, Poetics, Eighteenth-Century British History and Culture, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, Book Reviews, Scottish Poetry, Scotland, Anthology, Critical edition, and Robert Burns Poet
Research Interests: British Literature, Scottish Literature, Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Canadian Studies, and 15 moreAmerican Studies, English Literature, Literary Criticism, Transatlantic History, Scottish Studies, English, Scottish Culture, Robert Burns, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Social History, Transatlantic Literature, Book Reviews, Transatlantic studies, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, and Robert Burns Poet
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Reviews the following titles: The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford Burns: A Study of the Songs and Poems, by Thomas Crawford Robert Burns, by David Daiches Fickle Man: Robert Burns in the 21st Century, ed. by Johnny... more
Reviews the following titles:
The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford
Burns: A Study of the Songs and Poems, by Thomas Crawford
Robert Burns, by David Daiches
Fickle Man: Robert Burns in the 21st Century, ed. by Johnny Rodgers and Gerard Carruthers
Burnsiana: A Bibliography of the William R. Smith Collection in the Library of the Supreme Council, by Larissa Watkins
The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford
Burns: A Study of the Songs and Poems, by Thomas Crawford
Robert Burns, by David Daiches
Fickle Man: Robert Burns in the 21st Century, ed. by Johnny Rodgers and Gerard Carruthers
Burnsiana: A Bibliography of the William R. Smith Collection in the Library of the Supreme Council, by Larissa Watkins