From the Author
This collection reprints the ten most broadly useful essays on Burns written between 1965 and the present, along with five new essays first published here. Remembering my difficulties as an American graduate student beginning serious study of the poet--much of the best Robert Burns scholarship is strictly textual, assuming prior knowledge of Scottish cultural contexts--I wanted to assemble between two covers a crash course in "Scotia's Bard," one that would show the many ways in which he can be read and his significance assessed. Zack Bowen, general editor of the Hall Critical Essays on British Literature series, says the tone is sometimes "splenetic"--fair enough, though I might have used the terms "heated," "committed," "lively." Burns has been persistently misread, from his own time to ours. The contributors to this volume seek to set the record straight--though all take different routes and have different "truths" to convey about Burns. Two comparatively early classics--Raymond Bentman's "Burns's Use of Scottish Diction (1965) and Thomas Crawford's "Burns, Love and Liberty" (1979)--are included, but the major focus is on recent work, including two reprinted articles from the 1980s and six from the 1990s. These reprinted essays consider, among other things, possible "lost" radical poems by Burns, Burns's "biculturalism," his songs, his satires, his use of the Scottish "flyting" tradition, the nineteenth century's disturbing cult of Burns. The five new essays also consider a range of topics: the poet's self-representation in letters and poems, his representations of the body, William Wordsworth's hostility to Burns, Burns's nationalism, the extraordinary cultural impact of "The Cotter's Saturday Night." Some of these essays are theoretically grounded; some take a textual, biographical, or historical approach. But all are written forcefully and clearly, and all should be accessible to college students as well as to scholars new to Burns who are interested in considering Burns's long-disputed place in the canon. Non-academic readers with some prior knowledge of Burns's writings will also be able to follow the debate and (I hope) enjoy the fireworks.
