Essay on Burns [Paperback]

Thomas Carlyle (Author), Cornelius Beach Bradley (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0898752531 | ISBN-13: 978-0898752533 | Publication Date: March 1, 2001

Robert Burns, Scotland's most celebrated literary figure, was born at Alloway on January 25, 1759. His parents were William Burnes and Agnes Brown. Agnes Brown was the eldest daughter of a tenant farmer; she could read a little but never learned to write. William Burnes (the "e" was dropped from the family name after his death in 1784) was also a tenant farmer's son, and worked as a gardener. He instilled religious belief in Robert, the boy's mother and her cousin's widow Betty Davidson ("remarkable," according to Burns, "for her ignorance, credulity and superstition") passed on to him the folk tradition that "cultivated the latent seeds of Poesy".

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was a Scottish essayist and historian. Carlyle was one of the most important and influential of Victorian prose writers, a "sage" writer drawing on the tradition of German Romanticism, who represented himself and was received by many of his contemporaries as a prophetic voice. He sought alternatives to Christian faith in terms that many educated Victorians found compelling, for he represented the divine as immanent in human life. Carlyle's thought defies categorization: he critiqued both the laissez-faire capitalist doctrines of his day and the move towards democracy. He is in many respects valued today more for his expression of his ideas than for the ideas themselves. Carlyle brought together social criticism and historical writing in a new way and contributed greatly to the high status of non-fiction prose among Victorian genres. Elizabeth Barrett and R.H. Horne emphasized the uniqueness of his style when they wrote " . . . of him it ! is pre-eminently true, that the speech is the man. . . . He throws his truth with so much vehemence, that the print of the palm of his hand is left on it. Let no man scoff at the language of Carlyle--or if it forms part of his idiosyncracy, his idiosyncracy forms part of his truth."

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: University Press of the Pacific (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0898752531
• ISBN-13: 978-0898752533
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,289,878 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)