Robert Burns

This is a comprehensive overview of Burns’ entire poetic career emphasizing his construction of his role as a poet and his relationship to literary and intellectual history. This book treats Burns’ work chronologically from the first publication of his poetry in 1786 to his song writing and collecting which predominated in the 1790s. It encompasses discussion of Burns’ social and religious satires, his political comment and his utterances on love and gender. In line with modern Burns scholarship, this study reads Burns against both his Scottish and British literary backgrounds and emphasizes, particularly, Burns’ construction of his poetic problematic national history and focuses on how his mapping out of poetic space for himself as a Scot makes him a crucial proto-Romantic figure. The book debunks the myth of Burns as ‘the heaven-taught ploughman’, emphasizing his very contemporary understanding of the power of literature and of the emotions as a vital part of human intellect. It is aimed at students of literature in schools and in higher education; teachers of literature; and scholars valuing the extensive and up-to-date bibliography. It is suitable for sixth-form, academic and public libraries. No such overview of Burns’ work is currently available. It discusses the full range of Burns’ poetry in the light of modern scholarship. There is world-wide general interest in Burns as well as in Burns as studied poet at school and university level. It is written by a Scottish literature specialist.