'Heaven-taught Fergusson', wrote Robert Burns in stylish admiration. This tribute was only one of many bonds between Scotland's national poet and the poetic master whom he most loved, but never met.Later Scottish poets have admired Fergusson in similarly strong terms. The ten specially commissioned poems in this book paying tribute (directly or indirectly) to Fergusson continue a tradition of homage while sounding their own contemporary notes. Sometimes gleeful, sometimes solemn, Heaven-taught Fergusson both winks at and scrutinizes a poet who was in several ways strikingly different from Burns. Poets and critics from three continents come together in this volume. In various ways their soundings suggest just what it is about Fergusson that makes him still seem 'heaven-taught'.

Celebrating Burns's bicentenary, this work reflects upon and analyzes the achievements of Scotland's famous poet. It looks at topics ranging from "Burns and God" to "Burns and sex"--Amazon.com.

Though Robert Fergusson published only one collection of poems during his lifetime, he was a fixture in the Scottish periodical press. Rhona Brown explores Fergusson's poetic output in its immediate periodical context, enabling a new understanding of Fergusson's contribution to poetry that also enlarges on our understanding of the Scottish periodical press. Focusing on the development of his career in Walter Ruddiman's Weekly Magazine, Brown situates Fergusson's poetry alongside contemporary events that expose Fergusson's preoccupations with the frivolities of fashion, theatrical culture, the economic status of Scottish manufacture, and politics. At the same time, Brown offers fascinating insights into the political climate of Enlightenment Scotland and shows the Weekly Magazine in relationship to the larger Scottish and British periodical milieus. She concludes by exploring reactions to Fergusson's death in the British periodical presses, arguing that contrary to critical consensus, the poet's death was ignored neither by his own country nor by the larger literary community.

This book restores the long marginalised Scottish poet Robert Burns to his rightful place as a major poet of the 18th century and Romantic period. It discusses his education as a farmer during the revolutionary period of 'improvement' in 18th-century Scotland, decision to write 'Scots pastoral' poetry, and influence on Wordsworth and Coleridge.

The Edinburgh Companion to Robert Burns provides both a comprehensive introduction to and the most contemporary critical contexts for the study of Robert Burns. Detailed commentary on the artistry of Burns is complemented by material on the cultural reception and afterlife of this most iconic of world writers. The biographical construction of Burns is examined as are his relations to Scottish, Romantic and International cultures. Burns is also approached in terms of his engagements with Ecology, Gender, Pastoral, Politics, Pornography, Slavery, and Song-culture, and there is extensive coverage of publishing history including Burns's place in popular, bourgeois and Enlightenment cultures during the late eighteenth century. This is the most modern collection of critical responses to Burns from scholars from the United Kingdom and North America, which, more than ever before, seeks to place Burns as a 'mainstream' man of Enlightenment and Romantic impetus and to explain the enduring and sometimes controversial fascination for both the man and his work over more than two hundred years.

Focuses on Robert Burns's achievements as a poet and his special place in Scottish, English and Irish literary culture since the 18th century. Contributors include leading poet-critics such as award-winning Burns author Robert Crawford & Douglas Dunn,

Originally published in 2000 by Polygon to mark the 250th anniversary of Fergusson's birth, this new edition contains all Fergusson's finest poems in both Scots and English, and features a new introductory essay, revised orthography, a substantial section of notes and a glossary. Acknowledged as a crucial influence on Burns, Robert Fergusson was a remarkable poet in his own right. All his work was produced during a few brief years, delighting readers with its vigour and power. Although he wrote much verse in the then fashionable style of Augustan English, it is his Scots verse which, in its great warmth, humanity, satire, and hilarious comedy, is his enduring legacy. His work covers the whole gamut of human emotions and experience and his subject matter ranges from drunken encounters with the notorious City Guard to quieter reflections on pastoral themes. Fergusson died in 1774 at the age of only 24.

While recent scholarship has usefully positioned Burns within the context of British Romanticism as a spokesperson of Scottish national identity, Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture considers Burns's impact in the United States, Canada, and South America, where he has served variously as a site of cultural memory and of creative negotiation. Ambitious in its scope, the volume is divided into five sections that explore: transatlantic concerns in Burns's own work, Burns's early publication in North America, Burns's reception in the Americas, Burns's creation as a site of cultural memory, and extra-literary remediations of Burns, including contemporary digital representations. By tracing the transatlantic modulations of the poet and songwriter and his works, Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture sheds new light on the circuits connecting Scotland and Britain with the evolving cultures of the Americas from the late eighteenth century to the present.

This title was first published in 2003. This text examines the role of religion in the life of the poet Robert Burns. Incorporating previously unexplored sources, and taking into consideration contemporary work on Burns, and on Scottish literature and history, author J. Walter McGinty presents an account of Burns's personal religion and the factors that helped to form it. McGinty begins by discussing the recurring themes in Burns's religious writings: a belief in a benevolent God; a hankering after, if not a hope, that there might be a life after death; and a sense of his own accountability. He then presents for comparison the religious poetry of two of Burns's contemporaries, William Cowper and Christopher Smart, usefully extending the discussion of Burns beyond the purely Scottish context. Finally, McGinty provides portraits of some of the ministers of "The Church of Scotland's Garland-A New Song", followed by an analysis of Burns's religious poetry.

Scottish and Irish Romanticism is the first single-author book to address the main non-English Romanticisms of the British Isles. Murray Pittock begins by questioning the terms of his chosen title as he searches for a definition of Romanticism and for the meaning of 'national literature'. He proposes certain determining 'triggers' for the recognition of the presence of a national literature, and also deals with two major problems which are holding back the development of a new and broader understanding of British Isles Romanticisms: the survival of outdated assumptions in ostensibly more modern paradigms, and a lack of understanding of the full range of dialogues and relationships across the literatures of these islands. The theorists whose works chiefly inform the book are Bakhtin, Fanon and Habermas, although they do not define its arguments, and an alertness to the ways in which other literary theories inform each other is present throughout the book. Pittock examines in turn the historiography, prejudices, and assumptions of Romantic criticism to date, and how our unexamined prejudices still stand in the way of our understanding of individual traditions and the dialogues between them. He then considers Allan Ramsay's role in song-collecting, hybridizing high cultural genres with broadside forms, creating in synthetic Scots a 'language really used by men', and promoting a domestic public sphere. Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the Scottish and Irish public spheres in the later eighteenth century, together with the struggle for control over national pasts, and the development of the cults of Romance, the Picturesque and Sentiment: Macpherson, Thomson, Owenson and Moore are among the writers discussed. Chapter 5 explores the work of Robert Fergusson and his contemporaries in both Scotland and Ireland, examining questions of literary hybridity across not only national but also linguistic borders, while Chapter 6 provides a brief literary history of Burns' descent into critical neglect combined with a revaluation of his poetry in the light of the general argument of the book. Chapter 7 analyzes the complexities of the linguistic and cultural politics of the national tale in Ireland through the work of Maria Edgeworth, while the following chapter considers of Scott in relation to the national tale, Enlightenment historiography, and the European nationalities question. Chapter 9 looks at the importance of the Gothic in Scottish and Irish Romanticism, particularly in the work of James Hogg and Charles Maturin, while Chapter 10, 'Fratriotism', explores a new concept in the manner in which Scottish and Irish literary, political and military figures of the period related to Empire.