A Modern Poet on The Scotch Bard: Walt Whitman’s 1875 Essay on Robert Burns  (original) (raw)

Whitman on Robert Burns: An Early Essay Recovered

Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, 1996

THE AMERICAN POET, has published in an American newspaper his estimate of the poet Bums," W. M. Rossetti reported in the London Academy in late February 1875. 1 Remarkably, Whitman's early critical essay on Bums has hitherto been lost to scholarship. It was first printed in the January 25, 1875, issue of an ephemeral paper entitled Our Land and Time-a periodical so obscure it is not catalogued' by the Union List of Serials, the Union List of Newspapers, the National Union Catalogue of pre-1956 imprints, or the OCLC on-line database. Fortunately, it was copied the same day in the New York Daily Graphic, a paper to which the poet sometimes contributed, from which it is here reprinted. Whitman later revised the essay for publication in the New York Critic (December 16, 1882); in the North American Review under the title "Robert Bums as Poet and Person" (November 1886); in November Boughs, Democratic Vistas and Other Papers, and Complete Poems & Prose (all 1888); and finally in Complete Prose Works (1891-92). In lieu of a detailed collation of all versions, I have underlined here the passages omitted from Whitman's subsequent essays on Bums; that is, I highlight the material, totaling several hundred words, new to Whitman scholarship.2

Multifarious Perspectives of Robert Burns’ Poetry

Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education, 2018

Robert Burns occupies a significant place in the History of English Poetry. He has been studied from different perspectives, but no detailed study of his social philosophy has been made so far. He has a tendency to weave his personal moods and experiences into the texture of his poems so that they become a mirror of the bundle of contradictory traits in his complex personality. He is regarded as an 'untutored peasant' on the one hand and venerated as a 'social and literary rebel' on the other. This paper explores the various aspects of Burns' ideas and art in their comprehensiveness rather than in isolation. Some of the major aspects of his poetry chosen for the purpose are his sensibility, radicalism and realism, frustration and disappointment and his bucolic humour as a challenge to the opposing forces. The present paper attempts to fill up a gap in the criticism of Burns poetry by highlighting certain important aspects of his poetry. An attempt has been made to present a deeper insight into the creative process of Burns.

The Genius of Scotland: Robert Burns and His Critics, 1796-1828.

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.

ROBERT BURNS AND FRIENDS essays by W. Ormiston Roy Fellows presented to G. Ross Roy

2012

and friend and mentor to successive generations of Burnsians and Burns scholars. For more than fifty years, Ross Roy has been one of the most active and respected scholars in Scottish literary studies, both for his own research on Burns and other writers, and for the pioneering and influential journal he founded and edited, Studies in Scottish Literature. Arguably it is that journal, as much as any other factor, that first brought the scholarly study of Scottish literature its now-established academic credibility and recognition. The volume departs from the conventions of the festschrift in several ways: its contributors are neither the honoree's distinguished contemporaries nor his former students, the topics of the essays in no way represent the full range of the honoree's scholarly research and interests, and the volume champions no single methodology or perspective. In planning the volume, we were aware that many of the contributions to the splendid double-volume of Studies in Scottish Literature (2008) with which Dr. Roy concluded his editorship had already preempted a festschrift on traditional lines. Instead, this volume focuses on a single author and theme (broadly interpreted, it is true), and the contributors represent a special subset of the many scholars who would wish to honour Ross Roy. The central thread through Dr. Roy's own work has been Robert Burns, and the volume's title also celebrates his own gift for friendship. The participants are scholars from both sides of the Atlantic who have visited the University of South Carolina as W. Ormiston Roy Fellows to conduct research in the G. Ross Collection of Robert Burns & Scottish Poetry. Their essays explore aspects of Burns's relationships with his poetic predecessors and the cultural community of his youth, with his contemporaries, and with correspondents; his songs and song-editing; and his remarkable and very personal impact on subsequent generations. Three essays, still Burns-related, tie in with other threads in Ross Roy's career: his interest in the literature of his native Canada, in literary translation, and in book collecting. Beginning with a biographical tribute to Ross Roy by one editor, the volume concludes with a checklist of Ross Roy's published work by the other. Thanks are due in the first instance to the contributors. Patrick Scott owes thanks to Tom McNally, Dean of Libraries at the University of South Carolina, and to his colleagues in Rare Books, for freeing time to work on the volume, and to the South Carolina Honors College for supporting Justin Mellette's and Mark Taylor's assistance with this and other Burns projects. Ken Simpson acknowledges with gratitude the help of Ronnie Young and David Simpson with some technical issues. Thanks are also due to the good friends who funded publication of the volume through a donation to the Library Fund. The frontispiece portrait has been kindly shared by the University of Glasgow. But above all, the volume owes its existence to the respect and affection, reflected in the dedication, that so many of us have for Ross Roy and Lucie Roy, true friends.

'Far-fam'd RAB': Scottish Labouring-Class Poets Writing in the Shadow of Robert Burns, 1785-1792

This essay appears courtesy of Studies in Hogg and His World. All rights reserved.

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.