˂ 3 December 1993 Dr. John T. Harwood English 550 Recent Criticism of Burns' Poetry and Songs The first appraisal of Burns in October of 1786 adumbrated the pattern of criticism that would follow and appeared as an unsigned notice in the Edinburgh Magazine. It hailed Burns as "a striking example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty . . . a common plowman . . . of untutored fancy" (qtd. in Low 64). The notice is for the most part positive, but positive only in a restrictive way. The stereotype of Burns as an untutored rustic and symbol of native genius has created limitations in the scope of what critics have been subsequently able to see, and the reactionary schools that developed have hindered criticism even up to contemporary times. Studies have been seriously damaged because of the characterization of Burns as an "artless poet" in the Doric tradition or as an item of Scottish Nationalism. Leslie Stephen states in his article on Burns in the Dictionary of Literary Biography that "Criticism on Burns is only Permitted to Scotchmen of purest Blood" (qtd. in Low 14). There is some truth to Steven's comment even today, and the supposed barriers of accessibility have to a large extent defined the areas of inquiry that the criticism has followed. The nationalistic context tends to overwhelm more circumspect evaluation, and the patriotic and moralistic crosscurrents have carried Burns studies into a climate that impedes serious criticism of the poetry and objective study of the sociohistorical situation. An additional hurdle is the confusion about the excellencies or limitations of his linguistic style, which is often seen as too idiosyncratic with the vernacular of Burns' time and region to be accessible to outsiders or of universal merit. The nationalistic preoccupation with Scottish politics, history, and diction tends to draw attention away from them as profitable areas of inquiry because so much effort must be made to define and legitimize a different critical approach. Therefore, the articles tend to skimp on the attention which is allotted to the actual poems and songs. While the areas of debate have expanded in recent years, it is, as Carol McGuirk describes it, "a debate which is notable for its immediate divergence from the poetry itself into defence and attack of the poet's motives and conduct" ("Scottish Hero, Scottish Myth" 221). The majority of the criticism is still centered more on Burns' role as a political and mythological figure within Scotland rather than on examination of the actual works he produced. The following essay explores the areas of recent inquiry and attempts to summarize the contemporary positions held concerning Robert Burns as a poet and historical figure. The viewpoints are at best desperate and lack focus and at worst stymied through diametric oppositionwith one essay simply dismissing another. This survey will concentrate on the previous ten to fifteen years of work, but in order to clarify the formation of positions in Burns criticism, the "ancestral" articles from which the lines of debate derive have been briefly resurrected where it seemed prudent. I will close with the recent critical trends which seem to hold the most promise for future studies. The foremost area of perennial interest in Burns' studies centers on the question of Burns' politics and his role as a national symbol of Scotland. His highly politicized life and the political intonations of much of his work give impetus to both kinds of investigation. The historical/political approaches vary from a pure historical school that seeks to analyze the relation of Burns to the people of Ayrshire for the purpose of revealing the sociological aspects of Scottish culture to a more rhetorical and politically oriented school that seeks to link specific poems and songs to specific political and social issues. The most purely historical approach which has come out recently is Ian Carter's study, "Burns, Scott, and the Scottish Peasantry" (1982). Carter uses Burns' poetry as a point of departure to explore the sociohistorical world of the peasant class in Scotland. The thesis is that "by placing his work in an adequately elaborated historical contexta feat which we cannot manage at the momentBurns could give us a wealth of information about the opportunities and limitations, the joys and privations of being a peasant in eighteenthcentury southwest Scotland" (105). The study is more interested in understanding the social context than the poetry but nevertheless yields some interesting discussions that could be of use to both historians and literary scholars attempting to reconstruct the social milieu of the lowerclasses and songculture in Scotland. Stawhorn's essay "Burns and the Bardie Clan" is also written from the standpoint of a socialhistorian, but its focus is more narrowly concerned with the local poetic traditions and oral song culture. The Ayrshire that Strawhorn describes is a rich center of popular song which was benefited by a local printing press at Kilmarnoch. The essay includes a list of popular songs which were generally known around the region and crossreferences them to Burns' poetry, songs, and letters. Strawhorn portrays Burns' as a successful commodity of printculture due to the local familiarity and interest in the oral poetic traditions, the history of published poets from the area, and the increase in literacy and subsequent local market (due to the parish schools). The largest area of historically centered criticism attempts to explore the political allusions and derive subsequent correctives to the image of Burns. William Donaldson and Angus Dunbar Anderson have both produced works which explore Burns' politics by foregrounding the local political arena in minute detail. In Donaldson's essay "The Glencairn Connection: Robert Burns and Scottish Politics" (1981), he complains that too much attention has been placed on assessing the influence of the American and French Revolutions upon a handful of Burns' later poems and songs. By focusing on domestic politics, he attempts to shed light on the development of Burns' political views. According to Donaldson, although Burns' allegiances appear to shift at specific times, it is do to constantly fluctuating personal and political pressures in his life, but he, nevertheless, remains ideologically consistent in his democratic sentiment. In a similar vein of revolutionary zeal, Angus Dunbar Anderson explores Burns' as a Lowland Scot who never truly supported the Jacobites but joined with the highlanders in their nostalgic longing for the return of the Stuarts. His article "Late Eighteenth Century Politics as Shown by the Works of Robert Burns" (1983) contains a number of interesting observations about the ways in which Burns responds to the local politics, but Anderson largely loses credibility when he generates unlikely arguments to support the conclusion that Burns' death was possibly a form of political retribution inspired by his subversive lyrics. While Donaldson and Anderson focus on the local politics, others, such as Thomas Crawford, examine the international scene. Crawford's book Boswell, Burns, and the French Revolution (1990) fits into the category of historical studies which Donaldson summarily dismisses as overdone. Nevertheless, Crawford's approach to Burns' political sentiments is quite original. He uses the nonevent of Boswell meeting Burns to set his discussion into motion and questions why it never occurred. He provides evidence that such a meeting was desired on Burns' side but was avoided on Boswell's side. The thesis produces an intriguing mystery, and his investigation is well documented and meticulous, but his discovery of Burns as a democratic revolutionary inspired by the American revolution is a rather predictable conclusion. The issue of nationalism and politics often makes reference to the vernacular diction, and a school of Burns criticism has developed which is interested mainly in the language and the rhetorical effect which Burns created through his macoronic style. The use of vernacular Scots was seen as a limitation by nearly all the early commentators, and it was not until later that serious exploration began of the rhetorical effect of using standard English in combination with Scots dialect. Charles Lamb sums up the initial historical sentiment by describing vernacular Scots verse as "the uncongenial coalition of barbarous with refined phrases" (qtd. in Sampson 23). In "Robert Burns: The Revival of Scottish Literature" (1985), David Sampson frames his discussion from a similar viewpoint but alters the evaluation by examining the socialhistorical situation in Scotland, where everyday speech has become macaronic due to the pressures created by the union with England. He sees a contemporary rhetorical effect of irony generated through the use of Scots. The basis for his argument is that in Burns' time traditional Scots diction had become a lower register in relation to standard English and represented a vulgar, antiquated, and dying culture. He concludes that Burns uses the effect of the vernacular in an artful and cognizant effort to create revision in the hierarchical relationship between Scots, standard English, and the local culture. Following a similar interest in the macoronic style of the poetry, David B. Morris introduces Bakhtinian analysis to sort through what he sees as a linguistic meltingpot of utterances. In "Burns and Heteroglossia" (1987) the argument focuses upon how the use of language within a text can facilitate a return from the written word to active social dialogue. Morris sees Burns as continually shifting among a pastiche of registers, contrasting classical conventions and Augustan technique to the language of traditional and contemporary Scottish folksongs. The effect created by intertwining the voices is a "conflict in levels of diction [that] alerts us to social conflicts which the poem refuses to make explicit" (17); thus, speech "becomes a metaphor and arena for freedoms which politics cannot assure" (23). Morris contrasts Burns' dialogic satires to Pope's didactic satires, emphasizing how Pope leaves his opponents pinned like butterflies in a display case while Burns creates "poetic space" for his targets through the use of oral speech patterns. Since the issue of Burns' language finds its way into nearly all the debates on Burns at some point or other, I will turn at this point to additional topics and intermix the remaining articles which address the duallanguage features. An overall perennial problem is that Burns has never lived up to conventional standards of "lettered criticism." In part this is due to the use of vernacular, but also because of his revisionary impulse to modify genres and create variations and to write in genres thought of as "low," his work proves problematic for critical investigation that is concerned with the categorizing of traditional literary forms. In studies involving genre, discussion of the song and lyric forms provide the focus of recent Burns studies. Since Burns devoted a good deal of energy during the latter part of his life to collecting and composing lyrics meant to be sung, Burns criticism must find a way to deal with this genre. The next section discusses the attempts to deal with both the lyric as song and the lyric as formal poetry, and then moves on to other genre and taxonomic issues. There are two important recent studies involving the orality of the songculture in Burns' time. Each attempts to examine the qualities which characterized the songculture including the genre conventions of Scottish folk song and how Burns both influenced and was influenced by the contemporary styles. One, "Burns and the Bardie Clan," was already mentioned in the section on political/historical studies, since the thesis is aimed more at ascertaining sociohistorical information about the Ayrshire area and is less concerned with song as a genre in itself but as it related to printculture. The remaining study is more purely concerned with the songs. Thomas Crawford's Society and the Song Lyric: a Study of the Song Culture of EighteenthCentury Scotland (1979) offers the most expansive study on the songs yet to be attempted. The study subdivides the songlyric into nine major categories. It includes discussions on the subgenres of the national song, the drinking song, and the love song in corresponding chapters. The discussions are mainly close reading and interpretation combined with attempts here or there to historicize the sentiments. The study is wide ranging and has many useful cross references to various aspects of the critical debate on Burns, but seems a bit out of step with contemporary American criticism. The critical points he makes are sometimes just occasions set up to praise Burns and shed little useful light towards advancing criticism. In the discussion of love lyrics, Crawford makes so many sexist remarks that one wonders if he has ever heard of feminism. In a more sophisticated critical vein, Leopold Damrosch explores the lyric as a formal, written genre of poetry. In "Burns, Blake, and the recovery of the Lyric" (1982), Damrosch filters the issue of genre through a taxonomic analysis which contrasts the Augustan age to the Romantic age and sees Burns and Blake as resurrecting the lyric. His argument makes the assertion that "The eighteenth century strive to be Apollonian; Burns proclaims the return of Dionysus the liberator" (648). His argument focuses on how the lovelyric was worn thin by the cynical hedonism of the reformation and splintered into two strains"the playful song which was little more than a jeu d'esprit, and the Great Ode which was a portentous exercise in noble rhetoric" (637). His discussion ranges from Burns to Black to Pope to Cowely and back to Burns again and examines love songs, drinking songs, and Pindaric odes. Damrosch creates an interesting but somewhat thinly layered veneer of criticism over an overbearing enthusiasm for Burns. In the best recent study involving genre, Carol McGuirk focuses on Burns' use of Scots language in combination with Scottish settings to create revision and estrangement within traditional settings and genres. The title, "Scottish Hero, Scottish Victim: Myths of Robert Burns" (1987), has little to do with her argument, neither does the first five pages of her essay. The first section of McGuirk's study is largely an argument against the Burns' myth, while her larger discussion focuses on the linguistic style and revisionary impulse of Burns' work. She describes the destructive influence of the Burns' myth and uses it to frame a point of departure, setting herself apart from the Burns' myth in her dedication to addressing the poetics. She examines a variety of songs and poems using close reading coupled with an intertextual discussion to support her thesis that through a "selfconscious transfiguration of all his cultural and literary influences. . . he reanimates sentimental and neoclassical English traditions" (234). She emphasizes the genre concerns, duellanguage elements, and stylistic conventions in her discussion; however, the fact that a leading scholar such as McGuirk spends such an inordinate amount of discussion on the negative influence of the Burns myth indicates a serious problem exists. The issue of the Burns cult and the shadow it casts upon serious scholarship is an issue which many of the previously listed articles mentioned at least in passing, usually in the introductory paragraph block. The Burns clubs have generated much foolish criticism of him as a cultural icon. In Crawford's excellent study in 1960, he pointed out "there is no longer any reason to fulminate against the imbecilities of the Burns Cult: these jobs have been well done" (xii). In the subsequent years a number of studies of the Burns cult have come out that move away from the dialectic of "good/bad" to the more open ended "what does it mean as cultural/literary phenomenon?" But overall, as McGuirk's essay indicates, there is still fulminating being done. Carol McGuirk's earlier study, Robert Burns and the Sentimental Era (1985), also attempts to revise the Burns myth. Here, the tendency to sentimentalize Burns as a "heaven taught rustic" is undone by showing the extent to which he is in touch with the intellectual debates and fashions of Edinburgh. She sees his poetry and songs as dynamic and responsive to culture at large and in particular to the sentimental tradition in its many facets. Through drawing on historical sources and close reading of the poetry, she begins to draw out the cultural connections in the works of Burns. Other critics deal with the Burns myth more directly. The scholar Mary Ellen Brown has led the way towards a more balanced approach to Burns as a cultural phenomena. Her major book, Burns and Tradition (1984), offers a relatively thorough study of both the images Burns sought to portray at different points in his career and the historic uses for Burns as a cultural icon. Her earlier article "But You, or Me Will Never See, Another Rabbie Burns" (1981) attempts to investigate the social significance of the Burns legend. She neatly summarizes the thesis which is followed and discussed at much greater length in her book: that "the legendary tradition then focuses on those aspects of Burns the man which he shared with many of his contemporaries rather than stressing the qualities, experiences, and achievements which separated him from the mass of man and made him an individual worthy of note" (15). Brown, however, seems at times to lose critical focus and overestimate the importance of Burns to Scottish culture. Her work in folklore is complemented by Andrew M. Boyle's book, The Ayrshire Book of Burnslore (1985). While Boyle does not involve himself with criticism, he does collect a considerable wealth of historic hearsay about Burns. Others write directly in this tradition. "Robert Burns: The Image and the Verse Epistles" (1982) by G. Scott Wilson is inadvertently a case study in "Bardolotry," a term originally coined by Hugh MacDiarmid in Burns Today and Tomorrow (1959), his vitriolic assault on the Burns clubs,. Wilson makes much of the "manly image" and "rustic independence" he finds in the Mauchline epistles and concludes by asserting that "The Mauchline epistles remain among the most innovative, exciting, and important poetry of the century . . . and the vigor and zest of the language implies a commitment to imaginative freedom worthy of comparison with Blake or Dickens" (14849). Articles such as Wilson's make Burns' "imaginative freedoms" seem mild by comparison. Other critics write directly against critics such as Wilson. For example, Alan Bold writes in the essay "Robert Burns: Superscot" (1982) against the practice of "bardolotry." Bold outlines the various causes of Scotland's need for a national hero. He depicts 18th Century Scotland as having "a massive spiritual hangover prompted by the toxic taste of successive defeats and retained by a long folk memory of loss" (219). He formulates a vision of Scotland that is psychologized at the national level like an abused child holding onto Burns like a soiled rag doll. He also brings up the moral issues which often remain submerged beneath the critical milieu and emphasizes the destructive effect on Burns studies and on Scottish culture. He depicts Burnsians by asking the rhetorical questions: "What other poet is celebrated every year in an orgy of alcoholic selfindulgence? What other poet has a type of beer and a brand of whisky named after him? What other poet is freely quoted and discussed in pubs?" (230). He mentions the Merry Muses and the "low brow" nature of drinking songs in order to emphasize the manifold dimensions of Burns' work and suggests that the idolatry of Burns has a pernicious effect on Scottish culture; unfortunately, his rigorous introduction digresses into fulminating. In a more recent article, "BurnsLiterary Focus of Scottish National Identity?" (1989), Dietrich Strauss attempts to assess the state of Burns' image in Scotland. He suggests that "Burns has been reduced to a figure, dimly perceived as someone who could, on rare occasions, produce racy rhymes on Scottish whiskey, and savory or bawdy ones on the lasses of the countryrhymes, however, which as 'old stuff' are not worth remembering" (109). Strauss laments the state of Burns, and concludes "a nation which tends no longer to cherish the reflected memory and unsentimental veneration of a poet of Burns' stature . . . is risking the loss of part of her identity" (114). Strauss is in favor of maintaining and purifying the Burns Cult, but yet refrains from fulminating. These examples illustrate the type of diametric and unproductive opposition engaged by much of the work being done on Burns. Scholars are producing a meager amount of work, and most of it relatively useless. Nearly all of the quality critical scholarship produced on Burns over the previous fifteen years has already been represented in this essay as well as some examples of the weaker studies. One last area of recent Burns' scholarship warrants mention before moving on to suggesting directions for future studies. The area of New Criticism and various structuralist approaches is still productive. Of the recent articles from a New Critical or structuralist perspective, several provide useful analysis. William C. Strange's "The Fire Argument in The Jolly Beggars and The Cotter's Saturday Night" (1982) provides insight into the dominant theme in the two poems. It moves away from the previous reading of anarchy and towards a unified state by mapping the patterns of irony and imagery involving fire. While this study is straightforward New Criticism, W. B. Carnochan's "The Moral Sentiment of 'To a Louse'" (1982) incorporates an intertextual approach to the mapping out the thematic structure. He traces the theme of the poem back to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. By far the best of these studies is Thomas Crawford's "The Vernacular Revival and the Poetic Thrill: A Hedonist Approach" (1983). Crawford discusses the aesthetic effects of blending Scots and standard English using the a combination of "Russian Formalism and the American New Criticism" (79). He draws out minute features of style and diction and relates them to conventions of Scottish songculture and vernacular poetry. His study is successful in providing meaningful insight into the craft of Burns. Crawford's study, like a handful of other studies previously mentioned in this essay, seem to point towards areas of inquiry which look promising for the future. In summary, since Burns studies have characteristically neglected the structural analysis which formalistic approaches produce; there is still work that needs to be done in the form of careful scrutiny of individual poems and songs. The work of Carol McGuirk points towards productive work to be done in rhetorical analysis of the language and style and the fruitful exploration of genre theory. John Strawhorn's sociohistorical study of the song and print culture of Ayrshire opens up a terrain that appears fertile. David Morris' study using Bakhtinian analysis points towards an area of inquiry which looks like it might be the best equipped to deal with the subtleties of the mixed language and mixed society which it reflected. Finally, Mary Ellen Brown's work in the area of folklore seems to be advancing the study of Burns' as a cultural symbol by avoiding the pitfalls of the Burns enthusiasts. Along the line of "songculture," a critical framework able to deal successfully with issues of popculture and technology is badly needed, although Strawhorn's work points in that direction. With contemporary criticism's interest in the margins of literature, one is a little surprised that a morally problematic, marginalized Scottish poet would not have provided material for a slough of critical articles. There are large areas left relatively untouched by some of today's most vigorous schools of criticism. For example, feminist scholarship has hardly touched Burns. He has often been stereotyped as a "man's man, and a man's poet," and, indeed, the women portrayed are usually targets for his sexual desires. However, one of the great talents Burns had was for creating a dialogic matrix within his verse. The portrayal of women if investigated by contemporary feminist scholarship would likely reveal a variety of degrees of sexism in his poemssome downright sexist and objectifying and others wherein the women get the upper hand or, perhaps, contain a subdialogue which undermines what appears to be a straightforward, objectifying lovelyric. The Merry Muses would be an interesting focus for a feminist study, and is still virtually untouched. Only one article on The Merry Muses has appeared in the last fifteen years. The key study of The Merry Muses was done almost thirty years ago by G. Legman in his essay on erotic folklore, The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography (1966). He devotes a chapter to The Merry Muses which discusses its early reception and underground editions in America and Great Britain and gives an overall historical framework for the discussion of erotic folk culture. The only recent critical article is "Burns and Bawdy" (1982) by R. D. S. Jack. The article investigates the forms of ballad and parody, and provides some interesting discussion on pagan and Christian typology, play with doubleentendres, and the ironic use of humor. However, the article needlessly drifts into sexist commentary at places and needs the corrective of a more balanced methodology. One final direction which looks promising and has never been the center of a study is the binational identity of Burns, discussed somewhat in passing by Angus Dunbar Anderson in his aforementioned essay. The advances in African American studies made by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of AfroAmerican Literary Criticism (1988) looks applicable to Burns and could help draw out the intricate play of "troping" and vernacular signification in his verse. The Du Boisian concept of double vision and the resulting doubleconsciousness and socialized ambivalence as described by Bernard W. Bell in The AfroAmerican Novel and Its Tradition (1987) seems ideally suited for exploring the sociohistorical, binational environment in Scotland during the first Century of union with England. Overall, there is much work to be done. Criticism on Burns is moving to catch up with the recent critical revolutions. This does not mean that traditional scholarly, thematic, and historical studies are not needed, but it does mean that the field is virtually wide open and in need of revision by the contemporary critical methodologies. As "lettered criticism" becomes able to successfully deal with popculture, the hostile relations between the Burns enthusiasts and the professional scholars will perhaps be mitigated. The keystone of the next generation of studies will likely be the one that is able to create a framework that includes a consideration of Burns entire poetic output, including The Merry Muses, and not simply isolated periods or subgenres or assorted hermeticallysealed issues. Burns' work and life presents a perplexing motley superimposed upon a patchwork culture, but the few most promising of the recent studies indicate that recent critical trends possess the ability to open up Burns' work in a productive way. An Annotated Bibliography to the Works and Criticism of Burns Editions Burns, Robert. The Songs of Robert Burns. Ed. Donald A. Low. London: Routledge, 1993. [This edition contains all the songs published originally in The Scots Musical Museum (17871803) and additional songs from other sources. It is the first comprehensive and unexpurgated contemporary edition of all discoverable songs by Burns including the music.] Burns, Robert. The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns. Ed. James Kinsley. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1968. [The authoritative edition of Burns' Poetry and Songs. Contains the Merry Muses. Excellent annotations.] Burns, Robert. The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns. Ed. James Kinsley. London: Oxford UP., 1969. [A reasonably priced authoritative edition of the best of Burns sans Merry Muses and assorted other poems and songs.] Burns, Robert. The Merry Muses of Caledonia. Ed. James Barke and Sydney Goodsir Smith. New York: G. P. Putnam's Son's, 1964. [Contains both the bawdy verse by Burns and that which he collected.] Ferguson, Delancey J. The Letters of Robert Burns. Ed. G. Ross Roy. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. [The authoritative edition of Burns' letters.] Biographical Currie, James. The Works of Robert Burn, with and Account of his Life, and a Criticism on his Writings. To which are prefixed, some odservations on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry. Baltimore: F. Lucus and J. Cushing and G. Palmer, 1816. [A crucial biography in the formation of thought concerning Burns because of its severe tone of moral disapproval. Depicts him as drunken and dissipated and hints that he died of alchoholism and the "pox."] Lindsay, Maurice. Robert Burns. London: Robert Hale LTD., 1979. [The most recent authoritative study of Burns Life.] ents every detail meticulously.] . Robert Burns: His Personality, His Reputation, and His Art. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1936. [Companion to The Life] Reference [Due to the nature of Burns studies, a number of reference materials exist to assist the scholar in geographical, intertextual, theoretical, and linguistic aspects of study.] Bold, Alan. A Burns Companion. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1991. [An excellent overall guide to the many facets of Burns, including the best recent bibliography.] Cuthbertson, John. Complete Glossary to the Poetry and Prose of Robert Burns. 1886. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1967. [Contains upwards of threethousand illustrations of usage from English and Scottish authors. Still the best guide to Burns' vernacular.] Lindsay, Maurice. The Burns Encyclopedia. 3rd ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1980. [Contians a ready reference to names, places, and events alluded to by Burns.] Low, Donald A., Ed. Robert Burns: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge & Kegan  J  Olson .Paul, 1974. [A very complete anthology to the early criticism and thought regarding Burns and the social milieu from 17861837. MaCaulay, Coleridge, Dorothy Wordsworth, Cowper, Scott, Byron, Carlyle, and others are included.] Robotham, John. "The Reading of Robert Burns." Bullitin of the New York Public Library (1970). [A list of virtually all authors and texts ever quoted or alluded to by Robert Burns. A vital checklist for any intertextual study.] A Review of Recent Areas of Interest in Burns Studies Historical/Political Anderson, Angus Dunbar. "Late Eighteenth Century Politics as Shown by the Works of Robert Burns." Neuva Revista del Pacifico 23 (1983): 87101. [Examines what can be learned about the political milieu from Burns' poetry. Poises the question of possible foul play in regards to Burns' untimely demise.] Carter, Ian. "Burns, Scott, and the Scottish Peasantry." Peasants and Countrymen in Literature. London: Roehampton, 1982. pp105122. [This study uses Burns' poetry as a point of departure to explore the sociohistorical framework of the peasant class in Scotland.] Crawford, Thomas. Boswell, Burns, and the French Revolution. Edinburgh: The Saltire Society, 1990. [Examines the politics of Edinburgh and documents Burns committment to the American revolution and zeal for the French revolution.] Donaldson, William. "The Glencairn Connection: Robert Burns and Scottish Politics." Studies in Scottish Literature 16 (1981): 6179. [Donaldson complains that too much attention has been placed on assessing the influence of the American and French Revolutions upon a handful of Burns' later poems and songs. By focusing on domestic politics, he attempts to shed light on the development of Burns' political views. According to Donaldson, although Burns' allegiances appear to shift at specific times, it is do to constantly fluctuating personal and political pressures in his life but that ideologically he remains consistent in his democratic sentiment.] Royle, Trevor. The Story of Literary Edinburgh: Precipitous City. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1980. [Explores the social, historical, and literary milieu of Edinburgh from the first historical records of its existance in 1093 to contemporary times. The chapters on the Eighteenth century contain useful discussion of the union with England, the enlightenment, and the literary scene.] Strawhorn, John. "Burns and the Bardie Clan" Scottish Literary Journal 8.2 (1981): 523. [An excellent study from the perspective of a socialhistorian. The Ayrshire which Strawhorn describes is a rich center of popular song which was benefited by a local printing press at Kilmarnoch. The essay includes a list of popular songs which were generally known around the region and crossreferences them to Burns' poetry, songs, and letters. Strawhorn portrays Burns' as a successful commodity of printculture due to the local familiarity and interest in the oral poetic traditions, the history of published poets from the area, and the increase in literacy (due to the parish schools) and subsequent local market.] Nationalistic Bold, Alan. "Robert Burns: Superscot." The Art of Robert Burns. Eds. R. D. S. Jack and Andrew Noble. London: Vision, 1982. 215238. [Bold outlines the various causes of Scotland's need for a national hero. He depicts 18th Century Scotland as having "a massive spiritual hangover prompted by the toxic taste of successive defeats and retained by a long folk memory of loss" (219). He formulates a vision of Scotland that is psychologized at the national level like an abused child holding onto Burns like a soiled rag doll.] Strauss, Dietrich. "BurnsLiterary Focus of Scottish National Identity?" Nationalism in Literature and National Identity. Eds. Drescher Horst and Hermann Volkel. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1989. pp107116. [Dietrich Strauss attempts to assess the state of Burns' image in Scotland. He suggests that "Burns has been reduced to a figure, dimly perceived as someone who could, on rare occasions, produce racy rhymes on Scottish whiskey, and savory or bawdy ones on the lasses of the countryrhymes, however, which as 'old stuff' are not worth remembering" (109). Strauss laments the state of Burns, and concludes "a nation which tends no longer to cherish the reflected memory and unsentimental veneration of a poet of Burns' stature . . . is risking the loss of part of her identity" (114). Strauss is in favor of maintaining and purifying the Burns Cult.] Wilson, G. Scott. Robert Burns: The Image and the Verse Epistles." The Art of Robert Burns. Eds. R. D. S. Jack and Andrew Noble. London: Vision, 1982. 127150. [Wilson's essay is inadvertently a case study in "Bardolotry," a term originally coined in Hugh MacDiarmid's vitriolic assault on the Burns clubs in Burns Today and Tomorrow (1959). Wilson makes much of the "manly image" and "rustic independence" he finds in the Mauchline epistles and concludes by asserting that "The Mauchline epistles remain among the most innovative, exciting, and important poetry of the century . . . and the vigor and zest of the language implies a commitment to imaginative freedom worthy of comparison with Blake or Dickens" (14849). Articles such as Wilson's make Burns' "imaginative freedoms" seem mild by comparison.] LanguageMorris, David B. "Burns and Heteroglossia." The EighteenthCentury: Theory and Interpretation 28 (1987): 327. [A relatively sophisticated Bakhtinian exploration of the multiplicity of voices in Burns. He sees Burns as continually shifting among a pastiche of registers, contrasting classical conventions and Augustan technique to the language of traditional and contemporary Scottish folksongs. The effect created by intertwining the voices is a resulting "conflict in levels of diction [that] alerts us to social conflicts which the poem refuses to make explicit" (17); thus, speech "becomes a metaphor and arena for freedoms which politics cannot assure" (23). Morris contrasts Burns' dialogic satires to Pope's didactic satires, emphasizing how Pope leaves his opponents pinned like butterflies in a display case while Burns creates "poetic space" for his targets through the use of oral speech patterns.] Sampson, David. "Burns, Robert: The Revival of Scottish Literature?" The Modern Language Review 80 (1985): 1638. [David Sampson frames his discussion by examining the socialhistorical situation in Scotland, where everyday speech has become macaronic due to the pressures created by the union with England. He sees a contemporary rhetorical effect of irony generated through the use of Scots. The basis for his argument is that in Burns time traditional Scots diction had become a lower register in relation to standard English and represented an essentially antiquated and dying culture. He concludes that Burns uses the effect of the vernacular in an artful and cognizant effort to create revision of the hierarchical relationship between Scots, standard English, and the local culture.] Structuralist/New Critical Carnochan, W. B. "The Moral Sentiment of 'To a Louse'" Studies in Scottish Literature 17 (1982): 245248. [An intertextually based thematic reading which traces the moral sentiment back to Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.] Crawford, Thomas. "The Vernacular Revival and the Poetic Thrill: A Hedonist Approach." Scotland and the Lowland Tongue: Studies in the Language and Literature of Lowland Scotland. Aberdeen: Aberdeen UP, 1983. 7999. [This article uses a combination of "Russian Formalism and the American New Criticism" (79) to formulate an argument concerning the aesthetics of Burns. It pays special attention to and attempts to deal with the macaronic qualities of the text.] Noble, Andrew. "Burns, Blake, and Romantic Revolt." The Art of Robert Burns. Eds. R. D. S. Jack and Andrew Noble. London: Vision, 1982. 191214. [A discussion of the theme of revolution and rebellion within the works of Blake and Burns.] Strange, William C. "The Fire Argument in The Jolly Beggars and The Cotter's Saturday Night." Studies in Scottish Literature. 17 (1982): 209217. [This study seeks to explore the irony and imagery in the two poems. Strange suggests that the previous critical reading that anarchy is the dominant theme is no longer tenable and forwards a reading which attempts to unitfy thematic elements in both poems.] Theory/Genre/Taxonomy Crawford, Thomas. Society and the Song Lyric: a study of the Song Culture of EighteenthCentury Scotland. Edinburgh: Scottish AP, 1979. [Offers the most expansive study on the songs yet to be attempted. The study subdivides the songlyric into nine major categories. It includes discussions on the subgenres of the national song, the drinking song, and the love song in corresponding chapters. The discussions are mainly close reading and interpretation combined with attempts here of there to historicize the sentiments. The study is wide ranging and has many useful cross references to various aspects of the critical debate on Burns, but seems a bit out of step with contemporary American criticism. The critical points he makes are sometimes just occasions set up to praise Burns and shed little useful light towards forwarding criticism. In the discussion of love lyrics, Crawford makes so many sexist remarks that one wonders if he has ever heard of feminism.] Leopold, Damrosch Jr. "Burns, Blake, and the Recovery of the Lyric." Studies in Romanticism 21 (1982): 637660. [Damrosch filters the issue of genre through a taxonomic analysis which contrasts the Augustan age to the Romantic age and sees Burns and Blake as resurrecting the lyric. His argument makes the assertion that "The eighteenth century strive to be Apollonian; Burns proclaims the return of Dionysus the liberator" (648). His discussion ranges from Burns to Black to Pope to Cowely and back to Burns again and examines love songs, drinking songs, and Pindaric Odes. Damrosch creates an interesting but somewhat thinly layered veneer of criticism over an overbearing enthusiasm for Burns.] McGuirk, Carol. Robert Burns and the Sentimental Era. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1985. [Starts from the assumption that to examine Burn's as a "dialect poet" is intrinisically misleading and nonproductive. The tendency to sentimentalize Burns as a "heaven taught rustic" is undone by showing the extent to which he is in touch with the intellectual debates and fashions of Edinburgh. McGuirk argues the importance of a wider range of study and focuses her investigation on the influence of the Sentimental tradition on Burns' work.] . "Scottish Hero, Scottish Victim: Myths of Robert Burns." The History of Scottish Literature. vol 2. Ed. Andrew Hook. Great Britain: Aberdeen UP, 1987. 5 vols. pp21938. [Carol McGuirk focuses on Burns' use of Scots language in combination with Scottish settings to create revision and estrangement within traditional settings and genres. She emphasizes the genre concerns, duellanguage elements, and stylistic conventions in her discussion.] Folklore Boyle, Andrew M. The Ayrshire Book of Burnslore. Ayr: Alloway, 1985. [Boyle does not involve himself with criticism; he does collect a considerable wealth of historic hearsay about Burns.] Brown, Mary Ellen. Burns and Tradition. London: Macmillan, 1984. [Brown offers a relatively thorough study of both the images Burns sought to portray at different points in his career and the historic uses for Burns as a cultural icon.] . "But You, or Me Will Never See, Another Rabbie Burns." Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore 37 (1981): 1117. [Brown attempts to investigate the social significance of the Burns' legend. She neatly summarizes the thesis which is followed and discussed at much greater length in her book: that "the legendary tradition then focuses on those aspects of Burns the man which he shared with many of his contemporaries rather than stressing the qualities, experiences, and achievements which separated him from the mass of man and made him an individual worthy of note" (15). Brown, however, seems at times to lose critical focus and overestimate the importance of Burns to Scottish culture.] Burns and the Bawdy Lyric Jack, R. D. S. "Burns and Bawdy". The Art of Robert Burns. Eds. R. D. S. Jack and Andrew Noble. London: Vision, 1982. 98126. [The article investigates the forms of ballad and parody, and provides some interesting discussion on pagan and Christian typology, play with doubleentendres, and the ironic use of humor. However, the article needlessly drifts into sexist commentary at places and needs the corrective of a more balanced methodology.] Legman, G. The Horn Book: Studies in Erotic Folklore and Bibliography. New Hyde Park: University Books Inc, 1966. [The key study of The Merry Muses done almost thirty years ago. He devotes a chapter to The Merry Muses which discusses its early reception and underground editions in America and Great Britain and gives an overall historical framework for the discussion of erotic folk culture.]