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Corey Andrews

Youngstown State University, English, Faculty Member

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I am the Grace Ruth Endowed Professor of English at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio. My book Inventing Scotland's Bard: The British Reception of Robert Burns, 1786-1836 was published in 2022 by the South Carolina Scottish Literature Series and is available on Amazon. Inventing Scotland's Bard provides a detailed annotated bibliography of Burns's British reception history, offering the first such resource since J. Gibson's Bibliography of Robert Burns (1881).

My book The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834 was published in 2015 by Brill / Rodopi Press. I am currently working on a book-length project on critical and creative representations of Robert Burns, from 1828-2009.

I received my Ph.D. in Eighteenth-Century British Literature from Ohio University in 2000. My main research interest is eighteenth-century Scottish poetry, particularly the work of Robert Burns. I also specialize in Scottish Studies more generally, as well as issues related to labouring-class writers in the late eighteenth to the mid nineteenth centuries.
Phone: 330-941-3642
Address: 1 UNIVERSITY PLZ
DeBartolo Hall 246

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Books by Corey Andrews

Inventing the Bard: Robert Burns’s British Reception History, 1786-1836

Inventing Scotland’s Bard sets out to map the first fifty years of critical reaction to the poems... more Inventing Scotland’s Bard sets out to map the first fifty years of critical reaction to the poems, songs and life of Robert Burns, from his first book Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) to the explosion of new biographical and editorial work in the 1830s. Designed initially as a supplement and companion to Corey E. Andrews’s interpretative study, The Genius of Scotland (2015), this new book stands independently as a reference tool on the Burns phenomenon. Year by year, for half a century, it provides publication details and informative annotations on a variety of newspaper articles, periodical reviews, biographical comment, and poetic responses to Burns and his work. The materials reflect a wide spectrum of opinions and critical perspectives, from contemporaries who encountered Burn when his work was first published to writers of the two succeeding generations. Readers will find here a fascinating record of how in these crucial decades critics and readers engaged with Burns’s poetry to construct a national and international icon.

The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834

The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, focuses on the recept... more The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, focuses on the reception history of Robert Burns during and after his life, terminating in the life and career of “the Ettrick Shepherd” James Hogg. The concept of ‘genius’ is examined in depth, particularly its relation to issues of class and nation. For Burns, being characterized as a poetic ‘genius’ at first facilitated his success in finding audiences beyond his immediate locale in Ayrshire. The review penned by Henry Mackenzie in the Lounger encapsulated this aspect of Burns’s publicity, providing the catchphrase (‘the Heaven-taught ploughman’) that followed Burns throughout the rest of his career. While Mackenzie’s review proved initially useful by introducing the poet to wider audiences, it also severely limited Burns’s ability to participate fully in the literary field of his day. Most critics today recognize Burns’s great facility with mainstream poetic forms and modes and appreciate the dense allusiveness and intertextuality of his work. However, this book explores the reasons that this element of Burns’s verse was not appreciated by his critics and readers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, I examine the figure of Burns as both national icon and literary celebrity, fêted for his distinctiveness as a labouring-class ‘genius’ but also censored and judged for the putative transgressiveness of his life and work. The tension between approbation and moral condemnation expressed by Burns’s critics and readers culminated with the varying successes of James Hogg, for whom Burns’s legacy proved to be a difficult inheritance. I argue throughout the book that this process was directly tied to his reception history, which honed and refined Burns as a ‘cultural production’ that would meet the diverse needs of his national audiences. This resulted in considerable distortion of Burns’s biography, as well as critical diminishment for the scope and complexity of his poetry in both Scots and English. The simplification and distortion of Burns’s works and life story can still be felt in the present, as the book concludes with an assessment of the poet’s persona that was sanitized for public consumption in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Literary Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Club Poetry

This work provides a critical analysis of a neglected yet vital element of Scottish literature in... more This work provides a critical analysis of a neglected yet vital element of Scottish literature in the 18th century, covering the crucial period from the Union of 1707 to the revolutionary turmoil of the 1790s. It examines the literary output of several important clubs in eighteenth-century Scotland in an innovative fashion, offering the first book-length study of the club poetry of Scotland’s most significant eighteenth-century poets, Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns.

Papers by Corey Andrews

Poems in the Scots Register, 1650-1800

The International Companion to Scottish Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century, 2021

This chapter provides a survey of poems written in the Scots register, beginning in the mid-seven... more This chapter provides a survey of poems written in the Scots register, beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and concluding at the start of the nineteenth. Major and minor Scots poetry is assessed, with attention to formal and thematic continuities across the period. In particular, the Scots triumvirate of Allan Ramsay/Robert Fergusson/Robert Burns is examined in depth.

“Caledonia’s Bard, Brother Burns”: Robert Burns and Scottish Freemasonry

Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830, 2021

This chapter focuses on the Masonic experiences of Robert Burns, with attention to the history of... more

Teaching the Eighteenth-Century Labouring-Class Georgic

MLA Teaching Options: Teaching Eighteenth-Century Laboring Class Poetry, 2018

This chapter offers a pedagogical approach to eighteenth-century labouring class poetry in the co... more This chapter offers a pedagogical approach to eighteenth-century labouring class poetry in the college classroom, focusing on the poetic use of the georgic mode. It provides teaching models for the works of male and female labouring class poets of the period, such as Stephen Duck, Mary Collier, and James Grainger.

“Introduction to ‘Scottish Sociability: The Literature of Clubs and Associations’”

The Bottle Imp, 2017

This short essay introduces the 2017 Scottish Forum session at the MLA Conference in Philadelphia... more

"The Mirror Club: Periodicals as Tastemakers in Eighteenth-Century Scotland"

The Scottish Enlightenment and Literary Culture, 2016

This chapter explores the socio-cultural influence of Henry Mackenzie's two periodicals "The Mirr... more This chapter explores the socio-cultural influence of Henry Mackenzie's two periodicals "The Mirror" and "The Lounger" in Scotland during the 1770s-1780s. In particular, it explores the ways that the periodicals expressed aesthetic principles surrounding "taste," linking their techniques to earlier English models like "The Tatler" and "The Spectator." The influence of Mackenzie's review of Robert Burns's poetry is also assessed.

Radical Attribution: Robert Burns and "The Liberty Tree"

Studies in Scottish Literature, 2015

This article examines the provenance of the poem "The Liberty Tree," a work frequently attributed... more

Writing in Burns's Shadow: The Great Unknowns of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Labouring-Class Verse

This essay explores the legacy of Robert Burns, particularly the powerful influence he exerted up... more This essay explores the legacy of Robert Burns, particularly the powerful influence he exerted upon nineteenth-century Scottish labouring-class poets. The verse of these poets is assessed in this essay, with attention to their varying efforts to achieve recognition in the literary marketplace, where powerful forces shape the processes of reception and influence.

"The Glory and the Nothing of a Name": Sources of Charles Churchill's Scottophobia

The Eighteenth-Century Intelligncer , 2015

When Charles Churchill published “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, the controversial English poet... more When Charles Churchill published “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, the controversial English poet, priest, and libertine was enjoying considerable personal and critical success; his association with John Wilkes and The North Briton gave him no small measure of notoriety, and the hefty profits brought in by poems like “The Rosciad” allowed him to pursue a very irreligious life of pleasure. However, as Robert Southey later remarked of Churchill, “no English poet had ever enjoyed so excessive and short-lived a popularity.” Indeed, after the appearance of the poet’s “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, Churchill witnessed the fall and arrest of his own compatriot Wilkes only three weeks after the resignation of the hated Scottish minister, Lord Bute. The trend continued into the next year, when Churchill followed the exiled Wilkes into France and there died unexpectedly, at the age of thirty-three. By the time of his death, Churchill had amassed an impressive body of work, ranging from topical satire of London entertainments to virulently anti-Scottish propaganda like “The Prophecy of Famine.” This essay examines the latter, in such long poems as “The Prophecy of Famine” and “The Ghost,” in order to determine sources for both Churchill’s Scottophobia and its attendant popularity with English readers in the early 1760s. In particular, Churchill’s use of the famine-stricken Highlander will be investigated, for it is my contention that this image crystallizes the poet’s obsessive hatred of all things Scottish. The stereotype of the Highlander as a rugged, aggressive, masculine warrior is converted by Churchill into a paradoxical image capable of inspiring simultaneous loathing and inadvertent sympathy in English readers; this resultant image, the Highlander as both ravenous and starved, is central to Churchill’s political strategy in poems like “Prophecy of Famine.” The Scot as Highlander is safely dispelled as a serious menace due to his starvation, yet he is retained as a threat on account of his purportedly natural Scottish avarice. Studying the reasons for Churchill’s successful use of this poetic image turned political icon is the primary aim of this essay.

Scarred, Suffering Bodies: Eighteenth-Century Scottish Women Travellers on Slavery, Sentiment and Sensibility

Scots were among the most widely-traveled people in eighteenth-century Britain, often recording t... more Scots were among the most widely-traveled people in eighteenth-century Britain, often recording their experiences of cross-cultural contact in their public and personal writing. The chapter will provide a detailed examination of the response of Scottish women to West Indian slavery, a practice in which many Scots were deeply implicated. In particular, this chapter will discuss the Caribbean-Scottish relations explored in the travel accounts of two women: Janet Schaw (born ca. 1740) and Maria Ridell née Woodley (1772-1808). Based on her experiences in the West Indies in the 1770s, Schaw’s Journal of a Lady of Quality recounts the author’s personal contacts with West Indians and Scottish settlers. Not intended for publication, her journal explores the peculiarly Scottish dimension of West Indian life, seeking to clarify and defend the existing practice of slavery perpetrated by fellow Scots of “quality.” Schaw emerges in the Journal as an unwilling witness to slavery, a woman whose class status prevented her from establishing any sympathetic connection with the slaves she encountered. In this respect, Schaw’s Journal offers an alternative account of Caribbean-Scottish relations than has been typically expressed in the proto-abolitionist verse of her contemporary Scots. Two decades after Schaw’s Journal, Maria Riddell recorded her experiences as a young woman in the West Indies; her narrative Voyages to the Madeira and Leeward Caribbean Isles (1792) offers a much different viewpoint on the practice of slavery. Unlike the personal nature of Schaw’s Journal, Riddell sought to illustrate and assess life in the West Indies through a more “scientific” style of observation and description. This stylistic quality lends her Voyages a more distanced perspective on slavery, not yet presenting a fully-voiced critique of its practice but also disavowing the studied obliviousness of Schaw’s Journal. This chapter will examine this change in the perception of slavery from Schaw to Riddell, addressing the changing points of contact and departure in Caribbean-Scottish relations evidenced in the texts. It also offers the first critical analysis of Riddell’s Voyages, exploring in depth an important text that continues to be neglected in discussions of Scottish women’s travel literature. By examining the cross-cultural responses of Schaw and Riddell to life in the West Indies, the chapter will reveal the complex, often ambivalent reaction of Scottish women to Scotland’s role in a burgeoning British empire that was dependent upon slavery.

'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 ... more 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.

Footnoted Folklore: Robert Burns's "Halloween"

Robert Burns and Friends, 2012

The initial wave of celebrity surrounding Robert Burns’s print appearance in 1786 largely derived... more The initial wave of celebrity surrounding Robert Burns’s print appearance in 1786 largely derived from the novelty of the poet’s class background. Dubbed the “heaven-taught ploughman” by Henry Mackenzie, Burns achieved sudden fame as an untaught prodigy whose inspiration came directly from nature and the folk culture which he represented in his person and work. Although even contemporary critics of Burns such as John Logan doubted the poet’s authenticity, much of Burns’s 1786 Kilmarnock edition employs content and imagery that bolsters the poet’s “heaven-taught” persona. However, close analysis of Burns’s work often reveals the use of distancing devices that separate the poetic speaker from the content. Nowhere is this use more apparent than in “Halloween,” a long, quasi-anthropological study of the Scottish folk traditions surrounding the holiday. At 252 lines (among the longer productions in Burns’s body of work), “Halloween” teems with rich, often confusing detail about folk customs and rites that is meticulously explained in footnotes. While they do clarify matters of content and style, Burns’s footnotes also underscore and in fact, embody the distance between the poem’s folk content and its educated, primarily urban audience. Not only does Burns’s use of academic discourse belie his folk authenticity but more significantly, it points to gaps in access to experiences that separated and differentiated classes. In this sense, the footnote serves as a bridge between whole “ways of life” (to use Raymond Williams’s term) that were being increasingly confounded in eighteenth-century Scotland. This chapter explains how Burns straddled and attempted to traverse this gap in his poem “Halloween,” looking particularly at how the footnote both affirms and alienates the content to which it is appended.

Twentieth-Century Burns Scholar: J. DeLancey Ferguson.

This essay appears courtesy of the Burns Chronicle and the Robert Burns World Federation. All rights reserved.

This essay presents a critical appreciation of the work of J. DeLancey Ferguson, a noted Burns cr... more

Men of Feeling: Harley, Sindall, Zeluco, and Robert Burns.

Accounts of Robert Burns's reading are well-documented in his correspondence, where he frequently... more Accounts of Robert Burns's reading are well-documented in his correspondence, where he frequently attests to his enjoyment of three books in particular: John Moore's Zeluco and Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling and The Man of the World. These three Scottish novels recount the lives of vividly-imagined men whose actions affect those around them in dramatic fashion. Zeluco lies, deceives, and ultimately murders his lovers and family; the “Man of the World” Sindall behaves similarly, threatening the well-being of an innocent, virtuous family. At the other end of the spectrum, Harley (the lead of The Man of Feeling) weeps and emotes in vignette-like encounters with various scenes of suffering. Each of these characters holds clues to the exceedingly popular model of masculinity represented by the writing and reputation of Robert Burns. This essay examines the templates of masculinity embodied by Zeluco, Sindall, and Harley, in order to determine how and why they commanded such an influence on Burns's imagination. The characters' relation to late eighteenth-century ideals of politeness is also examined, in addition to the novels’ engagement with sentimental discourse. The essay offers an analysis of the combined influences of these three "men of feeling" on Burns, his writing, and his posthumous reputation.

"Burnsiana": The Collections of John Dawson Ross

This essay appears courtesy of the Burns Chronicle and the Robert Burns World Federation. All rights reserved.

This essay provides a brief account of the Burnsiana collections of John Dawson Ross, with partic... more

"Work" Poems: Assessing the Georgic Mode of Eighteenth-Century Working-Class Poetry.

Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took va... more Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives transformed due to the success of their verse (Stephen Duck most famously), but most faded into literary obscurity. However, a substantial body of “work” poems was produced by a diverse group of poets throughout the century, each manifesting divergent concerns and attitudes about the experience of work. This chapter assesses the formal connections uniting this poetic genre, particularly the frequent use of such literary devices as ironic distancing, litotes, and mock-georgic description. Instead of solely classifying “work” poems on the basis of their subject matter, this chapter demonstrates that such poetry (indeed the genre itself) lends itself to sophisticated literary techniques often associated with other poetic genres. In this fashion the full measure of eighteenth-century working class poetry can be evaluated more fairly, particularly by analyzing the formation of a new genre designed expressly by the poets themselves. The chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate the connectedness, rather than the alienation, of working class poetry to the eighteenth-century British poetic tradition.

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... more 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.

Venders, Purchasers, Admirers: Burnsian "Men of Action" from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century.

The article discusses the promotion of poet Robert Burns as a national icon for Scotland after hi... more The article discusses the promotion of poet Robert Burns as a national icon for Scotland after his death in 1796. It cites Burns' popular appeal to Scots of all classes, with special attention to his cultural value in nineteenth-century Scotland. As the nineteenth-century glorification of Burns waned, interest in his political views (and potential value) grew among many Scottish groups. In particular, the significance of politics assumed a primary role in critical and popular cultural analyses of the poet. Particularly in the new climate of devolution following the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, Burns represented different, often competing iconic meanings as various groups have sought to harness the power of his reputation to promote their interests. Nowhere has this process been more evident than in Burns’s relationship to politics; his endorsement or denunciation of radical politics in particular has continued to be a major bone of contention in discussions of his reputation. The article indicates the claim of ownership of Burns by the Scottish people continues to be a major feature of Scotland's relationship to Burns. It suggests that Burns' place in the literary field will be better understood and appreciated by recognizing the process by which he became a national icon.

Inventing the Bard: Robert Burns’s British Reception History, 1786-1836

Inventing Scotland’s Bard sets out to map the first fifty years of critical reaction to the poems... more Inventing Scotland’s Bard sets out to map the first fifty years of critical reaction to the poems, songs and life of Robert Burns, from his first book Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (1786) to the explosion of new biographical and editorial work in the 1830s. Designed initially as a supplement and companion to Corey E. Andrews’s interpretative study, The Genius of Scotland (2015), this new book stands independently as a reference tool on the Burns phenomenon. Year by year, for half a century, it provides publication details and informative annotations on a variety of newspaper articles, periodical reviews, biographical comment, and poetic responses to Burns and his work. The materials reflect a wide spectrum of opinions and critical perspectives, from contemporaries who encountered Burn when his work was first published to writers of the two succeeding generations. Readers will find here a fascinating record of how in these crucial decades critics and readers engaged with Burns’s poetry to construct a national and international icon.

The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834

The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, focuses on the recept... more The Genius of Scotland: The Cultural Production of Robert Burns, 1785-1834, focuses on the reception history of Robert Burns during and after his life, terminating in the life and career of “the Ettrick Shepherd” James Hogg. The concept of ‘genius’ is examined in depth, particularly its relation to issues of class and nation. For Burns, being characterized as a poetic ‘genius’ at first facilitated his success in finding audiences beyond his immediate locale in Ayrshire. The review penned by Henry Mackenzie in the Lounger encapsulated this aspect of Burns’s publicity, providing the catchphrase (‘the Heaven-taught ploughman’) that followed Burns throughout the rest of his career. While Mackenzie’s review proved initially useful by introducing the poet to wider audiences, it also severely limited Burns’s ability to participate fully in the literary field of his day. Most critics today recognize Burns’s great facility with mainstream poetic forms and modes and appreciate the dense allusiveness and intertextuality of his work. However, this book explores the reasons that this element of Burns’s verse was not appreciated by his critics and readers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Employing Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production, I examine the figure of Burns as both national icon and literary celebrity, fêted for his distinctiveness as a labouring-class ‘genius’ but also censored and judged for the putative transgressiveness of his life and work. The tension between approbation and moral condemnation expressed by Burns’s critics and readers culminated with the varying successes of James Hogg, for whom Burns’s legacy proved to be a difficult inheritance. I argue throughout the book that this process was directly tied to his reception history, which honed and refined Burns as a ‘cultural production’ that would meet the diverse needs of his national audiences. This resulted in considerable distortion of Burns’s biography, as well as critical diminishment for the scope and complexity of his poetry in both Scots and English. The simplification and distortion of Burns’s works and life story can still be felt in the present, as the book concludes with an assessment of the poet’s persona that was sanitized for public consumption in the nineteenth century and beyond.

Literary Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century Scottish Club Poetry

This work provides a critical analysis of a neglected yet vital element of Scottish literature in... more This work provides a critical analysis of a neglected yet vital element of Scottish literature in the 18th century, covering the crucial period from the Union of 1707 to the revolutionary turmoil of the 1790s. It examines the literary output of several important clubs in eighteenth-century Scotland in an innovative fashion, offering the first book-length study of the club poetry of Scotland’s most significant eighteenth-century poets, Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns.

Poems in the Scots Register, 1650-1800

The International Companion to Scottish Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century, 2021

This chapter provides a survey of poems written in the Scots register, beginning in the mid-seven... more This chapter provides a survey of poems written in the Scots register, beginning in the mid-seventeenth century and concluding at the start of the nineteenth. Major and minor Scots poetry is assessed, with attention to formal and thematic continuities across the period. In particular, the Scots triumvirate of Allan Ramsay/Robert Fergusson/Robert Burns is examined in depth.

“Caledonia’s Bard, Brother Burns”: Robert Burns and Scottish Freemasonry

Association and Enlightenment: Scottish Clubs and Societies, 1700-1830, 2021

This chapter focuses on the Masonic experiences of Robert Burns, with attention to the history of... more

Teaching the Eighteenth-Century Labouring-Class Georgic

MLA Teaching Options: Teaching Eighteenth-Century Laboring Class Poetry, 2018

This chapter offers a pedagogical approach to eighteenth-century labouring class poetry in the co... more This chapter offers a pedagogical approach to eighteenth-century labouring class poetry in the college classroom, focusing on the poetic use of the georgic mode. It provides teaching models for the works of male and female labouring class poets of the period, such as Stephen Duck, Mary Collier, and James Grainger.

“Introduction to ‘Scottish Sociability: The Literature of Clubs and Associations’”

The Bottle Imp, 2017

This short essay introduces the 2017 Scottish Forum session at the MLA Conference in Philadelphia... more

"The Mirror Club: Periodicals as Tastemakers in Eighteenth-Century Scotland"

The Scottish Enlightenment and Literary Culture, 2016

This chapter explores the socio-cultural influence of Henry Mackenzie's two periodicals "The Mirr... more This chapter explores the socio-cultural influence of Henry Mackenzie's two periodicals "The Mirror" and "The Lounger" in Scotland during the 1770s-1780s. In particular, it explores the ways that the periodicals expressed aesthetic principles surrounding "taste," linking their techniques to earlier English models like "The Tatler" and "The Spectator." The influence of Mackenzie's review of Robert Burns's poetry is also assessed.

Radical Attribution: Robert Burns and "The Liberty Tree"

Studies in Scottish Literature, 2015

This article examines the provenance of the poem "The Liberty Tree," a work frequently attributed... more

Writing in Burns's Shadow: The Great Unknowns of Nineteenth-Century Scottish Labouring-Class Verse

This essay explores the legacy of Robert Burns, particularly the powerful influence he exerted up... more This essay explores the legacy of Robert Burns, particularly the powerful influence he exerted upon nineteenth-century Scottish labouring-class poets. The verse of these poets is assessed in this essay, with attention to their varying efforts to achieve recognition in the literary marketplace, where powerful forces shape the processes of reception and influence.

"The Glory and the Nothing of a Name": Sources of Charles Churchill's Scottophobia

The Eighteenth-Century Intelligncer , 2015

When Charles Churchill published “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, the controversial English poet... more When Charles Churchill published “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, the controversial English poet, priest, and libertine was enjoying considerable personal and critical success; his association with John Wilkes and The North Briton gave him no small measure of notoriety, and the hefty profits brought in by poems like “The Rosciad” allowed him to pursue a very irreligious life of pleasure. However, as Robert Southey later remarked of Churchill, “no English poet had ever enjoyed so excessive and short-lived a popularity.” Indeed, after the appearance of the poet’s “The Prophecy of Famine” in 1763, Churchill witnessed the fall and arrest of his own compatriot Wilkes only three weeks after the resignation of the hated Scottish minister, Lord Bute. The trend continued into the next year, when Churchill followed the exiled Wilkes into France and there died unexpectedly, at the age of thirty-three. By the time of his death, Churchill had amassed an impressive body of work, ranging from topical satire of London entertainments to virulently anti-Scottish propaganda like “The Prophecy of Famine.” This essay examines the latter, in such long poems as “The Prophecy of Famine” and “The Ghost,” in order to determine sources for both Churchill’s Scottophobia and its attendant popularity with English readers in the early 1760s. In particular, Churchill’s use of the famine-stricken Highlander will be investigated, for it is my contention that this image crystallizes the poet’s obsessive hatred of all things Scottish. The stereotype of the Highlander as a rugged, aggressive, masculine warrior is converted by Churchill into a paradoxical image capable of inspiring simultaneous loathing and inadvertent sympathy in English readers; this resultant image, the Highlander as both ravenous and starved, is central to Churchill’s political strategy in poems like “Prophecy of Famine.” The Scot as Highlander is safely dispelled as a serious menace due to his starvation, yet he is retained as a threat on account of his purportedly natural Scottish avarice. Studying the reasons for Churchill’s successful use of this poetic image turned political icon is the primary aim of this essay.

Scarred, Suffering Bodies: Eighteenth-Century Scottish Women Travellers on Slavery, Sentiment and Sensibility

Scots were among the most widely-traveled people in eighteenth-century Britain, often recording t... more Scots were among the most widely-traveled people in eighteenth-century Britain, often recording their experiences of cross-cultural contact in their public and personal writing. The chapter will provide a detailed examination of the response of Scottish women to West Indian slavery, a practice in which many Scots were deeply implicated. In particular, this chapter will discuss the Caribbean-Scottish relations explored in the travel accounts of two women: Janet Schaw (born ca. 1740) and Maria Ridell née Woodley (1772-1808). Based on her experiences in the West Indies in the 1770s, Schaw’s Journal of a Lady of Quality recounts the author’s personal contacts with West Indians and Scottish settlers. Not intended for publication, her journal explores the peculiarly Scottish dimension of West Indian life, seeking to clarify and defend the existing practice of slavery perpetrated by fellow Scots of “quality.” Schaw emerges in the Journal as an unwilling witness to slavery, a woman whose class status prevented her from establishing any sympathetic connection with the slaves she encountered. In this respect, Schaw’s Journal offers an alternative account of Caribbean-Scottish relations than has been typically expressed in the proto-abolitionist verse of her contemporary Scots. Two decades after Schaw’s Journal, Maria Riddell recorded her experiences as a young woman in the West Indies; her narrative Voyages to the Madeira and Leeward Caribbean Isles (1792) offers a much different viewpoint on the practice of slavery. Unlike the personal nature of Schaw’s Journal, Riddell sought to illustrate and assess life in the West Indies through a more “scientific” style of observation and description. This stylistic quality lends her Voyages a more distanced perspective on slavery, not yet presenting a fully-voiced critique of its practice but also disavowing the studied obliviousness of Schaw’s Journal. This chapter will examine this change in the perception of slavery from Schaw to Riddell, addressing the changing points of contact and departure in Caribbean-Scottish relations evidenced in the texts. It also offers the first critical analysis of Riddell’s Voyages, exploring in depth an important text that continues to be neglected in discussions of Scottish women’s travel literature. By examining the cross-cultural responses of Schaw and Riddell to life in the West Indies, the chapter will reveal the complex, often ambivalent reaction of Scottish women to Scotland’s role in a burgeoning British empire that was dependent upon slavery.

'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 ... more 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.

Footnoted Folklore: Robert Burns's "Halloween"

Robert Burns and Friends, 2012

The initial wave of celebrity surrounding Robert Burns’s print appearance in 1786 largely derived... more The initial wave of celebrity surrounding Robert Burns’s print appearance in 1786 largely derived from the novelty of the poet’s class background. Dubbed the “heaven-taught ploughman” by Henry Mackenzie, Burns achieved sudden fame as an untaught prodigy whose inspiration came directly from nature and the folk culture which he represented in his person and work. Although even contemporary critics of Burns such as John Logan doubted the poet’s authenticity, much of Burns’s 1786 Kilmarnock edition employs content and imagery that bolsters the poet’s “heaven-taught” persona. However, close analysis of Burns’s work often reveals the use of distancing devices that separate the poetic speaker from the content. Nowhere is this use more apparent than in “Halloween,” a long, quasi-anthropological study of the Scottish folk traditions surrounding the holiday. At 252 lines (among the longer productions in Burns’s body of work), “Halloween” teems with rich, often confusing detail about folk customs and rites that is meticulously explained in footnotes. While they do clarify matters of content and style, Burns’s footnotes also underscore and in fact, embody the distance between the poem’s folk content and its educated, primarily urban audience. Not only does Burns’s use of academic discourse belie his folk authenticity but more significantly, it points to gaps in access to experiences that separated and differentiated classes. In this sense, the footnote serves as a bridge between whole “ways of life” (to use Raymond Williams’s term) that were being increasingly confounded in eighteenth-century Scotland. This chapter explains how Burns straddled and attempted to traverse this gap in his poem “Halloween,” looking particularly at how the footnote both affirms and alienates the content to which it is appended.

Twentieth-Century Burns Scholar: J. DeLancey Ferguson.

This essay appears courtesy of the Burns Chronicle and the Robert Burns World Federation. All rights reserved.

This essay presents a critical appreciation of the work of J. DeLancey Ferguson, a noted Burns cr... more

Men of Feeling: Harley, Sindall, Zeluco, and Robert Burns.

Accounts of Robert Burns's reading are well-documented in his correspondence, where he frequently... more Accounts of Robert Burns's reading are well-documented in his correspondence, where he frequently attests to his enjoyment of three books in particular: John Moore's Zeluco and Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling and The Man of the World. These three Scottish novels recount the lives of vividly-imagined men whose actions affect those around them in dramatic fashion. Zeluco lies, deceives, and ultimately murders his lovers and family; the “Man of the World” Sindall behaves similarly, threatening the well-being of an innocent, virtuous family. At the other end of the spectrum, Harley (the lead of The Man of Feeling) weeps and emotes in vignette-like encounters with various scenes of suffering. Each of these characters holds clues to the exceedingly popular model of masculinity represented by the writing and reputation of Robert Burns. This essay examines the templates of masculinity embodied by Zeluco, Sindall, and Harley, in order to determine how and why they commanded such an influence on Burns's imagination. The characters' relation to late eighteenth-century ideals of politeness is also examined, in addition to the novels’ engagement with sentimental discourse. The essay offers an analysis of the combined influences of these three "men of feeling" on Burns, his writing, and his posthumous reputation.

"Burnsiana": The Collections of John Dawson Ross

This essay appears courtesy of the Burns Chronicle and the Robert Burns World Federation. All rights reserved.

This essay provides a brief account of the Burnsiana collections of John Dawson Ross, with partic... more

"Work" Poems: Assessing the Georgic Mode of Eighteenth-Century Working-Class Poetry.

Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took va... more Eighteenth-century Britain saw the emergence of a new poetic genre, the “work” poem which took various forms of labor as its subject and was often written by laborers themselves. Several of these working class poets found their lives transformed due to the success of their verse (Stephen Duck most famously), but most faded into literary obscurity. However, a substantial body of “work” poems was produced by a diverse group of poets throughout the century, each manifesting divergent concerns and attitudes about the experience of work. This chapter assesses the formal connections uniting this poetic genre, particularly the frequent use of such literary devices as ironic distancing, litotes, and mock-georgic description. Instead of solely classifying “work” poems on the basis of their subject matter, this chapter demonstrates that such poetry (indeed the genre itself) lends itself to sophisticated literary techniques often associated with other poetic genres. In this fashion the full measure of eighteenth-century working class poetry can be evaluated more fairly, particularly by analyzing the formation of a new genre designed expressly by the poets themselves. The chapter ultimately seeks to demonstrate the connectedness, rather than the alienation, of working class poetry to the eighteenth-century British poetic tradition.

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... more 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.

Venders, Purchasers, Admirers: Burnsian "Men of Action" from the Nineteenth to the Twenty-First Century.

The article discusses the promotion of poet Robert Burns as a national icon for Scotland after hi... more The article discusses the promotion of poet Robert Burns as a national icon for Scotland after his death in 1796. It cites Burns' popular appeal to Scots of all classes, with special attention to his cultural value in nineteenth-century Scotland. As the nineteenth-century glorification of Burns waned, interest in his political views (and potential value) grew among many Scottish groups. In particular, the significance of politics assumed a primary role in critical and popular cultural analyses of the poet. Particularly in the new climate of devolution following the opening of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, Burns represented different, often competing iconic meanings as various groups have sought to harness the power of his reputation to promote their interests. Nowhere has this process been more evident than in Burns’s relationship to politics; his endorsement or denunciation of radical politics in particular has continued to be a major bone of contention in discussions of his reputation. The article indicates the claim of ownership of Burns by the Scottish people continues to be a major feature of Scotland's relationship to Burns. It suggests that Burns' place in the literary field will be better understood and appreciated by recognizing the process by which he became a national icon.

This short essay provides contextual background on Robert Burns's lyric, "Ae Fond Kiss," as well ... more

Burns the Critic.

This chapter focuses on the largely ignored issue of Burns’s critical practice. In his prose and ... more This chapter focuses on the largely ignored issue of Burns’s critical practice. In his prose and letters, one can find wide-ranging discussions of poetry and song, along with detailed analyses of literary forms and modes. Burns’s critical writings belie the deliberate oppositions of critic and poet and reveal a writer deeply invested in his craft, using critical axioms and sentimental topoi to refine his work. The tone and posture of much of Burns’s criticism is both brash and apprehensive; he critically values what he can creatively put into practice. For Burns, criticism was less about displaying correct learning or taste than on discovering sources for emulation. Successful emulation resulted from critical analysis and creative transposition, studying primary texts for sources, ideas, and strategies for future writing. Such a vigorous and surprisingly cohesive attitude about the craft of writing forms the heart of Burns’s criticism, an uncollected commentary randomly dispersed throughout his prose. This body of work also pointedly refutes his supposed ‘want of Learning’ and reveals a predominantly practical reader intrigued with the process of poetic creation.

"Ev'ry Heart Can Feel": Scottish Poetic Responses to Slavery in the West Indies, from Blair to Burns.

This article examines the wide-ranging Scottish poetic response to eighteenth-century slavery, pa... more This article examines the wide-ranging Scottish poetic response to eighteenth-century slavery, particularly the use of sentiment as a literary strategy designed to provoke empathetic reactions from readers. The article covers the entirety of the eighteenth-century Scottish response, ending with Robert Burns's ambiguous poetic treatments of slavery. Because Scots were intimately involved at home and abroad in the discourse and practice of the slave trade, they were well-positioned to respond to its effects. Scottish Enlightenment philosophy, derived from the works of Smith, Francis Hutcheson, and Dugald Stewart, had laid the groundwork for literary works that stressed the importance of feelings in the individual’s response to the world. Observable phenomena became not just the source of sensory impressions but served to structure and relate experiences by means of empathetic sentimental responses. These responses could guide future actions by acting to promote the relief of suffering and dissipate the stimulus to the observer’s own pain. Based on the central premise of this model—‘ev’ry heart can feel’—much Scottish poetry from the eighteenth century sought to redress the sufferings of slaves by appealing to core emotions in its audience, producing as a result a body of political writing that powerfully imagined the painful experience of slavery.

Robert Burns and the United States of America: Poetry, Print, and Memory, 1786-1866, by Arun Sood

Scottish Literary Review, 2019

Selected Essays on Robert Burns by G. Ross Roy, edited by Patrick Scott, Elizabeth Sudduth, and Jo DuRant

Scottish Literary Review, 2018

The Language of Robert Burns: Style, Ideology, and Identity by Alex Broadhead

The Bottle Imp, 2015

Revising Robert Burns and Ulster: Literature, Religion, and Politics, c. 1770-1920, ed. by Frank Ferguson and Andrew R. Holmes

Studies in Hogg and His World, 2014

Maurice Lindsay's The Burns Encyclopedia, ed. David Purdie, Kirsteen McCue, and Gerard Carruthers

Eighteenth-Century Scotland, 2014

Robert Burns: Selected Poems and Songs, ed. Robert P. Irvine

The Bottle Imp, 2013

Robert Burns and Transatlantic Culture, ed. Sharon Alker, Leith Davis, and Holly Faith Nelson.

Scottish Literary Review, 2012

Robert Burns in Global Culture, ed. Murray Pittock, and Burns and Other Poets, ed. David Sergeant and Fiona Stafford

Eighteenth-Century Scotland, 2012

Women Peasant Poets in Eighteenth-Century England, Scotland, and Germany: Milkmaids on Parnassus, by Susanne Kord

The Eighteenth-Century Novel, 2009

Review of several books published for the 250th anniversary of Robert Burns's birth

Eighteenth-Century Scotland, 2009

Reviews the following titles: The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford Burns: A ... more Reviews the following titles:
The Bard: Robert Burns, A Biography, by Robert Crawford
Burns: A Study of the Songs and Poems, by Thomas Crawford
Robert Burns, by David Daiches
Fickle Man: Robert Burns in the 21st Century, ed. by Johnny Rodgers and Gerard Carruthers
Burnsiana: A Bibliography of the William R. Smith Collection in the Library of the Supreme Council, by Larissa Watkins

Ballad Collection, Lyric, and the Canon: The Call of the Popular, by Steve Newman

Eighteenth-Century Intelligencer, 2008

A Pleasing Sinne: Drink and Conviviality in 17th-Century England, ed. Adam Smyth

The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, 2005