Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics: The Bard of Contention (1914-2014)
Robert Burns is Scotland’s best known and most influential poet; yet his political legacy also ranks amongst the most contentious. His ambiguous verse, oscillating between patriotic odes, egalitarian lines and royalist songs, lends itself to interpretations from across the political divide.
Blending political history and literary studies, this book explores this contested legacy of ‘Scotland’s National Bard’. It follows the transformations of Burns’s image throughout the late modern era, as revolutionaries, nationalists and avant-garde writers co-opted Burns’s myth to subvert their country’s social and constitutional order. From Great War unionism to 1940s socialism and contemporary nationalism, the examination of Burns’s tempestuous afterlives sheds light on the ongoing Scottish question. Overall, it reminds us that poetry is a very shifting ground on which to build a national identity.

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Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics: The Bard of Contention (1914-2014)
Robert Burns is Scotland’s best known and most influential poet; yet his political legacy also ranks amongst the most contentious. His ambiguous verse, oscillating between patriotic odes, egalitarian lines and royalist songs, lends itself to interpretations from across the political divide.
Blending political history and literary studies, this book explores this contested legacy of ‘Scotland’s National Bard’. It follows the transformations of Burns’s image throughout the late modern era, as revolutionaries, nationalists and avant-garde writers co-opted Burns’s myth to subvert their country’s social and constitutional order. From Great War unionism to 1940s socialism and contemporary nationalism, the examination of Burns’s tempestuous afterlives sheds light on the ongoing Scottish question. Overall, it reminds us that poetry is a very shifting ground on which to build a national identity.

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Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics: The Bard of Contention (1914-2014)

Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics: The Bard of Contention (1914-2014)

by Paul Malgrati
Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics: The Bard of Contention (1914-2014)

Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics: The Bard of Contention (1914-2014)

by Paul Malgrati

Hardcover

$110.00 
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Overview

Robert Burns is Scotland’s best known and most influential poet; yet his political legacy also ranks amongst the most contentious. His ambiguous verse, oscillating between patriotic odes, egalitarian lines and royalist songs, lends itself to interpretations from across the political divide.
Blending political history and literary studies, this book explores this contested legacy of ‘Scotland’s National Bard’. It follows the transformations of Burns’s image throughout the late modern era, as revolutionaries, nationalists and avant-garde writers co-opted Burns’s myth to subvert their country’s social and constitutional order. From Great War unionism to 1940s socialism and contemporary nationalism, the examination of Burns’s tempestuous afterlives sheds light on the ongoing Scottish question. Overall, it reminds us that poetry is a very shifting ground on which to build a national identity.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781399503457
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication date: 03/17/2023
Pages: 280
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Paul Malgrati was born in France and moved to Scotland in 2013, earning his award-winning PhD in Scottish History and English at the University of St Andrews in 2020. From 2020 to 2022 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow's Centre for Robert Burns Studies. He currently lives in Switzerland, working as a teacher and researching Scottish literature as an independent scholar. He is the author of a number of articles on both Robert Burns and on twentieth-century Scottish poetry. His first book of poems, Poèmes Écossais (2022) was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize. It is believed to be the first book of Scots poetry by a non-native Anglophone. Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics is his first monograph.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Scotland’s ‘Bardocracy’ 1. Explosive Memory: Burns Enters the Twentieth Century (1914–1919) 2. Renaissance, Iconoclasm and Burnsian Reformation (1920–1930) 3. Relic or Messiah? (1930–1940)4. ‘See Yonder Poor’: The Bard of Welfare (1941–1948) 5. Into the Cold War: Checkpoint Rabbie (1948–1959)6. Indigenous Dreams and Kailyard Politics: Burns After Empire (1960–1979) 7. The Bardic Politics of Scottish Devolution (1979–1999) 8. Rabbie for Yes? (2000–2014) Epilogue: A Poetic Constitution

Bibliography Index

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