Burns the Radical: Politics and Poetry in Late Eighteenth-century Scotland

by Liam Mc Ilvanney (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $5.37

  In this text, the author looks behind the trivializing image of the heav'n-taught ploughman to uncover the intellectual context of the poet's political radicalism. He reveals Burns as a sophisticated political poet whose work draws on a range of intellectual resources: the democratic, contactarian ideology of Scottish Peresbyterianism, the English and Irish Real Whig tradition, and the political theory of the Scottish Enlightenment. Throwing light on the poet's education and his early reading, Liam McIlvanney provides detailed readings of Burn's major poems. The book also offers research on Burns's links with Irish poets and radicals, providing a radical interpretation of the man who is coming to be recognized as the poet laureate of the radical Enlightenment.