Professor Nigel Leask, University of Glasgow, Research Leave
Every New Year many of us sing, often badly, a version of Auld Lang Syne and each January may partake in a haggis supper or tipple of whisky but do any of us know where these traditions comes from?
Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote the poem of Auld Lang Syne in 1788 and Burns Night on or around the 25th January is a celebration of his birth, life and works. In fact January 2009 was the 250th anniversary of his birth but despite his continuing status as a cultural icon in his native Scotland, very little critical attention has been paid to his influence on British romanticism. Professor Leask the recipient of a Research Leave grant hopes to return Burns to central position in the literary canon in the field of Romantic studies with the publication of his book 'Romanticism and Popular Culture in Britain and Ireland'.
Burns’ fame as Scotland's national bard, and his influence on Scottish writers like Hogg, Scott, Elizabeth Hamilton, Lockhart, Wilson and Carlyle, has achieved local recognition. But much light remains to be cast on his literary and intellectual context in the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as his far-reaching influence on English and Irish Romantic writers like Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lamb, Roscoe, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Clare, Hazlitt, De Quincey and Tom Moore. Burns’ poetry is now largely excluded from a revised canon of Romantic literature as it is taught in UK and US English departments, despite the fact that the canon has broadened to include women and minority writers. In fact the decline of his reputation as a major Romantic poet has continued measurably ever since 1945. Astonishingly, there is to date no dedicated study of Burns’ influence on British Romanticism. Contemporary Burns scholarship is still largely concerned with studying the poet in an exclusively national literary framework. Leask’s monograph reassess the global significance of Scottish and British Romanticism in the light of Burns’ achievement and influence.
Professor Leask is Regius Professor of English Language and Literature at Glasgow University. For decades Glasgow has been an outstanding centre for Burns study , the university has a dedicated Burns Research Centre and there is easy access to the worlds Burns library holdings in the University Library Special Collections, Mitchell Library and the National Library of Scotland
Leask’s book proves invaluable for academics as well as the wider audience especially those wanting to know where their haggis and singing traditions come from.
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