Spring, 2000

Dr. Leith Davis

web site: http://www.sfu.ca/personal/leith

This class will focus on Robert Burns (1759-1796), the acclaimed "Heav'n taught ploughman" and Bard of Scotland. We will examine not only Burns's poetry and songs, but also his contribution to the "imagined community" of the British nation. We will consider Burns in relation to: his poetic predecessors in Scotland; the song and ballad culture of Lowland and Gaelic Scotland; eighteenth-century English poetry; the contemporary marketplace; the formation of a canon of English literature in the nineteenth century. At issue throughout the course will be the intersection of the representation of gender and of the nation with concerns regarding orality and the literary marketplace. A photocopied reader of critical essays concerning Burns and Cultural Studies will be compiled for the course.

Texts:

Robert Burns: Selected Poems, ed. Carol McGuirk. Penguin, 1993.

Custom Courseware reader

Requirements:

Essay 1 (7-8 pp): 25 %

Essay 2 (10-12 pp): 35%

Seminar Presentation: 10 %

Final exam: 25 %

Attendance and Participation: 5 %

 Course Outline

Week One:

Jan. 6: Introduction to course

Week Two:

Jan. 11: The Lowland Ballad Tradition

Jan. 13: Critical article: Mary Ellen Brown, "Old Singing Women and the Canons of Scottish Balladry and Song" (in reader)

Week Three:

Jan. 18: The Rediscovery of the Ballad Tradition

Jan. 20:

Week Four:

Seminar: "Hardyknute" (in reader)

poems by Allan Ramsay (in reader)

Jan. 27: Scottish Predecessors

Week Five:

Feb. 1: English Predecessors:

Reading: Thomas Gray and William Collins, poems (in reader)

Feb. 2: Critical reading: The Dictionary of Sensibility web project

Week Six:

Feb. 8: Forging the Nation

Reading: James Macpherson, Fragments of Ancient Poetry

Feb. 10: Critical article: Adam Potkay, "Virtue and Manners in Macpherson's Poems of Ossian" (in reader)

Week Seven:

Feb. 15: Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect

Reading: "The Twa Dogs," Reading: "The Twa Dogs," "Scotch Drink," The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer," "The Death and Dying Words of Poor Mailie," "Poor Mailie's Elegy," "Halloween," "The Cotter's Saturday Night," "A Dream," "Man Was Made to Mourn"

Week Eight:

Feb. 22: Burns's Epistles

Reading: "Epistle to Davie," "Epistle to John Lapraik , An Old Scotch Bard"; "To the Same"; "To William Simson, Ochiltree"; "To James Smith"

Feb. 24: Critical article: Carol McGuirk, "Introduction," from Robert Burns and the Sentimental Tradition (in reader)

Week Nine:

Feb. 29: Burns's satires and repressed poems

Reading: "The Holy Fair"; "Holy Willy's Prayer"; "Address to the Unco Good"; "A Poet's Welcome to His Love-Begotten Daughter"; "The Fornicator"; "Jamie Come Try Me"; "Love and Liberty: A Cantata"; "Death and Dr. Hornbook. A True Story"

March 2: Critical article: Kenneth Simpson, "Robert Burns," from The Protean Scot (in reader)

Seminar: "The Auld Farmer's New-Year-Morning Saluation"

Week Ten:

March 7: Longer Poems: "The Vision"; "Tam O'Shanter"

 March 9: Critical article: "British Burns," Robert Crawford, from Devolving English Literature (in reader)

Seminar: "To A Haggis"

Week Eleven:

Reading: "On a Scotch Bard Gone to the West Indies"; "A Bard's Epitaph"; "There was a lad"; "Elegy on the Death of Robert Ruisseaux"; "Epitaph. Here lies Robert Fergusson, Poet; "On Fergusson"; "To William Creech";

March 16: Critical article, Peter Murphy, "Robert Burns," from Poetry as an Occupation and as an Art in Britain 1760-1830 (in reader)

Week Twelve:

March 21: Burns and National Song: The Scots Musical Museum and A Select Collection

Reading: "Song Composed in August"; "Corn Rigs"; "Bonnie Dundee"; "Ca' the ewes"; "To the Weaver's gin ye go"; "O'er the water to Charlie"; "Rattlin, roarin' Willie"; "The Winter is Past"; "Auld lang syne"; "Afton Water"; "John Anderson my Jo"; "The Banks o' Doon"; "Ae Fond Kiss"; "Ye Jacobites by Name"; "Such a Parcel of rogues in a Nation"; "The Lea-Rig"; "Robert Bruce's March to Bannockburn";

March 23: Critical article: Moira Ferguson, "Janet Little and Robert Burns: The Politics of the Heart" (in reader)

Week Thirteen:

March 28: Critical reception of Burns

Reading: Selections from Low (in reader); Wordsworth, "Letter to a Friend of Robert Burns";

 March 30: Critical article: Carol McQuirk, "Burns and Nostalgia" (in reader)

Seminar: Matthew Arnold (in reader)

Week Fourteen:

April 6: Conclusion: Burns in the 21^st century

Film: "Angelou on Burns"