Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I LITERARY PRODUCTION AND DISSEMINATION: CHANGING AUDIENCES AND EMERGING MEDIA
- PART II LITERARY GENRES: ADAPTATION AND REFORMATION
- 5 Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama
- 6 Dryden and the poetic career
- 7 Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (I): from the Restoration to the death of Pope
- 8 Eighteenth-century women poets
- 9 Systems satire: Swift.com
- 10 Persistence, adaptations and transformations in pastoral and Georgic poetry
- 11 Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (II): after Pope
- 12 Drama and theatre in the mid and later eighteenth century
- 13 Scottish poetry and regional literary expression
- PART III LITERATURE AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE: THE PRODUCTION AND TRANSMISSION OF CULTURE
- PART IV LITERATURE AND SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
- PART V LITERARY GENRES: TRANSFORMATION AND NEW FORMS OF EXPRESSIVENESS
- PART VI CONCLUSION
- Chronology
- Bibliographies
- Index
- References
13 - Scottish poetry and regional literary expression
from PART II - LITERARY GENRES: ADAPTATION AND REFORMATION
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I LITERARY PRODUCTION AND DISSEMINATION: CHANGING AUDIENCES AND EMERGING MEDIA
- PART II LITERARY GENRES: ADAPTATION AND REFORMATION
- 5 Restoration and early eighteenth-century drama
- 6 Dryden and the poetic career
- 7 Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (I): from the Restoration to the death of Pope
- 8 Eighteenth-century women poets
- 9 Systems satire: Swift.com
- 10 Persistence, adaptations and transformations in pastoral and Georgic poetry
- 11 Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (II): after Pope
- 12 Drama and theatre in the mid and later eighteenth century
- 13 Scottish poetry and regional literary expression
- PART III LITERATURE AND INTELLECTUAL LIFE: THE PRODUCTION AND TRANSMISSION OF CULTURE
- PART IV LITERATURE AND SOCIAL AND INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
- PART V LITERARY GENRES: TRANSFORMATION AND NEW FORMS OF EXPRESSIVENESS
- PART VI CONCLUSION
- Chronology
- Bibliographies
- Index
- References
Summary
At a Shrove Tuesday party in 1785, Robert Burns first heard ‘When I upon thy Bosom Lean’, a song by the local, Ayrshire poet, John Lapraik. He wrote at once to congratulate the author, but his verse letter, subsequently published as ‘Epistle to J. L*****K, An Old Scotch Bard’ is far more than a friendly tribute to a fellow poet. As Burns recreates his response to Lapraik's song, he takes the opportunity to express a sense of pride in the larger, shared culture of his native Scotland, while at the same time registering his sharp sense of the dilemmas facing contemporary poets whose familiar language and forms were different from those regarded as standard and acceptable by the period's influential men of letters. The contradictions inherent in prevailing aesthetic attitudes meet in Burns' poem, which is at once a celebration of local tradition and a manifestation of the complicated relationship between Scottish and English culture.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660–1780 , pp. 340 - 362Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
References
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