Burns and Other Poets Paperback - 2013

From the rear cover

AUTHOR-APPROVED Burns and Other Poets Edited by David Sergeant and Fiona Stafford /New essays on Burns' special place in Scottish, English and Irish literary culture/ In this volume 17 leading Burns scholars, poetry critics and practising poets reflect on the enduring significance of one of the most important poets of the eighteenth century. They show that Burns was a highly innovative and technically accomplished poet, as capable of transforming earlier traditions as of inaugurating new literary trends. Burns is considered alongside Scottish poets including Ramsay, Fergusson, Byron, Hogg, MacDiarmid, Paterson, Dunn and Mackay Brown; English and classical writers such as Milton, Addison, Gray, Wordsworth, and Virgil; and Irish figures from Merriman, Goldsmith and Dermody to Heaney. The chapters analyse Burns' relationship with the work of his predecessors, contemporaries and heirs; in exploring his debts and legacies they reveal the richness of his achievement. The political, national, philosophical and ethical aspects of his poetry are investigated, demonstrating the ways in which close readings are deepened by historical awareness. David Sergeant is a Junior Research Fellow in English at Somerville College, Oxford. He has written on Doris Lessing and Ted Hughes, is currently completing a book on Kipling's prose, and has published a collection of poetry, /Talk Like Galileo/. Fiona Stafford is Professor of English at the University of Oxford and a Tutorial fellow at Somerville College. Her first book, /The Sublime Savage/, was on James Macpherson's /Poems of Ossian/. More recent work includes /Starting Lines in Scottish, English and Irish Poetry: From Burns to Heaney/, and /Local Attachments: The Province of Poetry/.