Thresholds of memory: Birch and Hawthorn in the poetry of Robert Burns

Robert Burns’s status as a poet sufficiently close to rural poverty to be able to represent himself as its product, and sufficiently distant from it to be able to manipulate that product, is increasingly being realized. In this essay, Burns’s use of the country lore associated with the birch and hawthorn trees in Scotland and indeed in Europe more generally, is analyzed in terms of its deceptively simple representation of emotion, and the manner in which it acts as a point of access for Burns’s view of the tragic status of being human, caught between the cyclical natural world and our own narratives of being, which demand a linear time ending in a “forever” which on earth can only become loss

The Scottish Heritage Partnership Immersive Experiences: Policy Report

No abstract available

Who wrote the Scots Musical Museum? Challenging editorial practice in the presence of authorial absence

James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum, published in six parts in Edinburgh over the period 1787-1803, is now inextricably linked to its greatest contributor, the poet, song-writer and song-collector Robert Burns. This lecture builds from Murray Pittock’s recent editorial work on Johnson’s collection, forthcoming in the new multivolume Oxford Edition of Robert Burns, based at the University of Glasgow. The lecture shows that the apparently-innocent question “Who wrote the Scots Musical Museum?” is a complex one, raising very fundamental questions about the nature of authorship and editorship in the necessarily collaborative and social enterprise of song publication, and it raises issues of wide relevance to Scottish cultural studies and the editing of Scottish literary texts. Songs given detailed comment include "The Birks of Aberfeldy" (SMM 113), "McPherson's Farewell" (SMM 114), and "The winter it is past" (SMM 200)

Archibald Pitcairne’s The Phanaticks, ed. John MacQueen

Review of the first scholarly edition of a satirical play The Phanaticks (1691) [previously titled The Assembly ] by the Scottish Jacobite poet and physician Dr. Archibald Pitcairne (1652-1713)

Allan Ramsay: Romanticism and Reception

Provides a review and interpretation of Allan Ramsay\u27s career and reputation, and of scholarly and critical response to his work, exploring the foundational nature of his contribution to the language of Scottish literature, reaching a wider audience, for Scots, his dominant role in the history of Scottish song, and the pivotal role of his writing, especially his ballad-opera The Gentle Shepherd, in the formation of Scottish romanticism, and of the wider romantic movement

The W. Ormiston Roy Memorial Lecture: Who Wrote the Scots Musical Museum? Challenging Editorial Practice in the Presence of Authorial Absence

James Johnson’s Scots Musical Museum, published in six parts in Edinburgh over the period 1787-1803, is now inextricably linked to its greatest contributor, the poet, song-writer and song-collector Robert Burns. This lecture builds from Murray Pittock’s recent editorial work on Johnson’s collection, forthcoming in the new multivolume Oxford Edition of Robert Burns, based at the University of Glasgow. The lecture shows that the apparently-innocent question “Who wrote the Scots Musical Museum?” is a complex one, raising very fundamental questions about the nature of authorship and editorship in the necessarily collaborative and social enterprise of song publication, and it raises issues of wide relevance to Scottish cultural studies and the editing of Scottish literary texts. Songs given detailed comment include The Birks of Aberfeldy (SMM 113), McPherson\u27s Farewell (SMM 114), and The winter it is past (SMM 200)

The Scottish Heritage Partnership Immersive Experiences: Policy Report

No abstract available

Introduction: Allan Ramsay\u27s Future

Presents an overview of the new AHRC-funded edition of the Collected Works of Allan Ramsay, and of related recent scholarly and community activity in relation to Ramsay\u27s public recognition and heritage, both in the Pentlands area south of Edinburgh, near Penicuik and Carlops, and more broadly in Scottish literary history, specifically in relation to the origins of Scottish Romanticism

Spatial Humanities and Memory Studies: Mapping Edinburgh in the First Age of the Enlightenment

Describes the first phase of a digital project mapping social and cultural relationships in early 18th century Edinburgh, Scotland, part of a larger AHRC grant-funded study Allan Ramsay and Edinburgh in the First Age of the Enlightenment; explores interrelations between urban history, digital mapping, and emerging interest in the field of memory studies; and suggests links between the heterogeneous and cosmopolitan nature of housing in early 18th century Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment culture of innovation