This monograph offers a radical reconceptualization of the relationship between the poetics and practice of Robert Burns and reevaluates the nature of his role in the history of Scots. By drawing on ideas from twenty-first-century sociolinguistic theory, it seeks to transform the debate surrounding Burns’s language. Through a series of readings that explore the way in which Burns used and commented on the styles associated with different places, groups and genres, it demonstrates how languages, places, and the identities associated with both are, in Burns’s writing, subject to continual reinvention. In this respect, the study breaks with existing accounts of the subject, insofar as it presents Scots, English and the other languages used by Burns not as fixed, empirically-observable entities, but as ideas that were revised and remade through the poet’s work. Focusing on Burns’s poems, songs, letters, prefaces, and glossaries, the book pays special attention to the complex ways in which the author engaged with such issues as phonology, grammar, and the naming of languages. The Burns who emerges from this book is not the marginal figure of traditional accounts—an under-educated poet alienated from the philological mainstream—but rather a well-informed thinker who, more than any other contemporary writer, embodies the creative linguistic spirit of the eighteenth century.

18th century Scots poet Robert Burns wrote many of the most poignant and beautiful love poems of the period, primarily in the Scots language.In A Red, Red, Rose Derek Scott has translated eighty of the love poems and songs of Burns from the original Scots language into modern day English, making the works more accessible to a modern day reader.The works are printed both in the original Scots and modern English on adjacent pages to allow the reader to compare the versions easily.Included are many of Burns' most famous works: A Red, Red Rose; Ae Fond Kiss; and John Anderson, my Jo; as well as many less well known works.

Although recognised throughout the world, the poems of Robert Burns are rarely understood. This book gives readers an immediate understanding of 138 of his poems.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Tam O'Shanter" by Robert Burns. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.