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Click here to watch Robert Crawford’s talk on the poetry of Robert Burns plus other videos from the 2014 ASLS Schools Conference.

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Robert Burns is perhaps Scotland’s foremost cultural icon, and is the world’s most widely celebrated poet. Sometimes his fame – and his face on all those teatowels – stands in the way of an appreciation of the sheer scope of his genius. Although occasionally derided by ignorant and unthinking persons as “doggerel”, Burns’s poetry contains great depths of humanity, philosophy, humour and rare beauty.

Kenneth Simpson’s Scotnote provides students with a brief and authoritative introduction to Burns, his life and his work.

CONTENTS

• Myth and poet
• Poet and community
• Satire and sentiment
• The poet’s voices
• Burns and the supernatural
• Burns and song
• References
• Bibliography
• Index of poems and songs