“Bob’o’lincoms of Our Own”: Burns and American Poets, c.1800–1859

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Burns’sinfluence on American poets in the early to mid-nineteenth century. It begins with a discussion of the effects of British “poetic imperialism”, before suggesting that Burns provided a subversive model to hegemonic poetic models through his emphasis on locality, thematic rejection of hierarchy and fluid linguistic range. Early American “imitators” of Burns’s verse such as Robert Dinsmoor (1757–1836) and David Bruce (c.1760–1830) are addressed due to their aesthetic choice to employ the Scots idiom and Standard Habbie to various ends. Leading on from this, a broader assessment of Burns in relation to American vernacular poetry is put forth with particular reference to James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) and John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). The chapter culminates with analysis of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s commemorative tribute to Burns at the Parker House Hotel, Boston, during the 1859 Burns centenary celebrations.