MacDiarmid's Burns: The Political Context, 1917–1928

Malgrati, P. (2019) MacDiarmid's Burns: The Political Context, 1917–1928. Scottish Literary Review, 11(1), pp. 47-66.

Abstract

This article focuses on the political context which fostered Hugh MacDiarmid's iconoclastic approach to Burns's legacy in nineteen-twenties Scotland. MacDiarmid's critique of the conservative Burns cult – as he famously expressed it his 1926 poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle – did not stand alone in Scotland in the wake of the Great War. Instead, it was part of a wider radical movement which opposed the unionist and militarist hijacking of Burns that had taken place in Scotland during the Great War. In reaction to the bard of King, Country, and Empire, socialist and early nationalist organisations used Burns as a concrete symbol to express their ideas on peace, class, and nationhood. This post-war debate on Scotland's national bard, as this article will show, was instrumental in enabling MacDiarmid to articulate his own, literary, and revolutionary re-assessment of the 'Immortal Memory'.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Malgrati, Dr Paul
• Authors: Malgrati, P.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General); P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > Scottish Literature
• Journal Name: Scottish Literary Review
• Publisher: Association for Scottish Literary Studies
• ISSN: 1756-5634
• Published Online: 08 May 2019
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2019 Association for Scottish Literary Studies
• First Published: First published in Scottish Literary Review 11(1):47-66
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher