Background
He was born in 1958 and grew up in Stirlingshire.
(Robert Burns and Pastoral is a full-scale reassessment of...)
Robert Burns and Pastoral is a full-scale reassessment of the writings of Robert Burns (1759-1796), arguably the most original poet writing in the British Isles between Pope and Blake, and the creator of the first modern vernacular style in British poetry. Although still celebrated as Scotland's national poet, Burns has long been marginalized in English literary studies worldwide, due to a mistaken view that his poetry is linguistically incomprehensible and of interest to Scottish readers only. Nigel Leask challenges this view by interpreting Burns's poetry as an innovative and critical engagement with the experience of rural modernity, namely to the revolutionary transformation of Scottish agriculture and society in the decades between 1760 and 1800, thereby resituating it within the mainstream of the Scottish and European enlightenments. Detailed study of the literary, social, and historical contexts of Burns's poetry explodes the myth of the "Heaven-taught ploughman," revealing his poetic artfulness and critical acumen as a social observer, as well as his significance as a Romantic precursor. Leask discusses Burns's radical decision to write "Scots pastoral" (rather than English georgic) poetry in the tradition of Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, focusing on themes of Scottish and British identity, agricultural improvement, poetic self-fashioning, language, politics, religion, patronage, poverty, antiquarianism, and the animal world. The book offers fresh interpretations of all Burns's major poems and some of the songs, the first to do so since Thomas Crawford's landmark study of 1960. It concludes with a new assessment of his importance for British Romanticism and to a 'Four Nations' understanding of Scottish literature and culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198732422/?tag=2022091-20
(The recent turn to political and historical readings of R...)
The recent turn to political and historical readings of Romanticism has given us a more complex picture of the institutional, cultural and sexual politics of the period. There has been a tendency, however, to confine such study to the European scene. In this book, Nigel Leask sets out to study the work of Byron, Shelley and De Quincey (together with a number of other major and minor Romantic writers, including Robert Southey and Tom Moore) in relation to Britain's imperial designs on the 'Orient'. Combining historical and theoretical approaches with detailed analyses of specific works, it examines the anxieties and instabilities of Romantic representations of the Ottoman Empire, India, China and the Far East. It argues that these anxieties were not marginal but central to the major concerns of British Romantic writers. The book is illustrated with a number of engravings from the period, giving a visual dimension to the discussion of Romantic representations of the East.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0092J1NLU/?tag=2022091-20
(Robert Burns and Pastoral is a full-scale reassessment of...)
Robert Burns and Pastoral is a full-scale reassessment of the writings of Robert Burns (1759-1796), arguably the most original poet writing in the British Isles between Pope and Blake, and the creator of the first modern vernacular style in British poetry. Although still celebrated as Scotland's national poet, Burns has long been marginalised in English literary studies worldwide, due to a mistaken view that his poetry is linguistically incomprehensible and of interest to Scottish readers only. Nigel Leask challenges this view by interpreting Burns's poetry as an innovative and critical engagement with the experience of rural modernity, namely to the revolutionary transformation of Scottish agriculture and society in the decades between 1760 and 1800, thereby resituating it within the mainstream of the Scottish and European enlightenments. Detailed study of the literary, social, and historical contexts of Burns's poetry explodes the myth of the 'Heaven-taught ploughman', revealing his poetic artfulness and critical acumen as a social observer, as well as his significance as a Romantic precursor. Leask discusses Burns's radical decision to write 'Scots pastoral' (rather than English georgic) poetry in the tradition of Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, focusing on themes of Scottish and British identity, agricultural improvement, poetic self-fashioning, language, politics, religion, patronage, poverty, antiquarianism, and the animal world. The book offers fresh interpretations of all Burns's major poems and some of the songs, the first to do so since Thomas Crawford's landmark study of 1960. It concludes with a new assessment of his importance for British Romanticism and to a 'Four Nations' understanding of Scottish literature and culture.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0199572615/?tag=2022091-20
(The recent turn to political and historical readings of R...)
The recent turn to political and historical readings of Romanticism has given us a more complex picture of the institutional, cultural and sexual politics of the period. There has been a tendency, however, to confine such study to the European scene. In this book, Nigel Leask sets out to study the work of Byron, Shelley and De Quincey (together with a number of other major and minor Romantic writers, including Robert Southey and Tom Moore) in relation to Britain's imperial designs on the 'Orient'. Combining historical and theoretical approaches with detailed analyses of specific works, it examines the anxieties and instabilities of Romantic representations of the Ottoman Empire, India, China and the Far East. It argues that these anxieties were not marginal but central to the major concerns of British Romantic writers. The book is illustrated with a number of engravings from the period, giving a visual dimension to the discussion of Romantic representations of the East.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521604443/?tag=2022091-20
He was born in 1958 and grew up in Stirlingshire.
He was educated at Edinburgh Academy, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge before taking up a position of Reader in Romantic literature at Cambridge University.
He has been Regius Professor of English language and literature at the University of Glasgow, since 2004. He is a fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Centenary Fellow of the English Association. In 2004, he was appointed to Regius chair of English language and literature at University of Glasgow, and is Head of the School of Critical Studies, currently from 1 August 2010.
He also held teaching appointments at the University of Bologna, Italy.
University of Dundee, Scotland. And a visiting professorship at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México), Mexico City.
He has lectured widely in India, Europe, and Americas. He published The Politics of Imagination in Coleridge’s Critical Thought, his first book, in 1988.
Subsequently, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire in 1992, and many others later.
(Robert Burns and Pastoral is a full-scale reassessment of...)
(Robert Burns and Pastoral is a full-scale reassessment of...)
(The recent turn to political and historical readings of R...)
(The recent turn to political and historical readings of R...)