Lecture the theme: the romantic age in english literature (1780-1830). Representatives of romanticism

Robert Burns
(1759 - 1796)

Robert Burns was the most famous Scottish poet of the 18th century. He wrote poetry in English and Scottish dialect. His birthday is celebrated in Scotland as a national holiday. His verses inspired many British and foreign poets.
Robert Burns was born on January 25, 1759 in Ayrshire, Scotland. His father, William Burns, was a poor farmer, but he tried to give his son the best education. Later, the poet wrote about it in his verses “My Father Was a Farmer”:
My father was a farmer upon the Carric border, O,
And carefully hebbred me in decency and order, O.
He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a fathing, O,
For without an honest, manly heart no man was worth regarding, O.

Robert was sent to school at the age of six, but as his father could not pay for the two sons, Robert and his brother Gilbert attended school in turn. Thus William had to pay for only one pupil. When not at school, the boys helped the father with his work in the fields.

The school was closed some months after the boys had begun attend-ing it, and William Burns persuaded his neighbours to invite a clever young man, Murdoch by name. Murdoch tought their children language and grammar.
Robert was a capable boy. He became fond of reading, learned the French and Latin languages. His reputation as “untutored”, which he himself helped to create, was false, for he had read widely both in earlier Scottish poetry and English. His favourite writers were Shakespeare, Sterne, Smollett, and Robert Fergusson, another talented Scottish poet (1750-1774). Burns started writing poems at the age of seventeen. When he wrote in English, he wrote as a cultivated English poet would write, and his Scottish poems were not naпve dialect pieces, but clever manipulations of language varying from Ayrshire to standard English. He composed verses to the melodies of old folk-songs, which he had admired from his early childhood. He sang of the woods, fields and wonderful valleys of his native land. Burns had a deep love for Scotland, its history and folklore. The poet was deeply interested in the glorious past of his country. He sang the beauty of his native land where he had spent all his life. One of such poems is “My Heart’s in the Highlands”.