Burns & Scott: Builders of the Scottish Nation

Prof. Gerard Carruthers

Thursday 16th April 2015

Summary of the Talk:

Professor Gerard Carruthers delivered a wide-ranging and provocative lecture exploring how Robert Burns and Walter Scott contributed to the shaping of Scottish cultural identity. He challenged traditional 20th-century narratives that criticise Burns and Scott as creators of a false or backward-looking version of Scotland. Carruthers argued instead for their role as modern, secular, Enlightenment-driven thinkers who helped forge a plural, diverse Scottish identity that still resonates today.


Key themes included:

  • Reappraisal of Burns and Scott: Carruthers rejected simplistic binaries—Burns as nationalist versus Scott as unionist—and questioned the dismissal of their work by literary figures like Hugh MacDiarmid and Edwin Muir.
  • Literature as historical intervention: Both writers, Carruthers asserted, presented history in nuanced, critical ways that merge storytelling with political and social commentary.
  • Misappropriation by 19th-century figures: He singled out William Motherwell and John Gibson Lockhart as having politically hijacked the legacies of Burns and Scott, warping their reception into reactionary or imperialist symbols.
  • Rejection of nationalist essentialism: Carruthers was critical of the urge to imagine a “pure,” harmonious Scottish culture, arguing instead for the value of internal contradictions and plural perspectives.
  • Romanticism’s real Scottish roots: Contrary to claims that Scotland lacked a proper Romantic tradition, Carruthers cited examples like James Hogg’s Confessions of a Justified Sinner as evidence of a rich and complex Romanticism in Scotland.


Notable Insights & Points Worth Highlighting

  1. Scott’s admiration for Burns: Walter Scott referred to Burns as his “favourite Scottish author” and contributed to early Burns scholarship. He corrected inaccuracies in James Currie’s early biography and advocated for the inclusion of Love and Liberty (The Jolly Beggars)—a neglected but socially and artistically rich piece.
  2. Contradictions are central, not flaws: Burns and Scott both understood that identity is inherently complex. Carruthers praised their portrayal of multiple Scotlands—Jacobites, Covenanters, gypsies, Jews, and more—rather than a monolithic cultural narrative.
  3. Parallel traditions across Britain and Ireland: The romanticising and institutionalising of literary figures (Burns in Scotland, Moore in Ireland, Shakespeare in England) followed similar patterns, showing this was not a uniquely Scottish issue.
  4. Misuse of the Burns clubs: Carruthers provocatively linked the growth of Burns clubs in the early 19th century with British efforts to control working-class unrest. He argued they were encouraged (unlike trade unions) to channel energy into safer, nationalistic outlets.
  5. Lockhart's damaging legacy: John Gibson Lockhart, Scott’s son-in-law, was singled out as a key figure in distorting Romanticism in Scotland. Carruthers noted Lockhart’s class-based framing of Burns as a reckless peasant and Scott as an aloof gentleman, a view that stuck in subsequent criticism.
  6. Burns’s political radicalism: The idea that Burns was merely co-opted by the establishment was dismissed. His excise role, Carruthers argued, gave him time and access to continue his cultural mission—collecting songs, writing, and staying connected to the people.
  7. Burns and Scott as Enlightenment figures: Their works reflect Enlightenment universalism—the idea that human nature doesn’t radically change. Despite shifts in culture and belief, core moral and emotional truths remain.
  8. Importance of plurality in modern Scotland: The talk ended by affirming the relevance of Burns and Scott’s pluralistic visions to contemporary Scotland. Carruthers argued this is more useful than the rigid binaries of MacDiarmid’s Scottish Renaissance movement.


Professor Gerard Carruthers FRSE is Francis Hutcheson Chair of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. He is General Editor of the Oxford Collected Works of Robert Burns and was Founding Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow in 2007.

Synopsis:  Robert Burns and Walter Scott operate similarly brilliant imaginative agendas with Scotland's past. They pay attention to and promote that history via their work in ways that broadcast enduring ideas of Scotland to the wider world. Burns sometimes receives credit, and Scott its opposite - largely for political reasons - for their coinages of the nation. Both of these great Romantic writers, however, have been critiqued, most especially during the twentieth century for not being 'modern' enough. In poetry, fiction and song, however, Burns and Scott deal in sophisticated, sensitive ways with the changes and movement of Scottish history, with psychology and human sentiment that have lasting contemporary resonances. Professional Burns and Scott criticism have grasped their first rate literary and cultural significance, but it remains to be seen if a wider popular apprehension can one day do the same.

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