The Letters of Robert Burns

This article rejects previous critical appraisals of Burns’ letters as repetitive and contrived, and considers instead the ‘antithetical mind’ that Byron saw at work in them. Burns’ letters reveal a nuanced and selfconscious response to the language of sentiment (in authors such as Sterne) and its concurrent epistolary tropes. They combine delicacy and coarseness and use both poetry and prose to negotiate the social and literary demands of patrons, lovers and friends.