Epilogue: A Poetic Constitution

Abstract

The conclusion of the book offers a fresh overview of Burns’s afterlife, stressing key shifts in his political reception since the Victorian era. From Great War jingoism to 1940s socialism and contemporary nationalism, this final section highlights the increasing (and ongoing) conflation of Burns’s legacy with constitutional issues. Certainly, Burns remains a major symbol of Scottish identity, used by various political groupings wishing to impose their vision of Scottishness. Yet, more crucially, since the 1960s, ‘Scotland’s National Bard’ has been turned into a constitutional poet—an icon used not only to define the identity of a stateless nation but, more markedly, to advocate or oppose the creation of a Scottish nation-state. This trend is evident in Scottish politic, from the SNP to the Conservative party. It is also blatant in contemporary literature, where avant-garde scepticism about Burnsian authority still coexists with bardic postures, brandishing Scottish identity in hope of home-rule. Despite attempts by some poets, including ‘makars’ Liz Lochhead, Jackie Kay, and Kathleen Jamie, to query Burns’s myth through the lens of gender and race, Scotland’s constitutional obsession has become the central feature of the bard’s political afterlife in the twenty-first century.