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ļ ļļļ In this wayāand impressively, given the amount of scholarly ink that has been spilled on this topicāYahav advances understandings of both Richardsonās technique of āwriting to the momentā and his interactions with readers, such as Lady Bradshaigh, who proposed alternative endings to Clarissa. It is not (or not simply) that Richardson had a monomaniacal need to control interpretations of his works, but that the long-term process of judging, on the part of both characters and readers, was central to his literary project. Focusing also on musicological treatises, elocutionist writings, and aesthetic theory, Yahav demonstrates that duration was both individual and sharedābased on patterns originating in the human bodyāin a manner that the novel genre was uniquely able to take advantage of. While the duration of a single reading is necessarily ļ¬nite, collective engagement with a work endures. As she writes of Tristram Shandyās deployment of patterns of embodied rhythm, ā[a]s long as there are readers who can get Sterneās rhythmic prose [. . .] qualitative duration will continue to be felt and human time will continue to endureā (p. ļļļ). Feeling Time capably integrates a thorough understanding of eighteenth-century theories of temporalityāfrom those of major ļ¬gures such as Locke and Hume to less famliar ļ¬gures such as the musicologist Roger Northāwith incisive readings of canonical novels to oļ¬er a new view of the particular purchase of the novel genre in the eighteenth century. While a variety of writers may have been concerned with the question of how we know time, it was through novels that readers could not only contemplate but also experience duration as a qualitative moment that oļ¬ered an alternative to the relentless forward march of the clock. Uļ®ļ©ļ¶ļ„ļ²ļ³ļ©ļ“ļ¹ ļÆļ¦ Cļ”ļ¬ļ©ļ¦ļÆļ²ļ®ļ©ļ”, Sļ”ļ®ļ“ļ” Bļ”ļ²ļ¢ļ”ļ²ļ” Rļ”ļ£ļØļ”ļ„ļ¬ Sļ£ļ”ļ²ļ¢ļÆļ²ļÆļµļ§ļØ Kļ©ļ®ļ§ Robert Burns and the United States of America: Poetry, Print, and Memory ļļļļā ļļļļ. By Aļ²ļµļ® SļÆļÆļ¤. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. ļ
ļļļ. viii+ļ
ļļ pp. Ā£ļļ.ļļ. ISBN ļļļāļāļļļāļļļļļāļ. Such is the international popularity of Burns Night that no one can doubt the global reach of Robert Burns, especially in places touched by the Scottish diaspora. But what will astonish readers of Robert Burns and the United States of America is the extent to which the poetās name and words were visible in the early decades of the American republic. ī¢ose opposed to slavery cited his works in defence of their cause, and so did those who propagated it. He was invoked by Poe, Emerson, Whitman, and Twain; and, as Arun Sood reveals in a highly informative subchapter on āJames Lowell and American Vernacular Verseā (pp. ļļ
ļāļļ), he was the model on which many less familiar writers attempted to create an American dialect writing tradition. It is a great strength of this book that it does not treat the question of reception in a unidirectional way, preferring instead to chart the ways in which Burns both drew from and contributed to the emerging idea of America. Soodās study does an impressive job of charting the diļ¬erent forms of exchange that connected Burns before and aīer his death to a country he had never seen at ļ¬rst hand. ī¢roughout, ļļļ
Reviews Sood reads a diverse body of texts by the light of memory studies and transnationalism : two theories which allow him to emphasize the movement of Burnsās work across borders both temporal and national, where traditionally Burns has tended to be read through an overdetermined sense of his time and place. Among the source materials he draws on, we ļ¬nd (alongside more expected texts) pirated editions of Burnsās work, the āconstitutional documentsā (p. ļļļ) of the Ku Klux Klan, and the proceedings of the ļ¬rst American āBurns Supperā (p. ļļļ). ī¢e resulting picture is both panoramic and highly detailed. Following an Introduction, Chapter ļ
oļ¬ers a well-researched account of the poems Burns composed on American topics, contextualizing them in relation not only to contemporary events across the Atlantic, but also to British parliamentary politics and Burnsās own social networks. ī¢e succeeding chapter traces in depth the patterns of trade and circulation that facilitated the early dissemination of Burnsās work in the United States. Particularly notable here is Soodās consideration of the ways in which the...