An Exploration Of Themes In Robert Burns’ Poetry

Robert Burns was a well-known national poet of Scotland in the 18 th century who deeply explored ancient literature and folk songs.The poet advocated pure love in youths,declaring free fighters’ anti-slavery spirit of aggression.He attacked the oppressors of all hypocrisy and greed.He created a large amount of poems,especially famous for his love poems,in which women,love and sex were always the center.In his love poems,Burns expressed a passionate and passive feeling in which some were happy and others were painful.Honesty and straightforwardness were main characteristics in his love poems.Besides the love poems,there were many other styles of poems,such as ironic,epistolary,and narrative poems and so on,which all emerged with folk flavor and strong local color.Burns also unveiled the mask of the ruling class at that time.From the angle of human,beast and ghost,he satirized the darkness of human nature.The thesis consists of three parts aiming to explore the representative poems of Burns.The first chapter discusses and analyzes four types of women with different personalities.The main lyric objects are three important women in his life who are his wife,Highland Mary and Nancy.Burns highly praised his wife in many poems,some of which were eternal glory for people to appreciate.Unfortunately,a wonderful time was always temporary.A God of death took his true love ruthlessly.Highland Mary who was an amazing girl captured Burns’ heart in his life.He was famous for his writing and it was that time when he encountered elegant but lonely Nancy in Edinburgh.They expressed their spirit of hollow love by writing poems.Burns had an eye for beauty and also portrayed many other close related females vividly.The second chapter mainly expounds the patriotism to the Scotland and yearns for their liberty and peace.The poet wrote many poems to call on people to follow the spirit of war of independence in the United States.He also called upon that all the people uniting together to find their own wonderland.His sharp eyes penetrated into the sufferings of the people at the bottom and described it vividly.Burns was born in a tenant family.Therefore,he stood for the broad laboring class.The poems and songs for the beauty of nature,patriotism and liberty were the main subjects.He got an eagle’s eye which turned the common things into some unbelievable objects.He used plain language interpreting the heart of the lowest class.He loved this land whole-heartedly and advocated that people must not give up for the intruders.Burns’ patriotism for Scotland was exactly expressed in his poems and songs.The third chapter focuses on the hypocrisy of the church and his sentiment to the Kirk which depressed the common people.Burns wrote many poems exposing the hypocrisy of the church.He used a funny way to satirize the sham church.The ruling class oppressed the lower class for the benefit of their rights.Burns showed his sentiment in great anger to the ruling class and deep concern about the fate of his nation which can be seen in many poems.He was fairly dissatisfied with the ruling class.The traitors were the sort of people who were hated most in any countries.Burns cursed those people in his sharpest voice and reflected a positive sense of rebellion consciousness.It was this rebellion consciousness that truly showed his ardent love for his country.