Robert Fergusson: The Dilemma of the Poet in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

Abstract

<p>This thesis is concerned with the English and Scots poems of Robert Fergusson. As a result of the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, Scotland found itself stripped of a vernacular literature and sovereign powers. The vernacular revival of the eighteenth century compensated for these losses to some extent, but a poet writing in Scotland at the time had to face problems and situations which his predecessors before 1603 had not known. The thesis analyses the problems and discusses how Fergusson overcame them.</p>