SOURCE: Light from Heaven: Love in British Romantic Literature, Northern Illinois University Press, 1971, 288 p.

In the excerpt below Beaty analyzes Burns's use of humor in his writings about romantic love.

Robert Burns's distinction as a love poet stems chiefly from his ability to perceive the comic aspects of what he considered a very serious emotion. The eighteenth-century adaptation of sentiment to comedy, as well as the Scottish vernacular tradition, afforded him ample precedent for this seemingly paradoxical combination. As random comments in his letters indicate, he was obviously interested in examining the comic spirit; yet he apparently elaborated no critical manifesto of his own to explain his practice. Perhaps because he was often regarded as an inspired but untaught genius who succeeded without conscious artistry, influential critics of the early nineteenth century usually looked not to him for illustrations of their comic theories but rather to Jean Paul...