SOURCE: "Burns's Comedy of Romantic Love," in PMLA, Vol. 83, No. 2, May, 1968, pp. 429-38.

In the essay below, Beaty assesses the humorous aspects of Burns's love poetry.

The eighteenth-century adaptation of sentiment to comedy, as well as the Scottish vernacular tradition, afforded Robert Burns ample precedent for his humorous love poetry. He was obviously interested in examining the comic spirit, as random comments in his letters indicate; 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 Richter, who had obligingly translated his own precepts into creative examples. Not until after many of the speculations about humor had crystallized into definite concepts could Burns's achievement...