Robert Burns and the Mysteries of the Ayrshire Enlightenment
Date/Time
Date(s) - 27/02/2013
5:00 pm
Categories
Professor Colin Kidd (St Andrews)
The Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century tends these days to be depicted as a polite, placid and largely consensual affair, whose centre of gravity lay within the established institutions of Kirk and University. Yet, if we drill down to the micro-level of the Ayrshire Enlightenment in the era of Burns things seem much less sedate. In Ayrshire we encounter a very different kind of enlightenment, a rumbustious culture of ecclesiastical satire, a world of heresy proceedings, and a stark conflict between the parties of enlightenment and anti-enlightenment. Colin Kidd will attempt to make sense of this curious disjunction.
Reception to follow.