Beginning in the 18th century Western Europe, the Romantic Period was an era of increased sensibility and freedom in the lives of individuals. In regards to poetry, the Romantic Age marked a formal end to the formality of the prose form. This period was pioneered by several great authors and poets. Today, some of these individuals are still widely known names in English literature, Robert Burns being one of them. Robert Burns is one of Scotland’s most famous poets. He is a cultural icon whose name, to this day, is synonymous with Scottish life and the Scots language. Robert Burns was an important forerunner to the Romantic movement in poetry, and his work was a crucial influence on the early British Romantics like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. His life and his poems are celebrated annually even now, more than two centuries later, during the holiday of Burns Suppers which is held every January on or around the poet’s birthday. …show more content…
His mother was Agnes Broun, the daughter of a tenant farmer and his father was William Burnes, a Scottish tenant farmer. As a young boy, Robert worked long hours on his father’s farm, which was actually not very successful. But in spite of the poverty in which he lived, he was extremely well educated at the insistence of his father, who employed a private tutor for Robert and his younger brother Gilbert. In addition to his father teaching him, he was fully exposed to many literary characters, such as the works of William Shakespeare and Joseph Addison while attending a one-room school house for a total of 3 consecutive years. After many years of watching his father suffer due to the family’s never-ending poverty, Robert began to rebel against the common social conventions of his time, and this eventually led to the beginnings of his poetry’s satire being