Robert Burns: Inventing Tradition and Securing Memory, 1796-1909

Robert Burns: Inventing Tradition and Securing Memory, 1796-1909 is a project which operates on three levels. On the empirical level, it provides a comprehensive web-based catalogue of public monuments to Robert Burns worldwide erected by 1909, with a selection of images from the same period, combined with a web-based classification of the different kinds of Burns-related material culture available commercially or for domestic use. These datasets will enable the whole range of images and items used in the transmission of Robert Burns' reputation into the sphere of cultural memory to be available for study or consultation in one place for the first time. This is a particularly important development, because Burns was one of the most commemorated of all poets, and the documentation of the full range of his memorialization through objects and public monuments will provide an invaluable evidence base both for analysis and for the development of similar records of other writers. The project has the support and partnership of the National Trust for Scotland Burns Birthplace Museum and is currently negotiating access to two extensive private collections of domestic Burnsiana.

On a theoretical level, the project will seek to provide a model for the relationship between literary and material culture, addressing questions such as whether the choice of means of commemoration (e.g. through particular objects or depictions of the poet) has had an effect on the reputation of individual poems or approaches to the writer's life and whether literary and material culture diverge or converge in the significance they grant the reputation of the poet. It will seek to provide outcomes which can act as a basis for the examination of the use of material and commemorative culture as a formative influence in the reception, reputation and canon of other writers.

On a policy level, Inventing Tradition and Securing Memory will contribute, through its work with the curator David Hopes, to the interpretation of Burns at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum, the single most important Burns site in the world. The RBBM is in the process of final planning and development with £17M of the final £21M budget raised as of January 2009, and the current project will provide invaluable policy input at a crucial stage in the RBBM's crystallization as a major modern tourist venue. Burns is worth £157M to the Scottish economy (2003 figures), and the cutting-edge interpretation of his memorialization-itself so publicly visible in so many parts of the world-will be of great interest to the combined 100 000+ visitors a year expected at the Museum. It is expected that the dissemination of the research work to Glasgow Museums and to the Wordsworth Trust will also prove invaluable to the development of interpretative material in other venues.

Inventing Tradition and Securing Memory will provide a lasting web resource, a set of scholarly outcomes, and an engagement with the wider heritage, cultural and tourist industries through established collaborative agreements. Its methodologies will include:

i. The gathering of a comprehensive list of public commemorations through archives, newspapers, photograph collections and existing digital and secondary sources.
ii. The intensive use of archives to create a sense of the development of commissioning, fundraising and impact of public Burns commemoration in particular instances.
iii. The design of a taxonomy of domestic objects associated with Burns.
iv The consideration of Burns' memorialization as a form of invention of tradition (Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983)) and its use to 'compose' memories of who the poet was and what he represented.
v. Building on existing research, to establish ways in which material culture may be considered a legitimate part of the reception history of a text or author.