Robert Burns, Name Suppression, and the Sociable Uses of Ignorance

ABSTRACT: Conjuring up potential or "virtual" error or ignorance was central to Robert Burns's handling of names in poetry. He replaces many names in his 1786 and 1787 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect with dashes, initials, or asterisks, extending habits from his letters and scribal verse, where he also omits names, anticipates non-recognition, and makes a show of identifying the missing referents for his recipients. While obscuring names is often understood as helping authors in print avoid libel charges, for Burns occluded names instead facilitated the social rituals traditionally associated with scribal or coterie circulation. Omitting names gave Burns opportunities to do added kindnesses of explication in poems already meant as gifts. To document the social dimensions of name suppression, this essay analyzes gift copies of his 1787 Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect , in which Burns supplies by hand some of the omitted names. When Burns raises the possibility of not knowing in his letters, he seeks to compliment knowing readers as much as he assists unknowing ones. To frame his identifications and explanations as friendly favors and polite gestures, Burns needed readers to imagine uninformed others excluded from his circle.