The Byron Journal
Beyond Text: Burns, Byron and Their Material Cultural Afterlife
Abstract
Building on research recently undertaken as part of the Arts and Humanities Research
Council funded Beyond Text project titled 'Robert Burns: Inventing Tradition and
Securing Memory, 1796–1909', this essay demonstrates the role played by material culture
in preserving and creating the reputation and cultural memory of Burns, then undertakes
a comparative study of the role played by a selection of memorabilia in the cultural afterlife
of Byron, signalling the way in which this kind of research can be implemented well
beyond the study of Burnsiana. Arguing that the evidence points to a provisional contrast
between the afterlives of these two particular poets – namely that Burns projected a nation
to the world while Byron projected the world to a nation – the essay suggests that much is
to be gained more widely from an understanding of the way in which a variety of materials
'beyond text' create and preserve the cultural memory of poets and their works.