Ethical Functions of Animals in Robert Burns Poetry

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-589-8_57How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Robert Burns; Animal Imagery; Ethical Meaning

Abstract

General Background: Robert Burns occupies a central place in eighteenth-century literature as a poet whose work reflects both rural Scottish life and universal human values. Specific Background: In his poetry, animals are not passive elements but active figures conveying ethical meaning through emotions such as compassion, gratitude, indignation, mourning, and social critique. Knowledge Gap: Despite extensive scholarship, insufficient attention has been given to how animals function systematically as carriers of ethical discourse across multiple poems. Aims: This study examines five key poems—The Twa Dogs, Poor Mailie’s Elegy, The Auld Farmer’s Salutation to His Auld Mare, Maggie, On Seeing a Wounded Hare, and To a Mouse—to identify the ethical roles assigned to animals. Results: The analysis demonstrates that animals serve as moral agents expressing satire, empathy, protest, respect, and philosophical reflection, while Burns’s diction, dialogue, and stylistic techniques transform rural encounters into reflections on justice, vulnerability, and responsibility. Novelty: The study highlights the integration of literary form, diction, and cultural context in constructing animals as ethical participants rather than symbolic abstractions. Implications: These findings confirm that Burns’s poetry extends beyond agrarian description to articulate enduring ethical concerns, contributing to contemporary discussions on ecological awareness, human–animal relations, and moral responsibility.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Nina Konstantinovna Lyssenko
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/18
TI  - Ethical Functions of Animals in Robert Burns Poetry
BT  - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Communication and Digital Multimedia 2025 (ICCDM 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 713
EP  - 725
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-589-8_57
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-589-8_57
ID  - Lyssenko2026
ER  -