L’« arse » poetica de Robert Burns

Robert Burns deliberately chooses to provoke his readers’ tastes by mentioning the bottom in his poems and songs on a regular basis. This article aims to show, first, that, far from being a maverick, Burns is the inheritor of a long, sometimes forgotten literary tradition. The behind metonymically stands for the lower belly and more generally for bodily fluids. Within the Burns corpus, scatological references unsettle social hierarchies, and offer a carnivalesque critique of the aristocratic, religious, scientific and literary realms. Beyond the undermining of social conventions, Burns’s agenda in his “arse” poetica is to put forward the humane dimension of mankind.