ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the discourse surrounding the centenary events, suggests the way in which Burns served in 1859, not only as a "mediator between memory communities" on either side of the Atlantic, to invoke Ann Rigney's theories regarding cultural memory, but also as a marker of local, national and transatlantic differences. The Burns Centenary offers a unique opportunity to consider how the "local conditions" influencing the representation of one particular literary figure at one particular time "reconstitute" transatlantic networks. Examining the Centenary suggests how the identity of transatlantic locations both in Canada and the United States is established not just through the process of selectively incorporating and rejecting elements of Britishness, but also using representations of Britishness that are themselves highly ambivalent. The Centenary celebrations both in Britain and across the ocean in North America also effected a fundamental change in the nature of how Burns was understood and consumed after 1859.
