| dc.description.abstract | The concept of writers’ houses is a modern invention. Along with the growth of
literacy popularity and the rise of modern writers, whose origins are no more of
privileged class, their houses start to be pilgrimage destinations and places of
interest. Most writers’ houses are protected for their connections with the writers
rather than their architectural significance. Hence it is common to see that the
presentation of the house emphasises this aspect more than other, although in some
cases the writer’s history with the house is relatively short. Through the making of
writers’ houses, we see how people’s expectation towards a place is affected by their
perception of favoured history. This research aims to discover/ reflect on what the
expectation towards a writer’s house has been made of, and how the expectation has
led to spatial operations on the house in different times.
Burns Cottage, the birthplace of the eighteenth-century poet Robert Burns in
Alloway, is the earliest writer’s house developed in Scotland. As the development of
the Cottage has undergone a long span of more than two and half centuries, it is a
great example to demonstrate how people’s perception of a writer’s life and works
has been transformed into their understanding of the house, and how the
understanding has led to spatial operations developed with the spirit of
Enlightenment, that of Romanticism, and that of modern era. | en |
