John Skelton

John Skelton (c.1460–1529) can be described as the most important English poet between Geoffrey Chaucer, and Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey. His career spans the Wars of the Roses and the English Reformation, and he was laureated by three universities—Oxford, Louvain and Cambridge. He worked as a propagandist for both Henry VII and Henry VIII, under whom he held the title of orator regius. He was also familiar with developments in Renaissance humanism, in a manner of speaking: among his early works is an English translation of Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca Historica, made from the Latin rendering of the Florentine humanist Poggio Bracciolini. Desiderius Erasmus said that Skelton’s work was on a par with Roman poets (‘cum Romanis versu certare poetis’). However, even though Skelton has not been neglected by modern scholars, he has been misunderstood, as John Scattergood reveals throughout this important book. If many early readers of Skelton’s work appreciated him as a learned rhetorician, others denigrated his verse as indecorous: Skelton’s contemporary, Alexander Barclay, called him a wanton poet in 1509, and the Elizabethan critic George Puttenham, exemplifying the views of later critics, called Skelton ‘ridiculous’ and ‘a rude rayling rimer’. Skelton has often suffered from the negative effects of periodization, and, according to Scattergood, critics have tended to discover in Skelton only what they have expected, or perhaps wished, to find. On the other hand, Skelton, like any author, is best understood on his own terms: this is a poet who demands our close attention for his inventive language, vigorous metrics, consistent use of macaronic (mixed English–Latin) diction, and rhetorically sophisticated satire. This book offers an account of these aspects of Skelton’s career in terms of the poet’s own learning, reading, and use of earlier verse forms and models

Art · Art history · Erasmus · Humanism · Literature · The Renaissance · Theology · Classics · History · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy