Scots poetry

Maley, W. and Van Heijnsbergen, T. (2022) Scots poetry. In: Cheney, P. and Bates, C. (eds.) Sixteenth-Century British Poetry. Series: The Oxford history of poetry in English, 4. Oxford University Press: Oxford, pp. 389-404. ISBN 9780198830696 (doi: 10.1093/oso/9780198830696.003.0022)

Abstract

When Scots poetry of the sixteenth century is read within its own tradition, evolving late medieval beginnings with its own cultural–historical features, a body of work becomes visible that is attractive in its variety and its different emphases from English poetry. These differences interrogate received critical narratives of sixteenth-century poetry in English in the British Isles, for example, in terms of its periodisation (particularly through Scotland’s late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century humanist Renaissance); its different relationship between oral, printed, and manuscript transmissions; and its contrarian encounter with Petrarchan sonneteering. A sophisticated degree of metafictional engagement manifests itself throughout the century that, in its application of reason to affect, indicates that sixteenth-century authors position identity through an engagement with their rhetorical art rather than directly through their overflowing heart.

• Item Type: Book Sections (Other)
• Keywords: Scottish literature, Renaissance, poetry, poetics.
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Maley, Professor Willy and Van Heijnsbergen, Dr Theo
• Authors: Maley, W., and Van Heijnsbergen, T.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature; College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > Scottish Literature
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• ISBN: 9780198830696
• Published Online: 01 April 2022