Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Walter Ralegh, verse libels, libellous, duelling, verse pamphlets, Edward Guilpin, Nicholas Breton, John Weever
<< previous
next >>
16
particularly at two specific influences upon the language of libellous exchanges, verse libels airing personal differences that borrow their language from the code of duelling (focussing upon libellous verse exchanges associated with Sir Philip Sidney and Sir Walter Ralegh), and propagandist verse responses to antigovernment libels and pseudo-seditious verses based upon the language of the royal proclamation (focussing upon verse conversations involving John Skelton, Thomas Knell, Elizabeth I, Sir Henry Goodyer, Thomas Norton and James I).
In my examination of hostile exchanges between satirists I look at the sort of self-publicists and controversialists who model their personas upon the classical satirists, and who perceive that the fulfillment of this role involves attracting detractors with whom to spar. This includes a selection of verse controversies precipitated by Skelton at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and an examination of the provocative strategies employed in the War of the Satirists at the turn of the seventeenth century, involving John Marston and Joseph Hall initially and later escalating into an exchange of verse pamphlets attributed to Edward Guilpin, Nicholas Breton and John Weever.
In Chapter Two I focus upon a related but distinctly different form of hostile verse exchange, the verse flyting. The flyting is an intensely patriotic affair which centres characteristically upon the court and envisages the person of the king as its primary audience. These have been divided into cross-cultural flytings and domestic flytings.
Cross-cultural flytings appear to serve a similar purpose to the nationalist polemics of the troubadour sirvente of medieval Europe, in which official or pseudo-official representatives of rival nations exchange abuse during times of war or when diplomacy has broken down. These arise during periods of hostility with France and Scotland. The first Anglo-French flyting considered centres around the court of Henry VII and involves responses by Henry’s courtiers to a verse libel made against him by the French diplomat,
<< previous
next >>
Stumble It!
