Renaissance England, literary, oral, cultures, Renaissance verse, literary exercise, companion poems, echo poems, parodies, formal pairing

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probably attributable to the diversity of verse answering in Renaissance England, which counted many of these verse types (obviously excluding the tanka and renku) among its influences. As Steven Marx points out, moreover, the “babel” of technical terms for various types of debate poems in different literary and oral cultures is itself a hindrance to establishing a consensual terminology. ¹⁹

In this study I have steered as closely as possible to considering direct answers exclusively and excluded examination of related verse types such as companion poems, echo poems, parodies, imitations or dialogues between personified entities such as Love, Virtue, Temperance and so forth. As for the material accepted as verse answering proper, I have stuck generally to verses where there is fairly clear evidence (often provided in the title) that the Renaissance perception of them was as direct responses, rather than imitations, parodies or any other sort of reworking or formal pairing. I have also included verses where such an answering poem-answered poem relationship is postulated by recent scholarship.

This said, answer-poetry is nearly as generically, formally and socially heterogeneous as the corpus of Renaissance verse itself, and this obviously presents a challenge controlling and organising primary materials. The abundance of available material has necessitated the imposition of firm limits upon the scope of this study. The bias has been strongly towards those verse exchanges where their social context is either most readily apparent or self-consciously displayed and away from those in which the act of answering appears foremostly a literary exercise. Emphasis has also been placed upon answers that, within the scope of the material collected, can be grouped together convincingly by theme,

Field, 1589; repr. Menston, Yorkshire: Scolar, 1968), pp.170-2.

¹⁹ Steven Marx, Youth Against Age: Generational Strife in Renaissance Poetry with Special Reference to Edmund Spenser’s ‘The Shepheardes Calender’ (NY and Bern: Lang, 1985), p.154.

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