culture and rhetoric of the answer poem 1485-1626

The Culture and Rhetoric of the Answer Poem: 1485-1626

SECTION 1: POLEMIC: FLYTING, LIBEL AND SATIRE

Chapter 1: Responses to Libel and Satire

  1. The Verse Libel
    1. A Sociological Perspective
    2. Verbal Duelling
    3. Proclamatory Answers
  2. The Verse Satire
    1. Self Publicising Tudor Satirists
    2. John Skelton
    3. John Marston

Chapter 2: Domestic and Cross-Cultural Flyting

  1. Cross-Cultural Flyting
    1. Anglo-French Flyting
    2. Anglo-Scottish Flyting
  2. Domestic Flyting
    1. John Skelton and Christopher Garnish
    2. Thomas Smyth and William Gray
    3. Thomas Churchyard and Thomas Camel
    4. John Taylor and William Fennor

SECTION 2: MARRIAGE, FRIENDSHIP COURTSHIP/COURTIERSHIP

Chapter 3: Answer Poetry and Marriage: 1550-1570

  1. Pros and Cons of Marriage
  2. Duties of Husbands and Wives

Chapter 4: Late Tudor Amicable Verse Exchanges

  1. Barnabe Googe
  2. Isabella Whitney
  3. John Donne

Chapter 5: Women's answer-poetry and the female-voiced response

  1. Henrician Answer Poetry
  2. Late Elizabethan and Jacobean Answer Poetry
    1. Elizabeth I
    2. Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
    3. Lady Mary Cheke
    4. Lady Mary Wroth



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subjectsflyting, patriotic, Scots, contest, Scottish poets, Bawcutt, OED, Wars of Independence

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91

might also be voiced. Both are highly patriotic in sentiment, as poets purport to single out their literary rivals as foreign or domestic enemies, and seek to identify themselves fervently with the interests of their king and country. One of the most distinguishing features of flyting is the emphasis placed upon the writers’ relationship with patrons and their competition for royal favour. Among those flyters featured here, for instance, are John Skelton and Bernard André or Andreas, both of whom claimed the title of Poet Laureate, and both of whom were tutors to the princes during the reign of Henry VII; Henry and Arthur respectively.

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Cross-Cultural Flyting

The Scots were famed for flyting, although the leading authority upon flyting in Scotland, Priscilla Bawcutt, notices on more than one occasion that the perception that it is a “peculiarly Scottish” occupation needs revision. 162 In the case of English flyting specifically, it has received comparatively little attention, and such claims for the Scottishness of flyting have diminished somewhat the appreciation of it as an important and prominent pastime below the border. Although flyting was practiced widely in Scotland throughout the Middle Ages, its context was often cross-cultural as invectives were sallied back at forth between the Scots and the English during times of conflict such as during the Wars of Independence. 163 The impression that flyting

162 Bawcutt, ‘The Art of Flyting’, SLJ, 10:2 (1983), 5-24 (p.7) and Bawcutt (1992), p.222. OED bears some responsibility for fostering this impression since it describes flyting as “chiefly a kind of contest practised by the Scottish poets of the 16th c.” (OED, 1 b.).
163 Bawcutt has discovered the following brief example:


[Answer]

I was ane hund and syne an hair,           Thoue was ane hund, and hair salbe,

Anys I fled, I fle no mair.                      Anys thoue fled yett sall fle.

Rocht-futtit Scot, quhat says thow?        Taylt tyk, haue at thee now!

‘A Miniature Anglo-Scottish flyting’, NQ, 233 (n.s. 35), (1988), 441-4 (p.441). Another



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