Chapter 2: Royalism, Raillery and Ritual: Domestic and Cross-Cultural Flyting

Although the sorts of verse examined thus far, libel and satire, have a strong tendency towards dialogism and possess their own characteristic formalities they are less ritualised affairs than flyting. Flyting is a highly ritualised war of words conducted between two main competitors in which there is often consensus from the outset that this is primarily a two-player game. ¹⁵⁶ This distinction is apparent in what Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen term the intended “perlocutionary effect” of abusive utterances. ¹⁵⁷ Whereas the goal of libel and satire is often to provoke verse controversies, there is frequently some element of prearrangement in flyting and the business of the flyter, rather than to instigate or initiate the dispute, is to make an adversary reel with the force of the insult hurled. Jucker and Taavitsainen make a similar distinction between personal abuse and ritual flyting, writing that, “A personal insult requires a denial or an excuse, while a ritual insult requires a response in kind”. ¹⁵⁸ Their distinction, although useful, is slightly too rigid to account fully for the vagaries of Early Modern libel and flyting, since both are reflexive and frequently just as concerned with returning an insult as they are with defending personal honour. Flyting is less likely to offer “a denial or an excuse” than a respondent to libel, but there are plenty of exceptions here as well. Actually, the ritualistic element that separates

¹⁵⁶ This is most apparent in the domestic flytings considered. The flyting between John Skelton and Christopher Garnish, for instance, takes place at the command of Henry VIII, whereas John Taylor and William Fennor argue over the arrangements for an aborted verse contest which was to meant to have taken place between them. The flyting between William Gray and Thomas Smyth also seems to be signposted as an exchange of abuse between two main rivals from the outset, this time through the repetition of various forms of the word “troll” from the opening libel against Thomas Cromwell onwards. OED II. 2 defines “trolling” as “singing in the manner of a round, or a jovial style […] applied contemptuously to antiphonal singing”, and gives the first usage as 1575 (see also n.214).

¹⁵⁷ Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen, ‘Diachronic Speech Act Analysis: Insults from Flaming to Flyting’, JHP, 1:1 (2000), 67-95 (p.72).
¹⁵⁸ Jucker and Taavitsainen (2000), p.76.