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



Bookmark this page:

StumbleUpon Toolbar Stumble It!

bookmark the culture and rhetoric of the answer poem


AbeBooks.co.uk - New, Secondhand, Rare Books

CULTURE & RHETORIC HOME | contents | sitemap | | © the culture and rhetoric of the answer poem 2008



free call numbers   free call numbers | 0844 numbers | 0845 numbers | 0871 numbers | 0800 numbers | 030 numbers | gold numbers | platinum numbers | memorable phone numbers |


subjectsWolsey, Skelton, Cardinal, Lutheranism, preachers, Thomas Bilney, Thomas Arthur, prosecutor, sectarians, 1527

<< previous   next >>



69

made his name out of rude remarks uttered in public about other people”. 128 Even towards the end of his career when he attempts to pacify his old enemy, Wolsey, Skelton cannot resist angling for a detractor. He takes the Cardinal’s part against two preachers, Thomas Bilney and Thomas Arthur, who had recently recanted their Lutheranism following their arrest and interrogation (‘A Replycacion agaynst Certayne Yong Scolers Abiured of Late’, 1527). The poem is framed as part of a legal debate or “replication”, whereby Skelton assumes the role of prosecutor of the sectarians, and it concludes with a preemptive answer to the criticism he expects to attract even for this piece of pro-government propaganda (‘A Confutacion Responsyue, or an Ineuytably Prepensed Answere to all Waywarde or Frowarde Altercacyons that Can or May Be Made or Obiected agaynst Skelton Laureate, Deuyser of this Replycacyon, &c.’). He is certain that his discussion of theological matters in verse will be construed as irreverant and identifies himself with the Psalmist by way of justification, declaring that he is unrepentant and willing to fight his case, and thus paves the way for heated debate.

Although Skelton seems to have failed to initiate a quarrel here, past experience had no doubt taught him that potential detractors were usually in ready supply and he had successfully provoked a quasi-ecclesiastical controversy earlier in his career. In Phyllp Sparowe (c.1509) he closes with a more courteous invitation to his critics, offering judicious readers the opportunity to censor his work and excise offending matter:

And where my pen hath offendyd,
I pray you it may be amendyd
By discrete consyderacyon
Of your wyse reformacyon. (ll.1245-8)


127 William Nelson, John Skelton, Laureate (NY: Russell & Russell, 1964), p.67.
128 David R. Carlson, ‘Skelton and Barclay, Medieval and Modern’, EMLS, 1:1 (1995), 17 pars(2), http://www.shu.ac.uk/emls/01-1/carlskel.html.



<< previous   next >>

Google
 


Find this book at Biblio.com  Betterworld Books