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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2024

Laurie Atkinson
Affiliation:
Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
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Summary

The Garlande or Chapelet of Laurell of John Skelton ends on a note of poetic self-congratulation rarely sounded in fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century English poetry. Having appeared in a dream before the Quene of Fame in order to justify his place at her court, Skelton's poet-narrator reports the recital by Occupacyon of the list of his works recorded in her ‘boke of remembrauns’ (line 1149). Finally, after more than three hundred lines, and as many as fifty-one known, lost, and some possibly spurious works, Occupacyon makes mention of the present poem:

But when of the laurell she made rehersall,

All orators and poetis, with other grete and smale,

A thowsand thowsand, I trow, to my dome,

Triumpha, triumpha! they cryid all aboute.

Of trumpettis and clariouns the noyse went to Rome;

The starry hevyn, me thought, shoke with the showte;

The grownde gronid and tremblid, the noyse was so stowte.

The Quene of Fame commaundid shett fast the book,

And therwith, sodenly, out of my dreme I woke.

(Garlande, lines 1503–11)

There is much that is novel in Skelton's dream of fame, much else that is consciously antique. Skelton's textual double, Skelton Poeta, is honoured in a Roman-style triumph and welcomed into the company of the great poets of the past. His Garlande constitutes the capstone of a monumental poetic achievement which not even the capricious Fame can deny. In this, Skelton makes a marked departure from his foremost source: Geoffrey Chaucer's House of Fame. Line 1507 of the Garlande reimagines the description of Chaucer's Whirling Wicker, out of which:

com so gret a noyse

That had it stand upon the Oyse,

Men myghte hyt han herd esely

To Rome, y trow sikerly.

(Fame, lines 1924–30)

Where in Fame, the noise emitting from the Whirling Wicker is a cacophony of rumour, in the Garlande, the alarum of the assembled poets communicates a single affirmative message: the triumph of Skelton Poeta. Where Fame's ‘newe tydynges’ (line 1886), having passed into the world, are propagated or dismissed according to the erratic judgement of Fame, in the Garlande, Skelton's poem has the immediate status of an auctorite (cf. Latin auctoritas), inscribed as it is in Occupacyon's ‘boke of remembrauns’. Skelton rejects Chaucer's contention that poetic fame is arbitrary and impermanent.

Type
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Ideas of Authorship in the English and Scottish Dream Vision
Skelton, Dunbar, Hawes, Douglas
, pp. 1 - 8
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Introduction
  • Laurie Atkinson, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book: Ideas of Authorship in the English and Scottish Dream Vision
  • Online publication: 15 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781805432265.001
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  • Introduction
  • Laurie Atkinson, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book: Ideas of Authorship in the English and Scottish Dream Vision
  • Online publication: 15 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781805432265.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Laurie Atkinson, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, Germany
  • Book: Ideas of Authorship in the English and Scottish Dream Vision
  • Online publication: 15 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781805432265.001
Available formats
×