Gavin Douglas' Eneados: A Reinterpretation

PMLA ◽  
1952 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 845-862
Author(s):  
Bruce Dearing
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Entire Area ◽  
Gavin Douglas

In the general scorn and neglect by modern literary scholars of the entire area in English literature between Chaucer and Spenser, few poets have fared so ill as the sixteenth-century Scottish Chaucerian Gavin Douglas. To be sure, his name appears frequently enough in histories of literature, and occasionally in studies of Chaucer, or Surrey, or Henryson, Lindsay, Dunbar. But one suspects that Douglas has less often been carefully and sympathetically read than he has been hustled into a dusty place of honor by conventional encomium, or relegated to the ranks of the inconsiderable on the ground that he is a mere “Chaucerian,” a petty tracer of his master's matchless strokes.

An Aspect of the Renaissance in Gavin Douglas’ Eneados

1960 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 184-192
Author(s):  
Louis Brewer Hall
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Final Evaluation ◽  
Gavin Douglas

Interest in Gavin Douglas has bloomed, attending reappraisal of that group of poets designated as the Scottish Chaucerians. Admirers of Douglas, Henry son, Barbour, Dunbar, and the rest now have as their ally C. S. Lewis and the authority of his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. In this work, Lewis devotes ten pages to a detailed examination of Douglas’ translation of the Aeneid, and he is propitious in his final evaluation of it: ‘Here a great story is greatly told and set off with original embellishments which are all to the good—all either delightful or interesting—in their diverse ways.’

A Definition of Petrarchismo

PMLA ◽  
1909 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Berdan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Dramatic Literature ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of

While the origin, sources, and evolution of the drama of the sixteenth century have been elaborately studied, curiously enough the non-dramatic literature of the period has suffered from comparative neglect. Monographs on single authors, studies on English literature alone, in many cases have erred thru false perspective. Thus, altho the time is not yet ripe for the general history of the sonnet, desired by M. Vaganay, it may be profitable briefly to consider English literature, in one of its phases, in relation to the great movement of which it was a part.

Alexander Myln, Bishop George Brown, and the Chapter of Dunkeld

1991 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 349-360
Author(s):  
John Macqueen
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Gavin Douglas

It might seem reasonable to assume that Alexander Myln’s Vitae episcoporum Dunkeldensium was a humanist document. He begins with a paragraph called by Hannay a dedication to Bishop Gavin Douglas and to the canons of Dunkeld who were promoted in the time of Bishop George Brown. If anyone in early sixteenth-century Scotland deserves the name humanist, Douglas is the man, and one would expect a work dedicated to him to adopt a corresponding style. The book, however, does not wholly live up to expectations. Myln was a lawyer devoted to documents, and his normal style is that of the early records which he consulted. The dedication is no more than a formal greeting to the Bishop and Myln’s other colleagues on the residentiary Dunkeld chapter.

The First English Pattern Poems

PMLA ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 636-650
Author(s):  
Margaret Church
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Varying Length ◽  
Modern Era

Pattern poetry is verse which by the varying length of its lines forms a picture or design. Although most readers have noticed Herbert's “Easter Wings” or some of the fanciful shapes in Carolyn Wells' Whimsey Anthology, few have realized that these verses are forms which have come down to the modern era from Greek literature and possibly from even earlier oriental writings. My purpose in this article is to bring to light still one more influence which the Greek Anthology exerted on English literature in the sixteenth century and to discuss the first English poets who began to write shaped verses, forerunners of hundreds of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century patterns in poetry.

Gavin Douglas

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-212
Author(s):  
Alastair Fowler
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Transitional Period ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Landscape Poetry ◽  
Dictionary Definitions ◽  
Gavin Douglas

This chapter examines Gavin Douglas’s humanism. To ask whether Douglas was a true humanist is to try to fix the fluidities of a transitional period. And, besides, ‘humanist’ covers as many subtexts as its dictionary definitions betray. Assume a fourteenth- to sixteenth-century scholar of Latin and Greek literature, and Douglas qualifies—although classical studies then were not as now. But, take humanism as a movement away from religious to secular concerns, and Douglas’s humanism is more doubtful. The chapter then looks at mimesis and the rhetoric of ekphrasis in Douglas’s Eneados. The term ekphrasis is commonly defined as ‘description, particularly description of works of art’. But the term is much richer; the verb ekfrazdo means ‘tell, recount, express ornately’. Ultimately, Douglas’s greatest original achievement must be his invention of landscape poetry in English. In addition, Douglas’s Prologues not only use calendar art as a model but have themselves the structure of a calendar.

The Figure Genius in the Renaissance

1964 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 234-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. T. Starnes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
English Literature ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Middle Ages

The figure Genius in English literature has received attention from scholars from the eighteenth century to the present day, especially with reference to Spenser, Jonson, and Milton. Perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the subject is that by Professor E. C. Knowlton, in a series of articles in the 1920s, tracing the appearance and literary use of the figure from antiquity, through the middle ages, to the end of the sixteenth century. As the substance of much of Knowlton's investigation is in his study of 'The Genii of Spenser' (1928), this article merits a statement of the author's purpose and procedure.

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