A chilly spring?
March 27, 2014
Ane doolie sessoun to ane cairfull dyte doolie: doleful; dyte: story Suld correspond and be equiualent. Suld: should. So begins Robert Henryson’s The Testament of Cresseid, a story of what happened to Cresseid (or Criseyde or Cressida, depending on your preferred version) after she left Troy. Henryson’s …
Literatures of Older Scots and Middle English
February 25, 2014
If there are challenges in establishing Older Scots and Middle English as different languages (see previous blog) those are matched equally in attempting to define an Older Scots literary tradition. The Middle English literary tradition is so multifarious that to insist on separateness for Scotland seems doomed to failure. We can see, for instance, that …
Comparing technologies of publication
July 25, 2013
About five and a half centuries ago, printing with moveable type became possible, a result of Johannes Gutenberg’s inventiveness, but also because the necessary materials, including the right kinds of metal to make type, became available. Over the subsequent fifty years or so, this technology spread and became commercially viable: more printed books circulated, especially …
The drama of good government
June 3, 2013
Next Friday (June 7), I will be attending an extraordinary performance next Friday: an uncut production of Sir David Lyndsay’s Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis at Linlithgow Peel. Ane Satyre is the first surviving play text in Older Scots: it is a personification play, most akin to Mankind , Everyman or even Magnificence. The …
An earlier Iron Lady?
April 10, 2013
Baroness Thatcher is not the only Margaret to have had a significant impact on the history of Scotland. There is Margaret of Denmark, wife of James III, who seems to have kept the peace between her husband and her eldest son, James IV; there is also her daughter-in-law, Margaret Tudor, who provided her great-grandson (through …