The Complete English Poems

by John Skelton, John Scattergood (Editor)

In this edition of poems, the texts have been established afresh and are presented chronologically with textual variants. The editor provides notes to elucidate difficult passages and problem areas.

Genres: Poetry, Medieval, Classics

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1529

About the author

John Skelton, aka John Shelton, (c. 1463-1529) was an English poet and tutor to King Henry VIII.

Reviews

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Skelton (1460-1529) was educated at both Oxford and Cambridge before finding a patron in Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII and grandmother of Henry VIII. Skelton became Prince Henry's (later Henry VIII) tutor between about 1496-1501, and wrote him an advice book in Latin.

Ignored for a long time, we still don't quite know what to do with Skelton and his verse: he's certainly a 'filler', a kind of missing link, as it were, between Chaucer and Wyatt, but it's difficult to get a coherent handle on what he's doing and how he was perceived at the early Tudor court. Much of his verse is satirical, written in an epigrammatic style which can easily tip over into doggerel.

He's probably best known for his long poem Phyllyp's Sparrow, which is written in the voice of Jane Scrope lamenting the death of her pet bird and, almost certainly, drawing on Catullus (c.2 and c.3) and Ovid's Amores (2.6). But it's very difficult to discern the register of Skelton, to know when he's being serious and when making some kind of joke. He describes himself, for example, as the 'British Catullus' but then in the same verse also claims his likeness to both Homer... and Adonis!

Skelton's verse is certainly lively, energetic - and sometimes plain mad. Some of his contemporaries seem to have seen him as a buffoonish figure yet, at the same time, he was very learned and scholarly. We tend to have a fairly narrow view of early Tudor poetry but Skelton skews the picture in interesting ways.

[Diwan Mal]

hmmmm an alternative fun for dullards who read anatomy of melancholy or montaigne instead dof rabelais which I finished 4 months ago so this is really very similar with persius juvenalian suppreses bite. fun not an essential like gawain and langland also i somehow don't get chaucer or gower that much i consider them boomercore etc also this is deliberately written in trannycase haha
I liked sincere love poems more etc also this is really something scholar would read while researching some antiquarian policies or rosicrucian conspiracies w some skeltonics etc
PHYLLYP SPAROWE is so good.

[Ciara · Rating 3 out of 5]

He would've loved podcasts

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Consider me hooked on Skeltonics.

[Gitta · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng for a class at uni and it was one of the most misogynistic things I have read. Fortunately for himself and those who now read his works, Skelton was a good poet. The Skeltonic metre is beautiful and strongly contrasts the poem's content.

Certainly, if I had not learned about the tradition dating back to Antiquity, this would not have made any sense. If you truly want to understand this particular poem, do some reading on the Sieve of Tuccia and on women as leaky vessels and it'll become a lot clearer.

I've given it two stars because the writing is good. The ideas explored, though they display a thorough dislike of women, goes above and beyond any themes of the legend of Tuccia. So, I admire his originality in finding new, additional ways and methods to disgustingly describe women's leakage of bodily fluids. He takes misogyny to the next level. It came to no surprise then that Skelton was the tutor of Henry VIII, the notorious English king with eight wives. This is one of those works I like to dislike.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a challenge to read.