William Dunbar: Selected Poems

by Priscilla Bawcutt

William Dunbar is widely recognised as a major medieval poet, probably the most brilliant between Chaucer and Spenser. This new addition to the Longman Annotated Texts series provides valuable coverage of seventy of Dunbar's finest poems. Each is complete with useful headnotes which discuss theme, genre, metrical form, text and evidence to date the poem where this is available. All poems have been provided with annotation and glosses to aid the reader's understanding, and Latin is translated into English throughout.
The introduction provides a guide to the most important aspects of Dunbar and his poetry, and references to further reading.
This edition of William Dunbar will be welcomed by students of Scottish and English literature, especially by those with an interest in the medieval and renaissance periods.

Genres: Poetry, Scotland, Medieval, Classics, British Literature

464 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1996

About the author

Priscilla J. Bawcutt, née Preston was a scholar of Medieval and Renaissance literature in English and Scots. She studied English literature at the University of London and subsequently had along association with the English Department at the University of Liverpool where she was made an Honorary Professor.

Bawcutt's range of interest encompassed the English poets Chaucer, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne and T.S. Eliot and she was recognised for her work on the late-medieval Scottish makars, William Dunbar and Gawin Douglas, establishing trustworthy texts for both of these authors.

Reviews

[Manny]

Our plesance heir is all vane glory,
This fals warld is bot transitory,
The flesche is brukle, the Fend is sle;
Timor mortis conturbat me

The stait of man dois change and vary,
Now sound, now seik, now blith, now sary,
Now dansand mery, now like to dee;
Timor mortis conturbat me

No stait in erd her standis sickir;
As with the wynd wavis the wickir,
Wavis this warldis vanite;
Timor mortis conturbat me

[Peter Aronson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The interlinear translation works very well here, giving you the meaning and the look of the original poems at the same time. Alas, it does nothing for the pronunciation, which is not discussed except for a reference to a rather technical and academic book. This is somewhat frustrating when the translator's introduction tells us this poem is lyrical or that poem demands to be sung. But still a nice translation of a poet whose works should be better well known.