Court Politics Culture and Literature in Scotland and England 1500-1540

The focus of this study is court literature in early sixteenth-century England and Scotland. The author examines courtly poetry and drama in the context of a complex system of entertainment education self-fashioning dissimulation propaganda and patronage. He places selected works under close critical scrutiny to explore the symbiotic relationship that existed between court literature and important socio-political economic and national contexts of the period 1500 to 1540. The first two chapters discuss the pervasive influence of patronage upon court literature through an analysis of the panegyric verse that surrounded the coronation of Henry VIII. The rhetorical strategies adopted by courtiers within their literary works however differed depending on whether the writer was at the time of writing the verse or drama excluded or included from the environs of the court. The different often elaborate rhetorical strategies are through close readings of selected verse delineated and discussed in chapter three on David Lyndsay and chapter four on Thomas Wyatt and Thomas Elyot.