Talk:Chaucer's influence on 15th-century Scottish literature

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An interesting start!

needs in line footnotes to go with the references! --Rocksanddirt (talk) 03:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Contemporary comments

Despite his modern reputation as a writer of ‘Scots’, Douglas would however on his death in 1522 be memoralised by fellow Scottish poet or ‘Makar’ David Lindsay as a noted writer of ‘our Inglis rhetorique’ i.e of English. Douglas’ now-celebrated ‘Scots language’ was in reality a pastiche, a mix of 14th century Chaucer-inspired Middle English and of contemporary 16th century Scottish rustic – a still-familiar poetic device employed to create a pleasing patina of synthetic antiquity.

Earlier, Scottish poet William Dunbar (1459-c.1513) would write in ‘The Goldyn Targe’ (1508):

O reverend Chaucere, rose of rethoris all, As in oure tong ane flour imperiall, That raise in Britane evir, quho redis rycht, Thou beris of makaris the tryumph riall; Thy fresch anamalit termes celicall This mater coud illumynit have full brycht: Was thou noucht of oure Inglisch all the lycht,

On the oft-quoted pledge of 16th century ‘Scots language’ poet Gavin Douglas to “Kepand na Sudron bot our awyn langage”, James Murray ‘The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland’ (1873) comments that the claim is “very curious, in the light of the fact that no Scottish writer - indeed, so far as I know, no Northern writer, of any period, either in England or Scotland - has employed so many genuine Southern forms.”

It is worth noting that after the Bible Chaucer's works were the best selling books of the whole 16th (sic) century.

Cassandrathesceptic (talk) 17:46, 11 April 2016 (UTC)