Jane Griffiths

A contradiction in terms: Skelton's ‘effecte energiall’ in A Replycacion

This paper tests the commonplace that John Skeltons late poem A Replycacion (1527– 8) contains the first English formulation of the Platonic theory of divine inspiration. It argues first that Skeltons use of the term ‘effecte energiall’ suggests the influence of Aristotle as well as of Plato, second that Skeltons ‘divine inspiration’ can be read as a metaphor for the activity of the poets own mind. In asserting the poets originary power at a time when his authority was still widely thought to be derivative, the poem thus anticipates late sixteenth-century views of poetic authority. (pp. 55–68)

David R. Carlson, John Skelton and Early Modern Culture: Papers Honoring Robert S. Kinsman

It is impossible to work on Skelton for long without encountering the work of R. S. Kinsman. Over the course of a lengthy career that began with a doctoral thesis on Skelton in 1949, Kinsman has made a vital contribution to Skelton studies. Many of his articles on Skelton are still essential reading, while his John Skelton: Selected Poems (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969) is—unusually for a selected edition—indispensable for anyone with a serious interest in Skelton, not least for its fully glossed text of Speke Parott. It is entirely fitting, then, that a book in honor of Kinsman should also focus on Skelton, and fitting too that it should encompass a wide variety of approaches. The essays here, many of them by scholars whose names—like Kinsman’s own—are closely associated with Skelton’s, suggest diverse contexts in which Skelton and his works might usefully be read. So, for example, Greg Walker’s article examines what it might mean to consider Skelton as a court poet, emphasizing in particular the difficulty of defining the ‘‘court.’’ W. R. Streitberger investigates further one specific (and neglected) aspect of Skelton’s court connection through a consideration of his revels and entertainments. W. Scott Blanchard reexamines Skelton’s conflicted relationship with the sources of secular power by analyzing his treatment of ‘‘wealth’’ in Magnyfycence. Greg Waite examines holograph records of Skelton’s language, thus foregrounding an area that has been almost entirely neglected since F. M. Salter’s work in the 1950s. A. S. G. Edwards looks at the contrasting ways in which Skelton’s poems were published, in manuscript and print, in an article that has much to tell us about contemporary perceptions of the two media as well as about Skelton himself. In the final