Career

Barbour's contact with centers of fourteenth-century culture, like Paris and Oxford, and his knowledge of the popular medieval verse epics celebrating the great deeds of past heroes, like Roland and the warriors that fought at Troy, may possibly have stimulated him to emulation. In any case, he found in the recent history of his own nation deeds that in themselves were the equal of any performed around Troy or in the Pyrenees; these were the exploits of Robert Bruce, the leader of the Scottish forces in the long and almost hopeless struggle against the English Plantagenet kings.There were strong heroic elements in the long outlawry of Bruce, an ordeal that was finally rewarded by victory over the English at Bannockburn (1314) and a treaty of peace (1323); Barbour worked these exploits into his most famous poem, Brus (1375). This poem, of 13,500 four-stress lines and twenty books, was an immediate success, and Barbour was awarded an annual pension of twenty shillings in 1378 by Robert II of Scotland. The Brus was probably not Barbour's only poem, however. He may have written a lost poem on the genealogy of the Stuarts, and he is thought to be the author of two other poems, a "Troy" poem of which two fragments exist and a long poem of 33,000 lines, Legends of the Saints. The latter work is based on the Legenda aurea, the famous collection of saints' lives so popular in the Middle Ages, but differs from it in including the lives of two Scottish saints. Barbour is also thought to have put into verse the Gospel story. He died in Aberdeen on Mar. 13, 1395.

Achievements

• Barbour is important in literary history because, in addition to bowing to the conventional poetic preoccupations of his time, such as the versifying of saints' lives and the story of Troy, he had originality enough to conceive and carry out the writing of a national epic, The Bruce. This poem, which Barbour indicates is in part the result of seeking out the narratives of eye-witnesses, is a primary source for the career of Bruce as well as a poem expressive of national patriotism. Aesthetically, however, it is, as might be expected, in a position of cultural dependence on the more developed literatures of England and France. Barbour writes in octosyllabic rhymed couplets and employs a Northumbrian or Northern English dialect. His feeling that the chief merit of his long poem is that it is not a poem at all but simply sober truth set to verse leads to plain, unadorned directness. But the effect of this emphasis on factual material is mixed; The Bruce is sometimes vivid and moving because of its simplicity, but it is sometimes prosy and dull. Barbour is as direct as Chaucer, but he lacks that poet's gift of reporting fact with ironic intent. In his introduction concerning his book he writes:
  
  
  
  Now God gyff grace that I may swa [so]
  
  Tret and bryng it till endyng
  
  That I say nocht but suthfast [truthful] thing.

Works

• poem

  • Brus (1375)

  • Troy

  • Legends of the Saints