Background
Skelton was born in 1463 in Diss, England.
(John Scattergood's 'The Complete English Poems of John Sk...)
John Scattergood's 'The Complete English Poems of John Skelton', originally published in 1983 and long out of print, was the leading academic edition with comprehensive notes. Students are currently limited to searching for Skelton's poems in anthologies. This new edition contains the poems, accompanied by around 150 pages of revised notes. There is an entirely new introduction, covering all developments in Skelton scholarship since the early 1980's, and an updated reading list. Scattergood also reproduces much of the Latin paratexts, considered by readers to be so essential to Skelton - and therefore to scholars of his work. Reviews of previous edition: ''Skelton's greatest poems are learned, difficult, allusive, multilingual, intensely self-conscious and self-reflexive. With their verbal play and many-layered meaning they demand careful and repeated reading; and the most important reason why Skelton's reputation ... does not correspond to the reality of his work is that there has been no complete edition of the authentic text of his poems since that of Alexander Dyce in 1843. ... Scattergood's is a splendid achievement: it must be the product of many years of learned and intelligent labour, and it is likely to be the standard edition of Skelton for many years to come.' The Cambridge Review 'Skelton sits in an awkward historical corner beween the regular "middle ages" and the Shakespeare epoch; and is not nearly well-enough known today. Splendid then, to have ... this new, complete edition of his works with both the original spellings and explanatory notes, indeed the only such edition since 1843.' The Morning Star
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Skelton was born in 1463 in Diss, England.
Skelton is said to have been educated at Oxford, though it is documented that he studied at Cambridge. He could be the "one Scheklton" mentioned by William Cole as taking his M. A. degree at Cambridge in 1484, but this is unconfirmed.
Skelton's life in Norfolk became legendary for his sarcasms and practical jokes, some dour, some ribald. At both Oxford and Cambridge, however, and at the Court in London, he showed not only wit but an underlying earnestness.
By his early thirties he had become honorary "Laureate" and tutor to Prince Henry (later Henry VIII), and he had been publicly praised for his English style by Caxton and for his Latin by Erasmus. Fearful of Wolsey, he spent his last six years in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where he died on June 21, 1529.
The Renaissance was just reaching England during Skelton's time, and though he felt the influence of the new movement, he opposed it with vigor. It is true that he translated ancient authors, in a prose style which was an unsuccessful compromise with Classical elegance, but his unique verse style, which is still described by the name he gave it, "Skeltonic, " was freely adapted from the works of the wits of the Middle Ages. Using lines only two or three accents in length, he repeats the same rhyme for sometimes as many as nine consecutive lines. Even in the most violent satire, this manner can retain a tone of droll banter. In Phillip Sparrow, lamenting a dead bird, it imparts a mock-daintiness, and in The Tunning of Elinor Rumming, which describes a drunken crew of women, it heaps up loathsome images at a fast and ludicrous pace. The peculiarities of Skelton's work prevented it from influencing later poets, by many of whom it was cordially disliked, but Skelton remains one of the few readable English poets to write during the two hundred years that separated Chaucer and Spenser.
(John Scattergood's 'The Complete English Poems of John Sk...)
Though Skelton was thoroughly loyal to the Church and was ordained in 1498, many of his poems are satires directed against English clerical abuses; he attacked clerical abuses in general in Colin Clout, and Cardinal Wolsey in particular in Speke, Parrot.