Background
Gavin Douglas was born in 1474 at Tantallon Castle, East Lothian, Scotland. He was the third son of Archibald Douglas, the fifth Earl of Angus and his second wife Elizabeth Boyd.
(This volume serves as an excellent introduction to Middle...)
This volume serves as an excellent introduction to Middle English, Scottish poetry. Gavin Douglas's The Palis of Honoure is a dream poem from early sixteenth-century Scotland. It operates within the courtly tradition of Scottish poetry, establishing a dichotomy of earthly and heavenly things, instructing the audience in becoming more like the heavenly things in their comportment. This edition includes an ample gloss and notes, as well as an informative introduction and glossary, making it a perfect edition for use in classrooms of all levels.
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Gavin Douglas was born in 1474 at Tantallon Castle, East Lothian, Scotland. He was the third son of Archibald Douglas, the fifth Earl of Angus and his second wife Elizabeth Boyd.
Gavin entered the University of St. Andrews in 1490 and earned a master of arts degree in 1494. He may have studied law at Paris under the distinguished Scottish theologian John Major (or Mair).
His productive period began after he had taken orders and extends from 1501 to 1513; during these years he enjoyed the security of two and, later, three clerical appointments, including one at St. Giles in Edinburgh. The marriage in 1514 of his nephew, the sixth Earl of Angus to the widow of James IV, drew Douglas into a long battle for preferment, in the course of which he suffered imprisonment and other dangers. Though Douglas was for a time the Bishop of Dunkeld, the French party's triumph in Scotland compelled him to flee to the court of Henry VIII in London, where he died of the plague in 1522. Douglas' claim to fame rests on the poetry he produced during the first years of the 16th century. This may be regarded as a record of the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance which was a characteristic of the period. Two of Douglas' poems, The Palace of Honour and King Hart, are allegories or dream-visions in the style of Chaucer and Langland. As a prosodist, Douglas is a transition figure. In his early poems, he reproduced the verse forms of medieval poetry and also the alliterative devices of still older English verse. In his Aeneid, on the other hand, he employed the rhymed heroic couplet that was to have a distinguished history in later English poetry.
(This volume serves as an excellent introduction to Middle...)