William Dunbar (poet)

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William Dunbar was a Scottish poet of the 15th and early 16th centuries (around 1460 to around 1520) and was counted among the Makars .

Life

His exact year of birth and death are not known. Since he began studying at the University of St. Andrews in 1474 (and therefore had to be at least 14 years old), he was born in 1459 or 1460. In 1479 he received his Magister artium. He was probably of noble descent (from the House of Dunbar). For the rest of his life, his poetry is often used, especially a literary poet duel (Flyting), which he delivered with Walter Kennedy around 1492. He knew French and might have been to France. In 1492 he was perhaps a secretary and priest on a diplomatic mission in Denmark, with the ship being driven to Norway. From 1500 to 1513 he is recorded at the court of King Jacob IV . He is first mentioned on the court's payment lists in 1500 when he received a pension. He probably had an ecclesiastical function because there was no court poet. That he was a priest is shown in the documents (in 1504 he received money for his first mass at court and in a legal document from 1509 he is called a chaplain). In 1511 he accompanied the Queen to Aberdeen on a trip to the north of Scotland and describes the entry in a poem. In 1513 the king fell in battle (connected with a loophole in the court reports from 1513 to 1515). Dunbar seems to have survived him, however, as some poems that were written after 1513 (one 1517) could be ascribed to him with some probability. According to David Lyndsay (Testament of Papyngo) he died in 1530.

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He wrote around 80 shorter poems in Middle Scottish (from the Latinized language of the educated to colloquial language and vulgarities), including The Flyting, Dance of the seven deadly sins, The Golden Targe (The Golden Shield). In many cases they are thematically connected to the court of Jacob IV (for example The Thrissill and the Roies, one of his longest poems on the wedding of Jacob IV to Margaret Tudor in 1503). Some are short petition or begging poems to the king, some are satirical allusions to court people like the court doctor and alchemist John Damian. Like other poets of the Scottish Renaissance, he was influenced by Geoffrey Chaucer .

One of his best-known poems, The Golden Targe, is about the failure of reason to protect a dreaming from the violence of Venus with its golden shield. This is mixed with reflections on the difficulty of allegorical poetry. The Flyting (with attacks on Kennedy, who had a Gaelic background) and his satirical dream poem The dance of the seven deadly sins , which describes a carnival parade in Hell (and in which he makes fun of the Highland Scots), are early works ( around 1491 to 1493).

In the satirical The Dregy of Dunbar , based on a Latin funeral mass, he compares his happy life at court in Edinburgh with the Franciscan Abbey in Stirling, where the king stayed to repent.

His longest (and first printed) poem is The Tretis of the Tua Maritt Wemen and the Wedo (The Conversation of Two Married Women and the Widow), in which a man (the narrator) the conversations of two high-ranking noble ladies and a widow of two overheard on midsummer night talking fairly freely about their marriages. He also parodied various styles of courtly French poetry.

There are personal poems by him, such as about the dreariness of winter or about death (Timor mortis conturbat me, the Latin refrain). Few poems are devoted to religious subjects (such as Surrexit dominus de sepulchro, from the Latin refrain, about the resurrection of Christ who descends like a warrior into hell and conquers Satan).

His Lament for the Makars (1500 to 1506), funeral poem for poets, is a source for Scottish literary history.

Soon after the introduction of printing in Edinburgh, his first poems were printed in 1508.

Others

The earliest literary evidence of the word Fuck is ascribed to him in his poem In Secreit Place (also: Brash of Wowing) from 1503.

Work editions

  • John Small (Ed.): The Poems of William Dunbar. 3 volumes, Scottish Text Society, 2, 4, 16, 21, 29, Blackwood, Edinburgh 1884–1889
  • James Kinsley (Ed.): The Poems of William Dunbar. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1979
  • Jakob Schipper (Ed.): The Poems of William Dunbar. 5 volumes, Academy of Sciences Vienna, 1891 to 1894
  • W. Mackay Mackenzie (Ed.): The Poems of William Dunbar. Faber & Faber, London 1932; Corrected reprint by Bruce Dickins, 1960

literature

  • Walter Scheps, JA Looney: Middle Scots Poets: A Reference Guide to James I, Robert Henryson, William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas. Hall, Boston 1986
  • JW Baxter: William Dunbar: A Biographical Study. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh 1952
  • Edmund Reiss: William Dunbar. Hall, Boston 1979
  • Ian Simpson Ross: William Dunbar. Brill, Leiden 1981
  • Jakob Schipper: William Dunbar: his life and his poems in analyzes and selected translations together with an outline of the old Scottish poetry. A contribution to the Scottish-English literary and cultural history , Berlin: Robert Oppenheim 1884, Archive (German translations)
  • Tom Scott: Dunbar: A Critical Exposure of the Poems. Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh 1966
  • Priscilla Bawcutt: Dunbar the Makar. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992
  • Matthew P. McDiarmid: The Early William Dunbar and his Poems. Scottish Historical Review, Vol. 59, 1980, pp. 138-158.

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Makar is a Scottish bard or poet, in the narrower sense from the Renaissance period. The word root is the same as in the English maker . In addition to Dunbar, they include Robert Henryson , Jacob I and Gavin Douglas .
  2. ↑ Christopher Fairman Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting our First Amendment , Sphinx Publ. 2009, p. 35, google books
personal data
SURNAME Dunbar, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish poet
DATE OF BIRTH around 1460
DATE OF DEATH around 1520