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4 Having The Last Word: Manuscript, Print, and The Envoy in the Poetry of John Skelton
Get accessJane Griffiths is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol. She has published articles on late medieval and early modern poetry and poetics in a variety of journals including the Huntington Library Quarterly, Mediaevalia et Humanistica, Renaissance Studies, and the Yearbook of English Studies. Her books include John Skelton and Poetic Authority: Defining the Liberty to Speak (Clarendon Press, 2006) and Another Country: New and Selected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), which was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. She is now working on a study of the marginal gloss in the period of transition from manuscript to print.
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Published:18 September 2012
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Abstract
This article revisits John Skelton's envoys — where the poet sends forth his poem — and his revisions in the light of the increasing use of print over the course of his lifetime. Skelton began his writing career at a time when ‘publication’ was more likely to be by manuscript circulation than in print. His works survive in a variety of manuscripts and early printed editions which often preserve significantly different texts, providing a basis from which to investigate assumptions about differences between print and manuscript publication. Although print used frequently to be spoken of as a medium that entails closure, the printing of Skelton's Speak Parrot and A Garland of Laurel supports recent revisions of this view. Like a manuscript witness, the first printed edition of Speak Parrot attests Skelton's habit of revision, while that of A Garland reveals how he exploits differences between manuscript and print in order to renegotiate his position vis-àvis his audience. For Skelton, far from imposing a definite form on a poet's works, print may serve precisely as a means of ‘derangement’, or rearrangement. These editions suggest that Skelton is both more engaged with his readers and more adaptable to change than has often been suggested, presenting him as a poet who is willing and able to draw on new technology both for political ends and as an aid to defining and asserting his own poetic authority.
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