Constructing the Sexual Subject of John Skelton

Abstract

John Skelton's biography is not easily pieced together. Prominent historians have relied on extant court records, university registers, and war correspondences to locate him geographically. They have crossreferenced his poetry with documented events to situate him historically. And they have relied upon the writings of other poets to gauge his poetic and political significance. Despite this dearth of information, however, these reputable historians have constructed an easily digestible biography of Skelton that begins with his birth around 1460 and ends with his death on the eve of the English Reformation in 1529. Nevertheless, below the surface of this historical manufacturing is a process by which the subject of Skelton was passed through a Protestant propaganda machine that stained him with a sexual perversion that biographers have spent centuries trying to wash out.

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