Pium Vestrum Catullum Britannum: The influence of Catullus' Poetry on John Skelton

Abstract

John Skelton is the first English poet to show an unquestionable influence of the rediscovered Catullus. Despite the lack of direct quotations and the scarce reference to Catullus in Skelton’s work, his identification with the Latin writer in a very significant moment of The Garlande of Laurell and the amount of parallels between them encourage us to study their relationship. This paper examines the effects of Skelton’s reading of Catullan poetry going further than the thematic imitation in Phyllyp Sparowe already noticed by the critics: shared images, common motifs, and especially, similar attitudes towards some literary issues. It also analyses Skelton’s reception of the Renaissance “Catullan myth” and how he tried to assume it in order to be considered an analogous figure in his own time.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.