The Borderlands of Satire: Linked, Opposed, and Exchanged Political Poetry During the Scottish and English Wars of the Early Fourteenth Century

Abstract

P olitical satire is usually offered in medieval political culture as potent with the force of oral taunts and vows: fighting words, the expression or the instigation of violence. The action in and around such invective—its broader frame—is often the most compelling part, the backstory that gives the taunts their edge and meaning. Thus the popular prose Brut (first written in Anglo-Norman in the early fourteenth century) recounts that after William the Conqueror’s wife died, there was “grant contek e grant descord” between him and King Phillip of France. For a time this died down, while William lived in Normandy “a long time, without doing any harm to the king of France,” whereupon the king of France, “because he had remained so long in peace,” spoke “en escharn” [in scorn]—in the fifteenth-century English translation, “Kynge William hade longe leyen a childe bed, & longe tyme hap restede hym”: whereupon William “wonder wrothe toward pe Kyng of Fraunce” and, assembling a great force, entered France, burning, plundering, pillaging, and committing “al pe euel he might prou3-out al Fraunce.” 1 These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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