Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Theories of looking
- 2 Examples of looking
- 3 The Tristan story
- 4 Chrétien de Troyes
- 5 The Lanval story
- 6 Troilus and Criseyde and The Manciple's Tale
- 7 Partonope of Blois
- 8 The Knight's Tale and The Merchant's Tale
- 9 The Squyr of Lowe Degre
- 10 The Romaunt of the Rose
- 11 The Parliament of Fowls and A Complaynt of a Loveres Lyfe
- 12 The Palice of Honour and The Goldyn Targe
- 13 The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo
- 14 Phyllyp Sparowe
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - The Palice of Honour and The Goldyn Targe
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Theories of looking
- 2 Examples of looking
- 3 The Tristan story
- 4 Chrétien de Troyes
- 5 The Lanval story
- 6 Troilus and Criseyde and The Manciple's Tale
- 7 Partonope of Blois
- 8 The Knight's Tale and The Merchant's Tale
- 9 The Squyr of Lowe Degre
- 10 The Romaunt of the Rose
- 11 The Parliament of Fowls and A Complaynt of a Loveres Lyfe
- 12 The Palice of Honour and The Goldyn Targe
- 13 The Tretis of the Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo
- 14 Phyllyp Sparowe
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this chapter I shall examine two Scottish dream-poems, both dating from around 1500, both examples of love-allegory in the tradition of Chaucer and Lydgate, and both written by poets associated with the court of James IV of Scotland who were also clerics bound to celibacy. In both the poet represents himself as hiding in order to spy on a pagan celebration of love, and as being dragged out of his concealment to be ridiculed and punished by female deities. The poet's lowly role as a mere observer is intensified by his clerical status, which forbids him to do more than watch, but this also heightens his sense of the otherness of female sexuality and thus his curiosity about it and his investment of feeling in watching and then in being watched. The first is Gavin Douglas's Palice of Honour. Douglas, a younger son of the earl of Angus, was also a clerk who received an advanced formal education and took holy orders. The date of his ordination is unknown, but he was dean of Dunkeld by 1497, provost of St Giles' in Edinburgh by 1503, and bishop of Dunkeld in 1515, having narrowly failed to gain the archbishopric of St Andrews. The Palice of Honour can be dated fairly exactly to 1501. Though looking is of importance throughout its 2169 lines, I shall concentrate on the first of the three parts into which it is divided.
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- The Medieval Poet as Voyeur , pp. 231 - 248Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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