Two Scots Chaucerians

Robert Henryson (c.1420c.1506) and William Dunbar (c.1459c.1530) are the two Scottish poets in whom the debt to Chaucer is most apparent. Although it has been argued that the Scottish makars of the fifteenth century were influenced primarily by a native tradition, it is here argued that Henryson could not have written the 'Testament of Cresseid' without Chaucer's 'Troilus and Cressida', nor Dunbar his 'Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo' without the 'Wyf of Bath's Prologue'. In this 1967 study, H. Harvey Wood explores the life and work of Henryson, a countryman of fairly humble background, and Dunbar, a poet who identified himself with the 'nobles of blood'. A volume in the Writers and Their Work series, which draws upon recent thinking in English studies to introduce writers and their contexts. Each volume includes biographical material, an examination of recent criticism, a bibliography and a reappraisal of a major work by the writer.