Further Reading
Primary Sources
Bawcutt, Priscilla, ed. William Dunbar: Selected Poems. London:
Longman, 1996.
Kinsley, James, ed. The Poems of William Dunbar. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1979.
Secondary Sources
New CBEL 1:660–62.
Manual 4:1005–60,1204–84.
Bawcutt, Priscilla. “Aspects of Dunbar’s Imagery.” In Chaucer
and Middle English Studies, ed. Beryl Rowland. London:
Allen & Unwin, 1974, pp. 190–200.
Bawcutt, Priscilla. “William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas.” In
The History of Scottish Literature. Vol. 1, ed. R.D.S. Jack.
Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988, pp. 73–89.
Bawcutt, Priscilla. Dunbar the Makar. Oxford: Clarendon,
1992.
Baxter, J.W. William Dunbar: A Biographical Study. Edinburgh:
Oliver & Boyd, 1952.
Fox, Denton. “Dunbar’s The Golden Targe.” ELH26 (1959):
311–34.
Morgan, Edwin. “Dunbar and the Language of Poetry.” EIC2
(1952): 138–58.
Reiss, Edmund. William Dunbar. Boston: Twayne, 1979.
Ross, Ian. William Dunbar. Leiden: Brill, 1981.
Roth, Elizabeth. “Criticism and Taste: Readings of Dunbar’s
Tretis.” Scottish Literary Journal Supplement 15 (1981):
57–90.
Scheps, Walter, and J. Anna Looney. Middle Scots Poets: A Refer-
ence Guide. Boston: Hall, 1986, pp. 119–94.
Priscilla Bawcutt
DUNS SCOTUS, JOHN
(ca. 1266–1308)
Born in Scotland, Duns Scotus probably obtained his
early education at the Franciscan convent in Dumfries,
where he entered the order by 1280. He was sent to
Oxford no later than 1290 to begin his studies and may
have received his baccalaureate there. He lectured on
the Sententiae of Peter Lombard at both Cambridge and
Oxford. Ordained at Northampton in 1291, he went to
the University of Paris in 1293 to study for the master’s
degree in theology, but before completing the degree he
returned in 1296 to Oxford, where he commented again
on the Sententiae. Duns Scotus went once more to Paris
in 1302 and continued to lecture on the Sententiae. He
was exiled in 1303, when he opposed Philip IV the Fair’s
appeal to a general council against Pope Boniface VIII.
He returned in 1304, received the master’s degree in
1305, and became regent master in the Franciscan chair
for the next two years. In 1307, he was sent to teach
at the Franciscan house in Cologne, where he died on
November 8, 1308.
Possibly nicknamed “the Scot” early on at Oxford,
he engaged in theological disputes with such skill and
subtlety that he posthumously received the scholastic
titles Doctor subtilis and Doctor maximus. Duns Scotus
extended the moderate realism of Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas but was intent less on constructing a
system than on pursuing, often relentlessly, solutions to
philosophical and theological problems that he consid-
ered to blemish the systems of his predecessors, such
as the issues of contingency, individuation, distinctions
and univocity of being, the primary object of the intel-
lect, and the relation of love and will to intellect. He
took immense pains to distinguish and then properly
to reconnect the tasks and provinces of “philosophy”
and “theology.” He reacted to the efforts of Henry of
Ghent and others to reestablish Augustinianism at the
University of Paris. Although infl uenced by Avicenna, he
rejected both Augustinian and Aristotelian epistemolo-
gies and argued that being, not God or material things or
their essences, is the primary object of knowledge. He
saw theology as a science whose knowledge provides
the “practical” means to reach the soul’s supernatural
end. He emphasized the special uniqueness, or haec-
ceitas, of the individual, because each is the product of
God’s thoroughly free creative and loving election. He
distinguished between nature and will and argued that
the will alone possesses fundamental freedom and is the
primary rational power. He analyzed the human capac-
ity to love and to experience God. He distinguished the
will’s inclination to choose what is advantageous from
its “affection” toward justice for its own sake, which en-
ables the will to love God for God’s sake and not for the
soul’s advantage alone. Scotus’s concept of intellectual
intuition explained the capacity of beatifi c and unique
temporal visions of God in contrast with the ordinary
process of knowledge through sensory experience. He
promoted the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception
and maintained that the Incarnation would have occurred
regardless of the Fall.
Duns Scotus’s principal composition was his com-
mentary on the Sententiae. The two chief extant ver-
sions are included in the collections Opus Oxoniense,
especially the Ordinatio, and in the Opus Parisiense,
also known as the Reporta Parisiensia, containing
notes from students and scribes. The Tractatus de
Primo Principio and the quodlibetal questions represent
his mature theological constructions. He also com-
posed a series of logical commentaries, in the genre
of “questions,” on Porphyry’s Isogoge and Aristotle’s
Categories. Especially interesting are his Collationes,
composed of disputations held at Oxford and Paris. His
writings not only infl uenced later Franciscan theolo-
gians, known as the Scotists, but also such diverse fi gures
as Galileo, C.S. Peirce, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.See also Albert the Great; Aquinas, Thomas;
Boniface VIII, Pope; Peter LombardDUNS SCOTUS, JOHN