BARBOUR, JOHN (ca. 1320–1395) John
Barbour was a MIDDLE SCOTS poet best known for his
historical work The BRUCE. Like many of his contempo-
raries, very little is known about Barbour’s life other
than that he held the important post of archdeacon of
Aberdeen (one of the most important and wealthy cit-
ies in medieval Scotland), beginning in 1357, and
remained in that offi ce until he died. Although no
records attest to his education, most scholars believe
he was educated at Oxford.
The Bruce, written in octosyllabic COUPLETs, is for the
most part a factual poem that celebrates the life of ROB-
ERT I THE BRUCE and the war between the Scottish and
the English. Although the poem is historically based,
Barbour weaves components of other popular medi-
eval genres into his verse, notably ROMANCE. In the
poem, Bruce is a chivalric hero who surpasses all of his
knights and opponents. Later medieval historians
would consider Barbour’s work more as a CHRONICLE of
history and the authoritative voice on Bruce’s life than
as a piece of poetic value. Indeed, there is still much
work to be done evaluating Barbour as a poet and not
simply a historian.
Barbour fi nished his poem around 1376, only about
50 years after the death of his subject. The proximity of
the events to his writings allowed him access to such
sources as surviving veterans and a largely unchanged
landscape where the events took place. Records show
that Barbour received payment and a pension from the
king, Robert II, who possibly commissioned the work.
Several other works have been attributed to Bar-
bour, but none have been fully proven to be his. These
include a poem on the siege of Troy which is in the
same meter as The Bruce and a Scottish translation of
some French poems called The Buik of Alexander, but
The Bruce has truly been Barbour’s legacy, and it infl u-
enced, among others, BLIND HARY’s EPIC poem, The
WALLACE.
FURTHER READING
Goldstein, R. James. The Matter of Scotland: Historical Narra-
tive in Medieval Scotland. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1993.
McDiarmid, M. P., and J. Stevenson, eds. Barbour’s Bruce. 3
vols. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1980–85.
Jennifer N. Brown
BARCLAY, ALEXANDER (ca. 1475–1552)
Alexander Barclay is credited with being the fi rst poet
to write English PASTORALs. Little is known with cer-
tainty regarding Barclay’s life, and many scholars turn
to his writings to obtain information on his life and
experiences. Some believe he was born in Scotland
around 1475. He enjoyed a brief literary career, during
which he produced poems, translations, and a French
textbook. While many of his writings are translations,
Barclay’s writing style retained the character of the
original work, encompassing his own ideas about Eng-
lish society. He was among the fi rst writers to benefi t
from a wider circulation of his works as a result of the
printing press. Consequently, Barclay had an impor-
tant role in introducing Continental literature to the
English public.
Barclay is typically seen as a transitional fi gure
between late medieval and early Renaissance verse. He
lived during the earliest part of the Tudor Dynasty
(1485–1547), and his verse picks up on some of the
newer elements of the early modern period; he
believed he was writing something new. Scholarly
appraisals of Barclay’s works have been exceptionally
critical about his poetic abilities. Some of his best
known works are The Castell of Labour (1503), Ship of
Fools (1509), and Certayne Eglogues (ECLOGUES; printed
in various parts from 1514, but reprinted in 1570 in
complete form). The Castell of Labour is a medieval
ALLEGORY, fi lled with PERSONIFICATION, about the nature
of working for a living and its problems. Ship of Fools,
accompanied by an elaborate woodcut, refutes medi-
eval notions of scholasticism, medicine, and witch-
craft, and presents itself as a translation of a Latin
poem by Jacob Locher. This may be the earliest exam-
ple of the loose translation that was to become norma-
tive in English translation in the later Renaissance and
the attempt to update the translated poem with con-
temporary English references.
Without question, Barclay’s Certayne Eglogues merited
the attention of his day and today. Written in COUPLETs,
the poems are a loose translation of Mantuan, with orig-
inal interpolations. Pastoral poetry as a locus for political
commentary under the veiled images of a pastoral world
of shepherds thus became the norm for the Renaissance
pastoral. EDMUND SPENSER is a direct inheritor of thisBARCLAY, ALEXANDER 73