Such imaginary rivalry, in 1535 , looks forward to a distant future. The
court poets who briefly clustered around the young James VI worked with
their own combination of erotics and politics. And as Roderick J. Lyall has
recently argued, such practice raises multiple possibilities for a model of late
sixteenth-century culture that embraces two centers and two nations. The
possible grounds for comparison are numerous. English Protestant nation-
alism, and its internal counternarratives, needs to be weighed against
Reformation Scotland and the subsequent degree of tolerance during the
Lennox ascendancy, and the cult of Elizabeth against the intimacy sur-
rounding the youthful James VI, after another long royal minority.^9 The
period between 1485 and 1528 fabricates a multiplicity of literary cultures, in
a more capacious manner than Puttenham’s retrospective account of the
Tottel generation was inclined to grasp. It also lays the ground, as Lyall has
argued, for a triangular understanding of English, Scottish and European
writing. It is to be hoped that this book has played some part in opening up
such prospects.
Conclusion 173