11 .Onthe“polyvocal”element in Dunbar’s work, see John Leyerle,“The Two
Voices of William Dunbar,”University of Toronto Quarterly 31 ( 1961 / 62 ), 316 – 38 ;
my own“William Dunbar: The Elusive Subject,”Bryght Lanternis: Essays on the
Language and Literature of Medieval and Renaissance Scotland,ed. J. Derrick
McClure and Michael R.G. Spiller (Aberdeen, 1989 ), 194 – 208 ; Joanne Norman,
“William Dunbar: Grand Rhétoriqueur,”inBryght Lanternis, 179 – 93.
12. For cross-border analogues, see Wendy Scase,Literature and Complaint in
England 1272 – 1553 (Oxford, 2007 ), in particular 170 – 86 on the formal“dicta-
minal”complaint.
13. Bawcutt,Dunbar, 241.
14 .Onflyting, see Priscilla Bawcutt,“The Art of Flyting,”Scottish Literary Journal
10 ( 1983 ), 5 – 24 ; Douglas Gray,“Rough Music: Some Early Invectives and
Flytings,”English Satire and the Satiric Tradition, ed. Claude Rawson and
Jenny Mezciems (Oxford, 1984 ), 21 – 43.
15. Regement, 7 – 14 , 80 – 112 ; cf. B 29 , 4 ;B 26 , 12. We may also note Rutebeuf’s
obsessively recurring“Ce je m’esmai, je n’en puis mais”[“It’s my fear, I can do
nothing about it”] in his complaints (“Complainte,” 68 ; cf.“Mariage,” 20 , 80 ).
16. Cf. Edmund Reiss,William Dunbar(Boston, 1979 ), 39. We may compare
Rutebeuf’s“Griesche d’Yver,”in Michel Zink’s view a poem built on a reflexive
pun:“The poet claims not to have sufficient intellectual resources to invent or
recall afine, splendid story, a‘rich story’; his intellectual poverty compels him to
settle for describing his own life, a poor man’s life, a‘poor story.’”The Invention
of Literary Subjectivity, trans. David Sices (Baltimore, 1999 ), 96 – 97.
17. “Comme Colin Muset et Rutebeuf qui amusaient les autres en racontant leurs
soucis d’argent ou de ménage, Deschamps joue pour la cour la comédie du
Moi”[“Like Colin Muset and Rutebeuf who entertain others by telling of their
financial or domestic woes, Deschamps performs for the court the comedy of
the self”]. Poirion,Poète et le prince, 232.
18. René Girard,To Double Business Bound: Essays on Literature, Mimesis and
Anthropology(Baltimore, 1988 ), 140.
19. So described in the title given to B 4 by Bannatyne.
20. See Bryan S. Hay,“William Dunbar’s Flying Abbot: Apocalypse Made to Order,”
Studies in Scottish Literature 11 ( 1973 / 74 ), 217 – 25 .Onthedangerous“modernity”
of alchemy, perhaps not unconnected with Dunbar’sanimustowards Damian, see
Sheila Delany,“Run Silent, Run Deep: Heresy and Alchemy as Medieval
Versions of Utopia,”Medieval Literary Politics: Shapes of Ideology(Manchester,
1990 ), 1 – 18 , and Lee Patterson,“Perpetual Motion: Alchemy and the Technology
of the Self,”Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 ( 1993 ), 25 – 57.
21. On this sequence, see David Parkinson,“Mobbing Scenes in Middle Scots
Verse: Holland, Douglas, Dunbar,”JEGP 85 ( 1986 ), 494 – 509.
22. Fradenburg,City, Marriage, Tournament, 149 ; Tom Scott,Dunbar: A Critical
Exposition of the Poems(Edinburgh, 1966 ), 19 ; Gary Waller,English Poetry of the
Sixteenth Century(London, 1986 ), 108.
23. On Dunbar’s stance here, see A. E. Christa Canitz,“A Benefice for the
Prophet: William Dunbar’s Petitionary Poems,”SSL 33 – 34 ( 2004 ), 42 – 61.
196 Notes to Pages 64 – 67