The publication of Priscilla Bawcutt's complete edition of The Poems of William Dunbar provides the opportunity for a critical stocktaking on Dunbar studies and the chance to map out areas in which more extensive enquiry should be undertaken.
This volume of essays thus both celebrates the culmination of scholarship which Bawcutt's edition represents, and indicates new directions for the next phase of work on one of Scotland's greatest poets.
This collection of essays address major aspects of the literary, textual and linguistic contexts of Dunbar's poetry and assess his impact on subsequent generations of Scottish poets.
Introduction: William Dunbar and the book culture of 16th-century
Scotland. The Chepman and Myllar texts of Dunbar, Catherine van Buren; The
Maitland Folio Manuscript as a verse anthology, Julia Boffey; Editing Dunbar
- the tradition, A.S.G. Edwards; the stylistic relationship between Dunbar
and Douglas, R.J. Lyall; Dunbar and his immediate heirs, Janet Hadley
Williams; Dunbar, Scott and the making of poetry, Theo van Heijnsbergen;
Richard Maitland and William Dunbar- textual symbiosis and poetic
individuality, A.A. MacDonald; Dunbar's metrical technique, J. Derrick
McClure; classifying Dunbar - modes, manners and styles, Jonathan A. Glenn;
Aureation revisited - the latinate vocabulary of Dunbar's high and plain
styles, John Corbett; "Hale, Stern Superne" and its literary background,
Douglas Gray; a bibliography of the published writings of Priscilla Bawcutt,
Elspeth Yeo.
