An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Allison Stevenson (Centre for Research Collections Fellow, 2024)
A kind of celebration? The “Complaints of Scotland”, the union of the Crown and the Scoto-British poets of James VI and I
This talk presents the work on the project “The Scoto-British writers of James I”, focusing on the literary production of Scottish writers active in the first decade of the seventeenth century, in the reign of James VI and I following the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland. The “critically under-explored” (Crawford, 2009) panorama of early Jacobean Scottish literature testifies to a “rich and vigorous literary culture” (MacDonald, 2022) that provides information on a crucial junction in both English and Scottish history. The aim of this project is to contribute to re-discover this group of writers and their production, especially for what concerns their political writings and their contributions to the creation of cultural ideal of united Britain.
This talk focuses on a small group of poems that have sometimes been called “Complaints for Caledonia”, and that offer a significant counterpoint to much contemporary literature celebrating the English succession. These poems represent powerful echoes of the anonymous Complaynt of Scotland (1550), a polemical response to the pro-Union texts that flourished following the rough wooing. By adopting the poetical voice of a feminized Scotland, abandoned and betrayed, the “Complaints” problematize the relationship between Scotland and her ruler, and the whole idea of an equal union between the two Kingdoms, revealing specifically Scottish anxieties about the political realities of the Jacobean Union.
Please join in-person in the Seminar Room, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/81857401179
Passcode: 6aSe7GF7