This is the first attempt at a major revaluation of the entire Complaynt of Scotland for a century. This important, unique, neglected mid sixteenth-century Scottish prose work is placed in its historical context , The Complayner is revealed as a biblical and classical scholar, a patriot with humane European perspectives, focussing on the crucial problems confronting Scots in the aftermath of the English 'Rough Wooing'. He wrestles with the philosophical yet practical dilemma of such alternatives as freewill or fatalistic apathy, collaboration or non-collaboration, submission or resistance. It is an appeal for concord and resistance. The Complayner reveals implicit views of history as a providential pattern.and time as a continuous present in which linear chronology and causation are less important than meaning and perennially universally valid constants. The Complayner is identified as Robert Wedderburn, and new evidence of possible places and dates of writing and printing are given . Hitherto undetected sources and influences are indicated, including large-scale borrowing from Pliny and Guevara. The Complayner adopted from Chartier the framework of the dialogue, with its key features including the use of allegory, the dream vision framework, conscious display of humanism, erudition and moralistic eloquent sententiousness in Ciceronian periodic sentence structure and antithetical Senecan argumentation. Introduction, notes and an appendix, give a detailed parallel analysis of Chartier and the Complaynt.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:662443 |
| Date | January 1973 |
| Creators | Stewart, A. M. |
| Publisher | University of Edinburgh |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://hdl.handle.net/1842/17660 |
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