Alexander Montgomerie: Poetry, Politics, and Cultural Change in Jacobean Scotland
The outstanding courtier-poet of the Scottish reign of James VI and I, Alexander Montgomerie (c.1550–1598) was a gifted lyricist whose Catholicism made his position at court unusually problematic. This study combines a detailed investigation of Montgomerie’s biography with a careful reading of his verse, bringing out the ways in which the poet’s increasingly difficult personal circumstances are reflected in his development of a new poetics. It also seeks to situate Montgomerie’s poetry within a two-pronged model of later sixteenth-century British culture: against the background of the European development of Mannerist aesthetics and the emergence of the early Baroque.
Reviews
This monograph is an extremely significant contribution to sixteenth-century studies. Mustering new information from an impressive variety of sources, it makes an illuminating and persuasive case for the contrastive significance of Scottish literature and politics to cultural developments in England and across Europe. Persuasively and excitingly, the chapters of this monograph develop a thorough revision of our understanding of Scottish literature during the reign of James VI. Here is a cumulative achievement of research into the culture of Jacobean Scotland that has not been equalled for at least thirty years; it will stand for decades.
— David J. Parkinson, University of Saskatchewan
