Reference > Cambridge History > The End of the Middle Ages > The Middle Scots Anthologies: Anonymous Verse and Early Prose > Early Scottish Prose
  Didactic and Religious Verse Sir Gilbert Hay  

CONTENTS · VOLUME CONTENTS · INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages.

XI. The Middle Scots Anthologies: Anonymous Verse and Early Prose.

§ 16. Early Scottish Prose.


 
An additional interest, philological rather than literary, attaches to the Asloan collection from the fact that it contains a number of prose passages, which are among the earliest remains of Scots prose, other than legal and official documents. That there should be any vernacular prose, whether official or quasi-literary, at the beginning of the fifteenth century is almost surprising, when we consider the place held by Latin in the intellectual life, even in the commercial ralationship of renascence Scotland.  82 2The plea for a native medium is hardly urged before the middle of the sixteenth century; and then it is only occasional, and, as in Lyndsay’s Exclamatioun to the Redar, apologetic, because of the stress of reformation conflict. It was probably but rarely that a Scot excused his “Ynglis” on the grounds stated by the earl of March in his letter to Henry IV of England.  83 1 We know that Scots was used in public documents in the late fourteenth century. In the Bute MS. of Laws six of the twenty-five pieces are in the vernacular; so too are the parliamentary records from the reign of the first James. But neither in these nor in the texts represented in the Asloan MS. can we discover any half-conscious effort of style, such as marks the beginnings of fifteenth century prose in England.   26
Note 82. See Chapter IV [ back ]
Note 83. It “ys mare cleir to myne understandyng than latyne or Fraunche” (1400). Cf. Chapter IV. [ back ]

CONTENTS · VOLUME CONTENTS · INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
  Didactic and Religious Verse Sir Gilbert Hay  
 
Loading
Click here to shop the Bartleby Bookstore.
Shakespeare · Bible · Saints · Anatomy · Harvard Classics · Lit. History · Quotations · Poetry
© 1993–2013 Bartleby.com · [Top 150]