ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the royal Scottish court, and reappraises three earlier fifteenth-century works, the Kingis Quair, Walter Bower's prose Latin Scotichronicon and the anonymous Older Scots verse romance, Lancelot of the Laik. It explores how these works are very much products of royal court culture in Scotland from the first half of the fifteenth century, and are especially concerned with paradigms of articulating royal Scottish authority. The chapter suggests for the first time that Bower's Scotichronicon responds directly to the Kingis Quair, and that the dream-prologue of Lancelot of the Laik takes James's poem as its principal source. It argues that literary culture continues to thrive during the reign of James II and beyond. Thus, comparison of these texts reveals how some literary aspects of court culture from James I's reign can be understood as continuing into James II's minority and reign proper.