SOURCE: Fox, Alistair. “Beatus ille: The Eclogues of Alexander Barclay.” In Politics and Literature in the Reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII, pp. 37-55. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1989.

In the essay below, Fox examines Barclay's motivations for writing the Eclogues as well as for translating Brandt's Ship of Fools.

The patronage system affected different people in different ways, and these differences conditioned the kind of literature they contrived. Skelton wrote from within the court, having enjoyed the benefits that the system could impart. His problems were not ones of frustration at being excluded from court, but of insecurity and anxiety arising from the need to maintain his position and moral integrity once there. Consequently, he used the fiction of The Bowge of Courte to analyse and objectify the sources of that anxiety as a preparation for taking steps to resolve it. The case of Alexander Barclay is...