SOURCE: Wooden, Warren G. “Childhood and Death: A Reading of John Skeleton's Phillip Sparrow.” The Journal of Psychohistory 7, No. 4 (Spring 1980): 403-14.

In the following essay, Wooden tests C. S. Lewis's contention that Phillip Sparrow is the first great poem about childhood, and finds that the work presents a “sensitive exploration of a child's encounter with death, focusing on the metaphysical and emotional confusion” of the experience.

John Skelton (1450?-1529) wrote prolifically during the final years of the fifteenth and the early years of the sixteenth centuries—in that vague interregnum designated as either late medieval or early Renaissance. Among his poetic productions is Phillip Sparrow (written ca. 1508). Coleridge judged it “exquisite and original,”¹ and the poem, rightly so, has always attracted popular favor and critical attention. Yet literary critics have never fit Phillip Sparrow comfortably into any generic category. Usually scholars consider it a curious specimen of the...