SOURCE: Holloway, John. “Skelton.” In The Charted Mirror: Literary and Critical Essays, pp. 3-24. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960.

In the following essay, Holloway offers an overview of Skelton's best-known works to show how the poet drew upon and sometimes transformed the work of his predecessors, and finds that the most definitive features of his verse are its “amplitude, immediacy, rhythmic vitality,” and embodiment of life's vibrancy and change.

To discuss Skelton effectively is to do more than elucidate the past on its own terms, and for its own sake. There is no constraint on anyone to do more than this, and to think that there is, is to think like a barbarian. But if a critic finds that his subject empowers him to do more, he ought to say so. Although Skelton was writing more than 450 years ago, there are certain respects in which his poetry offers...