SOURCE: "Skelton's Garlande of Laurell and the Chaucerian Tradition," in Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer, edited by Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 122-38.

In the following essay, Scattergood compares Skelton 's The Garlande of Laurell to Geoffrey Chaucer's House of Fame and discusses Skelton's belief in the "all-embracing relevance of poetry."

Of all the English Chaucerians nobody wrote more about poetry, about the nature of the poetic tradition, and his own role in it than Skelton, and The Garlande of Laurell is in many ways his most considered statement. Usually his comments appear in the context of some other subject, but this poem is about poetry and nothing else. For all that, it is not a particularly unified or cohesive performance, partly due to the circumstances of its composition. From the astrological opening¹ it would seem that Skelton began the poem...