SOURCE: "Leaky Ladies and Droopy Dames: The Grotesque Realism of Skelton's The Tunnynge of Elynour Rummynge," in Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts, edited by Peter C. Herman, University of Illinois Press, 1994, pp. 145-67.

In the following essay, Herman deems Skelton's poem The Tunning of Elinor Rumming as grotesque realism and maintains that the action of the poem is best understood as a reversal of power relationships typical of the Tudor era.

Despite John Skelton's consistent presence in modern anthologies of sixteenth-century literature, he occupies the margins of the canon rather than a central position.¹ Erasmus's praise for Skelton's abilities notwithstanding, the majority of Skelton's contemporaries considered him more of an embarrassment than an adornment to English letters.² Indeed, his antics were so bizarre that they became the subject of a jest book, making Skelton the only major poet, let alone priest, so...