James VI and the Development of Scottish National Identity
Late medieval Scottish poetry both participates in and diverges from earlier English and continental forms. For example, James I's Kingis Quair closely follows an early courtly tradition, but the author seems to revision Chaucer's ending of Troilus and Criseyde (Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament, 1991); furthermore, while many English, particularly Chaucerian, dream visions rely on fantastical landscape, Scottish dream vision often depicts fictive "Real" and, in some cases, completely real landscape (e.g., Montgomerie's The Cherrie and the Slae, although not a true dream vision, portrays the precise location of the confluence of the rivers Tarff and Don). Therefore, late medieval and early modem Scottish poets, especially Dunbar, Douglas and Montgomerie, appear to be grasping onto an English literary tradition, largely through the influence of "Father Chaucer," probably due to a distinct lack of one of their own; however, they also appear to be trying to modify, to make Scottish, even to surpass the very tradition that they appropriate. They seem to wish to be cultured, civilized, connected to a masculine (patrilinear through the connection to "Father Chaucer") literary tradition, yet they want to remain distinctly Scottish. Therefore, they set themselves off from both English and Highlander.
Perhaps the culmination of this progression toward a distinctly Scottish literary tradition, or, more accurately, the pivotal point from this progression, occurs during the reign of James VI. During the first six years of James VI's personal rule in Scotland (1579-8 5), literature seemed to regain a place in the system of courtly patronage that had been in abeyance since the abdication of Mary Queen of Scots. It has, become conventional, if not justifiable, to speak of courtly literature in these years as tightly focused around an identity ("the Castalian Band") and a project ("The Divine Art of Poesie"), both developed under James' supervision. Likewise, it has been conventional to describe this literature as curtailed by history: when James took the English throne, the project and its values became obsolete.
This paper will focus on the relations between the English (and continental) and the Scottish literary traditions and, later, between James and the poets he patronized during the early years of his reign. At the start of his personal rule, James was only thirteen. He had just escaped from Stirling Castle and the forbidding tutelage of George Buchanan. His brief, intense connection with his older kinsman Esmé Stuart sieur d'Aubigny, with its flowering of courtly pastime and re-established contact to the latest styles of the French court (and the growing resentment and opposition it aroused from Kirk and Protestant magnates), is the context for the rise of courtly literature in the early 1580s. In this connection, James is both sovereign and protdgé; d'Aubigny is both courtier and mentor. The closeness between these two remolds James' identity as cultural arbiter, away from the humanism of Buchanan. The poetry of this period uses emblems especially richly elaborated by contemporary French poets: the sun, the tree, Phaeton, Icarus. In James' hands, but also in the hands of his 'master poet' Alexander Montgomerie (a client of d'Aubigny), these features present the complexities of relationship between monarch and subject, reader and writer, patron and client. Through these symbols, James appears to claim a double authority: that of divine sovereign and of poet. This shift seems even more intense as James openly claims authority as poet: the traditional modesty topos seems obviously lacking, as James refers to himself and his authorship as "the fountain and very being of truth ' (Basilikon Doron 89).
Furthermore, as previously mentioned, the other writers of his court were also responding to the strong presence of English courtly literature, drawn mostly from an earlier Scottish tradition that began with the Kingis Quair, and, in doing so, they strove both to differentiate themselves from that tradition in specific foregrounded ways (notably by claiming different connections with French literature), and to prove themselves more English (polished, learned, subtle) than the English. They undermined the very authority from which they drew. However, they did so with a strong sense of differentiation from a barbarian past, as is evident not only in earlier Scottish literature, but also in James's attitude towards Highlanders, the eradication of Gaelic, and the rise of Argyll.Ironically, James did succeed in becoming "more English than the English" when he took the English throne. At this time, his project, "The Divine Art of Poesie," lost its significance. Perhaps in achieving the status of sovereign of England, in attaining the supremacy over the English so evidently (if symbolically) desired by earlier Scottish writers, James (and Scotland) lost something as well: the uniquely Scottish approach to an established English literary tradition no longer seemed valuable. Perhaps it is only after this occurs can the nostalgia for the earlier "Golden Age" of Scottish literature develop; perhaps James's possession of the English throne facilitated a new type of Scottish nationalism; perhaps only once something is lost can it be mourned. These possibilities must be explored if we are to gain insight into the early development of Scottish national identity.