Ithaca College

 Dan Breen, Associate Professor of English, contributed a chapter to the recently published essay collection The Handbook of Renaissance English Literature, edited by Ingo Berensmeyer.  Breen's essay considers the poet John Skelton and his early allegorical poem "The Bowge of Court."

 Berensmeyer's Handbook seeks to provide a large-scale​survey of early modern English literature, from the late fifteenth to the late seventeenth century, for use primarily by undergraduate and graduate students.  The collection is divided into two lengthy sections.  Part 1 contains essays that examine issues of broad interest or concern to early modern writers, and Part 2 contains essays that examine a single text in significant detail.  Thirty-two scholars contributed essays to the collection, including some of the preeminent researchers in early modern studies in the US, UK, and continental Europe, such as Douglas Bruster, Andrew Hadfield, Janet Clare, and Ralf Hertel.

Breen's essay, entitled "John Skelton, 'The Bowge of Court (1499?),'" leads off the second section by examining what is perhaps the first English-language poem to find its way into print during the author's lifetime.  The essay reads the poem in relation to a number of other contemporary interpretations, and argues that "The Bowge of Court" reaches back to a longstanding tradition of vernacular dream poetry in England.  Breen's essay also includes a survey of critical assessments of the poem between its initial publication and the present day.