Gavin Douglas
Gavin Douglas - A Famous Scottish Poet & Bishop
Gavin Douglas (c. 1475 - 1522) had a distinguished if troubled career in the Church and in politics, for as uncle of the Earl of Angus, who married James IV's widow Margaret Tudor, he was inevitably embroiled in the factions and feuds that afflicted Scotland after the Battle of Flodden in 1513. Eventually he was deprived of his bishopric of Dunkeld and forced to flee to London, where he died of the plague.
His literary reputation rests largely on his translation of Vergil, The XIII Bukes of the Eneados. Not only was this the first translation of the Aeneid in Britain, but is also one of the most remarkable. The difficulties of the Scots literary language in which he wrote should not be allowed to obscure for modern readers the freshness, beauty, and vigour of the work, and the prologues he wrote for each book were fine poems in their own right. He was also the author of the splendid allegorical poem The Palice of Honour and almost certainly of King Hart. With Robert Henryson and William Dunbar he represented a period when Scotland was producing fine imaginative poetry while England was in the doldrums.
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