The Poems of William Dunbar

William Dunbar (c. 1460- c. 1520) was a Scottish poet that served as a cleric in the court of James IV. Dunbar was a dominant courtly poet in the golden age of Scottish poetry. Of more than 100 poems attributed to him, most are short occasional pieces, ranging from gross satire to hymns of religious exaltation. Dunbar often used Geoffrey Chaucer's metrical forms and poetic conventions. He may also be considered a Chaucerian in the sense that he and his contemporaries, both in England and Scotland, acknowledged a large debt to Chaucer, the "flower of rhetoricians," who, they believed, raised the English language to a status equal to that of Latin and French, where it could be used for both philosophy and literature. "The Poems of William Dunbar" is a collection of medieval poems full of intensity, sorrowful power, eroticism, and satire that colored the life of the celebrated Scottish poet.