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Factual: History

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: The Stewarts

The Essay: The Stewarts: Episode 3: Princes and Poets

The Stewarts

Episode 3

Episode 3: Princes and Poets

Princes and Poets

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Dr Sally Mapstone explores the literature of the Stewarts.

Dr Sally Mapstone of the University of Oxford discusses the canny and cultured literature of the Stewart dynasty before Flodden.

'Behold yon Scot eats his own blood!" Thus English soldiers taunt Robert Bruce, in the violent, highly fictionalised poem 'The Wallace' by Blind Harry. The medieval poem would become the inspiration for the script of 'Braveheart' in modern times, but it, and the earlier epic 'The Brus', show how the Scottish medieval Wars of Independence were hot political topics, ripe for propaganda, hundreds of years before Mel Gibson. These subjects were especially important to the new Stewart dynasty which succeeded the Bruces. 

They needed all the help they could get in their early years, but as Scottish literature evolved, the Stewarts were able to return the favour, as patrons of brilliant, cultured and sometimes scandalous poets (who were dropping the 'f-word' and the 'c-word' into their best work long before 'Trainspotting'). The Stewarts were both the target audience and sometimes, the target, for an increasingly self-confident feisty body of writers. Their stable of court writers were not afraid to look across the border and tut-tut at the giants of an earlier age, like that Geoffrey Chaucer, who probably made stuff up and who was definitely not qualified to stray into theology. Literary bon mots where the word 'miaow!' springs to mind and you wonder if the writer would like a saucer of milk are nothing new. Had such a thing existed, heaven only knows what they would have done to his Amazon reviews...

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Writers and historians discuss different aspects of the Stewart dynasty and their rule

Series in which writers and historians discuss different aspects of the Stewart dynasty and their rule

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The Stewarts

Episode 3: Princes and Poets

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