Abstract
This article explores the unexpected use that Sir David Lyndsay makes of Hary’s Wallace (c. 1476-1478) in composing his mid-sixteenth-century chivalric biography The Historie and Testament of Squyer Meldrum. Lyndsay’s exploitation of the Wallace, including Wallace’s encounter with the Red Reiver, has hitherto gone almost unremarked thanks to a near-universal assumption that the Historie is entirely based on the true events of Meldrum’s life. This article argues that Lyndsay intended the original coterie audience for the Historie to spot these borrowings and digest the implications, not only for Meldrum’s own character and life-story, but more broadly for the nature of ‘historical’ writing and the powerful warping pressures of readers’ expectations and patrons’ desires.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 105-127 |
Number of pages | 23 |
Journal | The Mediaeval Journal |
Volume | 10 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 28 Oct 2021 |
Keywords
- Sir David Lyndsay
- Squire Meldrum
- Hary's Wallace
- Chivalric biography
- Red Heiver
- Henrie Charteris
- Walter Bower's Scotichronicon
- Andrew of Wyntoun's Original Chronicle
- John Major or Mair
- William Stewart (poet)