“The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie” as an Inverted Litany: The Scottish Perspective on a Poetic Agon

Abstract

This article is composed of two parts. In the first, the Scottish genre of flyting, whose main purpose was to humiliate the opponent, is situated in the context of the Anglo-Saxon cultural and literary tradition. The second offers a stylistic analysis of “The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie”, arguing that the poem shows thematic affinity with satiric verse while bearing formal resemblance to litanic verse. “The Flyting” not only displays certain features that are characteristic of the litanic form, but also shares the litanic worldview, with God as the mediator of the poetic agon. Seen from this perspective, the poem’s hostile exchanges of insults do not represent a negation, but merely a reversal of the litanic tradition, and “The Flyting” may be seen as an example of an inverted litany

Keywords

• flyting
• Scotland
• late Middle-Ages
• litanic verse
• antonomasia
• hyperbole