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For Sean and thanks to Gavid: I did the Drayton entry for the DNB but I blush to say I don't know what Tuve was thinking of unless it is indeed this Wynkyn.  Might Jeanie Brink? In any case I quite agree with Gavin that printers don't cavort in pastoral fields or on Parnassus even when named Wynkyn (nor, I think, is the printer the same Wynkyn as he of "Wyknyn, Blynkyn, and Nod"). There are some serious issues here, though--why is it almost risible to think of Aldus, Stephanus, and Ponsonby dancing with thinly disguised Elizabethan poets in such verse? Is it the technology? All a poet needs is a feather (once part of a soaring bird) and some paper, and if you imagine poets as singers all they need is themselves and maybe a harp. Playing with the Muses or riding Pegasus with a printing press, or even a small modern printer, under one arm is just funny to imagine. The reason this may matter is that it goes with our own tendency, until recently, to minimize the role and intelligence of printers, maybe because we know they want to make money and money is so un-Parnassian, so that if Spenser didn't oversee this or that publication we tend, too often, not to try to trace the intelligence behind the organization or whatever. Printers don't dance with shepherds or muses. Anne.

On Jun 23, 2010, at 1:39 PM, Sean Henry wrote:

Dear all,
 
Rosemond Tuve (in her _Allegorical Imagery: Some Mediaeval Books and Their Posterity_), in discussing Wynkyn de Worde's 1529 Morte D'arthur, mentions Drayton "who could put Wynkyn de Worde in an eclogue" (422). My question is one of seeking a shortcut: can anyone direct me to the eclogue Tuve means? Does she refer to de Worde as a character in an eclogue, or to de Worde's Morte?
 
Many thanks, as ever.
 
Sean.


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Sean Henry, B.A., M.A., PhD.
Lecturer, Department of English
University of Victoria, B.C., Canada
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