Lee,
I can’t speak for continental courts during the period, but your poet
certainly had precedent in the Tudor tradition. Several continental poets
petitioned both Henry VII and Henry VIII for patronage. A French monk
named Bernard André held a prominent place at the court of Henry VII, and
was actually officially designated poet laureate by Henry (a title of some
ambiguity: it could signify a rhetorical degree from a major university,
or have the meaning more familiar to us – Skelton, I think, demonstrates
an anxiety over this movement that propels his recurrent preoccupation
with the laureate title). Other continental writers and scholars who
presented themselves and their work to the English court under the earlier
Tudors include Filippo Alberici and Pietro Carmeliano. David Carlson has
a very useful and interesting study of this called English Humanist Books,
Writers and Patrons, Manuscript and Print, 1475-1525. I hope such
historical antecedents are of some help.
Best,
Bryan Lowrance.
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