Skelton, John | Deborah Baker Wyrick (essay date 1980)
Deborah Baker Wyrick (essay date 1980)
SOURCE: Wyrick, Deborah Baker. “Withinne that develes temple: an examination of Skelton's The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng.”The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 10, No. 2 (Fall 1980): 239-54.
[In the following essay, Wyrick finds that The Tunning of Elinour Rumming is not merely a comic, playful work but one that has complex layers of moral and religious meaning.]
Critics are nearly unanimous in their assessment of Skelton's The Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng. It is “a picture, a verbal painting—and designedly nothing more”;1 it offers an “extreme example of a direct, non-intellectualized approach to sordid elements of experience.”2 “[C]ompletely unsubtle,”3 the poem can be termed “one of the most monstrous pieces of gross realism in the language.”4 An author with “no message, philosophical or...
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