John Skelton’s Bird Complex: Experiments in Macaronic Voice

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article takes up E. M. Forster’s tongue-in-cheek question—“had Skelton a bird complex?”—to explore the function of avian voice in John Skelton’s poetry. Past scholarship has frequently interpreted Skelton’s birds as vehicles of parody or satire. In contrast, this article argues that Skelton’s avian voicing can illuminate the non-semantic or extra-semantic qualities of human language. This argument moves beyond traditional theories of voice that conceptualize voice as a phenomenon experienced by human listeners. Specifically, it examines nonhuman macaronic speech in Phyllyp Sparowe and Speke Parott, two of Skelton’s most popular bird poems. In both poems, birds quote from liturgical or academic sources to access capabilities of language that cohere not in literal or allegorical meanings but affective performance. The first section of this article demonstrates how unauthoritative speakers in Phyllyp Sparowe use macaronic voicing to achieve the affective power of liturgical ritual. The second section explores unauthorized multilingualism in Speke Parott to suggest that nonsense macaronic style was a useful pedagogical tool in premodern literacy training. Both poems, therefore, employ avian speakers to theorize voice as non-lexical sonic material in premodern poetry.