Gavin Douglas’s translation of Virgil’s Aeneid is not only the greatest single poetical work, at least by some estimates, in the Scots tongue, but one of the earliest and finest secular translations in European literature. The importance of this work is twofold: it marks the zenith of the magnificent literary efflorescence of Scots in the late mediaeval and Renaissance periods, and it stands at the fountain-head of the great sequence of translations which, in Scotland and England alone, includes Golding’s Ovid and Caesar, North’s Plutarch, Chapman’s Homer, Stewart’s Ariosto and Urquhart’s Rabelais. Yet Douglas’s period of poetic activity represents only a small part of an active and chequered career in which h…
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Citation: McClure, J. Derrick. "Gawin Douglas". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 March 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=1295, accessed 22 November 2024.]
