John Knox: Reformation Rhetoric and the Traditions of Scots Prose 1490-1570

John Knox has seldom been taken seriously as a literary figure; in fact it is often assumed that he was hostile to 'art' of any kind. This study analyses John Knox's style of writing and suggests that Knox was one of the most highly rhetorical of all the sixteenth-century prose writers, although his prose was never decorative. Early chapters set Knox in his proper context by focusing on Scottish prose from John Ireland's Meroure of Wyssdome, through to The Complaynt of Scotland, before examining Knox's admonitory public epistles, his personal correspondence, and his more exclusively theological tracts. The final two chapters are devoted to his magnum opus, The Historie of the Reformatioun of Religioun in Scotland, the first truly great work of Scots prose, and show that Knox's talents represent the culmination of homiletic and historiographical traditions, the maturation of incipient religious forces in the sixteenth century and, as far as prose is concerned, the earliest establishment in Scotland of a fully rounded literary personality.

About the Author :
The Author: Kenneth D. Farrow was educated at the Universities of Stirling and Glasgow, where he took a first class honours degree in English and a Ph.D. in Scottish literature. In 1991 he became a postdoctoral research fellow of the British Academy. He has taught at the Universities of Glasgow, Kraków and Warnborough, and his other works include a translation into Scots of Homer's The Iliad.

Review :
«...this is an impressive piece of scholarship which has carefully unpicked and laid bare Knox's rhetorical skills. In so doing Farrow has added much to our appreciation of Knox as a writer and has placed 'The historie' in the centre of sixteenth-century Scots prose. (Jane E. A. Dawson, Ecclesiastical History) «Farrow's book is the most important study ever written by a Scottish scholar on Knox's literary competence. [...] Every Knox scholar will pause with gratefulness before this significant landmark in Knox studies.» (Pierre Janton, Cahiers Élisabéthains)