BARCLAY, ALEXANDER. - Scottish poet, b. in 1475, d. at Croydon (Surrey) in 1552.
It is disputed whether he pursued his studies at Oxford or at Cambridge; probably at both places. He had a profound knowledge of Latin authors (translator of Sallust’s Bellum Iugurthinum). He was first a secular priest, then a Benedictine, subsequently a Franciscan, and finally once more a secular priest and parish priest in London.
B. is famous for The Shyp of Folys of the Worlde (1509), a free version of the Narrenschiff (1494) by the Alsatian Sebastian Brant, derived, however, in all probability from the Latin text into which the original had been translated. A typical example of medieval allegorical works, the poem, adapted by B. to English habits of life, written in an easy and fluent language and rich in satirical ideas and figures, served to exhaust this genre once and for all, and to direct English literary genius toward drama, the novel, and the essay.
Also worthy of mention are the five Eclogues (1515-21), drawn from Battista Mantovano and Enea Silvio Piccolomini, later Pio II, and the first example of English pastoral poetry.
A Catholic of strictly orthodox views and sentiments, B. always had a moral, satirical, or didactic purpose, and in his writings he continually deplored the decline of the Catholic faith, the Bohemian heretics, the Turks, and the Jews.