SKELTON, JOHN. – English satirical poet, b. perhaps at Diss around 1460, d. at Westminster on 21 June 1529.
He belongs to a period of transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He was tutor to Prince Henry (the future King Henry VIII), and the author of allegories recalling Chaucer and Langland, as well as virulent satirical compositions that have repeatedly prompted comparison with Rabelais. He is chiefly remembered for the allegorical poem Colin Clout (1519), a personal attack on Cardinal Wolsey, with whom the poet later became reconciled, and the Boke of Philipp Sparrow, an elegy in which he paraphrases and dilutes the Catullan motif of the death of a sparrow in a long succession of somewhat insipid verses.
BIBL.: L. J. Lloyd, J. S., a sketch of his life and writings, Oxford 1938. Augusto Guidi