"Than springis rutis of resone": Exploring Coming of Age and the Journey to Manhood of a King "as yeit in tendyr age" (aka James V of Scotland)
Seminar in cooperation with the Research Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies (RRIIS, University of Aberdeen).
James V of Scotland succeeded the throne as an infant, claimed his majority as a youth at sixteen and died aged thirty, meaning that – according to some contemporary didactic writers – James died on the cusp of reaching the “estate of manhood”. The political experience of minority rule and impact on the kingdom has been much discussed in a Scottish context, as James was neither the first nor last minor king of Scotland. Yet significantly less work considers how these monarchs were viewed by others in terms of their masculine identity and what this meant in terms of their kingship at home and abroad.
Christopher Fletcher argues that an analysis of the language associated with manhood provides a means of identifying “unspoken, commonplace ideas of a society” that can better facilitate gendered analysis of actions and rhetoric. This paper takes this methodological approach and will focus its analysis on the period when James was aged between seven and fifteen years old, which correlates with the third ‘age’ or ‘eild’ of man as outlined in the Ratis Raving (a fifteenth-century Scots father-son advice poem that rather uniquely covers the seven ages of man). This period of life, according to the poem, was one when the ‘rutis of resone’ were emerging and was an important period between childhood and adolescence.
Using a gendered analysis of contemporary texts – such as poetry, didactic texts and diplomatic letter collections – this paper explores how James was perceived as he navigated this challenging liminal age in the most powerful position in the realm, and what this can add to our wider understanding of kingship and masculine identity more generally.
Lucy Dean works on Scotland and Europe with a keen interest in ceremony and ritual, monarchy and kingship, gender and masculinity, coming of age and the life cycle, material culture and public history. She recently published (2024) Death and the Royal Succession in Scotland, c.1214 – c.1543: Ritual, Ceremony and Power with Boydell & Brewer.
- Venue
- Taylor Building A27, and online
- Contact
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Contact Prof Karin Friedrich for the online link: k.friedrich@abdn.ac.uk.