Skeltonic Anxiety and Rumination in The Shepheardes Calender

Colin Clout, the central figure in Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender, is both poet and poetic subject at different points in the poem, and the anxiety of that disjunction becomes a central focus of the poem itself. The Shepheardes Calender is fascinated with and tense about the boundaries between author, character, and work. In examining these ambiguities, Spenser aligns himself closely with John Skelton who also struggles with the relationship between poetic body and physical body.