mock-ups in the comments are encouraged.

[angevin2]

This is entirely lareinenoire's fault.

Poll Fifteenth-Century Poetry and its Discontents

Comments

[lnhammer]

John Gower may in fact be a wanker, but he'd write the least horrifying sex-ed treatise of the three. At least as far as wanking is concerned.

---L.

[vitabeata]

I mean, have you read book eight of the Confessio?

However, if the question were who would create the most horrifyingly didactic treatise, my vote would go to Lydgate.

[oursin]

Robert (adultery gives you leprosy! and serve you right) Henryson, proof that if John Knox hadn't existed the Scots would naetheless have had to invent him.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, but Henryson's poetry, as poetry, doesn't make me want to beat myself to death, whereas Lydgate does. So I suppose it depends where you're looking for the primary source of horror to come from....

[speak_me_fair]

Oh, Lydgate....didacticism being his whole LIFE, anyway.

Thank you for this truly frightening concept. Really.

[angevin2]

You are MOST WELCOME. ;)

[liseuse]

Hoccleve. I can only imagine the "sex ends in misery and despair and intense depression" that he would manage to convey. Though, Henryson probably deserves to be on the list. What with the leprosy and all.

[angevin2]

We didn't put Henryson on the list because the unstated -- and, in fact, unclear, though it was inspired by this fic, assumption that the poets would be working on a royal commission. (Henry IV did have all those sons. ;) )

With that assumption in place, I think Gower would be the most disturbing by far. All things considered. ;)