Underwood, Verne

About the author: Verne Underwood is chair of the English and Humanities department at Rogue Community College in Grants Pass, Oregon. He received his PhD from Arizona State University. He has published articles on John Lane, as well as writing the Lane entry which will appear in the forthcoming New Dictionary of National Biography, published by the Oxford University Press

John Lane’s 1621 Pastoral Poem Tritons Trumpet an Edition of the Trinity College Manuscript Collated with the British Library Manuscript

2001 0-7734-7453-6
Although Lane published three works during his life, this, his most ambitious original work, has never before been published. The calendar structure of the work is principally modeled on Spenser’s Shepheardes Calendar, although Lane divides each month into separate ‘husbandrie’ and ‘moral’ sections. He echoes Chaucer in his use of narrative verse tales incorporating genres such as romance and fabliaux. Lane’s chief aim is to attack the vices of his age, and he has much to say on the instability of the court in contrast with the idyllic life of the country. In originality as well as breadth of subject, Tritons Trumpet represents Lane’s crowning achievement; its constant allusions to contemporary English politics and culture as well as the compelling narrative of its many tales will be of value to Renaissance historians as well as literary scholars.