Author: Minot, Laurence
Biography:
MINOT, Laurence (fl early 14th century: ODNB)
A fourteenth-century English poet whose work was discovered by late-eighteenth-century Chaucerians and first separately published in an edition prepared by the antiquary Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), Minot celebrates the military triumphs of Edward III and scoffs at his enemies the Scots and the French. Nothing certain is known of his family and personal life; ODNB is doubtful about legendary elements but suggests that he may have been a member of the landed gentry of northern England—most probably Yorkshire or Norfolk. His poems, written in a northern dialect, survive in a single manuscript copy of the fifteenth century and were brought to the attention of scholars by Thomas Tyrwhitt in his edition of the Canterbury Tales (1775-8). Thomas Warton (q.v.) published extracts in the third volume (1781) of his History of English Poetry. It was left to Ritson to present Minot as a credible master of the early English poetic tradition but further editions are proof that some later nineteenth- and twentieth-century editors agreed that he is worth renewed attention. (ODNB 23 June 2023; Joseph Ritson, “Dissertation,” in Minot, Poems [1795]; WorldCat)