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Buchanan, George (1506-82). The most distinguished Scottish humanist of his era, Buchanan was educated at Paris, where he gained a reputation as a neo-Latin poet and dramatist. Deeply influenced by Erasmus, his anticlerical views led to frequent brushes with authority culminating in imprisonment by the Portuguese Inquisition. On his return to Scotland in 1561 he was associated both with the court of Mary Stuart and with the new protestant kirk. Following the queen's deposition in 1567, he emerged as the most influential of Mary's detractors, justifying resistance to tyranny in his elegant dialogue De jure regni apud Scotos (1579) and his monumental Rerum Scoticarum historia (1582).

Buchanan, George (1506-82), humanist, textual critic, poet, playwright, historian, and political theorist, was a Scotsman who taught for many years in Paris, Bordeaux, and Coimbra. A friend of the Pléiade, especially Du Bellay, he wrote in Latin, not French, yet his poems and plays helped to shape vernacular writing. From the 1530s onwards he wrote witty, elegant satires and erotic and scientific poems, but did not publish them until he was 60. His plays were performed in Bordeaux in the 1540s, with his pupil Montaigne among the actors: translations of Euripides' Medea (1544) and Alcestis (1556), and two original works, Jephthes (1554) and Baptistes (1577). Buchanan was the first to write classical tragedy in France, adapting Euripides and Seneca to biblical subjects, and following Aristotle's principles. After condemnation and imprisonment by the Portuguese Inquisition for his Protestant sympathies, during which time he worked on his metrical paraphrases of the Psalms, he returned to Paris, and then Scotland (1561), where he became tutor to the young James VI (later James I of England). He wrote there De iure regni apud Scotos (1579), discussing royal authority and tyrannicide and attacking Mary Queen of Scots, and his subjective and controversial Rerum scoticarum historia (1582).

— Peter Sharratt

Buchanan, George (1904-1989), novelist and poet. Born in Kilwaughter, Co. Antrim, and educated at Campbell College, Belfast, he became a journalist. In the Second World War he served in the RAF. His first novel, A London Story (1935), compares the careers of two brothers. Rose Forbes (1937) and The Soldier and the Girl (1940) are studies of Irish women seeking fulfilment. The Green Seacoast (1959), an autobiographical work, covers the period of the Easter Rising. In collections such as Conversation with Strangers (1959) and Inside Traffic (1976), his poetry deals with urban experience. The Politics of Culture (1977) is one of several essay collections.

1506–82, Scottish humanist. Educated at St. Andrews and Paris, he became (1536) tutor to James V's illegitimate son James Stuart (later earl of Murray). He was imprisoned (1539) for satirizing the Franciscans but escaped to the Continent. He taught at Bordeaux, where Montaigne was among his pupils, and at Coimbra and became highly regarded as a Latin poet. Returning to Scotland in 1560, Buchanan declared himself a Protestant. He became an opponent of Mary Queen of Scots after the murder (1567) of Lord Darnley and in 1571 published the Detectio Mariae Reginae, a bitter attack on the queen. From 1570 to 1578 he was tutor of the young king James VI (later James I of England). Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum historia (1582) is a useful source for his time, but his most influential work was the De jure regni apud Scotos (1579), which argued that the king rules by popular will and for the general good.

Bibliography

See I. D. McFarlane, Buchanan (1981); P. J. Ford, George Buchanan: Prince of Poets (1982).