| Sumario: | The narrator of Gavin Douglas's The Palice of Honour , though he lacks inquisitiveness about almost everything he encounters, slowly recognises and participates in the process of being groomed to become a talented maker of verses. The most explicit signs of his progress are the seven inset poems that he creates during his journey. Scholars have not addressed how the Palice 's inset poems, which range from stale and conventional complaints about love and fortune to an invocation and finally to a profoundly moving hymn, are shaped through tests administered by Venus and the Nymph. The narrator's dream vision and waking experience document his artistic progress, sometimes stumbling and ill-timed but sometimes sure-footed, as he gains artistic confidence and skill. During his 'trauaill', the seven inset poems he composes trace his apprenticeship as he prepares to 'follow the poete principall', Virgil. Each inset poem is highlighted in at least one way, such as rhyme schemes, refrains, and thematic and generic signals. Taken as a group, they illustrate the narrator's growing awareness of the connection between reflection on his craft and development as a poet. He becomes more competent as a maker by emphasising the inset poems' metapoetic texture and themes. Pamela M. King identifies a metapoetic text as self-reflexive writing that features 'aesthetic introspection', 'autoreferential techniques', and 'self-conscious artifice'. Characteristic strategies of medieval dream poems, these are all used extensively by the narrator – the Palice 's protagonist and inventor – in his inset poems. Venus's and Calliope's challenges, along with the knowledge he gains from the Nymph and 'the Court Rethoricall', encourage his artistic reflection. With their assistance, the narrator develops from a novice to an accomplished poet whose journey is a declaration about a successful apprenticeship that will culminate in the Eneados , 'in the langage of Scottis natioun'.
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