Eros and Poetry examines the erotics of literary desire at the Stewart court in Scotland during the reigns of Mary, Queen of Scots and James VI. Encompassing the period from the early 1560s to the late 1590s, this is the first study to link together Scottish Marian and Jacobean court literatures, presenting a relatively unknown body of writing, newly theorized and contextualized. It argues that in this period erotic poetry can only be considered in relation to the figure of the monarch, and that the formation of elite lyric culture takes place under the shaping influence of desire for, and against, the sovereign, and her or his 'passional' and symbolic powers.