Predictive processing is one of the most significant emerging schools of thought in cognitive science. With its emphasis on anticipation and modifications as the result of ‘prediction error’, it has much to offer literary criticism, which itself has much to offer in return. This essay explores the particular pertinence of predictive processing to poetic form and to satire, with reference to three poems by John Skelton: Ware the Hauke (c. 1505), Speke Parott (1521) and Why Come Ye Nat To Courte? (1522). One key aspect of the cognitive model, the distinction between signal and noise, proves particularly germane to understanding the ways that Skelton complicates and enables readerly responses
