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During the fifteenth century John Lydgate was the most famous poet in England, filling commissions for the court, the aristocracy, and the guilds. He wrote for an elite London readership that was historically very small, but that saw itself as dominating the cultural life of the nation. Thus the new literary forms and modes developed by Lydgate and his contemporaries helped shape the development of English public culture in the fifteenth century. Maura Nolan presents a major re-interpretation of Lydgate's work and of his central role in the developing literary culture of his time. ... Read more

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"As a commentator on trends of Fortune, Lydgate would have enjoyed the surge of affirmative attention his poetry has begun to attract. This revisionary book radically revalues this previously maligned poet's accomplishments." —Paul Strohm, Columbia University

Essays in this volume argue for a powerful reassessment of John Lydgate's poetic projects. The preeminent English poet of his own century, Lydgate (ca. 1370–1449) addressed the historical challenges of war with France, looming civil war in England, and new theological forces in the vernacular. He wrote for household, parish, city, monastery, church, and state. Although an official poet of sorts—perhaps the first major official poet in the English poetic tradition—he was not by any means a merely celebratory or sycophantic writer. Instead, he drew on his authority both as poet and as monastic historian to shape a challenging literary space and to underline the treacherousness of history. Despite his exceptional cultural significance, Lydgate has, for different reasons, been marginalized by many literary historical movements since the sixteenth century. John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England is energized by the challenge of a substantial oeuvre in need of reevaluation. Each essay makes a decisive contribution to an aspect of Lydgate's work and opens fresh perspectives for further investigation.

Contributors write about Lydgate from a variety of critical perspectives and emphasize the diversity of the poet's writings beyond the city-state tragedies of Troy and Thebes. Genres discussed include beast fable, mumming, hagiography, devotional poetry, and civic pageant. The essays also reassess crucial themes in the field of Lydgate studies, including Lydgate's unofficial laureateship, his relations to his patrons, his syntax, and his relationship to Chaucer. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A judicious and timely revaluation of Lydgate's work
This impressive and significant collection (the first such on the `angel-mouthed' poet so revered by the fifteenth century) situates itself at the forefront of the current whirlwind rehabilitation of the Monk of Bury that was kick-started so decisively by David Lawton in his 1987 essay `Dullness and the Fifteenth Century'.*John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England* is certainly timely: four book-length studies appeared on the poet in the three decades after the publication of the first (in German) in 1952, yet the last twelve months alone have seen the publication of another three.And whereas critical discussion of Lydgate's work has traditionally been distracted by sterile debates about literary merit, these refreshing essays, free from such tendencies, fix our attention squarely on the poems themselves.

Individual poems (notably the *Fall of Princes* John Lydgate's Fall of Princes: Narrative Tragedy in Its Literary and Political Contexts (Oxford English Monographs), the *Temple of Glas*, the autobiographical *Testament*, and `The Churl and the Bird') receive extended consideration.Attention is given to Lydgate's various voices: his civic poetry, mummings, and royal entries (C. David Benson and Maura B. Nolan) and hagiographical verse (Fiona Somerset and Ruth Nisse) are sensitively explored.However, as its subtitle suggests, the linking theme of the collection is the issue of Lydgate's compliancy with the unstable Lancastrian dynasty.The degree to which the Monk was subservient laureate and naïve propagandist or, instead, politically astute and subversive commentator is revisited by several contributors, but none probes the complex relationships between political power and textual culture more convincingly than Robert J. Meyer-Lee and Scott-Morgan Straker.

Although codicological work would have strengthened this collection and certain arguments can feel a touch strained, these essays (all but one of which here appear for the first time) are as valuable as they are judicious: blinking in the unfamiliar glare of the centre-stage, Lydgate is now being brought from the shadow of Chaucer and dyspeptic Reformation stereotypes before an audience that is at last prepared to read him on his own terms. ... Read more

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This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

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Webster's bibliographic and event-based timelines are comprehensive in scope, covering virtually all topics, geographic locations and people. They do so from a linguistic point of view, and in the case of this book, the focus is on "John Lydgate," including when used in literature (e.g. all authors that might have John Lydgate in their name). As such, this book represents the largest compilation of timeline events associated with John Lydgate when it is used in proper noun form. Webster's timelines cover bibliographic citations, patented inventions, as well as non-conventional and alternative meanings which capture ambiguities in usage. These furthermore cover all parts of speech (possessive, institutional usage, geographic usage) and contexts, including pop culture, the arts, social sciences (linguistics, history, geography, economics, sociology, political science), business, computer science, literature, law, medicine, psychology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, biology and other physical sciences. This "data dump" results in a comprehensive set of entries for a bibliographic and/or event-based timeline on the proper name John Lydgate, since editorial decisions to include or exclude events is purely a linguistic process. The resulting entries are used under license or with permission, used under "fair use" conditions, used in agreement with the original authors, or are in the public domain. ... Read more

Product Description
The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: London, Published for the Early English text socie; Publication date: 1911; Subjects: Poetry; ... Read more

Product Description
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words.This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ... Read more

Product Description
The Benedictine monk John Lydgate was the most admired poet of the fifteenth century. He received commissions from some of the most powerful men in the land (including Henry V); he is spoken of with constant admiration; manuscripts of his work are abundant; many of his poems were put into print by England's earliest printers, ensuring that his influence extended well into the sixteenth century. The Fall of Princes, probably the longest poem in the language, is arguably Lydgate's masterwork; yet, until now, it has received only cursory critical attention. This book offers the first extended discussion of the poem. The Fall of Princes accumulates accounts of nearly 500 figures from mythology and history (biblical, classical, and medieval) who have fallen from their positions of fame and power into obscurity, adversity, or poverty. In presenting these tragedies Lydgate probes the causes of the reversal of their fortunes; how far can the caprice of a blind Lady Fortune be blamed? How far are the protagonists themselves responsible for their undoing? Most pressingly of all, why is it that bad things happen to seemingly innocent people? In drawing its conclusions about the downfalls of powerful men and women, Lydgate's poem operates within the popular medieval genre of "advice to princes" literature. This book locates Lydgate's work within its contexts, exploring the nature of his relationship with the uneasy Lancastrian dynasty during the minority of Henry VI as well as his response to contemporary conflicts between ecclesiastical and secular authority. In particular, this book closely analyses Lydgate's manipulations of his French source text, allowing readers to see in detail for the first time what it is that Lydgate was setting out to achieve. Finally, the book identifies the readership of Lydgate's poem in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, discussing its influence on the evolution of narrative tragedy in English. ... Read more

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Originally published in 1891. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies.All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. ... Read more

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This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone! ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more