John Lydgate
Encyclopedia
John Lydgate of Bury was a monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
and poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
, born in Lidgate, Suffolk
Suffolk
Suffolk is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in East Anglia, England. It has borders with Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south. The North Sea lies to the east...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is prodigious, amounting, at a conservative count, to about 145,000 lines. Life at the monastery of Bury St. Edmund's, where he spent most of his life, gave him a leisure that many another poet might have envied, and enabled him to explore and establish every major Chaucerian genre, except such as were manifestly unsuited to his profession, like the fabliau
Fabliau
A fabliau is a comic, often anonymous tale written by jongleurs in northeast France between ca. 1150 and 1400. They are generally characterized by an excessiveness of sexual and scatological obscenity. Several of them were reworked by Giovanni Boccaccio for the Decamerone and by Geoffrey Chaucer...
. In the Troy-book (30,117 lines), an amplified translation of the Trojan history of the thirteenth-century Latin writer Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne was an early 13th century Sicilian writer, living at Messina, who wrote in Latin...
, commissioned by Prince Henry (later Henry V), he moved deliberately beyond Chaucer's Knight's Tale and his Troilus, to provide a full-scale epic. The Siege of Thebes (4716 lines) is a shorter excursion in the same field of chivalric epic. The Monk's Tale, a brief catalog of the vicissitudes of Fortune, gives a hint of what is to come in Lydgate's massive Fall of Princes (36,365), which is also derived, though not directly, from Boccaccio's
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
De casibus virorum illustrium
De Casibus Virorum Illustrium
De Casibus Virorum Illustrium is a work of 56 biographies in Latin prose composed by the Florentine poet Giovanni Boccaccio of Certaldo in the form of moral stories of the falls of famous people, similar to his work of 106 biographies On Famous Women.-Overview:De Casibus is an encyclopedia of...
. The Man of Law's Tale, with its rhetorical elaboration of apostrophe, invocation, and digression in what is essentially a saint's legend, is the model for Lydgate's legends of St. Edmund (3693) and St. Albon (4734), both local monastic patrons, as well as for many shorter saints' lives, though not for the richer and more genuinely devout Life of Our Lady (5932).
Early life and education
He was admitted to the Benedictine monastery of Bury St. EdmundsBury St. Edmunds
Bury St Edmunds is a market town in the county of Suffolk, England, and formerly the county town of West Suffolk. It is the main town in the borough of St Edmundsbury and known for the ruined abbey near the town centre...
at fifteen and became a monk there a year later.
Patronage
Having literary ambitions (he was an admirer of Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
and a friend to his son, Thomas) he sought and obtained patronage for his literary work at the courts of Henry IV of England
Henry IV of England
Henry IV was King of England and Lord of Ireland . He was the ninth King of England of the House of Plantagenet and also asserted his grandfather's claim to the title King of France. He was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, hence his other name, Henry Bolingbroke...
, Henry V of England
Henry V of England
Henry V was King of England from 1413 until his death at the age of 35 in 1422. He was the second monarch belonging to the House of Lancaster....
and Henry VI of England
Henry VI of England
Henry VI was King of England from 1422 to 1461 and again from 1470 to 1471, and disputed King of France from 1422 to 1453. Until 1437, his realm was governed by regents. Contemporaneous accounts described him as peaceful and pious, not suited for the violent dynastic civil wars, known as the Wars...
. His patrons included, amongst many others, the mayor and aldermen
Alderman
An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members themselves rather than by popular vote, or a council...
of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the chapter of St. Paul's Cathedral, Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick
Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick
Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, Count of Aumale, KG was an English medieval nobleman and military commander.-Early Life:...
and Henry V and VI, however his main supporter from 1422 was Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester
Humphrey of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Gloucester, 1st Earl of Pembroke, KG , also known as Humphrey Plantagenet, was "son, brother and uncle of kings", being the fourth and youngest son of king Henry IV of England by his first wife, Mary de Bohun, brother to king Henry V of England, and uncle to the...
. In 1423 he was made prior of Hatfield Broad Oak
Hatfield Broad Oak
Hatfield Broad Oak is a village and civil parish in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England, about five and a half miles south-east of Bishop's Stortford...
, Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
but soon resigned the office to concentrate on his travels and writing. He was a prolific writer of poems, allegories, fables and romances, yet his most famous works were his longer and more moralistic Troy Book, Siege of Thebes
Siege of Thebes (poem)
Siege of Thebes is a poem written by John Lydgate and completed around 1420....
and the Fall of Princes. The Troy Book was a translation of the Latin prose narrative by Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne was an early 13th century Sicilian writer, living at Messina, who wrote in Latin...
, Historia destructionis Troiae
Historia destructionis Troiae
Historia destructionis Troiae or Historia Troiana is a Latin prose narrative written by Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian author, in the early 13th century. Its main source was the Old French verse romance by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie...
. At one time, the long allegorical poem The Assembly of Gods
The Assembly of Gods
The Assembly of Gods is a fifteenth century dream vision poem by an unknown author...
was attributed to him, but the work is now considered anonymous. Lydgate was also believed to have written London Lickpenny, a well-known satirical work; however, his authorship of this piece has been thoroughly discredited. He also translated the poems of Guillaume de Deguileville
Guillaume de Deguileville
Guillaume de Deguileville was a French Cistercian and writer. His authorship is shown by one acrostic in Le Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine, two in Le Pèlerinage de l'Âme, and one in Le Pèlerinage de Jhesucrist. These acrostics take the form of a series of stanzas, each beginning with a letter of...
into English. In his later years he lived and probably died at the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds.
Talent
The Oxford English DictionaryOxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
cites Lydgate with the earliest record of using the word "talent" in reference to a gifted state of natural ability.
Editions
- J. Allan Mitchell, ed. John Lydgate, The Temple of Glass. Series: TEAMS Middle English Texts. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007. Pp. viii, 95.
Quotations
- "Who lesith his fredamFreedom (political)Political freedom is a central philosophy in Western history and political thought, and one of the most important features of democratic societies...
, in soth, he lesith all."
—an old proverbProverbA proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
Lydgate included in his moral fable The Churl and the Bird
- Lydgate wrote that King Arthur was crowned in "the land of the fairyFairyA fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
", and taken in his death by four fairy queens, to Avalon where he lies under a "fairy hill", until he is needed again.
- Lydgate is also credited with the first known usage of the adage "Needs must" in its fullest form: "He must nedys go that the deuell dryves” in his Assembly of the Gods. Shakespeare later uses it in All's Well That Ends WellAll's Well That Ends WellAll's Well That Ends Well is a play by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1604 and 1605, and was originally published in the First Folio in 1623....
.
- Lydgate is a character in a 2003 mystery novel The Bastard's Tale, by Margaret FrazerMargaret FrazerMargaret Frazer is the pen name of an historical novelist known for more than twenty mystery novels and a variety of short stories. The pen name was originally used by Gail Frazer and Mary Monica Pulver Kuhfeld in their collaboration on The Novice's Tale, the first of the Sister Frevisse books...
, which takes place in Bury St. Edmunds in 1447.
External links
- John Lydgate at luminarium.org, including links to online texts
- The Online Medieval Sources Bibliography cites printed and online editions of Lydgate's works