Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page i languages of power in the age of richard ii Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page ii Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page iii Lynn Staley languages of power in the age of Richard II the pennsylvania state university press university park, pennsylvania Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page iv Disclaimer: Some images in the original version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Staley, Lynn, 1947– Languages of power in the age of Richard II / Lynn Staley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0–271–02518–2 (alk. paper) 1. English literature—Middle English, 1100–1500—History and criticism. 2. Power (Social sciences) in literature. 3. Great Britain—History—Richard II, 1377–1399—Historiography. 4. Richard II, King of England, 1367–1400—In literature. 5. Politics and literature—Great Britain—History—To 1500. 6. Power (Social sciences)—Great Britain—History—To 1500. 7. Literature and history—Great Britain—History—To 1500. 8. Chaucer, Geoffrey, d. 1400—Political and social views. 9. Kings and rulers in literature. 10. Monarchy in literature. I. Title. pr275 .p67S73 2005 820.9'358—dc22 2004013330 Copyright © 2005 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48–1992. Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page v For duke Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page vi Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page vii Contents Preface and Acknowledgments ix one The Hawk on the Wrist and the Fool in the Chimney Corner 1 two Inheritances and Translations 75 three Princely Powers 165 four French Georgics and English Ripostes 265 Epilogue 339 Bibliography 357 Index 387 Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page viii Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page ix Preface and Acknowledgments This book is an inquiry into one of the most dramatic periods of English history—the reign of Richard II—as it appears through the lenses aªorded by the many literary, political, chronicle, and pictorial texts that mark the last quar- ter of the fourteenth century. Here, I do not so much read literature through history as oªer a way of reading history through its refractions in literature. I am particularly concerned with the ways in which late-fourteenth-century En- glish writers used, analyzed, and altered the languages of power. Moreover, I seek to understand the nuances and purposes of courtly address by reading lit- erary works within the contexts of historical and explicitly political texts that sought to organize and define the events of the age and by using literary works to provide a context for those events we call “history.” This book isolates and traces what is an actual search for a language of power during the reign of Richard II and scrutinizes the ways in which Chaucer and other writers partic- ipated in these attempts to articulate the concept of princely power. During the reign of Richard II, the prestige of the English crown and the terms used to define that crown were in flux. The Rising of 1381, the challenge to the church voiced by John Wyclif that escalated from the early 1370s on, the ten- sions of war with France, and the personal and political di‹culties Richard had in assuming a position of true sovereignty after his accession to the throne as a child in 1377 were all factors in what has been described as a long crisis of au- thority. I maintain that for Richard and for those around him, there was a mo- ment when kingship lacked a defining rhetoric. That moment occurred in 1387– 88, when those who opposed the king and his friends moved against them in the Merciless Parliament, where Richard was made to oversee the destruction of many of his closest associates. I argue that we need to see these events as not simply altering the nature of Richard’s reign, as many fine historians have pointed Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page x [x] Preface and Acknowledgments out, but also as changing the very language—and possibly the focus—of courtly address. The Merciless Parliament was by no means the only moment when Richard was checked, but it became a marker for subsequent attempts to understand the reign of Richard II. In the work of John Gower, Adam of Usk, Thomas Wals- ingham, and the author of Richard the Redeless, there is evidence for a contem- porary reading of Richard’s deposition in relation to the charges brought against him by the Appellants. Indeed, the Articles of Deposition repeat many of the same charges of 1387–88. In 1399, however, Richard was not described as being a hapless victim of others’ perfidy, but as a knowing perpetrator of crimes against his subjects.1 What is more, after the Merciless Parliament, the language of ad- dress begins to change in texts that we might associate with royal circles. The ornate, courtly rhetoric of the early to mid-1380s is displaced by works like the Melibee or Gower’s later work or even Richard Maidstone’s Concordia. These texts are concerned with counseling mercy, with oªering a princely reader an image of prudence and sagacity as a model. Where texts predating the Merciless Par- liament give the impression of a youthful (and at times heedless) leader, those written afterwards attempt to figure authority in terms of adult measure. They suggest their writers’ awareness of Richard’s probable feelings but, at the same time, they oªer means by which a monarch might take rational control of a di‹cult situation. The first two chapters are concentrated around the figure of Richard II and the relationship between his need for a language of power and the needs of po- ets for a language of princely address. The courtly literature of the early years of Richard’s rule frequently takes the forms of erotic petition. It employs the rhetoric of frustrated love to express a relation between center and periphery that figures power (the lady or the prince) as imperious and remote, often ide- alized, and always the source of favor. After the events surrounding the Merci- less Parliament, however, a language previously used despite its limitations be- came manifestly empty and unworkable. The first chapter discusses writing we can loosely define as “courtly”—Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, the Legend of Good Women, and some of the Canterbury Tales as well as Clanvowe’s Boke of Cupide, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, and Usk’s Testament of Love—in relation to 1. Nigel Saul’s Richard II (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997) is essential for Richard’s reign. For Richard’s deposition, see also Chris Given-Wilson, ed. and trans., Chronicles of the Revolu- tion, 1397–1400 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), and Michael J. Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Phoenix Mill, U.K.: Sutton Publishing, 1999). Staley, Languages of Power 10/15/04 12:03 PM Page xi Preface and Acknowledgments [xi] the events of Richard’s court and the ways in which contemporary writers recorded those events. I argue that the authors of these texts did far more than draw upon the fictions of erotic petition to address a prince. They explored the very limits of the language they used, thus indicating the need for a new figur- ing of regal power. Chapter 2 focuses upon the Merciless Parliament as it was described by the chroniclers and upon the noticeable change in modes of courtly address as they appear in literary and political texts until 1396 or 1397, when Richard began to behave in ways that threatened the privileges of the nobility. From the sorts of texts sponsored by or addressed to Richard, it is clear that either he or his ad- visers likewise understood the need for a new rhetoric of royal address. In the France of Charles V might be perceived a possible antidote to the challenge of the Merciless Parliament. What was attractive about Charles V was his ability to mingle magic with Aristotle, to present himself as embodying both the mys- tique of French sacral kingship and the rational and natural order of a hierar- chically fixed system ruled by a good and wise king. By the time Richard and/or his advisers sought to invent such a theory for England, the terms they attempted to appropriate from Valois France could not define an ideal of English communal identity. A vigorous literature of political address throughout Richard’s reign provides evidence of opposing eªorts to develop a language that could be used to describe the regal image or the scope of royal power. As Chapter 3 demonstrates, Richard should not be considered the only En- glish prince who might have understood the necessity of creating a language of power. Both John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock saw the relationship be- tween cultural production and patronage as a component of such a language.