John Lydgate and His Readers by Alaina Bupp B. A., University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2004 M

John Lydgate and His Readers by Alaina Bupp B. A., University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2004 M. A., University of Colorado Boulder, 2007 A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Colorado Boulder in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English 2018 This thesis entitled: John Lydgate and His Readers written by Alaina Bupp has been approved for the Department of English ______________________________________ (William Kuskin) ______________________________________ (Tiffany Beechy) Date__________________ The final copy of this thesis has been examined by the signatories, and we find that both the content and the form meet acceptable presentation standards of scholarly work in the above-mentioned discipline. Abstract Bupp, Alaina (Ph. D., English) John Lydgate and His Readers Thesis directed by Professor William Kuskin Fifteenth-century poet John Lydgate holds the distinction of being both prolific and popular in his own time. Unfortunate comparisons to his literary forbear, Geoffrey Chaucer, dampened his early reputation, and Lydgate spent centuries out of favor with literary critics. In the past decade, he has enjoyed a resurgence of critical attention; this project considers why this may be and also why he remained in the critical shadows for so long. To answer these questions, I turn to Lydgate’s approach to his readers and the manuscripts and early printed books with which his early (and enthusiastic) audience would have been encountering his works. This project argues that Lydgate’s encouragement of readers to participate in the work, to correct him where they find fault, is sincere. He undertakes a system of literary creation that deliberately does not enforce a hierarchical approach to authority; instead of literary authority remaining with the poet, Lydgate attempts to bestow it upon those among his readers who would prudently and earnestly correct his work. In examining the manuscripts and early printed books of the works, I am able to determine those places where communication between Lydgate, the bookmakers, and the readers concerning this issue were most visible, and most able to elicit readerly interactions. iii Contents CHAPTERS Introduction 1 Chapter One – Lydgate’s Troy Book: An Invitation to the Reader 46 Chapter Two – Destructive Preservation through Reading in Fall of Princes 94 Chapter Three – Lydgate the Prudent Reader in Siege of Thebes 140 Chapter Four – A Lydgatean Legacy: Authority and Paradox in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida 197 Conclusion – A Mirror for Magistrates and its Reading Writers 253 BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources 259 Secondary Sources 261 APPENDICES Appendix I – Figures 275 Appendix II – Prologues to The Canterbury Tales and Siege of Thebes 299 iv 1 Introduction This project examines John Lydgate’s three major works, Troy Book, Fall of Princes, and Siege of Thebes, and describes an attitude of reciprocity with their readers. Lydgate engages and incites readers towards an active role within literary creation. They oblige. This productive, generative relationship between author and reader plays out on the pages of books, the medieval manuscripts and early printed books which contain Lydgate’s works. By examining these books, I am able to sketch a picture of an active fifteenth-century readership and Lydgate’s role in encouraging it. This relationship between Lydgate and his readers impacted his works; when readers entered into the realm of literary creation, when they edited, amended, altered, and amplified Lydgate’s works, they were rendering them more useful, relevant, and acceptable to their current environments. This meant that Lydgate’s active readers were ensuring the survival of his works across time and place and taste. Active readership preserves works. And it does so through their alteration or, in essence, through their destruction. This dissertation works to identify and explain these moments of destruction, or, more precisely, of destructive preservation. British Library MS Arundel 99, a fifteenth-century copy of John Lydgate’s Troy Book, contains an interesting instance of a reader entering into the physical space of the work and altering it in a small way. The text in this manuscript is divided into two columns per page. In the middle margin of folio 2r, an early hand has drawn a particularly elaborate manicule: a hand holding a thistle points at a line in the second column. The nearby lines read: Whos story yit age hath nought diffaced, Nor cruel deth, with his mortal strokys; For maugre deth, ye may beholde in bokys 2 The story fully rehersed new and newe And freschely floure of colour and hewe, From day to day, quyk and no theng feynt. For clerkys han this story so depeynt That deth nor age, by no maner weye The trouthe may not make for to deye (Prologue ll. 250-258)1 The manicule points directly at the line “The story fully rehersed new and newe”.2 The appearance of a manicule in this manuscript is not out of the ordinary, but in the greater scope of Lydgate manuscripts, I have found that Troy Book is less likely to be marked by readers than Fall of Princes. Perhaps this is due to the production of large, prestigious books for Troy Book, ones that make reading, and notating, difficult. What does strike me as relevant here is the consideration shown for a line that has little to do with the action of the story. Perhaps it is simply that the first time I read the line, it struck me as revelatory and I marked it in my own copy, underlining both “new”s twice. To find that another reader, separated from me by centuries, thousands of miles, and any number of differing characteristics and contexts, would also single out this line and go to the trouble to mark it, although, admittedly, in a much more artistic way than I did, strikes me as odd. But it should not. Both the reader of Arundel 99 and I realized that this short line contains the heart of Lydgate’s matter. Here his reason for writing, the reason for literature, resonates. The story, fully rehearsed, becomes new and new. Lydgate and his early publishers often term his work 1 Lydgate, John. Troy Book. Edited by Robert R. Edwards, Medieval Institute Publications, 1998. All further quotations are from this edition, unless otherwise noted. 2 This line corresponds with line 253 of the prologue in both the TEAMS edition (on page 33) and the EETS edition (page 8). The spelling is somewhat different as both modern editions relied on Cotton Augustus A.iv as the main copy text, referring to Arundel 99 only where the previous seemed flawed. Both modern editions also emended the final –e. 3 translation. He takes something familiar, like the Troy story, and simply renders another’s version of events into English. But in this line, we see Lydgate’s attitude towards the act of so- called translation. He uses the word “rehersen.” When looking at the definition of this word, it is clear that by the time Lydgate uses it, the meaning is roughly what we think of today. The Middle English Dictionary provides the following definitions: to narrate, report, or tell, to recite, or to repeat or reiterate.3 The OED provides an etymology that gives a bit more insight into the word. The prefix re-, of course, means again, but the root word –herse seems to be trickier. It appears to be a word that describes a harrow, or long rake that is pulled over fields after they are plowed in order to break up remaining dirt clods; the word is also used as a verb to describe the action completed by a herse or harrow.4 So to harrow a field is to go over it again, readying the soil for planting by making the consistency of the ground finer and easier to work, ultimately making the crop yield greater. When the prefix re- is added to this word, the repetition is doubled. And when this word is used to describe the efforts of a translator, like Lydgate in relation to the Troy story, it makes a certain amount of sense. The author (or translator’s source) is the first to harrow the material; he takes the actions or ideas and renders them into language, attempting to make them finer than they were. The translator, then, re-harrows or rehearses the material, making it accessible in another language, going over the words again and again to get the sense just right. The rehearsal of the story of Troy, here, makes it ready and available to more readers; the yield will be even greater because of Lydgate’s rehearsal. 3 “rehersen, (v.)” Middle English Dictionary, www.quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med- idx?type=id&id=MED36539 4 "rehearse, v." OED Online, Oxford UP, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/161472. Accessed 16 April 2018; "herse, n." OED Online, Oxford UP, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/86352. Accessed 16 April 2018; "harrow, n.1." OED Online, Oxford UP, March 2018, www.oed.com/view/Entry/84371. Accessed 16 April 2018. 4 But the rehearsal of the story does not stop with the translator. Like a field’s growing cycle, each rehearsal or re-harrowing stimulates growth and renewal. Each time the story is retold, it becomes new again, finer than before. In many instances, Lydgate instructs his readers to correct him where they find fault.5 The reader, then, is breaking down the larger clods of earth into finer, more fertile soil. By correcting bad meter or the final –e, the reader removes those stumbling blocks for future readers and enables a greater understanding of the heart of the work.

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