THE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH BEGGING POEM _______________________________________ A Dissertation presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy _____________________________________________________ by DAVE HENDERSON Dr. John Miles Foley, Dissertation Supervisor MAY 2008 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the dissertation entitled THE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH BEGGING POEM presented by David Henderson, a candidate for the degree of doctor of philosophy, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. Professor John Miles Foley Professor Michelle Karnes Professor Johanna Kramer Professor David Read Professor Daniel Hooley ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to John Miles Foley for his invaluable assistance throughout my graduate experience at the University of Missouri, and for his guidance on this project, which was undertaken after a longer hiatus than either of us is anxious to acknowledge. Thanks also to Michelle Karnes, Johanna Kramer, and Dan Hooley, who agreed to join the project in medias res and provided assistance without which completion would not have been possible. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements .....................................................ii Foreword ..............................................................1 Chapter One ..........................................................12 The Old English Begging Poem Chapter Two ..........................................................68 Chaucer and Lydgate Chapter Three .......................................................122 Thomas Hoccleve: Convention and Invention Afterword ...........................................................178 Notes ...............................................................182 Works Cited .........................................................200 Vita ................................................................216 FOREWORD This study will examine in some detail the purposes and practices of medieval English begging poetry. A begging poem, loosely defined, is a short poem that makes a request for compensation in the form of money or goods and implicitly or explicitly identifies the supplicant as well as the party to whom the request is directed. At the outset, let me emphasize that the preceding (loose) definition is not a first attempt at defining a genre. Begging poems tend to be sufficiently dissimilar in style and technique to militate against the formulation of an organic critical construct complete with genesis, evolution, and characteristic forms and content. In fact, poems that beg can perhaps be more comprehensively understood if we consider poetic begging as a trope, the use of embellished language as an enabling medium rather than as a generic marker. Although no overarching theory will be specified, my analysis suggests that there is a consistent and productive methodology for studying this peculiar industry. The foundation upon which my analysis will be built is the relationship between poet and patron. It is clear that the typical medieval poet needed patronage of some kind if he intended to support himself, even in part, with his art. Thus, our 1 2 study of begging poetry takes us straight to the heart of a process, an exchange, that was essential to the production of a very significant proportion of medieval poetry. By focusing upon the social contract prevailing between poet and patron, then building upon this foundation by recourse to the literary, historical, anthropological, and other resources available to us, we can gain a more thorough understanding of the way in which the business of poetry was transacted in England in the Middle Ages. At the outset, we will recognize that our approach is not particularly reusable or portable. Each poet (and sometimes, each poem as well) must be considered in the light of the circumstances pertaining to its inspiration, composition, and dissemination. Although all of our sample poems present a request, implicit or explicit, for compensation of some sort on behalf of the poet and, perhaps, others, the sheer variety of the poems suggests the expedience of keeping our approach eclectic and our definitions simple. Aside from the request for compensation, the poems have little in common. Some of them identify, implicitly or otherwise, the party to whom they are addressed, as well as the supplicant poet; others do not. There are, moreover, no clear rules regarding the form of the begging poem. Forms often employed by begging poets, such as the ballade in the case of the later examples, certainly do not mark a work as a begging poem. The Old English begging poems, similarly, were written according to the same rules that govern the rest of Anglo-Saxon poetry; like the late- medieval poems, their style seems to contribute little that is specific to our understanding of the genre. Tellingly, some of the begging poems are openly humorous, while others are almost pious in tone, a range that is demonstrated even within the oeuvre of a single poet. 3 Though often remarked upon, medieval English begging poetry has not been analyzed in much detail. The poems I shall consider have often been studied in other contexts, with only passing mention of their status as begging poems.1 In light of our formulation of begging as a trope rather than a genre, this discovery is not a surprising one. We shall consider poems that are exclusively dedicated to begging, as well as longer poems that may devote more or less significant passages to the business of begging but nevertheless foreground other concerns. The main focus of this study will be short poems entirely devoted to the purpose of begging, although we will have occasion to mention longer works as well. As suggested above, we shall explore the begging poems in an eclectic fashion. The very diversity of our sample texts necessitates such an approach. However, the relationship between poet and patron forms a unifying thread. Out of this relationship grows a narrative, a blend of fact and fiction that reveals how the poem came to be written and what it accomplished. Since the boundaries of such a narrative are difficult to define and obviously vary from subject to subject, I will structure the discussion with several important considerations. First, the identities of poet and patron must be explored. Second, the social and political milieux in which the cast of characters moves is exploited to further illuminate our narrative. Finally, we must examine the poems on a line-by-line level, as specimens of the poet’s craft, with an eye both to illuminating their meaning and to shedding yet more light on the facts of the poet’s relationship with his master. First, then, we will attempt to identify the patron and the poet, either implicitly or explicitly. When a narrator does not name himself, 4 we assume that the poet is playing the role, and in some cases we will even be able to say, with some certainty, that the poet represents his own interests. There may be co-petitioners as well, who may or may not be named. Things are a bit more difficult in the case of the patron. Initially, we will be forced to satisfy ourselves with attempting to extrapolate what sort of person the patron might have been. As we move forward in time and the historical record becomes more complete, patrons can sometimes be identified with certainty. Second, we will examine the relationship between poet and patron. This relationship may be based upon something as ordinary as the poet’s day-to-day employment in the service of his patron or as potentially extraordinary as service at court. In other cases, in which there is no relationship yet and no attempt is made to recover a debt, the poet uses his skills to win employment and the promise of future rewards. Ideally, as we consider the relationship between poet and patron we will gain a much clearer perception of the circumstances under which a wide range of medieval poetry, not just the begging poems, came to be written. Finally, we will analyze each poem with an eye to illuminating how well it achieves its goals as a begging poem. Although we will be able to determine with a good degree of certainty, in a few cases, whether or not payment was actually received, that will not be among our criteria. Rather, we will seek to identify how each poet expresses and identifies his relationship with his patron, remarking upon the commonalities that we discover in the process. Each of the poets we will discuss, for instance, is very aware of the distance between himself and his patron, however original his expression of this gap may 5 be, and each expresses, or at least promises, fealty of some kind. In some cases, one may even get the feeling that the success of the poem in some way depends on the poet’s bowing exactly low enough to appropriately express his subservience, aside from whatever other art he must bring to bear to achieve his goal. Our sample texts cover a significant range of medieval English poetry, from both a chronological and stylistic perspective. The Old English begging poems Deor and Widsith are discussed in Chapter One. The approaches we will follow in later chapters do not all apply in this one since, first of all, we are unable to identify either the poet or the patron with any certainty. The poems are presumed to have been named for their creators, although, in the case of Widsith, which can be translated “long journey,” the name is so closely related to the poem’s subject matter that one is reluctant to posit Widsith’s historical existence. Aside from this, Widsith appears to be a character in the poem himself, which forces us to posit an additional level of indirection in our identification of him. There is no compelling reason to believe that an individual named Deor ever existed either. The identities of the patrons are problematic as well. Deor only implies the existence of a patron, although he does vilify Widsith’s patron, Eormanric, who is identified by one critic as “one of the most legendarily tyrannical kings who ever lived” (Brown 1989, 284).