A BLACK MONK IN THE ROSE GARDEN LYDGATE AND THE DIT AMOUREUX TRADITION SUSAN BIANCO DPHIL THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE SEPTEMBER, 1999 ABSTRACT This thesis explores connections between the courtly poetry of John Lydgate, monk of Bury, and works which belong to the French tradition of the dit amoureux. A theoretical framework has been adopted for this study which insists upon the need to historicise Lydgate's dits; these were occasional poems. Linked to this historicisation is an acknowledgement of the important relationships in late-medieval literature between ideology and genre and between ethics and politics. A study of the genre of the dits amoureux in the fourteenth century reveals poems which are didactic and courtly; they also frequently refer to specific historic referents. No courtly commission has hitherto been sought for Lydgate's dits amoureux. The suggestion that Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, features in both the Complaynt of the Black Knight and the Temple of Glas positions these poems amongst Lydgate's earliest extant works. The Complaynt may refer to Bolingbroke's exile in France; the Temple may have been written to celebrate his marriage to Joan of Navarre. I conclude that the Complaynt exploits the tradition of the French dit amoureux to use the allegory of an unhappy courtly lover to express political and androcentric concerns. I propose a multiplicity of readings for the Temple. It depicts a 'marriage' in Venus' temple of love, produces an implicit critique of courtly language and courtly love and teaches the importance of gaining popular support through eloquent speech in the public forum. The last of these 'readings' reveals what is probably Lydgate's most important contribution to the tradition of the dit amoureux. The monk of Bury emerges from this study as a highly-skilled and self-conscious court poet, acutely aware of literary tradition and conventions and of their potential relationship to ethics and politics. ll TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ii Table of Contents iii Acknowledgement vi Author's Declaration vii CHAPTER I Introducing the Monk from Bury: Poet, Prince-pleaser, Man of Many Words 1 1 A 'life' for Lydgate: patrons and poetry 3 2 A reversal of fortune: from 'Lancastrian laureate' to drivelling monk 25 3 Poetry and politics: a theoretical approach 31 CHAPTER II Towards a Definition of Dit Amoureux 50 1 An introduction to the dit amoureux in the twentieth century 52 2 The dit in the fourteenth century 2i Poems of instruction 57 2ii Dreams come true: the dit and historic referents 63 3 The dit in the late fourteenth century: a continuing tradition of instruction and historic referents 66 4 Continuity and change in the portrayal of the source and object of love 4i The god of love 72 4ii The lady 82 5 Discontinuity and change: recent critical perspectives 86 iii 6 Chaucer and the French tradition of the dits amoureux 98 7 Gender and genre in late-medieval courtly verse 110 CHAPTER III Developing the Dit: The Influence of Pastoral on Lydgate's Complaynt of a Loveres Lyf 113 1 French sources for the theme of exile in Lydgate's Complaynt 114 2 Dit and pastoral: a classical tradition of patronage and protection for those who complain in the green shade 121 3 The Dit, the pastourelle and historic referents 128 4 Dit and pastoral: idylls,war and exile 132 5 Lydgate's pastoral dit amoureux: An exiled knight in the green shade 134 6 A case for the exiled Henry Bolingbroke 141 7 Knights at the fountain: the influence of Machaut's Fonteinne Amoureuse 157 8 Lydgate's unladylike lady: French precedents 160 9 'Trouthe' vs tyranny: an appeal to Venus and 'allé trew' 168 10 A theoretical conclusion: no threat to the established order 178 CHAPTER IV Reflections upon the Temple of Glas: A Dit Amoureux and its Public Forum 184 1 Ladies in the temple: possible occasions for an occasional poem 187 2 French precedents for the Temple 210 3 Strategies of composition: narrative perspectives 213 iv 4 The narrator's textual affinities 215 5 The complaining lady: challenging the conventions of the dit amoureux 219 6 The complaining man: the traditional central subject 229 7 In Venus' temple: the mythographic tradition 232 8 Venus: goddess of lechery, or angel of wisdom 238 9 A 'prudent' interpretation of Venus' wisdom 248 10 The expediency of appearing before the 'prese' 252 11 The question of gender: masculine, feminine - and clerical? 258 12 Ethics and politics: the need for an eloquent 'voice' of persuasion 261 13 Lydgate's innovation: the courtly dit on the public stage 264 CODA Towards New Horizons 266 BIBLIOGRAPHY 276 V Acknowledgements I should like to take this opportunity to thank the Department of English Literature at York for funding the early years of my doctoral research, and the British Academy for funding the final year. I am also grateful to all those who have offered advice and support along the way, with especial thanks going to Karen Hodder, Nicholas Havely, Prof. Stephen Reimer, Dr. Scott Straker, Prof. Mark Ormrod, Joanna Chamberlayne, Dr. Gwilym Dodd and Abigail Wheatley. I am indebted to Prof. Michael Jones for generously providing me with a copy of his forthcoming but as yet unpublished article. I must also thank all my friends here at York, especially for their company during the darker moments. Above all, I am grateful to my supervisor, Prof. Alastair Minnis for his encouragement, support, and inexhaustible patience. The thesis is dedicated to the usual suspects. Vl DECLARATIONS I declare that I have read and understood the paragraphs on plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct in the University’s Ordinances and Regulations. This dissertation is the result of my own work. Signed CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCING THE MONK FROM BURY: POET, PRINCE-PLEASER, MAN OF MANY WORDS And by a ryuer forth I gan costey, Of water clere as berel or cristal. Til at the last I founde a lytil wey Tovarde a parke, enclosed with a wal In compas rounde; and by a gate smal, [w]ho-so that wolde frely myght[e] goon Into this parke, walled with grene stoon. And in I went..... 1 John Lydgate (c.1371-1449), monk of Bury St. Edmunds, wrote well over one hundred and forty thousand lines of poetry, some sacred and some secular. The verses above, in which Lydgate's narrator steps into a beautiful courtly garden, or park, might be read as an allegory of the monk's own experience as he entered the world of court poetry and patrons. In the course of this thesis I shall argue that Lydgate's dits amoureux owe their inception to a commission from some member of the court nobility.2 Although the term 'court' has become ever more problematic for medievalists during recent years, Michael Bennett helpfully points out that late-medieval writers did not suffer the same problems but simply 1 These are lines 36-43 of Lydgate's A Complaynt of a Loveres Lyf. See John Lydgate: Poems, ed. J. Norton-Smith (Oxford, 1968), p.48. All future references to the Complaynt refer to this edition. 2 For a discussion of the term 'nobility' as it was understood in fifteenth-century England, see K. Mertes, 'Aristocracy' in Fifteenth-Century Attitudes: Perceptions of Society in Late Medieval England, ed. R. Horrox (Cambridge, 1994), pp.42-60. Mertes demonstrates a very close link between 'noble' and 'gentle', both terms being related to 'being well bred....[and] belonging to an important family' (p.45). 1 'acknowledged the existence of the king's court'.3 Whilst the concept of the 'royal court' might remain somewhat 'nebulous' for modern scholarship, Bennett does not hesitate to posit 'the king's person' at its centre. The king's 'immediate entourage' are likewise unproblematically included, but then Bennett widens the focus to include the never-constant gathering which made up the 'king's companions'. These were 'members of the royal family; his "favorites", high-born and low-born; his confessor and chaplains; his hosts on his perambulations; foreign visitors; and so on'.4 The small but significant selection of Lydgate's work with which this study principally concerns itself has close associations with the royal court in its most exclusive sense. Indeed, the two poems which I shall analyse as part of Lydgate's contribution to the tradition of the dits amoureux can be associated with Henry IV. One of the aims of this thesis is to demonstrate that a recognition of the close connection between Lydgate and the Lancastrian court is crucial to the reading of at least some of Lydgate's courtly poems. 3 M.J. Bennett, 'The Court of Richard II' in Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context, ed. B. Hanawalt (Minnesota, 1992), pp.3-20 (p.8). 4 Paul Strohm offers a very different definition of 'court' in relation to Lydgate. He argues that in order for Lydgate (and Hoccleve) to be credited with having written 'court poetry' the 'court' must be 'understood less as an entity or even a font of material reward than as an imaginative stimulus and emotional aspiration'. P. Strohm, 'Hoccleve, Lydgate and the Lancastrian Court' in The New Cambridge History of Medieval Literature ed. D. Wallace (Cambridge, 1999), pp.640-61 (p.641). In the light of the extended contact with, and commissions from, the Lancastrian court which I shall demonstrate, it seems to me that Strohm's description (at least with reference to Lydgate) is inappropriate. 2 In the course of this first chapter, as well as providing a review of recent Lydgate criticism I shall construct a 'life' for Lydgate.