[In the following essay, Renoir claims that Lydgate uses the image of a binding knot to express permanence of union, and argues further that this metaphor is used to serve different purposes in The Temple of Glass, Mumming at Hertford, and “A Gentlewoman's Lament.”]

The literary critics of the nineteenth and twentieth century have taught us to look upon John Lydgate as the most inept writer in the English language. One recalls Joseph Ritson's scathing account of him, in Bibliographia Poetica (London: 1802), as “a voluminous, prosaick, and driveling monk” (p. 87) and George Saintsbury's elaborate condemnation of his “dull, hackneyed, slovenly phraseology,” in the Cambridge History of English Literature. More recently, a contributor to Shenandoah (1955, VI, No. 2) unhesitatingly picked a passage from Lydgate to illustrate the inferiority of late Middle-English poetry (p. 27). However, the fact that the innumerable detractors of Lydgate have, by and large, conspicuously neglected to support their arguments with specific and accurate references to his works prompts one to wonder whether they have not occasionally been somewhat more eager to censure his production than to read it carefully. It may not be out of place to point out that, as Walther Schirmer has reminded us in John Lydgate: ein Kulturbild auf dem 15. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: 1952), that poet was commonly considered of equal stature with Chaucer until the second half of the eighteenth century (pp. 223-224). That valuation was certainly extravagant; yet, it is the present writer's suggestion that Lydgate ought not to be considered so utterly incompetent as his modern critics would have us believe.

Among the many accomplishments of Lydgate which have either escaped notice or been considered unworthy of mention, we must number the ability to make one expression serve different purposes within different contexts without losing its freshness. Take, for instance, an image of which he seems to have been especially fond: that of a binding knot used to express permanence of union. We find it as a metaphor for “marriage” twice in the Troy Book (ll. 4171; IV, 3556) and three times in the Siege of Thebes (ll. 815, 844, 1590). In the former work, it also serves as a simple yet powerful means of illustrating the belief that the eclipse at the death of Christ was a unique disruption in the otherwise indisruptible scheme of things: “Nature her knot that tyme did unbinde” (l. 1738). Despite frequent occurences, however, the image does not grow stale, for Lydgate handles it with so masterly a hand that it always fits the context in which it appears, both emphasizing its tone and impressing its lesson upon the reader. Three cases in point will bear out this contention.

The first example is from the Temple of Glas. The image of the binding knot appears near the end of that poem to express Venus' concept of the union which should ideally conclude an affair of courtly love:

Eternalli, be bonde of assuraunce,
The cnott is knytt, which mai not ben unbound.

(ll. 1229-1230)

A few lines later, the goddess will promise the lovers to unite them so securely “That nouȝt but deþ shal þe knot unbynd” (l. 1270). The Temple of Glas is an excellent piece of work, but its excellence is of a purely technical nature, insofar as it is a very formal exercise illustrating the theory of courtly love rather than applying it to the development of an actual love story. In this context, the image of the “cnott. … which mai not ben unbound” does not stir any profound emotion in the reader, for the lovers are much too frankly theoretical figures to make their union emotionally significant to anyone. Accordingly, the image is merely a particularly effective means of expressing an appropriate conclusion to a familiar problem; as such, it affords one no more—but no less—than the sedate satisfaction concomitant with the appreciation of a fine piece of rhetoric.

The second example is from the farcical Mumming at Hertford, at the opening of which a troop of disgruntled peasants “ful froward of ther chere” (l. 6) approach the king “on ther kne” (l. 7) to beg for his mercy and protection. Their sufferings are listed in most eloquent terms, and the contrast between the speaker's apparent earnestness and the grotesque cause of the peasants' complaint sets the comic tone for the remainder mumming:

[They wish] to compleyne un-to Yuoure Magestee
Upon þe mescheef of gret adversytee,
Upon þe trouble and þe cruweltee
Which þat þey have endured in þeyre lyves
By þe felnesse of þeyre fierce wyves,
Which is a tourment verray importable,
A bonde of sorowe, a knott unremuwable.

(ll. 8-14)

Here, the picture of “a knott unremuwable” unequivocally brings home to the reader the full impact of the ludicrously desperate plight of a throng of browbeaten husbands irrevocably united to wives whom we may suppose fairly akin to Chaucer's Wife of Bath.

The third example is from “A Gentlewoman's Lament.” In that poem, a gentlewoman loves a man so far above her degree that she may not hope to see her sentiments reciprocated. The topic is banal enough, but Lydgate develops it into a deeply touching situation by supposing the gentlewoman and the man she loves to have been childhood companions, at an age when social differences were of little consequence, but when she was too young to think of love. In this light, her complaint takes on a pathos unexpected in the works of a poet whose reputation for dulness has become nearly proverbial with us:

For whane we were ful tendre of yeeris,
Flouring booþe in oure chyldheed,
Wee sette to nothing oure desyres
Sauf un-to playe, and tooke noon heede,
And gaderd floures in þe meede
Of youþe þis was oure moost plesaunce,
And, Love, þoo gaf me for my meede
A knotte in hert of remembraunce
Which þat never may beo unbounde.

(ll. 17-25)¹

Here, the image of the “knotte in hert” serves a double purpose. Not only does it emphasize the relentlessness of the gentlewoman's grief, but it makes us visualize a quasi-physical aspect of it.

In brief, Lydgate succeeds in using the same image to elicit from his reader three totally different reactions: in the Temple of Glas it prompts us to a purely technical kind of appreciation; in the Mumming at Hertford, it draws laughter from us; and in the “Gentlewoman's Lament,” it stirs us to compassion. Of course, this ability to adapt an image to the context in which it appears is not original with Lydgate. We recall that Chaucer, whom our poet repeatedly acknowledged as his master, could use the auditory image of a “thonder dent” equally effectively to illustrate Nicholas' dubious practical joke, in the Miller's Tale (l. 3807), and the glorious death of Capaneus, in Troilus and Criseyde (V, 1505)². But the example of Chaucer in no way detracts from his follower's accomplishment. John Lydgate knew how to suit imagery to context and should be given credit for it.

Notes

1. Quotations from and references to the works of John Lydgate are to the following editions: (1) “A Gentlewoman's Lament” and A Mumming at Hertford, in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. Henry Noble MacCracken, vol. II (London: EETS, 1934); (2) Lydgate's Siege of Thebes, ed. Axel Erdmann, vol. I (London: EETS, 1911); (3) Lydgate's Temple of Glas, ed. Joseph Schick (London: EETS, 1891); (4) Lydgate's Troy Book, ed. Henry Bergen, vols. I and IV (London: EETS, 1906 and 1910). Punctuation and capitalization of quotations are the present writer's. The letters u and v have been written according to modern practice.

2. References to Chaucer's works are to The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Fred Norris Robinson (Boston: 1933).