SOURCE: Wilson, Janet. “Poet and Patron in Early Fifteenth Century England: John Lydgate's Temple of Glas” Parergon: Bulletin of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Renaissance Studies no. 11 (April 1975): 25-32.

[In the following essay, Wilson argues that Lydgate modified the theme and organization of his courtly love poem Temple of Glas, injecting it with more realism, to suit the tastes of his middle-class audience.]

Recent critics have identified the emergence of a new reading public in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England, whose literary interests, it is suggested, became influential in shaping the literary fashions of those times. John Burrow adduced evidence from the manuscripts of Piers Plowman of the existence and influence of an audience other than the clerical reader. He remarked ‘there was growing up … a new kind of lay public, independent, like the audience of clerks, of any specific locality—the original, it might be said, of the modern Reading Public. This public was recruited from the growing class of men, outside the Church, who had enough money to buy manuscripts, and enough education to read them’.¹ The new reading public came from a group that, according to Gervase Mathew, could be described as middle class, ‘to whom would belong the guildsman in the town, many property-holders in the country, the reeve, the bailiff, the shipman and the miller’.² The rise of this class can be attributed to general economic factors such as the growth of trade, of towns, of urban prosperity, and in particular to the sustained prominence of East Anglia during this time. Specific social reasons, such as the rapid spread of education in English, the decline of French, and the assertion, particularly by Chaucer, of the status of English, were also influential in the continuation of a vernacular literary tradition. The wealth of this new middle class, unlike that of the knightly class, lay in trade. Land and property were acquired, as in the case of the Pastons, in order to consolidate new wealth and social standing, and these motives extended to the acquisition of manuscripts and printed books. Derek Pearsall sums up the growing force of this group: ‘Nothing happened overnight, but by the early fifteenth century, the class which before Chaucer had to be content with second-hand and second-rate versions of French romance, has the prestige and authority not only to absorb in modified form the full didactic tradition in literature, but also to annex courtly literature to its own tastes’.³ In this article I intend to show how a conventional courtly love poem of the early fifteenth century, The Temple of Glas, was revised in at least two different versions by its author, and was modified in theme and organisation to suit the tastes of the readers for whom it was intended. Pearsall identifies the effect of the middle class as ‘a broadening of the base of literature, more sobriety, uniformity, and mediocrity, and the effective elimination of elite culture’,⁴ a description which could be applied equally well to the courtly love tradition in the fifteenth century. However, I should also like to show that in The Temple of Glas, the lowering of tone and the deflation of the courtly love ideal, which Norton-Smith identifies as a feature of Lydgate's work,⁵ does not just demarcate a falling off of the allegorical tradition, but is accompanied by a growth of realism which more accurately reflects the probable interests of the reading public of the time. Finally, I should like to suggest that in the sense that it is dictated by an arriviste reading public, a ‘rising bourgeoisie’, the appearance of realism in the vernacular courtly love tradition can be seen as a precursor of renaissance values in fifteenth-century England, in much the same way as that humanism which filtered into England slowly through the Universities and the new centres of learning.

Yet is was not by their tastes alone that this new reading public was able to influence the composition of works of courtly love literature. Certain wealthy families were able to continue and extend the system of patronage which in the fourteenth century had been confined largely to the aristocracy and court circles—in particular to the sophisticated and French-influenced court of Richard II for whom Chaucer wrote and to whom he would have read aloud his courtly love allegories. Samuel Moore has shown how a system of patronage and literary appreciation grew up in the mid fifteenth century in East Anglia among families, like the Pastons, Sir John Fastolf and Sir Miles Stapleton, who were linked by ties of kinship, neighbourhood and common interest.⁶ These families were representative of the new reading public, in that they collected manuscripts and printed books, sent their sons to Oxford and Cambridge, and in particular in that they commissioned poets to write for them. Poets such as John Metham and Osbern Bokenham were patronised by this group and it was within this kind of social and increasingly intellectual milieu that Lydgate worked. It seems likely that it was for an audience such as this that The Temple of Glas was written. Although Lydgate is known as the monk of Bury, recent evidence would suggest that his literary activities frequently took him away from the monastery, and although his most famous patrons are Henry VI and Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, he also wrote, especially when young, for a lay public who could afford to commission such poems.

The Temple of Glas, by its very organisation appears to have been an occasional piece, intended originally as a presentation copy or as a gift on the part of its owner to a lady, or to celebrate a union between a knight and his lady. That the poem was commissioned appears from Shirley's stating in the rubric of his manuscript (Add. 16165) that it was ‘fait à la requet d'un amoreux’. Pearsall notes that the poem was also used by its owners in much the same way, as a Valentine. He quotes from Gardner's Introduction to the Paston Letters:

Sir John Paston demanded his copy in a hurry in 1461-1462, when he was wooing Anne Haute; he probably wanted it just as Slender wanted his ‘Book of Songs and Sonnets’ to woo another Mistress Anne.⁷

One may conjecture that the practical purpose to which the poem was put may account in part for its popularity, It exists in seven manuscripts, and was one of the first poems printed by Caxton after he set up the printing press in 1476. But although the Pastons are typical of this new class of reader, H. N. MacCracken's claim that the poem was in fact commissioned by the family to celebrate the marriage between Sir William Paston and Agnes Berry in 1420 seems dubious.⁸ His suggested proof, that the motto of the Lady in the poem, de mieulx en mieulx, is the same as that of the Paston family, may point to some connection, but does not provide sufficient evidence to prove the Paston's patronage, Indeed, it seems unlikely that the poem was commissioned for a marriage, given the ambivalent light in which marriage is presented; and to date it as he does, at 1420, is to ignore all the internal evidence of a strong Chaucerian influence and of a connection with the earlier Complaynt of a Loveres Lyfe. If the Chaucerian imitation is taken into account, then the earlier date of 1403 proposed by Schick and Schirmer is the more likely one.⁹ But although there is no complete proof of the identity of the patron, More establishes that some members of this group did know Lydgate and probably would have read the poem. We can assume from his evidence of literary appreciation and patronage, that some of the differences between The Temple of Glas and the fourteenth-century poems of the courtly love tradition upon which it is based, may be attributed to the reading public's change of taste by the early fifteenth century.

The tastes and expectations of the class of reader for whom The Temple of Glas appears to have been written, would have been conditioned by the prevailing poetic tradition, of which the prime exponent was Chaucer. Chaucer was certainly recognised by the generation after him for his dream vision poems. Thomas Usk called him Love's servant ‘the noble philosophical poete in Englisshe’,¹⁰—and his most popular works were the early allegories such as The Book of the Duchesse, The Parlement of Foules, The Hous of Fame, and his stories of courtly love, such as ‘The Knight's Tale’, The Legend of Good Women, and Troilus and Criseyde. Lydgate was a self-confessed admirer and follower, and openly acknowledged his debt to Chaucer in many of his poems. In the early courtly love poems, his imitation of the master is obvious; for example, the theme of A Complaynt of a Loveres Lyfe is based on The Book of the Duchesse, while The Temple of Glas draws for its opening dream vision on The Hous of Fame, and throughout both these works, phrases and words from Chaucer's other courtly love poems, particularly Troilus and Criseyde, can be identified. Readers in the fifteenth century would have accepted such imitation as part of the tradition, expecting Lydgate to follow in the same path. His courtly love poetry is preserved in manuscripts bound into ‘Chaucerian’ miscellanies (which typically consist of The Legend of Good Women, The Parlement of Foules, La Belle Dame sans Merci, and The Temple of Glas, such as the one belonging to the library of Sir John Paston.

But the reading public's desire for conformity to the outlines and details of the tradition is not simply explained as the result of Chaucer's influence. This attitude can also be seen as symptomatic of the new literary situation in the early fifteenth century. The close relationship between poet and patron of the previous century, such as that between Chaucer and the court audiences of Richard II and Edward III, had ceased to exist. The delicate balance between reader and poet was upset; the patronage of literature began to fall into the hands of the new moneyed class, whose literary taste was conservative and dominated by preceding tradition. The result of these economic and social changes is also reflected in the mood of sober orthodoxy and seriousness which prevailed in the fifteenth century. The new readers were preoccupied with propriety and decorum in all way of living, as the proliferation of manuscripts and incunabula on matters of behaviour and manners bears witness. Books of etiquette, such as the Books of Courtesy, and of manners, such as Lydgate's Stans Puer ad Mensam, abound; and Lydgate, as a professional poet sensitive to the public's interests, was particularly versatile in meeting such demands.

But although the orthodoxy in fifteenth-century fashionable literature can be seen as a response to the demands of this new class of reader, there is also a wider context for this change. The atmosphere of gaiety and the sophisticated allusion of the court circles of the late fourteenth century had existed as a result of ignoring political realities: the new mood of the fifteenth century is a sign of the more restrained and sober personalities of Henry V and VI, who had more conventional tastes than their predecessors, and also of the growing realisation of the serious committment of the war with France. To sum up, in courtly literature, the new mood of moral didacticism can be seen as a result of a greater awareness of political and economic realities, and in particular a desire for orthodoxy and for moral exempla as guidelines in a time of social change and growing spiritual anxiety.

Moral didacticism had previously been a feature of religious polemic; its extension in the fifteenth century to a genre traditionally entertaining would suggest a change in consciousness. The tone is most prevalent in matters of behaviour and social decorum. Examination of The Temple of Glas reveals that the celebration of true love, which is also extra-marital, is tempered by a concern for the implications of a union that could be construed as adulterous. In the poem, Lydgate extends the typical courtly situation of the distressed lover and his complaint of woe and suffrance in love (which Chaucer had dealt with in The Book of the Duchesse and which Lydgate had imitated already in A Complaynt of a Loveres Lyfe) to present a triangular relationship. The predicament with which he deals is that of an unhappily married woman, who is completely virtuous, yet in love with another man. The action in brief consists of the complaints of the Lady and the lover to Venus; her response and advice to them; and finally her uniting them as true lovers. This situation, where the genuine love is potentially adulterous, would have seemed of doubtful morality to Lydgate's reading public, particularly in the light of the ending which celebrates the lovers' union. Lydgate, it will appear, had difficulty in presenting the initial situation in a way that would not offend the moral and social sensibilities of his readers.

Norton-Smith has shown convincingly that the seven existing manuscript versions of the poem contain variations which are not just the result of mistakes in scribal transmission, but which represent a series of revisions on Lydgate's part.¹¹ The manuscripts can be grouped into three recensions, which represent Lydgate's successive attempts to rehandle the situation in terms of existing morality. Norton-Smith identifies five main variations, connected, he says, because they clarify the Lady's initial position and present her character more forcibly as consistently virtuous and humble and more worthy of Venus' final sanction of her union with the lover. The major change, he asserts, is the Lady's initial complaint to Venus. I agree with him that the other changes are made in accordance with the initial alteration in her situation and character, and therefore I will not deal with them all here, but will concentrate on the complaint only and its implications for the rest of the poem.

The original complaint of the Lady, couched in conventional allegorical terms, contains an inveighing against an unknown force called Jelusye; in the revised version, however, this rhetorical topos borrowed from Chaucer's Compleynt of Venus is omitted. Instead of stating allegorically that she is married, the Lady merely suggests that she is tied, directing her complaint not against a personification called Jelusye, but against a situation over which she has no control. That Lydgate consciously refined the poem to this shape is clear, for he removed an additional stanza (19a) where it had been suggested that the Lady accepts the lover because she has refused so many other men for his sake alone—improper conduct for a married woman. Obviously Lydgate wanted to present the Lady as completely virtuous, with respect to both her duties—that of conjugal fidelity, and that of true love. Lydgate made the changes to present the Lady as constant and obedient to Venus' command (Venus being the mouthpiece of virtue in the poem) and not anxious to exact revenge against her husband; he attempted to exclude any sexual implications from the situation by presenting the lovers' union as idealised and therefore as one that would not conflict with the claims of the prior, earthly marriage of the Lady. In avoiding any overt suggestion of immorality or adultery, Lydgate remains consistently true in The Temple of Glas to a moralist's code of love. The priority of service and constancy in love is obvious throughout.

The revisions which Lydgate made to the Lady's situation and character can be seen as part of a deallegorising process. There are inconsistencies, for example in the opening allegorical sections—as when the lovers in the Temple appear first as figures on the wall, and then as people, and when Venus appears first as a statue, then as a goddess—which are not accounted for in the revisions. Lydgate is preoccupied with the Lady's situation, with propriety of behaviour, and in this alone wanted to maintain consistency The Lady is made to conform to a code of constancy and virtue in love, which is developed in order to sanction the extra-marital union. The effect of Lydgate's revisions, however, is to make the Lady realistic and psychologically credible in a way which is new.

The Temple of Glas has been described as a pastiche, as a mixture of different forms and genres, and this variation of treatment is nowhere more noticeable than in the presentation of the Lady. The contrasting perspectives of her are endorsed by the use of different verse forms: for the narrative dream vision the rhyming couplet is used, for the lyrical complaint sections, the more formal seven line stanza the ‘rime royal’. In the opening allegorical dream vision sequence she is described in terms of surpassing excellence by the dreamer as the most gracious and morally virtuous of the lovers who inhabit the Temple. Pearsall has pointed out how Lydgate draws on the rhetorical topos of descriptio feminae pulchritudine and indeed this whole opening section is heavily allusive and referential.¹² Yet in the dramatic presentation of the revised complaint to Venus, the style changes radically in the interests of realism—the Lady explores the feelings which arise from her psychological situation, and breaks down the stereotyped picture of her established in the opening sequence, to emerge as a particular woman with a particular attitude to love.

The complaint opens with an elaborate apostrophe to Venus presented as a pronominatio; the Lady divided loyalties are implied in the very terms of her address, for she hopes that Venus will be able to solve her conflict:

O blisful sterre, persant and ful of liȝt,
Of bemys gladsome, devoider of derknes,
Cheif recounford after þe blak nyȝt

(11. 328-30)

When she talks of her own conflict, there is a significant shift of style:

Mi þouȝt goþe forþe, mi bodi is behind
For I am here and yonde my remembraunce;
Atwixen two so hang I in balaunce.
Deuoide of ioie, of wo I haue plente:
What I desire, þat mai I not possede:

(11. 346-50)

The language here is simple and basic; there are fewer French polysyllabic words in this complaint than at any other point in the poem. The syntax follows the structure of the thought, each stanza contains a completed sentence, and each line in each stanza contains a sense unit. The staccato effect thus created, underlined by the balanced expression in each line, renders a state of stasis, and emotional stress, which is not necessarily tempered by understanding. Sorrow and self-pity are presented as black forces of woe, as the Lady is imprisoned and overwhelmed by her circumstances.

Venus's reply, made in an elaborate abstract style, contrasts to the Lady's complaint. She states:

… ! Douȝter, for þe sad(de) trouþe,
The feiþful menyng and þe innocence
That planted bene withouten eny slouþe
In ȝour persone, deuoide of al defence,
So haue atteyned to oure audience
That þuruȝ oure grace ȝe shul be wel releuyed,
I ȝov bihote of al þat haþ ȝov greued.

(11. 377-83)

The diction here is more complex, as is the sentence structure, which is subordinate and complicated. There is enjambement, and the lines and rhythms are free-flowing, giving the impression of effortless eloquence and control. Venus intends to edify the Lady, to elevate her emotions above self-pity, to idealised attitudes of service and piety. Her concept of the lover's relationship is based on ideals of steadfastness and constancy, and she tells the Lady:

And for þat ȝe euer be of oon entent
Withoute chaunge or mutabilite.

(11. 384-5)

The Lady's next speech shows a dramatic change of style, suggesting that she has become more assured as a result of Venus' promise to help. Her goals become defined as those of duty and service, and she is directed towards a course of action; her humility becomes more pronounced. At the same time, she understands the change of feeling in herself:

For of ȝoure grace I am ful reconsiled
From euere trouble vnto ioy and ease, …
Mi peynes old and fulli my disease
Vnto gladnes so sodeinli to turne
Hauyng no cause from hennesforþ to mourne.

(11. 475-81)

Further, the style and manner of delivery are more relaxed. In thanking Venus and promising her obedience, she surrenders her will to her:

For nov and euer, o ladi myn benygne,
That hert and wil to ȝow hole I resigne.

(11. 487-8)

The fact that the Lady emerges as a fallible and self-seeking person, in sharp contrast to the earlier picture of womanhood perfected, shows the degree to which Lydgate breaks from the tradition in his handling of the poem's theme. This exchange between the Lady and Venus is particularly efficacious because it is dramatic, and attitudes and feeling are borne out by subtle shifts of style. This realism, however, remains local and is not worked out in the poem's action at large. The Lady becomes more conventional as she adheres to Venus's code of service and constancy in love; the lover is always idealised. He follows the models of Troilus and The Black Knight, and complains of denial and unrequited love, in traditional high style.

Both Lady and lover are defined through their relation to a pattern in the poem based on the Boethian ‘doctrine of contraries’.

Norton-Smith has identified a hidden metaphor in The Temple of Glas which is applied as a ‘connecting allegory’ to the action. It operates particularly in connecting the imagery and residual allegory of the dream vision framework, to the action of the dream itself contained in the complaint sections.¹³ This ‘connecting allegory’ draws for its expression upon Troilus and Criseyde and ‘The Knight's Tale’, but has its origins as a way of thought in the Consolations of Philosophy. The doctrine of contraries states that every object of perception and sensation is identified physically, classified ethically, by its corresponding opposite, and this provides the basis for the metaphor in the poem. These contrasts are evident in the Lady's complaint to Venus, whom she sees initially in terms of light and darkness; it operates constantly on this level of particular detail, as a means of perception, by polarising the flux of experience. In the poem's story, the metaphor is manifested through the doctrine of contraries in love. The lovers can only find true love through suffering—in the Lady's case, through an attachment which she does not want, and in the man's case, through unrequited love. The allegory appears at three different stages according to Norton-Smith: (1) in the lovers' situation and psychology (2) in the resolution as pronounced by Venus (3) in the function of the planetary Venus as described in the ballade of the rejoicing spirits. The experience of the poem is reduced at these crucial points to what Pearsall calls a ‘mechanism of contrast’, for the metaphor stands for the idea of change in the poem.¹⁴ By these means the moral growth of the Lady and the lover is summarised, and a basis is provided a against which their progress can be measured. In this sense the ‘connecting allegory’ provides a conceptual basis for the poem's action. Norton-Smith has noted Lydgate's originality in this respect, claiming that while he is derivative in his use of medieval consolatio as a philosophic scheme, he is nevertheless innovative in relating this scheme to the action of the poem. Certainly this allegorical organisation is aesthetically pleasing; the setting and schematical unity of the imagery provide a design for exhibiting two matching portraits of suffering, and then a resolution celebrated through a beautifully composed ballade apostrophe to Venus.

Yet, as has been suggested, the allegory is at the service of, and designed to elucidate, a situation which is presented in the first instance as realistic. The Lady's situation and complaint at the opening of the dream, appear as lifelike and credible as a result of Lydgate's attempt to give the Lady a moral dimension. Lydgate begins with a state which is real, but which has to be treated abstractly; accordingly, in this use of allegory he inverts the usual situation in which personifications are treated with realistic detail. Pearsall sums it up:

In other words, Lydgate rejects the realism which allegory in its decline was beginning to promote, and returns to the conceptualisation of experience from which allegory originally began.¹⁵

The allegorical form of the poem is basically dependent for its efficacy on the realistic presentation of the Lady's situation. I should therefore like to examine the consequences of her situation for the poem's structure, as it is in this respect that the effects of the intrusion of realism can be noted most clearly.

The implication of the poem's organisation is that character and human behaviour have a place in the overall scheme of things, but that action is subordinated to the central scheme; that is, the underlying metaphor, the Boethian ‘doctrine of contraries’, acts as a centripetal force to which all action inevitably tends. In this respect, in that the episodes of the poem relate not to one another by cause and effect, but to the poem's ‘philosophy’ which they illustrate or elucidate, the poem's structure fits loosely into the structure described by critics as ‘Gothic’. However, this organisation is not always obvious, partly because the allegory is limited by a discursive narrative style. Norton-Smith, while claiming that Lydgate creates a new total form in this poem, also says that ‘the prolix, episodic deliberate manner obscures the newly created shape’.¹⁶ I agree with him that there is a dichotomy in the poem's structure, but I suggest that this may also arise from a fundamental inconsistency between the content of the poem and its treatment; that is, in The Temple of Glas content begins to determine form in a way that urges on the poem a different kind of organisation from the one employed. In presenting the Lady's situation through a dramatic complaint, Lydgate deals initially with the real, the lifelike and the particular, but in a way which is not finally endorsed in the poem's structure.

In developing the basic situation of the Lady—that of constraint in love—Lydgate gives sympathetic treatment to a situation which is new to the courtly love tradition. He approves and celebrates a union which is extra-marital, but which does not contradict the marriage bond. This choice of theme may have originated in a plea against forced marriages, for the lovers in the Temple complain amongst other things of forced marriages, and the Lady complains of constraint in love. And there may have been social grounds for such an attitude. W. Schirmer and H. S. Bennett have cited evidence from the Paston Letters of forced and loveless marriages made as business contracts.¹⁷ Certainly Lydgate's attitude to love in this poem goes beyond the traditional courtly love concepts to suggest a basic belief in individual freedom. In his sympathetic treatment of the Lady and in approving her unspecified union with the lover, he endorses the feelings of the individual against the claims of society. C.S. Lewis has noted this, saying ‘Lydgate regards the matrimonial or the celibate vow as a cruel obstacle to the course of true love’.¹⁸ This attitude does indeed represent a new direction of the sentiment, as Lewis asserts, and in particular, an advance over the earlier treatment of courtly love. Gervase Mathew has pointed out that in fourteenth-century poems of courtly love, ideals of amour courtois were wedded to those of marriage, and poems like ‘The Knight's Tale’, ‘The Franklin's Tale’, Sir Orfeo, all give witness to the priority of the marriage contract.¹⁹ Even in Malory's Arthuriad, the recognition and preservation of the marriage of Arthur and Guinevere is crucial to the outcome of the story. In The Temple of Glas Lydgate, sensitive to the positions of true love and the social contract, attempts to reconcile them. By his decorous treatment of the Lady, he demonstrates how the individual conforms to social morality by following a set code of behaviour. Yet in the pathos created by attempting to resolve the individual's interests with a social system, Lydgate causes a dislocation in the poem between form and content.

The allegorical organisation of the poem is designed to project the moral code, and the polarities of human experience. According to this organisation, the most significant moment comes at the end of the dream, in the ballade of the rejoicing spirits in the Temple to Venus. Impressive because of its dense poetic texture and its complex form, the ballade also achieves resonance by its culminating position. The elevated style suggests that this is a deliberately calculated climax, designed to celebrate the union of the lovers and also to seal the successful outcome of the moral code of virtue and constancy in love which they have practised. The ballade therefore exists as a successful resolution of the action and theme.

The Lady's complaint, however, represents a climax in the poem of a completely different kind, but which, nevertheless, has just as much impact. With a sharp shift of focus and style, she dramatically describes a precise situation in personal terms, a situation which does indeed produce an increase in pathos. The unexpected realism is enforced by the catalysing function of her complaint, for the action of the poem springs from the Lady's attitude and feelings as evinced at this point. Her complaint provides a dramatic context, suggesting the beginnings of character in action, of reported rather than patterned behaviour. But the realism is never extended to shape the poem's form, nor does it become crucial to its structure, and this is where the basic dislocation between form and content arises. Lydgate dared to present a situation new to the courtly love complaint, but he does not fully explore the implications of his attitudes and he does not give the conflict more than the conventional treatment. In this poem he may be considered to be consciously responsive to the demands of his audience. In organising his material in line with conventional morality, he is finally dictated to by his social obligations as a poet.

Notes

1. John Burrow, ‘The Audience of Piers Plowman’, Anglia, LXXV (1937), 377.

2. Gervase Mathew, ‘Marriage and Amour Courtois in Late Fourteenth Century England’ in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, ed. C.S. Lewis (London, 1947), p. 128.

3. D. Pearsall, John Lydgate (London, 1970), p. 70.

4. Ibid.

5. John Lydgate: Poems, ed. J. Norton-Smith (Oxford, 1966), Introduction, p. ix. All quotations from The Temple of Glas are taken from this edition, hereafter referred to as Poems.

6. Samuel Moore, ‘Patrons of Letters in Norfolk and Suffolk c. 1450’, PMLA, XXVII (1912), 188-207.

7. John Lydgate, p. 18.

8. H. N. MacCracken, ‘Additional Light on the “Temple of Glas”’, PMLA, XXIII (1908), 128-40.

9. The Temple of Glas, ed. J. Schick (EETS, ES 60; London, 1891; repr. 1924), Introduction, p. cxiv: W. F. Schirmer John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century (London, 1961), p. 37.

10. Thomas Usk, The Testament of Love (c. 1387), III, iv. 249; in Chaucerian and other Pieces, ed. W.W. Skeat (volume VII of the Oxford Chaucer, 1897), p. 123.

11. J. Norton-Smith, ‘Lydgate's Changes in the “Temple of Glas”’, Medium Aevum, XVII (1956), 166-72.

12. John Lydgate, p. 98.

13. Poems, pp. 177-179.

14. John Lydgate. p. 114.

15. Ibid., p. 110.

16. Poems, Introduction, p. x.

17. John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century, p. 36; H.S. Bennett, The Pastons and their England: Studies in an Age of Transition (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 27-41.

18. C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (London, 1936), pp. 243-51.

19. ‘Marriage and Amour Courtois in Late Fourteenth Century England’, 132-134.