SOURCE: Ebin, Lois. “Lydgate's Views on Poetry.” Annuale Mediaevale 18 (1977): 76-105.

[In the following essay, Ebin argues that Lydgate developed a new critical language to describe his craft, that his view of poetry differs substantially from that of his English predecessors, and that his language points to the beginnings of a new English poetic.]

Scattered through the more than 145,000 lines of Lydgate's poetry are numerous references to the process of writing and to his role as a poet. These lines, for the most part Lydgate's original additions to his sources, introduce assumptions about poetry which are at once significantly different from Chaucer's and also central enough to an understanding of fifteenth-century writing to warrant more careful attention than they have received. In these passages Lydgate not only develops a new critical vocabulary to define the qualities of good poetry, but he articulates ideas about poetry, particularly his conception of the poet as craftsman, his belief in the importance of amplification and high style, and his concern with the relation between the language of poetry and the state, which considerably influenced the writers who follow him. His digressions, though virtually ignored by critics, provide a key to an understanding of his purpose as a poet and to the poetic ideals and practices which dominate the fifteenth century.

A significant part of Lydgate's contribution lies in the vocabulary he develops to deal with poetry. To a greater extent than we have recognized, in his digressions about poetry, Lydgate creates a new critical language, coining words where none exist and assigning new meanings to terms which were found in English before his time but which were not applied to poetry. Eight words in particular—“enlumyn,” “adourne,” “enbelissche,” “aureate,” “goldyn,” “sugrid,” “rethorik,” and “elloquence”—which Lydgate popularizes or develops with new meanings, embody the most important of his critical ideals and should be considered briefly before turning to a broader discussion of his views about poetry. Together these words form an interrelated set of terms, reinforced by strong metaphoric associations, which in turn is adopted by every major writer in the fifteenth century.

Central to Lydgate's new vocabulary is the highly charged term “enlumyn” which has a range of meanings from the obvious “to illuminate,” “to cover with light or color” to the more specialized senses Lydgate develops, ‘to embellish by means of poetic art,” “to clarify difficult matter.” Although Chaucer uses this term before Lydgate, he introduces it only six times in all of his writing¹ and only once with reference to poetry, in the Clerk's famous praise of Petrarch (IV [E] 33). In contrast to Chaucer, Lydgate uses “enlumyn” more than 50 times, and, in more than half of these instances, he applies the term specifically to poetry.² Like Chaucer in the Clerk's Prologue, in a few cases Lydgate introduces the work “enlumyn” to signify the poet's power to make something illustrious, brilliant, or famous by means of his art. The striking praise of Dante in Book IX of the Fall of Princes, [FP] for example, echoes this sense: “Thou hast enlumyned Itaile & Lumbardie / With laureat dites in thi flouryng daies …”³ But even when Lydgate borrows from Chaucer, one notes an interesting extension of his term. Unlike Chaucer, Lydgate attempts to draw attention to the implications of the poet's activities as illuminator by means of an elaborate analogy between the sun and the poet. In the example cited above, he addresses Dante as the “cleerest sonne, daysterre and souereyn liht / Of our cite, which callid is Florence, …” (FP, IX) 2522-23), suggesting the relation between the sun's radiance and the radiance of Dante's verse. On several other occasions in the Fall of Princes when Lydgate uses the term with the same meaning, he is even more explicit. Praising Cicero in Book VI, he extends the analogy to define the specific way in which the poet or orator “enlumynes.” Like the sun which shines its beams of light upon the world, the poet sheds beams of rhetoric and eloquence upon his matter:

Lik a sunne he dide hem [the Romans] enlumyne
Bi hih prowesse of knihtli excellence;
And thoruh the world his bemys dede shyne
Of his rethorik & his elloquence …

(FP, VI, 3081-84)

Further extending the analogy, Lydgate suggests the way in which the poet's “enlumynyng” not only sheds lustre on his matter but inspires the poets who follow him. When Boccaccio meets Petrarch in Book VIII of the Fall of Princes, he praises him as the poet “which han Itaille lik a sunne cleer / With poetrie pleynli to descryue, / Most soueraynli enlumyned by your lyue …” (FP, VIII, 68-70) and then reveals that this “sun” has been his “lanterne, liht, and direccioun” in his occupation as a poet (FP, VIII, 76-77).

In addition to expanding Chaucer's usage, Lydgate exploits the term “enlumyn” to describe the poetic process in several ways which are not anticipated by Chaucer. Most commonly, he introduces the word with the sense “to color” or “to embellish” to refer to the poet's style, to the way in which he exploits the colors or flowers of rhetoric to illuminate his matter. In the envoy to the Troy Book, for example, Lydgate submits his work for correction and apologizes that it is “enlumined with no floures / Of rethorik” but only with white and black.”⁴ Secondly, in an even more significant sense for fifteenth-century writing, Lydgate adapts the term “enlumyn” to define the poet's process of enriching or extending his medium. Used in this way, “enlumyn” points specifically to the poet's effort to raise the level of his language, to make his English suitable for poetic endeavors, a meaning for which there is no hint of Chaucer. This sense, for example, is apparent in the Serpent of Division when Lydgate praises Chaucer as the “first that euer elumined our language with flowers of rethorik …”⁵ Again, in the Life of Our Lady, Lydgate exploits the term with this meaning to draw attention to Chaucer's achievement as the poet who found “floures, firste of Rethoryke / Our Rude speche, only to enlumyne …”⁶ that is as the poet who first made English elegant and poetic. Finally, Lydgate introduces the term “enlumyn” to emphasize the poet's critical role in clarifying or shedding light on the significance of his content. The famous passage in praise of Chaucer in the Prologue to the Siege of Thebes suggests this meaning of the term. After referring to the range of Chaucer's subject matter, Lydgate praises him for ‘keping in substaunce // The sentence hool / with-oute variance, // Voyding the Chaf / sothly for to seyn, // Enlumynyng þe trewe piked greyn // Be crafty writing.”⁷ Thus, while Lydgate takes a hint from Chaucer for his use of the word “enlumyn,” he greatly expands the range of meanings of the term.

Linked to “enlumyn” are two other words, “adourne” and “enbelissche” which Lydgate introduces for the first time in English with specific reference to poetry.⁸ Both of these terms serve to clarify one aspect of the meaning of “enlumyn”—the ability of the poet to extend his language, to make it more beautiful, effective, and enduring. It is the power which Lydgate has in mind when he praises Chaucer in the Troy Book [TB] as the poet who “gan oure tongue first to magnifie / And adourne it with his elloquence” (TB, III, 4243). In his role as “adourner” or “enbelisscher” of our language, Lydgate indicates that the poet is like the more skillful artist, Nature, who when she pleases uses her art to form creatures of lasting splendor and beauty:

… se how I, Nature,
Whan [þat] me list, embelissche can my wirke:
…
Riȝt as me list adourne & make fair,
So peint & florische, it schal nat apeire;
And my colours so craftily dispose.
Of þe lillie and be rose,
And so annew þat þei schal nat fade,
But ay ben on; …

(TB, II, 5024-34)

Like Nature, the poet is so skillful in his art that it does not distract us, an emphasis which underscores the difference in meaning between Lydgate's use of “adourned” and “enbelissched” and the modern connotations of decorated.

“Enlumyn,” “adourne,” and “enbelissche” describe the poet's process of working on his matter. Closely related to these terms are a second group of words which Lydgate coins to define the effect of the poet's activities. The most important of these terms, “aureate,” “goldyn,” and “sugrid,” refer to the qualities of the diction and style the poet produces. Each of these terms points particularly to an ideal, an aspect of good writing, which for Lydgate is the antithesis of the “rude style” of bad writers.

“Aureate,” a term which Lydgate introduces for the first time in English, suggests the special nature of the poet's medium, the heightened poetic quality which sets it off from ordinary speech and writing. As Norton-Smith points out, Lydgate's coinage probably was based on the late latin aureatus which is recorded once in literary usage as a difficilior lectio and has the meaning “gold-adorned,” but unlike Lydgate's term, does not refer to language.⁹ While Lydgate's coinage has the obvious connotation of “goldyn” suggested by the latin root, he develops three more significant meanings by means of striking metaphoric associations with which he repeatedly surrounds this work—“eloquent,” “fragrant, that is poetical not only in a visual sense,” and “inspired.” The most familiar of these meanings, “eloquent,” is suggested by the recurrent metaphor “aureate colors.” In Lydgate's special sense, this phrase refers to the golden or eloquent style the poet creates, the result of his “enlumyng.” This meaning, for example, is apparent in Book VIII of the Fall of Princes when Boccaccio praises his master Petrarch for providing a model of good poetic style. Significantly, Lydgate changes his source to define Boccaccio's indebtedness in terms of the metaphor “aureate colors.” In his version, Boccaccio praises Petrarch as the “Cheff exaumplaire to my gret auauntage, / To refourme the rudnesse of my stile / With aureate colours of your fresh langage” (FP, VIII, 79-80). As Lydgate makes clear in several other examples of this phrase, “aureate colour” does not refer simply to a superficial process of painting or decorating, but to a suitable relation between the poet's style and his subject matter, that is to an appropriate use of eloquent and golden language. At the beginning and end of the Fall of Princes, for example, Lydgate emphasizes that he puts aside aureate colour and writes only “with whyte and blak,” the colours befitting his sad story: “Wooful clausys of custom they requere, / No rethoryques for floryssynges delyctable: / Lettres of compleynt requere colour sable, …”¹⁰

A second important meaning of “aureate” is suggested by the metaphor “baume aureate.” Although John Norton-Smith argues that this phrase refers to the “spoken sound of eloquent language,”¹¹ “baume aureate” when used alone does not suggest spoken sound. Rather the term “baume” refers to fragrance and introduces a potent analogy between the intoxicating and perfumed secretion of a flower and the poet's rhetorical or poetical output which overwhelms the reader not only by its golden appearance but by its pleasing or intoxicating effect. Characteristically, Lydgate uses the metaphor “baume aureate” to describe what the poet produces, the particular kind of writing which makes him recognizable as a poet. In the “Mumming for Mercers,” for example, he makes this meaning quite clear, referring to “Tulius,” “Macrobye,” “Ovyde,” “Virgilius,” “Petrark,” and “Bocas,” and adding that “Thoroughte þat bawme aureate / þey called weren poetes laureate.”¹²

Finally, Lydgate develops the striking metaphor “aureate licour” to draw attention to the inspired nature of the poet's writing.¹³ As Lydgate suggests, this potent liquid or “aureate licour” is transmitted directly from God and the muses to the poet and enables him to write in a manner worthy of his subject. At the beginning of the “Ballade at the Reverence of Our Lady,” for example, Lydgate seeks encouragement for his poetic journey and prays: “O wynd of grace, now blowe in to my saile! / O auriat licour off Clyo, for to wryte / Mi penne enspire, of that I would endyte!”¹⁴ Likewise, at the outset of the Fall of Princes, he apologizes for his lack of poetic skill and points out that the muses who sing on Parnassus “with ther sugred aureat licour / Thei be nat willi for to doon fauour; …” (FP, I, 461-62). In several of the religious poems, Lydgate uses this metaphor even more explicitly to refer to the poetic power, the substance of poetic inspiration, which comes directly from God and enables the poet to deal adequately with sacred matter. At the outset of the “Invocation to Seynte Anne,” for example, he fervently prays to God to inspire him to write in a manner which will do justice to this lady:

þou first moeuer, þat causest every thing
To haue his keping thoroughte þy prouydence,
And rightfully art callid lord and kyng,
Having þe lordship of eche Intelligence,
Destille adoune þy gracious Influence
In-to my brest þat dulle is for rudenesse,
Of holy Anne some goodly word expresse.
…
Shed from abouen þy licour aureate, …(15)

Thus the term “aureate” means more than “golden” in a narrow sense. In Lydgate's usage, it points to an aspect of good writing, an ideal of poetic style which distinguishes the “baume” of the poet from ordinary speech or writing, and, at the same time, suggests the source of this inspiration.

Like “aureate,” Lydgate introduces the term “goldyn” as a term of praise to refer to the poet's or orator's heightened style. When used alone, the word is more specific than “aureate” and points principally to the eloquence of the poet's language, its richness, lustre, visual splendor, and stylistic perfection. It is these qualities, for example, which Lydgate has in mind when he praises Dares Phrygius in the Fall of Princes for his “goldene style” (FP, IX, 3402). Likewise, in “As a Mydsomer Rose,” he refers to Chrysostom's “goldene mouth” to draw attention to his excellence as a poet.¹⁶ In addition to introducing “goldyn” alone, on many occasions, Lydgate combines the word with the recurrent metaphors of “rain” or “dew,” life-giving forces which give new lustre and vitality to the objects they fall upon. In its most striking and frequently used sense, this metaphor refers to the distillation of poetic excellence, the golden liquid of the poet's speech or rhetoric which, like the rain or dew in its action, gives the poet's medium new potency and effectiveness. This meaning of the phrase, which is not suggested by the metaphors for “aureate,” is quite common in Lydgate's praise of Chaucer, for example, in the Life of Our Lady where he commends Chaucer as the one who “made firste, to distille and rayne / The golde dews, dropes of speche and eloquence / Into our tunge, thurgh his excellence …” (II, 1632-34).

Complementary in significance to “goldyn” and “aureate,” Lydgate introduces the term “sugrid,” another word which is not used in English before this time with specific reference to poetry. In contrast to these terms, “sugrid” refers specifically to the sound of the words the poet produces, to the sweetness or melodiousness of his language rather than to its visual splendor or lustre. Occasionally, Lydgate employs the term literally to refer to the mouth or the tongue of the skilled poet, the source of pleasing language, for example, in the Prologue to the Siege of Thebes [ST] where he admires the “sugrid mouth of Chaucer,” or, again in “As a Mydsomer Rose,” where he defines Cicero's power as an orator in terms of his “sugryd tonge.”¹⁷ But Lydgate's most common and most original use of the word “sugrid” is as a descriptive term for the pleasing sound of speech, music, or poetry. In Book IV of the Troy Book, for example, he draws attention to this meaning when he praises Antenor's elegant and effective speech: “His tale gan with sugred wordis swete. / Makyng þe bawme outward for to flete / Of rethorik and of elloquence, …” (TB, IV, 5201-03). Likewise, in the Fall of Princes, he refers to the “sugrid langage & vertuous daliaunce” of rhetoricians (FP, VI, 3467). At other times, Lydgate uses the term “sugrid” to describe the harmonious and enticing sound of music as in the phrase the “sugrid melodie” of Charybdes (TB, V, 2864) or “þe soote sugred harpe” of Mercury (ST, I, 273). But most important for our purposes is his application of the adjective “sugrid” to the sound of poetry. In the Fall of Princes, Book IX, for example, he refers to “[the] sugryd dytees of Omer” (FP, IX, 3402) which are unlike his own rude writing. In an even more striking example in the Prologue to the Troy Book, Lydgate links good poetry with the “hony swete / Sugrest tongis of rethoricyens” and the sounds of “musicyens” as he prays to Calliope for inspiration, the mother of the poet-musician Orpheus and the muse who best represents the “sugrid” sounds of all three arts (TB, Prol. 53-62).

Finally, Lydgate gives added weight and a new significance to two very important words, “rethorik” and “elloquence,” which in his critical passages represent the epitome of good poetry. Although earlier writers use these terms, it is Lydgate who gives them their particular meanings and importance as pivotal critical terms in the fifteenth century, the embodiment of the ideals of good poetry. The extent to which Lydgate popularizes and changes the connotations of “rethorik” and “elloquence” is underscored dramatically by a brief comparison with Chaucer. On the one hand, Chaucer uses these terms only rarely; each appears only six times in his writing, and, when he uses these words, he either does not apply them directly to poetry, or with a few notable exceptions, he introduces them with an ironic or a pejorative meaning.¹⁸ Lydgate, in contrast, uses each item more than thirty times, very frequently together, and always as terms of commendation.¹⁹ Eloquence in Lydgate's writing is a positive attribute of style and refers to the way a writer or orator uses his medium elegantly, effectively, and appropriately. As Lydgate emphasizes, the eloquence of an author improves his subject. Referring to Guido who wrote the version of the Troy story he translates, Lydgate remarks that “he enlumyneth by crafte & cadence; / This noble story with many fressche colour / Of rethorik, and many rich flour / Of eloquence to make it sounde bet …” (Prol. 362-65). But in praising writers or orators for their eloquence, Lydgate has a very specific sense of the word in mind which we have not recognized. In his hands, the word almost always is linked with prudence, wisdom, and discretion and thus means much more than “fair langage.” In the Troy Book, for example, Lydgate remarks that Alphenor is pleased to listen to Ulysses “To here hym talke, for his eloquence / For his wysdam & his hiȝe prudence” (TB, V, 2143-44). Again in Book IV of the Troy Book, he places Ulysses' eloquence in the context of these virtues, “Wys Vlixes, ful of eloquence; / Gan his tale prudently deuyse” (TB, IV, 1698-99). Likewise, he refers to Aeneas as one who “hadde of fame of passyng elloquence, / Wys of counseil and of gret Sapience, …” (TB, II, 4915-16). As Lydgate emphasizes in his chapter on rhetoric and oratory, Nature has given eloquence only to man. When it is “conveied bi prudence,” it is a “thyng couenable in especiall” (FP, VI, 3383-84). It teaches him to live in harmony and to be stable in virtue (FP, VI, 3403-09).

“Rethorik” also is a favorable term in Lydgate's writing, a distinct mark of praise. Its weight and significance are perhaps best revealed by the phrase which Lydgate repeatedly introduces to distinguish his master, Chaucer, “the noble rethor poete.” In the Troy Book, Lydgate, for example, sums up Chaucer's achievement by characterizing him as “þe noble Rethor that alle dide excelle” (TB, III, 553). Again in the Life of Our Lady, Lydgate refers to Chaucer as “the noble Rethor, poete of Brytayne” (II, 1629). For Lydgate's “noble Rethor” thus represents the highest form of praise, a distinct shift from Chaucer's more ambiguous use of the term.

Most frequently, Lydgate introduces the word “rethorik” in the familiar sense of the colors or flowers of rhetoric to refer to the successful style of the good poet or orator. At the outset of the Troy Book, for example, he praises Guido “For he enlvmyneth by crafte & cadence / This noble story with many fressche colour of rethorik …” (TB, Prol. 362-64). Likewise, in the Life of Our Lady, he celebrates Chaucer as the poet who “fonde the floures, first of Rethoryk / Our Rude speche, only to enlumyne …” (II, 1635-36). While this meaning, also found in Chaucer's Franklin's and Squire's Tales, is common, Lydgate unlike Chaucer repeatedly clarifies the significance of these metaphors to make their positive sense clear. Following Boccaccio, he carefully distinguishes between natural rhetoric learned in youth and “crafft of rethorik” which comes to man only by great diligence:

Bochas eek tellith, touchyng rethorik
Ther been too maneres: oon is of nature,
Lernyd in youthe, which doth oon spek[e] lik
As he heereth & lerneth bi scripture;—
Crafft of rethorik youe to no creature
Sauff to man, which bi gret dilligence
Be studie kometh to crafft of elloquence.

(VI, 3409-16)

Rhetoric, in the sense in which the term is a characteristic of good poetry or speech, thus requires long study and a great deal of skill.

Lydgate makes it clear, moreover, that “crafft of rethorik” involves more than skillfully ornamented style or elegant language, the meaning suggested by Chaucer's references in the Clerk's and Squire's Tales. “Rethorik” in Lydgate's work more often has the broader meaning of good writing, good speech, or noble style. This emphasis is apparent in the following lines from the Siege of Thebes when Lydgate bids the reader refer to Boccaccio for an example of noble style: “Lok on the book / that Iohn Bochas made / / Whilom of women / with rethorikes glade, / / and directe / be ful souereyn style …” (ST, 3201-03). Likewise, Lydgate stresses the links between his term “rethorik” and “souereign style” in his praise of Virgil in Book IV of the Fall of Princes. Briefly reviewing his writing, he singles out the Aeneid as the work “which that dide excell / In rethorik be souereynte of stile” (FP, IV, 72-73).

But more important, “rethorik” in the sense in which Lydgate defines it—good writing, “souereign style”—serves to illuminate the essential truth of a story. As he explains in the Prologue to the Troy Book, poets “Han trewly set thoruȝ diligent labour, / And enlumyned with many corious flour / Of rethorik, to make vs comprehende / The trouthe of al, as it was kende; / …” (TB, Prol 217-220). Used in this way, the term conveys a very different impression than we find in Chaucer's work. While we learn to suspect the motives of the rhetoricians in the Canterbury Tales—the Reeve, the Man of Law, the Summoner, the Pardoner, the Merchant, the Franklin, and even the “good wife of biside Bathe”—in Lydgate's work the “rethor” is “noble” and his art is the epitome of good poetry.

Although the vocabulary Lydgate develops either is not found in Chaucer's writing, or if used, is introduced with an entirely different meaning, after Lydgate, these terms become the standard critical language of the fifteenth century. One only need compare the praise of Chaucer before and after Lydgate to gain some idea of the impact of his terms. In the passages before Lydgate's time, one finds very little trace of the vocabulary we have been considering. Gower, for example, in the first recension of the Confessio Amantis (1390), has Venus praise Chaucer simply as “mi disciple and mi poete: / For in the floures of his youthe / In sondri wise, as he wel couthe, / Of ditees and of songes glade, / The whiche he for mi sake made, / The lond fulfild is overall …”²⁰ Likewise, Thomas Usk, in the Testament of Love (1387), commends Chaucer's writing principally for its appropriateness and gentility: “his noble sayings can I not amende: In goodnes of gentyl manlyche speche / Without any maner of nycite of stories ymagynacioun in wytte and in good reason of sentence he passeth al other makers.”²¹ After Lydgate, however, the new critical terms are used conspicuously in the work of every major writer of the period. Hoccleve, for example, in The Regement of Princes, praises Chaucer as ‘’the flour of eloquence” who “with bookes of his ornat endytyng, / That is to alþis land enlumynyng.”²² Shirley, at the end of his edition of Chaucer's translation of Boethius, likewise, refers to the poet as “famous Chaucyer which first enlumyned þis lande with retoryen and eloquent langage of oure rude englisshe modere tonge …”²³ A few years later, an unknown poet again echoes Lydgate's language as he assesses the dead Chaucer's achievement:

Maister geffrey Chauucers þat now lith graue
þe noble Rethor poete. of grete bretayne
þat worthi. was the laurer to have
Of poetry. And þe palme atain
þat furst made to still & to rain
þe gold dew Dropes. of speche in eloquence
In to english tonge / þorow his excellence.(24)

But even more significant than the extreme popularity of Lydgate's terms, are the implications of his new vocabulary. In the first place, his critical language points to a conspicuous emphasis on craft. This is apparent not only in the number of words he coins to describe the poet's process of working on his matter, but in the importance he attaches to the ideal of the “noble rethor poet,” the craftsman skilled in the language of poetry, who treats his subject eloquently and appropriately. Lydgate's terms, moreover, draw considerable attention to the ideal of the poet as the improver and extender of his medium. Many of his terms, “enlumyn,” “adourne,” and “enbelissche,” for example, suggest the poet's self-conscious effort to make his language and his style more brilliant, effective, and enduring. The recurrent analogies with the sun and nature suggest the importance of this function of the poet. Like the sun, the poet illuminates his matter and makes it “goldyn.” Like Nature, he creates works fairer than the ordinary and more enduring. By his use of the terms “elloquence” and “rethorik,” Lydgate sums up this function of a poet and defines a standard of good writing toward which the poet repeatedly strives. His ideal is a “souereign style” in which artistic skill is linked with prudence, wisdom, and discretion. Finally, Lydgate's terms point to a confidence in the power of poetry to “enlumyn” man's darkness, inspire him, and lead him to virtue.

When considered together, Lydgate's terms suggest a rather different conception of poetry and the role of the poet than we find in Chaucer's work.²⁵ In contrast to Chaucer who repeatedly questions the relation between appearance and reality, experience and authority in his art and the limitations the poet's craft by its very nature imposes on his effort to create a truthful vision, Lydgate neither doubts the inherent truthfulness of poetry, nor does he question the poet's intentions. In his work, the problems which Chaucer considers so anxiously no longer are apparent—the ability of the poet to mislead by means of his art, the relation between a poet's or narrator's will or “entent” and his use of his craft, the limits of mortal man with his restricted vision as artist. Rather, Lydgate's digressions point to an unfailing assurance that the poet is noble and his writing leads man to truth.

A recognition of this emphasis is especially important in understanding two aspects of Lydgate's poetics—his conspicuous interest in high style and his preoccupation with amplification—the two features which his critics have censured most vehemently. As we have seen, several of Lydgate's terms draw attention to his interest in creating a heightened poetic style, in making his language more “goldyn,” “surgrid,” and “elloquent.” His serious effort to develop such a style in English contrasts sharply with the concerns of his predecessors. As Burrow points out, high style is not characteristic of the late fourteenth-century writers who prefer to speak out more indirectly and ironically. Because these poets “so rarely ‘speak out’ in direct, unguarded utterance, passages of full-throated grandeur or pathos are uncommon in Ricardian verse.²⁶ Chaucer and many of his contemporaries, in fact, deliberately make the reader nervous about the unequivocal use of high style. As Burrow observes, “Chaucer disposes his reader to respond cautiously to anything resembling a ‘flight,’ and to be always on his guard for the ironic implication, the humorous crosslight.”²⁷ Lydgate's unrestrained interest in high style thus represents a major shift in attitude.

It is important to recognize in evaluating this change that Lydgate's enthusiasm for high style is not just an interest in style for its own sake, but an outgrowth of his conception of poetry. As Lydgate repeatedly emphasizes, he seeks to find a medium worthy of his purposes, a style which will enable him to fulfill his role as a poet. At the outset of the Troy Book, for example, he prays to Mars and the muses of poetry “to do socour my stile to direct” so that he can write in a manner which will do justice to his subject. He then provides a long digression on the importance of poetry, emphasizing its power to reveal truth, to withstand time, and to lead men to virtue (Prol., 216-25). Finally, Lydgate reviews the writing of all the poets who narrated the story of Troy before him and concludes that Guido was the best for he told the story in the style most worthy of his subject (Prol., 372-74).

Lydgate's concern with providing a style suitable for his subject is even more conspicuous in the digressions in his religious verse. These poems are filled with his repeated pleas to God to guide his style, to raise it to the level of the sacred matter he narrates. At the end of the first book of the Life of Our Lady, for example, Lydgate protests that his “mater is so Inly spirituall / That I dar nat, so high a style pace …” (I, 871-72). Without Mary's grace, he cannot find words noble enough for his charge. Finally, his interest in the relation between his style and his purpose as a poet is apparent in his numerous apologies for his lack of poetic skill, passages which he introduces so frequently and so conspicuously that they become a characteristic mark of his writing. Although the humility topos is highly conventional, Lydgate typically exploits this device in a manner which draws attention to the problem we are considering. A good example is found in the long envoy with which the Fall of Princes closes (FP, IX, 3303-3540). In the first place, Lydgate exploits this topos to flatter his patron and insure a fitting reward for his labors. But having made his plea for money, he abruptly changes his tone and turns to consider his position as a poet. Recalling the great writers before him who undertook works of similar magnitude, he bids the reader have compassion for he cannot match the “goldyn style” of these poets. As Lydgate anxiously worries if he had lived up to his role as a poet, he draws attention to the importance of his task of finding a medium worthy of his subject.

Lydgate's assumptions about the noble function of poetry also underlie his preoccupation with amplification. His conspicuous concern with amplifying not only specific lines and phrases, but entire passages and even whole structures is not just a feature of decadent style as many critics have assumed but is a direct outgrowth of his view of poetry. In his Preface to the Fall of Princes, Lydgate articulates this connection most clearly. As he begins his longest work, he suggests that amplification is the means by which the poet makes the essential truth of his work apparent. To underscore this point, he significantly expands and modifies Laurent's Preface, adding to his source passages which draw attention to the importance of amplification. For example, while Laurent merely says that he will amplify only those stories which the authors have told so briefly that they provide little more than the names,²⁸ Lydgate gives the passage an entirely different emphasis by changing Laurent's reason for amplifying, indicating that he will extend a story whenever it is virtuous.²⁹ Likewise, Lydgate concludes this section of the Prologue by adding two stanzas for which there is no basis in Laurent to clarify and defend the process of amplification. Significantly, in these stanzas, he equates amplification with plainness and clarity, arguing that a story which is told too briefly prevents men from comprehending its turth:

For a story which is nat pleynli told,
But constreynyd vndir woordes fewe
For lak off trouthe, wher thei be newe or old,
Men bi report kan nat the mater shewe;
These ookis grete be nat doun ihewe
First as a strok[e], but bi long processe,
Nor long stories a woord may not expresse.

(ll. 92-98)

This view of amplification, it is important to note, represents a significant deviation from the statements of the rhetoricians. According to Geoffrey of Vinsauf, for example, the poet has two paths open to him: “either your path will be broad or narrow, either a river or a rivulet, either you will proceed discursively, or you may skip along hastily; either you will note a thing briefly, or draw it out in an extended treatment.”³⁰ In contrast to Lydgate, he suggests the poet chooses the broad path primarily to give variety and pleasure:

you may give pleasure with this device; without it your meal may be abundant enough, but with it your mere dishes become excellent courses. A parade of courses coming more numerously, and tarrying at the banquet table that proceeds more deliberately, is a mark of distinction. Long and richly we feed the ears with varied material, …”³¹

By emphasizing clarity and truthfulness rather than variety and pleasure, Lydgate thus changes the definition of amplification to one which is more in line with his own assumptions about poetry.

Lydgate, however, articulates the relation between the ideals his critical terms define and his purpose as a poet most emphatically in his chapter “On Poets and Writing” in the Fall of Princes, IV, a section which he adds entirely to his source. In this chapter, Lydgate stresses the importance of writing and its relation to the larger design of man's knowledge. He begins in the same vein as Chaucer in the Parliament and the Legend of Good Women by defining the powers of poetry to preserve past knowledge. (FP, IV, 1-7). But then Lydgate moves beyond the ideas found in these works to suggest that poetry not only preserves past knowledge, but has a restorative power. As he indicates, writing is the “frut of the tre of lyff” which can renew hearts and restore the five wits. The natural food of lively and healthy minds, it enables man to triumph over sloth and live a virtuous life. But most important, as Lydgate indicates by means of his central metaphor of light, poetry has the power to dispell the darkness of man's mind and “enlumyn” the world around him. As he explains, God ordained writing to compensate for man's dullness and make the world intelligible to his infirm wit. “God sette writyng & lettres in sentence, / Ageyn the dulnesse of our infirmyte, / This world tenlumyne be crafft of elloquence” (FP, IV, 29-31). This process of “enlumynyng,” of shedding light on the design of the world, Lydgate indicates, is the supreme task of the poet.

Although Lydgate borrows some of his ideas from Boccaccio's De Genealogia Deorum, he adds considerably to the hints he takes from this source. Like Boccaccio, Lydgate fervently defends the powers of poetry, its sublime effects, its ability to lead men to virtue, and its source of inspiration in God. In defining these ideas, he echoes and expands many of the points Boccaccio makes in his famous definition of poetry in Chapter VII of Book XIV of De Genealogia:

This poetry, which ignorant triflers cast aside, is a sort of fervid and exquisite invention, with fervid expression, in speech or writing, of that which the mind has invented. It proceeds from the bosom of God, and few, I find, are the souls in whom this gift is born; indeed so wonderful a gift it is that true poets have always been the rarest of men. This fervor of poetry is sublime in its effects; it impels the soul to a longing for utterance …³²

Like Boccaccio, Lydgate, moreover, emphasizes that the poet must be well-trained in his craft. As Boccaccio explains, “For, however deeply the poetic impulse stirs the mind to which it is granted, it very rarely accomplishes anything commendable if the instruments by which its concepts are to be wrought out are wanting—I mean, for example, the precepts of grammar and rhetoric …”³³ As we have seen, this is a recurrent theme in Lydgate's digressions. Finally, the two agree that the poet must often remain apart from other men in the leisure and solitude of contemplation. As Boccaccio explains, the handiwork of Nature “collect[s] the scattered energies of the mind, and renew[s] the power of the poet's genius, if it be weary, prompting it, as it were to long for contemplation of high themes, …”³⁴ Likewise, Lydgate observes: “… poetis to sitte in their librarie / Desire of nature, and to be solitarie. / Swich as men loue, such thyng þei vndertake …”

But however great his debt to Boccaccio might be, Lydgate's views about poetry and the ideals to which his critical terms point are distinct not only from Chaucer's but from Boccaccio's as well. Of greatest significance is Lydgate's considerable emphasis on craft. While Boccaccio includes as a major concern in his definition of poetry a discussion of the poet's powers of invention, Lydgate ignores this aspect of the poetic process and concentrates instead on the role of the poet in presenting and improving the matter which is given. In his definition of poetry, for example, Boccaccio stresses invention in the opening lines and adds a passage to the end which describes the power of the poet to create new worlds, a passage which could just as well have appeared later in Sidney's Apology:

Further, if in any case the invention so requires, it can arm kings, marshal them for war, launch whole fleets from their docks, nay, counterfeit sky, land, sea, adourn young maidens with flowery garlands, portray human character in its various phases …³⁵

Lydgate mentions the function of invention only briefly and centers instead on the poet's powers to “adourne,” “enbelissche,” “enlumyn,” to perfect and extend the limits of his medium. Without exception, as we have seen, his critical terms point to this function of the poet. While Boccaccio repeatedly stresses the role of poetry as a veil which covers “truth in a fair and fitting garment of fiction,”³⁶ Lydgate, in many of his works, envisions poetry as a process of “enlumynyng,” of rendering his work glorious, illustrious, and brilliant, but also of shedding light on difficult matter to clarify and illuminate its significance.³⁷

Finally, Lydgate establishes a significant relationship between his role as a poet, the “goldyn” language he creates, and the well-being of the state, a concern only briefly touched upon in Boccaccio's De Genealogia and not evident that his definition of good poetry extends beyond the definition offered in the Fall of Princes. Poetry not only “enlumyns” man's world and leads him to virtue in a general sense, but in many cases, it points to a specifically political virtue. While critics have noted that several of Lydgate's works provide examples useful to the well-being of the state,³⁸ they have overlooked the more significant connection Lydgate establishes between the “goldyn” language of poetry and the state. As Lydgate emphasizes in his chapter “On Rhetoric and Oratory” in the Fall of Princes, the poet's or orator's words have unique powers to bring concord out of discord, order out of disorder, civilization out of chaos:

Of rethoriciens whilom that wer old
The sugrid langage & vertuous daliaunce
Be goode exaumples & proverbes that thei tolde,
Woordes pesible enbelisshed with plesaunce,
Appesid of tirauntes the rigerous vengaunce,
Sette aside ther furious sentence
Bi vertu onli of prudent elloquence.

(FP, VI, 3466-72)

Lydgate makes the critical relation between the poet, the golden language of poetry, and the well-being of the state even more explicit by his unusual exploitation of the myth of Amphion, the legendary founder of Thebes. Significantly, he introduces this figure at least four times in his work when no mention of Amphion is prompted by his sources.³⁹ In each case, as critics have not recognized, Lydgate develops Amphion as a symbol of the relation between the poet and the state fully realized—the poet, orator, and statesman, who through his golden language, brings harmony and order to the realm. By his unique treatment of the myth, he defines a central tenet of his poetics which becomes increasingly important in the work of the fifteenth-century writers who follow him.

The most extensive treatment of the Amphion legend is found in the Siege of Thebes.⁴⁰ At the outset of this poem, Lydgate departs from his “auctour” and introduces a lengthy account of Amphion's founding of Thebes. Though he draws on other accounts of Amphion, especially Boccaccio's De Genealogia Deorum, Book V, chapter 30, he makes several significant changes which point up his own unique treatment of the myth. Like Boccaccio, Lydgate emphasizes that Amphion built the walls of Thebes only with “the swetnesse / and melodious soun / / And armonye / of his swete song …” (ST, 202-03) and without craft “of eny mannys hond.”⁴¹ As the two poets explain, Amphion had a unique power which he received from Mercury at birth that he should be “Most excellent / be craft of Rethorik.”⁴² Adding to Boccaccio, however, Lydgate clarifies, his “song” is his “crafty speech” and “his wordes swete” which were so “pleasaunt,” “favorable,” and “mete” that they caused all to do his bidding in concord. “In her Eerys / that shortly was ther noon // Disobeysaunt / with the kyng to goo, // Wher so euere / that hym list assigne” (ST, 231-33). Thus the city was built through the “syngyng of this king” (ST, 241).

Lydgate concludes by drawing the following moral from his story: the “soote sugred harpe” of Mercury is more fortunate than the sword of Mars “whetted kene and sharpe.” A prince can gain more by fair language than by war:

I take record / of Amphyoun,
That bylte Thebes be his elloquence
Mor than of Pride / or of violence,
Noble and riche / that lik was nowhere non,
And thus the walles / mad of lym and stoon
Were raised first / be syngyng of this kyng,
Lich as Poetes / feyn in her wryting.

(ST. 286-92)

Again this conclusion is not prompted by his source. Boccaccio merely relates the brief legend of Amphion without considering the broader implications of his actions or the political significance of the story.⁴³

By means of these changes, Lydgate exploits the myth of Amphion to introduce a major theme of the Siege of Thebes—the opposition of the word and the sword. The entire poem, in Lydgate's version, in fact, can be seen as an example of this theme. As critics have not recognized, during the course of the narrative Lydgate develops a series of incidents which re-emphasize the significance of the example of Amphion with which he opens. His Thebes story, thus, provides a contrast between examples of war averted by words and examples of the disastrous consequences when the sword of Mars is favored more than the harp of Mercury.

On the one hand, Lydgate introduces several instances of the successful triumph of words over the sword. When Polyneices and Tydeus first meet in a storm, for example, their impulse is to fight it out to see who will win the right to stay in the shelter. Adrastus awakens, and like Amphion, with his eloquent words persuades the two men to lay down their swords. The outcome is much more favorable to both men. Adrastus befriends them, marries them to his daughters, and gives each of them great riches and half of a kingdom.⁴⁴ A second example occurs when the Greeks are befriended by Lady Ipsiphyle.⁴⁵ As she goes out to fetch water for the weary men, a serpent poisons the son of King Lycurgus who had been in her care. Lycurgus, however, rather than seek revenge by means of the sword as the queen at first would have him do, is moved by Adrastus' “sweet words” to avoid strife and forgive Ipsiphyle.

Juxtaposed to these example are a number of incidents, disastrous in their outcome, in which the sword gains precedent over the word. The first example occurs when Tideus rides to Thebes in an attempt to persuade Eteocles to fulfill his agreement with Polyneices and turn the kingdom over to him for a year.⁴⁶ Tideus speaks eloquently, but Eteocles refuses to listen. The result is the beginning of the devastating war of Thebes in which both kingdoms are destroyed. Again, during the wars, the prophet Amphiorax tries to persuade the Greeks to give up their siege.⁴⁷ But his words are ignored and the warriors end in disaster. Finally, in an episode which directly parallels the incident in which Tideus acts as a messenger to Eteocles, Jocasta enters the Greek camp with the hope of persuading her son Polyneices to cease fighting and become reconciled with Eteocles.⁴⁸ Her words also fail, the siege continues, and both sides are devastated. As Lydgate points out, this is the inevitable result when war wins over words:

… in the werre is non excepcioun
Of hegh estat / nor lowh condicioun,
List do dispose / with her double chere,
And Bellona / the goddes in hir char
But as fortune / and fate, both yffere,
Aforn provydeth / ; wherfor ech man be war
Vnavysed / a werre to bygynne.
For no man woot who shal lese or wynne.
And hard it is whan eyther party leseth.

(ST, 4645-53)

One finds an even more interesting development of the myth of Amphion in Book VI of the Fall of Princes. Here, Lydgate goes beyond the suggestions of the Siege of Thebes and the opposition of the word and the sword to consider the relation between poetry and Fortuna, the force which threatens not only king and state, but all human civilization and order. Reorganizing the structure of Book VI, he sets up the story of Amphion as a frame for the events of this crucial section of the Fall. At the outset of this book, Lydgate significantly diverges from his source and inserts a reference to Amphion into the lively debate between Fortuna and Boccaccio. As Boccaccio emphasizes to Fortuna, the power of poetry is considerable whether it be the eloquent language of Tullius or his own plain style. To prove his point, he cites the example of Amphion, who, by means of his “fair langage” and his “song,” first civilized men (FP, VI, 335-41). He then provides a brief history of civilization, stressing the role of eloquent language in reforming men and creating order:

Peeplis of Grece, of Roome & off Cartage,
Next in Itaille, with many a regeoun,
Wer inducid be swetnesse of langage
To haue togidre ther conuersacioun,
To beelde castellis & many roial toun.
What caused this?—to telle in breef the foorme,
But eloquence rud peeplis to reffoorme.

(FP, VI, 379-85)

Before men were influenced by poetry and “fair speche,” Lydgate emphasizes, they were rude and bestial. But through the power of eloquent language they have come together “In goldene cheynys of pes and vnite; …” (FP, VI, 391).

Again at the end of Book VI, Lydgate inserts a long chapter “Ageyn / Ianglers and / difframers of Rethorique” in which, following Laurent, he provides a brief description of the skills of the rhetorician and stresses the unique advantages man has as a result of his powers of speech.⁴⁹ Significantly, Lydgate again departs from his source to draw attention to the singular powers of the rhetorician to bring concord and comfort, to join warring men and restore the disconsolate. As an example of his point, he cites the experience of Amphion who built the walls of Thebes by means of his song:

Bexaumple as Amphioun, with song & elloquence
Bilte the wallis of Thebes the cite,
He hadde of rethorik so gret subtilte.
In his language ther was so gret plesaunce,
Fyndyng therbi so inli gret proffit,
That al the contre kam to his obeissaunce,
To heere hym speke thei hadde so gret delit;
The peeple enviroun hadde such an appetit
In his persone, in pes & in bataille:
Heer men may seen what rethorik doth auaille!

(FP, VI, 3491-3500)

In the context of Book VI, Lydgate's treatment of the Amphion legend is even more significant. The reference to Amphion at the outset marks the conclusion of the debate between Boccaccio and Fortuna and forms the main point of Boccaccio's defense. Fortuna, first accusing Boccaccio of trying to change her nature, argues that he must accept her as she is and not complain of her doubleness. Boccaccio responds that even though worldly things are changeable, he will attempt to finish his book in the hope that he will be remembered for it. Even though his language is not as elegant as Tullius', he argues, his work will be useful for he seeks to lead men to virtue which is removed from Fortuna's domain. As Boccaccio continues, he adds an important dimension to the view of poetry we have been considering by skillfully setting up an opposition between the power of poetry and the power of Fortuna. While “fair langage” and “fressh ditees” first brought men into harmony, Fortuna, in contrast introduced strife and discord. If it had not been for the power of “fair langage,” man's kingdoms and cities would have been destroyed:

Afftir the sharpe[nesse] of thi cruel rage
Onli bi mene of spech & fair langage,
Folk be thi fraude fro grace ferr exilid,
Wer be fair speche to vnite reconcilid.

(FP, VI, 375-78)

Throughout the brief sketch of civilization which follows, Boccaccio repeats this emphasis. While Fortuna brings disorder, poetry and eloquence lead men back to civilized and harmonious state. While Fortuna makes men “incorrigible / Wilful, froward, causeles at debat,” fair speech reconciles them, for there is no outrage so terrible that “gracious langage” cannot reform it. Boccaccio's arguments in the frame of Book VI thus define a pattern which provides an important perspective for understanding the significance of the stories in the center of the book.

The examples in the body of Book VI describe the downfall of civilization represented by imperial Rome through chaos and disorder and the reaffirmation of the power of rhetoric and poetry in the person of Cicero. The series begins with the story of Saturnine who caused great trouble in Rome by conspiring with Marius to banish Metellus. Then follows a group of stories of people whom Fortuna helped to make war against Rome—Marius, who after lengthy wars was defeated by Sulla; Spartacus, who organized a large group of conspirators and churls to ravage the country; Viriathus, the thief who attacked Rome; Mithridates, whom Fortuna helped make war against Rome for forty years; and finally the bitter feud of Pompey and Caesar which threatened the downfall of the city. The section ends with Caesar's conquest of Egypt, his destruction of Alexandria and the civilization it represents, his death at the hands of Brutus, and renewed warfare and disorder.

In contrast to this long series of examples of the disorder prompted by Fortuna, Lydgate introduces the climactic story of Cicero, the “Laumpe and lanterne of Romeyn oratours,” the “prince of elloquence,” who restored concord to Rome. Made a citizen for his virtues and chosen counsel, Cicero opposed the cruel Catiline and broke up the conspiracy against Rome, saving the city from destruction. By the power of his rhetoric and eloquence, he reconciled rivals and brought order to Rome, “Thoruh his langage this saide Tullius / Reconsilede bi his soote orisouns / To the lordshipe & grace of Iulius, / Princes, kynges of dyuers regiouns, / That suspect stood bi accusaciouns, …” (FP, VI, 3130-34). For a brief moment, the power of eloquent language restores the harmony and order Fortuna repeatedly seeks to destroy. But ultimately cicero is exiled by Antony and slain. Lydgate concludes with a chapter in praise of rhetoric and oratory and the example of Amphion who is linked to Cicero by the power of his speech. Finally, Book VI ends with the beginning of a new cycle, the renewal of warfare and disorder under the Triumvirs.

Thus, by his exploitation of the myth of Amphion in the frame of Book VI, Lydgate draws attention to a final theme, the opposition of Fortuna and the poet. While Fortuna brings about disorder and chaos, the poet by means of his “fair langage” has the power to restore order and harmony to men. By extension, this conclusion applies to Boccaccio and hence to his translator Lydgate. Despite Fortuna's arguments at the outset of the book, the two poets will continue their writing, thereby affirming the power of poetry.

Significantly, Lydgate goes even further than Boccaccio. Near the end of his long translation, he emphasizes not only the poet's power, but his sacred obligation to write. In the Prologue to Book VIII, the next to the last book of the Fall of Princes, Lydgate makes several changes in his source to dramatize this point. In contrast to Laurent, he pictures Boccaccio old and infirm, overcome by weariness with his task, a picture which significantly resembles Lydgate's condition at the end of the Fall of Princes. Just as Boccaccio is about to give up and allow himself to be overcome by Sloth, Petrarch appears to him. Again changing his source, Lydgate has Boccaccio welcome Petrarch in terms which recall his own view of poetry:

Wolkome maister, crownid with laureer,
Which han Itaille, lik a sunne cleer
With poetrie, pleynli to descryue,
…
Ye haue been lanterne, liht and direccioun
Ay to supporte myn ocupacioun,
As in writyng bookis to compile,
Cheeff exaumplaire to my gret auauntage,
To refourme the rudnesse of my stile
With aureat colours of your fressh langage.

(FP, VIII, 67-81)

In Lydgate's version, Boccaccio concludes by again emphasizing his age and his determination to give up his craft. Petrarch responds by espousing the critical doctrine of the poet's obligation to write:

… he that can and ceseth for to write
Notable exaumples of our predecessours,
Of envie men wil hym atwite,
That he in gardyns leet perishe þe holsum flours
In sondry caas that myhte do gret socours.

(FP, VIII, 162-66)

After Petrarch concludes, Boccaccio overcomes the feebleness of his age and prepares to begin his book. In two stanzas which he adds to his source, Lydgate makes explicit the parallel between himself and Boccaccio and closes the prologue with his renewed determination to write (FP, VIII, 190-203). By these changes, Lydgate thus sums up his views of the poet and the noble function he performs. An “enlumyner” who sheds beams of rhetoric and eloquence on his matter, making it brilliant, illustrious, and clear, the poet offsets man's “dulness” and brings order and harmony to his world.

In our haste to pass Lydgate off as a poor Chaucerian, we thus have overlooked the extent to which he deliberately departs from the basic assumptions of his “master.” Underlying his writing, as his digressions make clear, is a view of poetry which differs substantially from his English predecessors'. This shift is apparent particularly in the critical vocabulary Lydgate develops, in the number of terms he finds it necessary to coin or popularize to describe the poetic process. Lydgate's language, a significant achievement in its own right, points to the beginning of a new poetic in English. In the writing of the fifteenth-century poets, his basic tenets are articulated more fully and explicitly—the conception of the poet as a craftsman, the “noble rethor” who “enlumines,” “adournes,” and “enbelissches” the surface of the poem; the importance of amplification and “souereign style” as the means by which the poet executes his sacred function of leading men to truth; the relation between the “goldyn,” “aureate,” and “sugrid” language of poetry and the state; and the power of poetry with its “ornate elloquence” and fragrant “baume” to withstand the ravages of Fortune. In their most skillful form, the poems on poetry produced by Lydgate's successors, “The Goldyn Targe,” “The Palace of Honour,” and the Pastime of Pleasure among others, are a prelude to the formal poetics in English which first appeared in the sixteenth century.

Notes

1. John S. P. Tatlock, ed., A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer 2nd ed., (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1963), pp. 268-9.

2. See, for example: Life of Our Lady, I, 58; II, 1635-6; III, 196; III, 583; III, 1029; V, 5; Thebes, 11. 56-7; Temple of Glas, 1. 283; Troy Book, Prol 59; 218; 362; II, 1029; II, 4700; II, 6782; Envoy, 100; Fall of Princes, III, 3570; IV, 31; 371; VI, 3080; VIII, 70; IX, 2525; Life of St. Edmund, 11. 221-2; “Exposition of the Pater Noster,” 1. 318; “To Mary, the Queen of Heaven,” 11. 41-42. There is no dictionary evidence for an earlier English usage of the term “enlumyn” to refer to poetry other than the one example in Chaucer's work (Middle English Dictionary, ed. by Hans Kurath [Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1952], III, 160; Oxford English Dictionary [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933], III, 192). As Lowes suggests, Chaucer may have gotton the idea for his one poetic use of the term from Deschamps who in the Marguerite poems refers to Ovid, “saiges en rethorique, / Aigles treshaultz, qui par ta theorique / Enlumines le regne d'Eneas.” (John Livingston Lowes, “The Prologue to the Legend of Good Women as Related to the Franch Marguerite Poems and the Filostrato,” PMLA, 19 [1904], p. 641, note 3). Neither Littré nor the Altfranzosisches Worterbuch cite any similar uses of the term. (Dictionnaire de la Langue Francaise, ed. by Littré [Paris: Librarie Hachette, 1883], II, 1404; Altfranzosisches Worterbuch, ed. by Adolf Toblers & Erhard Lommatsch [Berlin: Weidmanns, 1925], III, 447-48).

3. John Lydgate, Fall of Princes (London: Oxford University Press, 1924), IX, 2525-26. All subsequent references to this poem will be to this text. Note also Dante's related usage in De Vulgari Eloquio, I, 17. “Primum igitur quid intendimus, cum illustre adjicimus, et quare Illustre dicimus, denudemus. Per hoc quidquid illustre dicimus et intelligimus quod illuminans, et illuminatum praefulget.”

4. John Lydgate, Troy Book (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1910), V, 100-01. All subsequent references to this poem will be to this edition. This meaning appears to be a skillful extension of the meaning found frequently both in English and in French “to give color or light to something.” In the Romance of the Rose, for example, the rosebud is described as “enlumyned With colour reed … As nature couthe it make faire” (Rose, 1965 [Med, III, 160]). See also, Littré, II, 1404; Altfranzösisches Wortherbuch, III, 447-50.

5. Caroline F. R. Spurgeon, ed., Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion (1925, repr; New York: Russell & Russell, 1960), I, 14. Although he neither dates this usage nor does he cite any examples to illustrate it, Littré cites a related figurative meaning of “enluminer” in French, “Enluminer son style, y répandre des ornaments qui ont plus d'eclat que de naturel” (Littré, II, 1404).

6. John Lydgate, A Critical Edition of John Lydgate's Life of Our Lady, ed. by Joseph A. Lauritis (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Duquesne University Press, 1961), II, 1635-36. All subsequent references to this text will be to this edition.

7. John Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, ed. by Axel Erdman (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Co., 1911), 11. 53-57. All subsequent references to this text will be to this edition. Occasionally, Lydgate also used the term “enlumyn” with the meaning “to inspire.” In this sense, the term points to the relation between God, the supreme “enluminer” and the poet who, through God's grace, receives his unique powers. As Lydgate prays to God in the Life of St. Edmund: “Send doun of grace thi licour aureate / Which enlumynyth these rhetoriciens.” In an even more striking example in the Life of Our Lady, Lydgate suggests that God's grace enters the actual pen with which the poet writes and gives him the power to illuminate his work. As he prays to Mary,” … the licour of thy grace shede / Into my penne, tenlumyne this dite” (I, 57-58). This usage, “to inspire” in the sense of poetic inspiration, it is interesting to note, is a brilliant extension of the general meaning found in Chaucer's Parson's Tale (x [I] 244) “to illuminate or enlighten the heart or mind,” “to give spiritual insight.” While Chaucer refers broadly to spiritual enlightenment, Lydgate with considerable originality, applies this meaning directly to the poetic process, creating a striking metaphor for his artistic inspiration.

8. Note that Lydgate's usage of these terms in this sense is earlier than the examples cited in the MED (I, 101; III, 74). In developing “adourne” and “embelissche” as critical terms for poetry, Lydgate appears to have extended some of the earlier senses of these words as well as added new connotations. He obviously draws upon the most common meaning of “adourne,” “to beautify,” which one finds in the works of Chaucer and other poets, though not with reference to poetry, for example, in the proem to Book III of the Troilus, “O blisfull light, of which the bemes clere Adournith al the thyrd hevyn faire.” Likewise, Lydgate has in mind the sense “to add lustre to, as a quality does” found in Usk's lines (TL, 18, 135) “This jewel, for vertue, wold adorne and make fayre al a realme.” But when applied to poetry, Lydgate's term “adourne” also carries the significance to “to order” or “to arrange,” a usage found in French to refer to the creation of God, for example, in the following lines from the Chronique des Ducs de Normandee (23769): “Apres vout Deus le munt former E les elemenz deviser; E quart il out tuit (1. tut) aorné Eus en (1. Eu sen) de sa parfundité (Altfranzösisches Worterbuch, I, 414). Finally, although Lydgate first introduces the term “enbelissche” into English as a critical term for poetry, his usage in part is an extension of a non-poetic sense of the word, “to increase the beauty of an object or person,” as in Chaucer's lines from the Legend of Good Women (1737), “Hire teres ful of honeste Embelished hire wifly chastite.” Significantly, however, we do not find the terms “adourne” and “enbelissche” used with reference to poetry before Lydgate in the examples cited in the MED, the OED, or in the French and Latin usages noted by Littré, the Altfranzösisches Worterbuch, and the Mittellateinisches Worterbuch (MED, I, 101; III, 74; OED, I, 125; III, 106; Littré, II, 1336; Altf. Wb., I, 414-15; III, 42-43; Mittellateinisches Worterbuch bis zum ausgehenden 13 Jahrundert [Munich: C. H. Beck, 1967], I, 242).

9. John Norton-Smith, ed., John Lydgate Poems (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 192. See, for example: Fall of Princes, I, 461; VIII, 81; VII, 1157; Troy Book, Prol., 31; 211, IV, 5202-04; V, 3400; “Exposition of the Pater Noster,” 1. 315; “An Invocation to Seynte Anne,” 1. 14; “A Mumming for the Mercers of London,” 1. 34; “Ballade at the Reverence of Our Lady,” 11. 12-14; “Ave Regina Celorum,” 1. 7; “As a Mydsomer Rose,” 1. 43; 1. 83. Note that in addition to the late Latin uses cited by Norton-Smith, the Mittellateinisches Worterbuch records the use of the stem aureus to refer to the eloquence of an orator, cf: Hugeb. Willib. 4, p. 101, 20. “Iohannes ille Os a—us;” Otto Frising Chron. 4, 19 p. 208, 8. “Chrisostomus tanquam—i oris propter eloquentiam vocatus” (Mittellat. Wb., I, 1247). There is no dictionary evidence of any application of the French term doré to poetic language before Lydgate's time (Littré, II, 1222; Altf. Wb., II, 2030-31) nor is there evidence of the appearance of the word aureat in English before Lydgate (MED, I, 529-30; OED, I, 565).

10. Lydgate, Fall of Princes, IX, 3441-47; see also: Prologue, 449-66.

11. Norton-Smith, John Lydgate Poems, p. 193.

12. John Lydgate, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part II, ed. by Henry Noble Mac-Cracken (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), #45, 11. 34-35.

13. See, for example: Life of St. Edmund, 1. 221; “The Legend of Seynt Margarete,” 1. 56; “Exposition of the Pater Noster,” 1. 315; “An Invocation to Seynte Anne,” 1. 14; “Ballade at the Reverence of Our Lady,” 11. 12-4; Troy Book, Prol., 31.

14. John Lydgate, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part I, ed. by Henry Noble Mac-Cracken (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, & Co., 1911), #49, 11. 12-14.

15. Lydgate, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part I, #23, 11. 1-14.

16. John Lydgate, The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part II, #63, 1. 82. This usage of the word “goldyn” (from AS “gold”) as a critical term in English for eloquent language or heightened style, it is important to note, is original with Lydgate. While Chaucer introduces “goldyn” ten or eleven times, he exploits the adjective only to describe something made of gold or gold in color without providing any hint for Lydgate's usage (Tatlock, A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 380). Although neither the OED nor the MED record this meaning (OED, IV, 280-81; MED, IV, 228-29), Lydgate uses “goldyn” more than six times to refer to good poetic style. See, for example: Life of Our Lady, II, 1633; “An Invocation to Seynte Anne,” 1. 12; Serpent of Division, Spurgeon I, 14; Troy Book, II, 4699.

17. Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, Prol, 1. 52; The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part II, #63, 1. 82. Lydgate may have gotten some hint for his uses of “sugrid” to refer to the sound of poetry from the occasional application of this term in Middle English to the pleasing sound of speech. Usk, for example, in the Testament of Love (1387-8) uses the word in this sense to refer to the comforting words of his guide: “she gan deliciously me comforte with sugred wordes” (I, IV, 34). Likewise, Littré records a similar usage in fifteenth-century French. “Tu m'as cy donne de mos emmiellés, de paroles farcis de sucre” (IV, 2068), Lydgate, however, appears to have been the first to introduce the term into English with specific reference to poetry (OED, X, 117). Likewise, no earlier uses in this sense are recorded in French (Littré, IV, 2068; Altf. Wb., V, 1110-1111).

18. Tatlock, A Concordance to the Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, p. 262.

19. See, for example: Troy Book, Prol., 219; 364; I, 1402; II, 171, 868, 2500, 4699, 4726, 5606; IV, 2792, 3541; Fall of Princes, VI, 3084, 3166, 3123-29; 4915, 5606; III, 2305, 3242, 4243; IV, 146, 1698, 2792, 6577; V, 2143; Fall of Princes, VI, 2956, 3084, 3126, 3152; Thebes, 11. 42, 215, 287. For a useful discussion of the changes in the connotations of the words “rethoric” and “elloquence” in the fifteenth century, see: Patricia Kean, Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry (London & Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), II, 218-26.

20. John Gower, The English Works of John Gower, ed. by G. C. Macaulay (1901, repr; London, New York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1957), Vol. II Book VIII, 11. 2942*-47*.

21. Thomas Usk, The Testament of Love in Chaucerian and Other Pieces, ed. by Walter W. Skeat (1897, repr; London: Oxford University Press, 1959), Book III, chap. iv, 11. 255-58.

22. Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Critisicm and Allusion, I, 21.

23. Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, I, 49.

24. Spurgeon, Five Hundred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion, I, 53.

25. Chaucer's anxiety about the truthfulness of poetry has a long tradition in medieval poetics. This view, for example, is implicit in Augustine's discussion of the ambiguity of words in De doctrina christiana and is prominent in Philosophy's criticism of poetry in Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae, in Alan de Lille's discussion of man's speech in Planctus Naturae, and in Langland's use of language in Piers Plowman. For an interesting survey of this tradition, see: Alice S. Miskimin, The Renaissance Chaucer (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1975), pp. 54-80. Among the many studies of Chaucer's views on this subject, the following are particularly useful: Robert O. Payne, The Key of Remembrance, A Study of Chaucer's Poetics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963): Kean, Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry; John A. Burrow, Ricardian Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971); Charles Muscatine, Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972); Dorothy Everett, “Some Reflections on Chaucer's ‘Art Poetical’” in Essays on Middle English Literature, ed. by Patricia Kean (1955, repr; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 149-74; Robert J. Allen, “A Recurring Motif in Chaucer's House of Fame,” JEGP, 55 (1956), 393-405; Sheila Delany, Chaucer's House of Fame: The Poetics of Skeptical Fideism (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1972). Lydgate, in contrast, appears to be influenced by the opposite tradition most eloquently articulated by John of Salisbury, Dante, and Boccaccio of poetry as ennobling, a certain source of truth. Although Derek Pearsall, Lydgate's most recent critic, finds him “little interested in poetic theory” (John Lydgate [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970], p. 233), a careful investigation of his numerous digressions on poetry reveals that Lydgate not only was familiar with the important medieval views of poetry, but that he repeatedly selected from among these views those which presented poetry as ennobling, a source of truth. Likewise, the terms which he coins to define the qualities of good poetry, suggest a view of poetry more coherent than the loosely formulated poetic which Pearsall assumes. Although few critics have studied Lydgate's poetics, the following provide a useful discussion of the traditions which underlie his high style: Elfriede Tilgner, Die Aureate Terms als Stilement bei Lydgate (Berlin: Paul Funk, 1936); John Cooper Mendenhall, Aureate Terms: A Study in the Literary Diction of the Fifteenth Century (Lancaster, Pa., 1919); John Allan Conley, Four Studies in Aureate Terms, unpublished dissertation (Stanford, 1956); Walter Schirmer, “Der Stil in Lydgates religiose Dichtung,” Kleine Schriften (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1950), pp. 40-56; Isabel Hyde, “Lydgate's ‘halff chongyd latyne’: an Illustration,” Modern Language Notes, 70 (1955), 252-54; J. A. Lauritis, “Second Thoughts on Style in Lydgate's Life of Our Lady,” in H. E. Petit, ed., Essays and Studies in Language and Literature (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964), pp. 12-23.

26. Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, pp. 44-45.

27. Burrow, Ricardian Poetry, p. 128.

28. Laurent de Premierfait, “Le Prologue de Translateur” in Lydgate's Fall of Princes, Part I, ed. by Henry Bergen (1924, repr; London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. liv.

29. Lydgate, Fall of Princes, I, 85-91.

30. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, The New Poetics in Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts, ed. by James J. Murphy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), p. 41. For a useful discussion of the attitudes toward amplification in Medieval Literature, see: Jane Baltzell, “Rhetorical ‘Amplification’ and ‘Abbreviation’ and the Structure of Medieval Narrative,” Pacific Coast Philology, 2 (1967), 32-9.

31. Geoffrey of Vinsauf, The New Poetics, pp. 43-44.

32. Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogia deorum gentilium libri (Bari; Guis. Laterza & Figli, 1951), Liber XIV, p. 699. (Translation by Charles G. Osgood, Boccaccio on Poetry [New York: Bobbs-Merill Co., 1956], p. 39.)

33. Genealogia, Liber XIV, chap. 7, p. 700.

34. Genealogia, Liber XIV, chap. 11, p. 713.

35. Genealogia, Liber, XIV, chap. 7, pp. 699-700.

36. Genealogia, Liber, XIV, chap. 7, p. 699.

37. It is only in the Fables and on one occasion in the Fall of Princes that Lydgate explicitly articulates the theory of poetry as a veil. (Prologue to Isopes Fabules in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, Part II, #24, 11. 22-28; FP, III, 3830-1).

38. See, for example: R. W. Ayres, “Medieval History, Moral Purpose and the Structure of Lydgate's Siege of Thebes,” PMLA, 73 (1958), 463-74.

39. Siege of Thebes, 11. 183-327; Fall of Princes, VI, 337-43, 3491-3500; Temple of Glas, 1. 1310.

40. Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, 11. 183-327.

41. Boccaccio, Genealogia, Liber V, chap. 30, p. 274. “Eum autem cythara movisse saxa in muros Thebanos construendos dicit Albericus, nil aliud fuisse, quam melliflua oratione suaisse ignaris, atque ridibus et duris hominibus, et sparsim degentibus, ut in unum convenirent, et civiliter viverent, …” Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, 11. 202-03.

42. Boccaccio, Genealogia, Liber V, chap. 30, p. 274. “Quod autem a Mercurio cythatam susceperit, est quod eloquentiam ab influentia Mercurii habuerit, …” Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, 1. 219.

43. Boccaccio, Genealogia, Liber V, chap. 30, p. 274.

44. Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, 11. 1236-1649.

45. Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, 11. 2998-3504.

46. Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, 11. 1874-2122.

47. Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, 11. 2794-2988.

48. Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, 11. 3726-3821.

49. Lydgate, Fall of Princes, VI, 3277-3500.