John Lydgate and the Making of Public Culture [Paperback]

Maura Nolan offers a major re-interpretation of Lydgate's work and of literary culture in the fifteenth century.John Lydgate articulated in his poetry, prose and translations many of the most serious political questions of his day. Lydgate wrote commissions for the court, the aristocracy, and the guilds. Maura Nolan offers a major re-interpretation of Lydgate's work and of his central role in the developing literary culture of the fifteenth century. Moreover, she provides a wholly new perspective on Lydgate's relationship to Chaucer, as he followed Chaucerian traditions while creating innovative new ways of addressing the public.John Lydgate articulated in his poetry, prose and translations many of the most serious political questions of his day. Lydgate wrote commissions for the court, the aristocracy, and the guilds. Maura Nolan offers a major re-interpretation of Lydgate's work and of his central role in the developing literary culture of the fifteenth century. Moreover, she provides a wholly new perspective on Lydgate's relationship to Chaucer, as he followed Chaucerian traditions while creating innovative new ways of addressing the public.During the fifteenth century John Lydgate was the most famous poet in England, filling commissions for the court, the aristocracy, and the guilds. He wrote for an elite London readership that was historically very small, but that saw itself as dominating the cultural life of the nation. Thus the new literary forms and modes developed by Lydgate and his contemporaries helped shape the development of English public culture in the fifteenth century. Maura Nolan presents a major re-interpretation of Lydgate's work and of his central role in the developing literary culture of his time.Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Tragic history: Lydgate's Serpent of Division; 2. Social forms, literary contents: Lydgate's mummings; 3. Tragedy and comedy: Lydgate's disguisings and public poetry; 4. Spectacular culture: the Roman triumph; Bibliol#p