(ca. 1370-1450) poet
Born in Lidgate in Suffolk, John Lydgate began his education at the abbey of Bury Saint Edmunds and later became a priest. After attending Gloucester College, Oxford, he returned to Bury Saint Edmunds and taught rhetoric to sons of noble families. Upon his return home, he began writing prolifically.
Lydgate’s works are numerous and wide-ranging, and despite his varied style, he was criticized repeatedly for being too ornate and wordy. Included among his works, which exhibit both depth and breadth, are didactic poems, religious prayers, lyrics, fables, satires, and mummings, poems recited alongside performers who gesture and move but who do not speak.
Two of his most important works are The Siege of Thebes (1420-22) and The Fall of Princes (1431-38). The Siege of Thebes is a verse translation of an anonymous Old French poem titled Roman de Thebes (ca. 1150). In Lydgate’s version, the author-narrator imagines himself a fellow pilgrim accompanying those featured in chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Offering to tell a tale to help pass the time on the return trip to London, the author-narrator tells a story about the siege of Thebes. This story depicts events leading up to the time when the story told by Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” begins. The narrative frame, as well as the many instances in the text where Lydgate mimics Chaucer’s language, attests to Lydgate’s well-known admiration of Chaucer.
Despite the readability of The Siege of Thebes, The Fall of Princes was Lydgate’s most popular work during his lifetime. It is a verse translation, with creative additions by Lydgate, of a French version of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. As his longest work, The Fall of Princes offers innumerable biblical and classical stories detailing the rise and fall, and the ambitions and disastrous grave mistakes of aspiring individuals. The work’s ultimate purpose is to show that sin results from immoral action.
During the 15th through the 17th centuries, Lydgate was considered equal to Chaucer and gower as a poet of estimable skill. In addition, the sheer volume of his work helped develop the East Midland dialect as part of the Modern English language.
Works by John Lydgate
Bergen, Henry, ed. Lydgate’s Fall of Princes. London: Boydell and Brewer, 1967. Erdmann, Axel. Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes I. London: Boydell and Brewer, 1996.
Works about John Lydgate
Ebin, Lois A. John Lydgate. Boston: Twayne, 1985.
Schirmer, Walter F. John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the XVth Century. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1979.
