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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: LUP-MAL |
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LYDGATE, JOHN (c. 1370c. 1451) , English poet, was born at the village
Benedictine
drawn
dates
birth
Lydgate had a consuming passion for literature, and it was probably that he might indulge this taste more fully that in 1434 he retired from the priorate of Hatfield Broadoak (or Hatfield Regis), to,which he had been appointed in June 1423. After 1390but whilst he was still a young
Lydgate is a most voluminous writer. The Falls of Princes alone comprises 7000 stanzas; and his authentic compositions reach the enormous total of 150,000 lines. Cursed with such immoderate fluency Lydgate could not sustain himself at the highest level of artistic excellence; and, though imbued with a sense of the essentials of poetry, and eager to prove himself in its various manifestations, he stinted himself of the self-discipline necessary to perfection of form. As the result the bulk of his composition is wholly or comparatively rough-hewn. That he was capable of better work
Hawes ). In these he reveals himself as a not unworthy successor of Chaucer, and the pity of it is that he should have squandered his powers in a futile attempt to create an entire literature. For a couple of centuries Lydgate's reputation equalled, if it did not surpass, that of his master. This was in a sense only natural, since he was the real founder of the school of which Stephen Hawes was a distinguished ornament, and which " held the field " in English letters during the long and dreary interval between Chaucer and Spenser. One of the most obvious defects of this school is excessive attachment to polysyIlabic terms. Lydgate is not quite so great a sinner in this respect as are some of his successors, but his tendency cannot be mistaken, and John Metham is amply justified in his censureEke John Lydgate, sometime monk of Bury, His books indited with terms of rhetoric And half-changed Latin, with conceits of poetry. Pedantry was an inevitable effect of the early Renaissance. French literature passed through the same phase, from which indeed it was later in emerging; and the ultimate consequence was the enrichment of both languages. It must be conceded as no small merit in Lydgate that, in an age of experiment he should have succeeded so often in hitting the right word. Thomas Warton remarks on his lucidity. Since his writings are read more easily than Chaucer's, the inference is plainthat he was more effectual as a maker of our present English. In spite of that, Lydgate is characteristically medievalmedieval in his prolixity, his platitude, his want of judgment and his want of taste; medieval also in his pessimism, his Mariolatry and his horror of death. These attributes jarred on the sensitive Ritson, who racked his brains for contumelious epithets such as " stupid and disgusting," " cart-loads of rubbish," &c.; and during the greater part of the 18th and loth centuries Lydgate's reputation was at its lowest ebb. Recent
Lydgate's most doughty and learned apologist is Dr Schick, whose preface to the Temple of Glass embodies practically all that is known or conjectured concerning this author, including the chronological order of his works. With the exception of the Damage and Destruction in Realmsan account of Julius Caesar, his wars and his deaththey are all in verse and extremely multifariousnarrative, devotional hagiological, philosophical and scientific, allegorical and moral, historical, satirical and occasional. The Troy-book, under-taken at the command of Henry V., then prince of Wales, dates
work
which_ enanied him to turn from elaborate epics to quite popular poems like the Mumming at Hertford, A Ditty of Women's Horns and London Lick penny. The humour of this last is especially bright and effective, but, unluckily for the author, the piece is believed to have been retouched by some other hand. The longer efforts partake of the nature of translations from sundry medieval compilations like those of Guido di Colonna and Boccaccio, which are in Latin.See publications of the Early English Text Society, especially the Temple of Glass, edited by Dr Schick; Koeppel's Lydgate's Story of Thebes, eine Quellenuntersuchung (Munich, 1884), and the same scholar's Laurents de Premierfait and John Lydgates Bearbeitungen von Boccaccios De Casibus Illustrium Virorum (Munich, 1885); Warton's History of English Poetry; Ritson's Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica; Furnivall's Political Poems (E. E. T. S.) ; and Sidney Lee's article in the Dict. Nat. Biog. (F. J. S.) End of Article: LYDGATE, JOHN (c. 1370c. 1451) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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