Now –
Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in England
John
Lydgate: Lydgate was a friend of Chaucer, upon
whom he models much of his poetry. But as a poet he is no Chaucer. Throughout
the fifteenth century the authority of Chaucer was paramount, and Lydgate pays tribute
to him on numerous occasions, always in the same tone, as “The noble poete of
Breteyne, My mayster Chaucer.” John Lydgate has the distinction of being the most
voluminous poet of the 14th century and even of all the Middle Ages
in England - about 140,000 lines of verse. His longest poems are The Storie of Thebes and Troye Book.
[Classical times
and the Middle Ages took a strange interest in the unnatural story of Oedipus
and his marriage to his own mother. When his sons quarreled over the right to
rule Thebes and the party of Polynices laid siege to the city, the opportunity
existed for an epic narrative, comparable to that which described the siege of
Troy. The Virgilian epic, the Thebaid,
by Statius, a Roman poet of the Silver Age, gave western Europe such a
treatment. Either the Thebaid or an
epitome of it was made into a French poem in the twelfth century called the
Roman de Thebes, and this in turn became the basis of other romances. The only
English poem on the subject was Lydgate’s Siege
of Thebes].
Stephen Hawes, while he is too
much an echo of the past, is also an allegorist, and faintly heralds Spenser.
Hawkes, who acknowledges as his masters the trinity - Gower, Chaucer and
Lydgate – and especially Lydgate, is like a ghost from the past. His chief work
is The Pastime of Pleasure.
Alexander Barclay is the
first of his nation to have come across a subject of German origin. His Ship of
Fools is a translation made in 1509 from the Strasbourg poet Sebastian Brant. The
figures in the poem are not the usual wooden creatures representing the common
vices and virtues, but they are sharply satirical portraits of the various
kinds of foolish men. Sometimes Barclay adds personal touches to make the
general satire more telling. Certayne Eclogues, another of Barclay's
works, is the earliest English collection of pastorals. It contains, among much
grumbling over the times, quite attractive pictures of the country life of the
day.
John
Skelton - Skelton's peculiar metre, came to be
called 'Skeltonics.' He also published works like A Lytell Geste of Robin Hood knowing the
popular ballad would please a less refined audience. In The Book of Colin Clout, Colin Clout is a peasant, another Piers
Plowman, who chastises the vices of the clergy. Book of Philip Sparrow, an elegy on the death of a sparrow who
belonged to fair Jane Scroupe, is filled with feeling, elegance and grace.
Sir Richard Ros - little is known about him, except his parentage, and does
not have much to recommend him but a certain metrical skill. The Flower and the Leaf is more than a tableau gracefully described, in
which one company of knights and ladies representing the Flower gets drenched
in a shower and is hospitably given shelter by another company representing the
Leaf. The Assembly of Ladies owes
something to Lydgate’s Temple of Glass. In tone and phrasing the most Chaucerian
of all these apocryphal pieces is a little poem of 290 lines called The Cuckoo and the Nightingale. In the
manuscripts it is just as fittingly called The
Book of Cupid, God of Love, for it explains that the God of Love has great
power over folk, even over the poet, who is “old and unlusty.” The body of the
poem is a dispute between the two birds over the joys and sorrows of love,
recalling at times in setting and circumstances the altercation in the Owl and the Nightingale.
Chaucer’s Imitators and Disciples in Scotland
King James I of Scotland: In
many ways the Scottish Chaucerians were more successful in their efforts than
their English contemporaries. In 1406, at the age of eleven, the young King
James I of Scotland was captured by the English and for eighteen years was a
prisoner in England. He does not seem to have been badly treated and had plenty
of leisure in which to acquire the intimate knowledge of Chaucer’s poetry which
he shows.
The story of his capture and imprisonment, his
falling in love at first sight when, like Palamon in the Knight’s Tale, he
caught a glimpse of a surpassingly beautiful lady in the garden below his
prison window, and the dream in which he is carried aloft, like Chaucer in the Hous
of Fame, to the palace of Venus and later is advised by Minerva.
—such incidents
form the subject of The Kingis Quair
(“King’s Book”). Written apparently just before his release, in a language the
Chaucerian character of which has been somewhat obscured by Scottish copyists,
it makes a very pleasing little romantic story out of facts which are in part
at least autobiographical. As its 197 stanzas are those of Chaucer’s Troilus
the form has generally been known since as “rime royal.”
Robert Henryson - Later in the
century another Scottish poet, Robert Henryson, schoolmaster of Dunfermline,
caught some of the spirit of Chaucer in his Fables, where he told such stories
as “The Cock and the Fox” and “The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse,” adding to
each, however, a rather un-Chaucerian “moral.” He turned the tale of Orpheus
and Eurydice into rime royal and wrote a number of shorter moralizing pieces.
His ballad of Robene and Makyne has been admired as an early pastoral and
considered superior to the Nut Brown Maid, a judgment with which many will
agree. But the poem which attaches itself most closely to Chaucer is The
Testament of Cresseid. In this piece Cresseid, deserted by Diomede, curses the
gods and is punished by leprosy. Ashamed to be seen by her friends, she goes to
the spittel-house to live among the lepers. The crowning torture which she
endures is to be given alms, as one of the beggars, by Troilus, whom Henryson
represents as still living and who happens to pass by in a company of knights.
William
Dunbar - is
generally considered to be the chief of the Scottish Chaucerian poets. Returning
to Scotland, he became attached to the household of James IV, and in course of
time was appointed official Rhymer. Dunbar wrote freely, often on subjects of
passing interest; and though his work runs mainly on Chaucerian lines it has an
energy and pictorial quality that are quite individual. Of the more than ninety
poems associated with his name the most important are the Goldyn Targe, of the common allegorical-rhetorical type; The
Thrissil and the Rois, celebrating the marriage of James IV and the English
Margaret (1503); the Dance of the Sevin
Deidlie Synnis, with its strong macabre effects and its masterly grip of metre;
the Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, a revival of the ancient
alliterative measure, and outrageously frank in expression; and The Lament for the Makaris, in short
stanzas with the refrain Timor Mortis conturbat me, quite striking in its
effect.
John Barbour is yet another
important Scottish poet to claim our attention. He was born in Aberdeenshire,
and studied both at Oxford and Paris. His great work is his Bruce (1375), a lengthy poem of twenty
books and thirteen thousand lines. The work is really a history of Scotland's
struggle for freedom from the year 1286 till the death of Bruce and the burial
of his heart (1332). The heroic theme is the rise of Bruce, and the central
incident of the poem is the battle of Bannockburn. The poem, often rudely but pithily
expressed, contains much absurd legend and a good deal of inaccuracy, but it is
no mean beginning to the long series of Scottish heroic poems.
Gawin
Douglas - The Palace of Honour, is of elaborate and careful
workmanship, and typical of the fifteenth-century manner; King Hart, a laboriously allegorical treatment of life, the Hart
being the heart of life, which is attended by the five senses and other
personifications of abstractions; Conscience, a short poem, a mere quibble on
the word 'conscience,' of no great poetical merit; and the Aeneid, his most considerable effort, a careful translation of
Virgil, with some incongruous touches, but done with competence and some
poetical ability. It is the earliest of its kind, and so is worthy of some
consideration.
Sir
David Lyndsay - Most of
Lyndsay's literary work, was written during the period of prosperity at court. He
differs from his contemporary Gavin Douglas, who abandoned literature to become
a politician. Lyndsay’s famous works are -
The Dreme, The Testament and Complaynt
of the Papyngo, and Ane Pleasant
Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis.
PROSE-WRITERS
Reginald
Pecock may
have been born in Wales, and perhaps in 1390. He was educated at Oxford, and
took orders, when he became prominent through his attacks upon the Lollards. In
his arguments he went so far that he was convicted of heresy (1457), forced to
make a public recantation, and had to resign his bishopric of Chichester. He died
in obscurity about 1460. His chief work was The
Repressor of Over-much Blaming of the Faith.
The first book printed in England was The Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophers
(1477). The main part of the volume was the work of Lord Rivers, but Caxton, as
was his habit, revised it for the press. It would be difficult to overestimate
the debt of English literature to Caxton. He printed almost every English work
of real quality known in his day, including Chaucer and Malory. In addition, he
made and printed twenty-four translations from French, Dutch, and Latin texts,
of which the most remarkable were the two earliest, the Recuyell of the Histories of Troye (1471) and the Game and Playe of the Chesse (1475).
John
Fisher - opposed
Henry VIII's desire to be acknowledged as the head of the English Church, and
was imprisoned in the Tower. While there he was made a cardinal by the Pope;
and he was beheaded by the orders of Henry.
Hugh
Latimer - In
the early 1530s Hugh Latimer, became the most celebrated preacher of reform in
England, began a vigorous sermon campaign against ‘pickpurse purgatory’, ‘this
monster purgatory’ and its affiliated religious practices. Latimer’s racy
colloquialisms and fiery zeal brought to a populace selectively acquainted with
the Gospels a native analogue of Jesus’ chastisement of the hypocrisy of the
Pharisees by calling them ‘whited sepulchres’ or his tongue-lashing and
expelling of the money-changers in theTemple at Jerusalem. Latimer’s
iconoclastic challenge provoked at least as much public outcry as public
interest, eliciting the charge that he was spreading ‘new learning’ – that is,
heresy.18 Nonetheless, he was the Lenten preacher at court in 1534, and was
appointed Bishop of Worcester in 1535. He resisted some of the reforms of
Henry, was imprisoned in the Tower, and was released on the death of the King. At
the accession of Mary he was once again thrown into jail and was burnt at
Oxford.
Blind
Harry is also
known as Harry or Henry the Minstrel. He is famous for his The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, a lengthy poem recounting
the life of William Wallace, the Scottish independence leader, written 172
years after Wallace's death.
Notes -
1. Try to find out the other special characteristic features that
you find in the Disciples of Chaucer both in England and in Scotland.
2. We can find in Early Middle English the growth of
a local tradition of songs and ballads. The song lyric might celebrate the
changing of the seasons, like ‘Lenten is come with love to town’ (from Spring),
The ballad traditionally told a story, based on a character (like Robin Hood,
unfortunate Lord Randal, or the Wife of Usher’s Well), in memorable rhythmic
verses. The ending was generally unhappy, in contrast with the simple, positive
assertions of the song lyrics. The ballad Lord Randal is a question/answer
dialogue, ending in his death.
3. A little sheaf
of poems deserves mention. La Belle Dame
sans Mercy is a translation in 856 lines from Alain Chartier.
4. Makar, also
spelled Maker (Scottish: “maker,” or “poet”), plural Makaris, or Makeris, also
called Scottish Chaucerians, any of the Scottish courtly poets who flourished
from about 1425 to 1550. Because Geoffrey Chaucer was their acknowledged master
and they often employed his verse forms and themes, the makaris are usually
called “Scottish Chaucerians”.
Source(s)
English Literature by Edward
Albert [Revised by J. A. Stone]
History of English Literature,
by Legouis and Cazamian
The Routledge History of Literature in English: Britain
and Ireland, by Ronald Carter and John McRae
A Literary History of England.
II Edition. Edited by Albert C. Baugh. Volume I
The Britannica Encyclopedia
Image Source: medievalknight.clapalong.com
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