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John Lydgate's Fall of Princes: Narrative Tragedy in its Literary and Political Contexts

Online ISBN:
9780191705939
Print ISBN:
9780199275014
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

John Lydgate's Fall of Princes: Narrative Tragedy in its Literary and Political Contexts

Nigel Mortimer
Nigel Mortimer
Assistant Head and Head of English, Merchiston Castle School, Edinburgh
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Published online:
1 January 2010
Published in print:
16 June 2005
Online ISBN:
9780191705939
Print ISBN:
9780199275014
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

The Fall of Princes by the Benedictine writer John Lydgate (c.1370-1450) is a translation of Giovanni Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrium (1355-60) via an intermediary French prose version by Laurent de Premierfait, the Des Cas des nobles hommes et femmes (1409). The Fall, probably the longest poem in the language, is arguably Lydgate's masterwork, yet until now it has received only cursory critical attention. This book offers the first extended discussion of the poem. The Fall accumulates accounts of nearly 500 figures from mythology and history who have fallen from positions of fame and power into adversity. In presenting these tragedies Lydgate probes the causes of the reversal of their fortunes. How far can a blind or capricious Lady Fortune be blamed? How far are the protagonists themselves responsible for their undoing? In drawing its conclusions about the downfalls of powerful men and women, Lydgate's poem operates within the popular medieval genre of ‘advice to princes’ literature. This book locates Lydgate's work within its context, exploring his relationship with the uneasy Lancastrian dynasty during the minority of Henry VI and his response to contemporary conflicts between ecclesiastical and secular authority. In particular, it closely analyses Lydgate's manipulations of his French source text, allowing readers to see in detail for the first time what it is that the poem is setting out to achieve, and identifies the readership of the Fall in the 15th- and 16th-centuries, discussing the poem's influence on the evolution of narrative tragedy in English.

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