Read our interview with Mary C. Flannery about her new book
Monastic Vernacularities – Syon Abbey Society session at the International Congress on Medieval Studies
September 17, 2012 By
Video of three papers given at the International Congress on Medieval Studies
The Virtues of Balm in the Late Medieval Period
September 8, 2012 By
The nature of balsam and its qualities, especially the ability to act as an extraordinarily effective preservative, demands further inquiry. Is this Lydgate’s invention, or instead a reflection of late medieval ideas about a particular natural substance?
Writers in religious orders and their lay patrons in late medieval England
February 6, 2012 By
Critics have long recognized that the religious orders played an important part in the production of vernacular devotional literature in late medieval England. The orders were well suited to this task. Reading and writing were an important part of the life of those who lived under a rule.
Text and context: author and audience in John Lydgate’s Life of St Edmund
January 4, 2012 By
Ostensibly John Lydgate’s verse Life of St Edmund is a characteristic, if lengthy, example of late-medieval hagiography. The Life was commissioned by Abbot Curteys of Bury St Edmunds, where Lydgate was a monk, to mark King Henry VI’s lengthy sojourn at the abbey between Christmas 1433 until Easter 1434.
Trojan Wars: Genre and the Politics of Authorship in Late Medieval and Early Modern England
January 1, 2012 By
In the Middle Ages, Troy was not ancient history. As a living myth that continued to evolve along with the English nation, Troy functioned as a site for examining England’s cultural and political questions.
A Norfolk gentlewoman and Lydgatian patronage: Lady Sibylle Boys and her cultural environment
August 30, 2011 By
A Norfolk gentlewoman and Lydgatian patronage: Lady Sibylle Boys and her cultural environment Bale, A. Medium Aevum, 78(2), (2009) Abstract The poetry of John Lydgate (c.1370–1449/50) is often discussed in terms of the poet’s illustrious and powerful patrons: literary commissions for royal figures such as Henry V (Troy Book), Henry VI (numerous mummings and pageant poems), […]
‘Among other, I, that am falle in age’: Lydgate, Plural Singularity and Fifteenth-Century Testaments
January 13, 2011 By
‘Among other, I, that am falle in age’: Lydgate, Plural Singularity and Fifteenth-Century Testaments Block, Sam Marginalia, Vol. 10 Cambridge Yearbook (2008-2009) Abstract In 1447, William Stevenes of Somerset wrote a will making ten bequests to ‘the fabric’ of religious buildings, and sixteen to clergy. Such bequests are common in fifteenth-century wills. Eber Carle Perrow suggests this […]
Truth, Translation, and the Troy Book Women
December 18, 2010 By
Truth, Translation, and the Troy Book Women Shutters, Lynn Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 32(1) (2001) Abstract When one thinks of the great writers of Middle English verse, John Lydgate is not likely to come to mind. Lydgate’s vast corpus of writing has often been relegated to a somewhat embarrassing footnote in […]
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