John Lydgate's Troy Book and the Ideology of Prudence

Abstract

John Lydgate's Troy Book presents itself as a faithful translation of an objective historical record, but it has long been acknowledged that the classical world it represents is in many ways also representative of contemporary English society. While the first book-length treatments of Lydgate focused primarily on the question of his "humanism," more recent examinations have productively explored his complex engagement with what might be called Lancastrian ideology, his role as sometime spokesman for a dynasty whose claim to the throne was questionable and whose court was, as Paul Strohm suggests, more of a "fitful Lancastrian aspiration, embracing such divergent energies as John of Gaunt's pre-dynastic manoeuvrings; Henry IV's precarious and rebellion-ridden early years . . . Henry V's extended absences . . . and all the uncertainties of Henry VI's premature and troubled reign." 1 Opinion on the nature of Lydgate's commitment to this unstable regime, as well as that of other fifteenth-century writers, has evolved considerably in recent years. Those who comment at length on Lydgate's politics have generally seen him as a propagandist who consistently affirms the legitimacy of Lancastrian rule—in Derek Pearsall's words, "the first poet writing in English . . . to fashion his poems as instruments of royal policy." 2 More recently, critics have offered qualifications to this position, attributing to Lydgate oblique criticisms of Lancastrian policies, or stressing the inconsistencies of his Lancastrian propaganda: the "Lancastrian text," Strohm argues, "is . . . always striving but never succeeding in reconciling its placid surface with its external entanglements and its internal contradictions." 3

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