Lydgate’s Danse Macabre and the Trauma of the Hundred Years War

Abstract

This essay argues that the foundational traumatic lacuna behind John Lydgate's Danse Macabre is the social agon between those who wage the Hundred Years War and those who fight in it. Drawing from the insights of trauma theory to discuss the poem's form, the essay uncovers Lydgate's persistent concern with the damage caused by the war and the concomitant political unrest it causes. It argues further that Lydgate theorized this agon using the emergent genre of tragedy, which is beginning to be practiced anew in late-medieval England. Tragic discourse is riven by concerns about the efficacy of human action and the radical contingency of fortune, creating a crisis of agency that can be used as a form of political critique. Ultimately, Lydgate blends the genre of tragedy with the mirror for princes and estates satire genres to argue that, while everyone must eventually dance with death, during war some estates lead the dance.

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