Book contents
5 - Promotion and Self-Promotion
from PART II - Lydgatean Fame
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2013
Summary
One of Lydgate's most noteworthy digressions in the Fall of Princes is on the subject of writing. In the prologue to book IV, Lydgate reflects on the power of writing to bring all ‘thynges passid, notable in substaunce, […] to newe remembrance’ (IV.41–2):
Lawe hadde perisshed, nadde be writyng;
Our feith appalled, ner vertu of scripture;
For al religioun and ordre of good lyuyng
Takth ther exaumple be doctryn of lettrure.
For writyng causeth, with helpe of portraiture,
That thynges dirked, of old that wer begonne,
To be remembred with this celestial sonne.
God sette writyng & lettres in sentence,
Ageyn the dulnesse of our infirmyte,
This world tenlumyne be crafft of elloquence;
Canoun, cyuile, philosophie – these thre
Confermed fraunchises of many strong cite,
Couenauntis asselid, trouthis of old assured,
Nadde writyng been, myht nat haue endurid.
(IV.22–35)
Of particular note here is Lydgate's emphasis on remembrance, which at times seems almost an extended meditation on the reference to ‘olde bokes’ as ‘of remembraunce the keye’ in the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. Like the dreamer-poet's praise of books, Lydgate's tribute to writing hails it as the preserver of human memory and the tool by which things otherwise absent or past are borne in mind.
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- John Lydgate and the Poetics of Fame , pp. 105 - 128Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012