Literature and the English court in the late Middle Ages

This study is an exercise in literary history, covering the period from Chaucer to Skelton. It attempts to establish the nature and the extent of court patronage in the late middle ages, and to evaluate the importance of such patronage both on the life and work of individual authors, and on the literary climate of the period as a whole. In general, it takes issue with the widely-accepted view that the moving force behind late medieval English literature was of predominantly bourgeois origin. The first half of the study attempts to define the social matrix within which the court literature of the period is to be set. It deals with the asocial life of the king’s court (the familia regis) in general, and with the activities of the inner circle of the court (the camera regia) in particular; there is also a discussion of the nature of courtly education and of the aristocracy's attitudes towards books. Throughout, particular emphasis is placed on household departments and officials likely to be involved with any kind of literary activity, and where English evidence is thin, reference is often made to Continental practices. In the second half, thebe is a discussion of the kinds of work written for courtly audiences and the extent to which current fashions dictated the authors' choice of subject and treatment. The literature of polite diversion (the tradition of so-called "Chaucerian" verse) is claimed to represent an essentially amateur phenomenon providing writers with far less chance of official encouragement and remuneration than the production of didactic and propagandist works. The demand of a newly literate court audience for books dealing with every aspect of the aristocratic life led to the active encouragement of translators and compilers, whilst the ostentatious rivalry between courts produced a need for literary propaganda and resulted in the promotion of apologists and eulogizers. The emergence of the idea of the profession of letters, it is claimed, owes much to these developments. The study concludes with an account of the way authors viewed their own social role, and suggests that the Fifteenth Century witnessed a growing confidence in the value, and dignity of their vocation.