Chapter 8

Consolidating literary traditions

Singing of princes

Professional poets depended for their livelihood on their patrons and their skill. In all medieval literary contexts thus far, we have seen those who worked for the local nobility, or sometimes the king: the Anglo-Saxon scop, the Old Norse skald, the Welsh Gogynfeirdd (early poets), the Irish file, and the later Scottish makar. For the Celts, their poetic tradition was bardic; their practitioners, then as now, were bards. Across these earlier cultures, the teller of tales was important to the way society functioned and celebrated itself. The Anglo-Saxon poem Deor, written down in about 970, is a self-advertisement for its own poet and tells us a little about the status of the self-employed professional literary figure. The speaker, Deor, reveals that he was well employed until recently, with a loyal lord and rewards for his skill when he would sing with the harp, praising his patron. Now his job and his land have been given to a ‘leoðcræftig monn’ (man skilled in poetic craft), called Heorrenda: poetry was a competitive business.

In Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon professional poet plies his trade in the king’s hall where all the warriors gather for the feast, together with some of the noblewomen. The poet regales the assembled crowd with legends of heroes, like Sigemund the dragonslayer, and great wars or national events; he has a stock of learning and poetic formula at his disposal and he works deftly to create an engaging and pertinent verse narrative from his store of knowledge. Much of what the scop sings brings history into the present, and in so doing, creates a larger heroic context for Beowulf’s exploits, or those of other warriors and kings.

Praise-poetry existed in all cultures, sung at the courts of kings and nobles to entertain, encourage, and gain renown and reward for the poet. The Old Norse skalds (see Box 9) of the Danish King Cnut’s court in England (1016–35) wrote remarkable praise-poetry in honour of Cnut as the defeater of the English line of kings. Although this poetry was not written down until much later, there is no doubt of its creation being contemporary with Cnut himself. One of these skalds, Óttarr svarti, writes about the dynastic takeover that Cnut effected in 1016 when he took over the kingdom from Edmund Ironside, grandson of Edgar the Peaceable:

Herskjöld bart ok helduð	You carried the warshield
hilmir, ríkr af slíku;	prince, and prevailed;
hykkat, þengill, þekkðust	I do not think, lord, you
þik kyrrsetu mikla.	cared much for sitting in peace.
AEtt drap, Jóta dróttinn,	Lord of the Jótar [Cnut], struck the kin
Játgeirs í för þeiri;	of Edgar on that expedition;
þveit rakt—þrár est heitinn—	ruler’s son [Cnut], you dealt them
þeim, stillis konr, illan.	a harsh blow; you are called defiant.

In complex poetry, alliterating, condensed, and rhetorically powerful, Cnut’s reputation as the greatest of warriors is consolidated through the piling up of kingly heroic references.

Analogous to skaldic poets in service to kings and their courts is the work of the early Welsh poets of perhaps the 6th century: Taliesin who wrote in praise of Urien, king of Rheged; and Aneirin, the author of Y Gododdin. These early exponents of poetic art influenced the metre and method of the creations of later poets, the 12th-century beirdd y twysogion (‘bards of the princes’). Among these was Cynddelw Brydydd Mawr (‘the great poet’, 1155–1200), court poet of Prince Madog ap Maredudd; and Gwalchmai ap Meilyr (1130–80), who wrote in praise of the king of Gwynedd, Owain. Some of these poets wielded considerable power and became significant members of the household.

Box 9 Old Norse literature

Like all medieval vernacular literary traditions, Old Norse literature existed in oral form well before it was recorded in writing. It has a complicated history, made more complex by the geographical and cultural range of Old Norse, which includes not just Britain and Ireland, but also all the Scandinavian countries, including Iceland and Greenland. Within Anglo-Saxon England, the similarity of Old Norse and Old English languages means that the influence of Old Norse after the 9th century is difficult to detect. Certainly, English writings of the 10th century and later contain Old Norse loanwords and some stylistic similarities have been noted. Later texts still, such as the 12th-century verse sermon cycle the Ormulum, and the 14th-century romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, are quite indebted to Scandinavian influences.

The first Anglo-Scandinavian king of England, Cnut, who reigned from 1016 to 1035, encouraged the production of Old Norse verse by highly specialized poets called skalds. Similarly, the earls and bishops of the Scottish Isles, such as Orkney, patronized and composed courtly poetry in the 12th and 13th centuries, which was captured in writing by the later medieval authors of Icelandic sagas and poetry. Indeed, the centuries-old settlement in the British Isles of many Scandinavians had an immeasurably important impact on English; many everyday words like ‘skin’, ‘they’, ‘sister’, ‘law’, and ‘husband’ are Old Norse in origin.

Those who wrote the most highly elevated poetry—like the skalds and the Irish filidh—might have close relationships with their patrons. And the level of sophisticated poetry that they wrote was demanding not just of the poet, but also of his audience. The expectation was clearly that those listening were able to understanding elusive references, dense metaphor, and clever collocation. Clearly, for this work, the most proficient and highest class of poets was patronized by great and, sometimes, royal households who would provide reward and a public space for the poets to perform their work.

The practice of royalty and nobles maintaining their own poet continued in Wales, Ireland, England, and Scotland throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. In Wales, after the Conquest of 1282 and the death of the last prince, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, the patronage of poetry moved to the houses of the gentry, who (together with members of the clergy) employed the cywyddwyr (later medieval poets, who flourished from about 1300 into the 16th century) to compose for them. Great Welsh poets in the later Middle Ages include not only Dafydd ap Gwilym, but also Iolo Goch, Guto’r Glyn, Tudur Aled, and Lewys Glyn Cothi. These poets wrote on a host of subjects, including inspirational poems about the bravery of contemporary Welshmen in battles. Iolo Goch’s panegyric Syr Hywel y Fwyall (‘Sir Hywel of the Axe’) focuses on Sir Hywel ap Gruffudd’s defence of Criccieth Castle when ‘he put a bridle on the French king’s head’:

Annwyl fydd gan ŵyl einiort,

He’ll be loved by the gentle romancer,

aml ei feirdd, a mawl i’w fort.

his poets are many, his table is praised.

This reference to Hywel as being a worthy subject for the romancer (a writer of romance narrative), and a patron of many poets, is a reminder, too, that just as the best writers had the most generous patrons, so those patrons gathered together materials from a variety of sources into books that they commissioned for their household. There is no doubt that having the best poets writing for them and having the most accomplished literary figures among their households gave additional cultural and social status to the elite, and glorified their own learning and their achievements.

‘Men take of it heed’

In the later 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer was associated with the court of Richard II. As we saw, Chaucer wrote The Book of the Duchess for John of Gaunt; and the Legend of Good Women was written for Richard II’s wife, Anne of Bohemia. Chaucer’s contemporary, a fellow courtly writer and Privy Seal clerk, Thomas Hoccleve (1367–1426), produced his very popular work the Regiment of Princes in about 1410 for the future King Henry V. This poem instructs a prince, though a long series of examples, how to rule justly and legitimately. In directly addressing Henry V in the Regiment, Hoccleve reminds his royal patron:

In al my book yee schul nat see ne fynde

Throughout my book you shall not see or find

That I youre deedes lakke or hem despreise.

That I lessen your deeds or fail to praise them.

Hoccleve had other patrons, too, including Humphrey of Gloucester, youngest son of Henry IV, and some of these royal figures were patrons of numerous writers, especially writers whose works were written in English. There was a wide audience for vernacular writings, and English writers could thus assist in getting particular messages—intellectual or political—across.

Prior to his accession to the throne, Henry V commissioned the prolific poet and monk of Bury St Edmunds John Lydgate (c.1370–1451) to write Troy Book. This poem of over 30,000 lines, completed in eight years by 1420, tells a moralizing story of the Trojan wars, which builds on previous versions of the well-established theme. It also seeks to build a new narrative of rightful lineage for the Lancastrian line (Henry IV had usurped Richard II). Lydgate wrote hundreds of other texts, too, in a wide variety of genres and he, like Hoccleve, was fully aware of the debt owed to Chaucer in providing a firm setting for English as a major literary medium for public poetry. A portrait of Chaucer is included in one of the early manuscripts of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes, which lends authority to Hoccleve’s work.

Both Hoccleve and Lydgate praised Chaucer explicitly in their own works, demonstrating not only his recognized authority and brilliance, but also claiming validation as his successors. Indeed, Hoccleve claimed that Chaucer tried to teach him how to write poetry. Lydgate, on the other hand, never met Chaucer, but his own merits as a writer were quickly established. He followed his Troy Book with the Siege of Thebes in 1422 and both poems make a case for the worthiness of chivalry. His works included anti-Lollard writings, confirming his role as a major orthodox author in his own right, who helped to promote both the monarchy and the established church against opponents. To this end, his moral writings, his saints’ lives, and his numerous other religious works, such as The Life of Our Lady, mark him out as one of the most productive authors of the late Middle Ages.

The impact of Chaucer’s writing had a wide reach. Almost immediately his influence was felt in Scotland, with the composition of The Kingis Quair (‘The King’s Book’), apparently written by the Scottish King James I, after his capture at the age of 11 by the English in 1406. He was imprisoned for eighteen years, and writes about his experiences in this semi-autobiographical poem. The Kingis Quair shows that the writer knew Chaucer’s oeuvre very well, and was familiar with Lydgate’s Temple of Glass. The author writes a dedication to Chaucer and to John Gower, multilingual author of Mirour de l’omme, Vox clamantis, and Confessio amantis. James lauds their work and hopes to benefit from their association:

Unto impnis of my maisteris dere,

To the poems of my dear masters,

Gowere and Chaucere, that on the steppis satt

Gower and Chaucer, so that on the steps sat

Of rethorike quhill thai were lyvand here,

Of rhetoric while they were living here

Superlative as poetis laureate

Superlative as poets laureate

In moralitee and eloquence ornate,

In morality and ornate eloquence,

I recommend my buk in lynis sevin,

I recommend my book in seven-line stanzas,

And eke thair saulis unto the blisse of Hevin.

And also their souls into the bliss of Heaven.

He also commends their souls to heaven, while recommending his book to sit on the steps of the poets laureate. His use of seven-line stanzas—Rhyme Royal—emulated a form perfected by Chaucer in his romance Troilus and Criseyde. Like The Knight’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, The King is Quair examines themes influenced by Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and courtly love, but does so in a self-conscious and subjective mode of expression.

The flowering of national literatures

The royal association with Scottish literature illustrated by the writing of The Kingis Quair led to an extensive commissioning or patronage of literary works within the Scottish court itself later in the 15th century. The courtly poets of Scotland were known as the makars, and they also make clear their debt to Chaucer, whom they sought to emulate in their own work. This group of scholar-poets included Robert Henryson (c.1460–1500), who produced a version of the Orpheus and Euridice myth, as well as fables, and, most notably, the Testament of Cresseid, which seeks to reconfigure Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde by, among other aspects, completing the earlier work.

Henryson’s contemporary William Dunbar (c.1460–1520), like his earlier English counterparts, was closely allied with the royal court; James IV of Scotland was patron of Dunbar, who became a public poet, writing religious and secular works, as well as satirical verse, addressed at a variety of targets. In his Lament for the Makaris, Dunbar eulogizes great poets that have preceded him, including Chaucer, Gower, Barbour, Robert Henryson, and others. In it, he laments the brevity of life and the pointlessness of worldly glory, recognizing—as so many other medieval texts do—that all humanity turns to dust; Death spares no one. Repeating the cohering refrain, every four lines, Timor Mortis conturbat me (‘Fear of death disturbs me’) he talks of Death as ‘petuously devour | The noble Chaucer, of makaris flour, | The Monk of Bury, and Gower, all three’ (‘devouring noble Chaucer, the flower of poets, Lydgate and Gower, all three’), Dunbar simultaneously bemoans the passing of the great, while celebrating, in poetry, their eternal greatness. He writes himself into this long line of literary wonders in the production of this poem, which survives in a number of manuscript versions.

What is especially notable about Chaucer, Lydgate, and Hoccleve in this period from c.1390 is that they attest to a renewed vigour in English literary composition and transmission, but this is now a literary endeavour that is supported in English by kings and the aristocracy. These authors all built on the prose and poetry of earlier writers to adapt and transform well-loved narratives into contemporary works, many with political resonances, and many directly addressed to monarchs and nobles. As interesting is the popularity of these great stories more broadly. Whereas other works exist in only one copy (like the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the three religious texts in the same manuscript, Cleanness, Pearl, and Patience; or the 15th-century poem Athelston), the works of Chaucer, Lydgate, and Hoccleve and Langland’s religious masterpiece Piers Plowman tend to survive in multiple copies, suggesting that numerous noble households, or ecclesiastical institutions, wanted to commission copies. The status of the book as a marker of culture and education led to significant demand, a demand that resulted from increased male and female literacy and that could be met in abundance once printing got underway from 1485 in Britain.

Ordering books, writing lives

The role of women is critical in any discussion of the flowering of the arts and their commissioning of books is important throughout the centuries. In the earlier Middle Ages, King Alfred reveals that it was his mother who encouraged his love of the written word and sought to make literacy a desirable skill in her son while he was still a young prince. Queen Emma, wife of King Cnut, commissioned the writing of the Encomium Emmae reginae in the 1040s, some years after Cnut died, in order to promote herself and her husband’s reputation (see Figure 7). This Latin praise-text in honour of the queen does all it can to depict Cnut and Emma in a glorious light, using classical sources to elevate its subjects and seeking, through its rhetoric, to protect the interests of the queen at a time when her power at court was coming to an end. The fact that this Encomium was written in Latin prose replete with Virgilian echoes suggests that Emma was herself learned, multilingual, and politically astute. From the known commissioning of texts, it is possible to deduce a considerable amount about the abilities of the intended audience, or, at least, the image those commissioners wish to project.

Religious materials were also written at the request of women. Ailred of Rievaulx wrote the Latin De institutione inclusarum in about 1160 for his sister and other religious women who separated themselves from the world in religious contemplation. Before about 1272, Friar Thomas Hales wrote his Love-Ron (Love-Song) after a religious woman, perhaps a nun, asked for a devotional song to encourage her in her chosen life as a virgin. Hales advises his addressee to sing the song about the rectitude of purity and the life of devotion to Christ in order to memorize it, to help her come to heaven where she would be led into the bridal chamber of God.

7. London, British Library, Additional 33241, folio 1 verso. Encomium Emma Reginae frontispiece.

Throughout Britain and Ireland in the Middle Ages, increasing numbers of those families with money and some education made or commissioned whole books—anthologies of religious and secular verse and prose, often produced multilingually. One such book is the largest medieval literary book, the Vernon Manuscript now at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, compiled in around 1400 and containing 370 texts. It was written for someone, perhaps in the West Midlands, whose identity is not known, because their coat of arms in the manuscript was never completed.

Other owners are known, giving invaluable information about particular readers’ interests. In Scotland, the Earl of Orkney commissioned the making of Oxford, Bodleian Library, Arch. Selden B. 24 in the 1480s, a manuscript of poetry that contains The Kingis Quair, alongside Hoccleve’s Mother of God, and a good many Chaucerian poems including Troilus and Criseyde. This type of ‘household’ book was regularly produced from the closing years of the 14th century onwards, as it became more common for wealthy families to own manuscripts and documents, and, in many cases, participate in their creation.

The Findern Manuscript (Cambridge University Library, Ff. 1. 6), belonging originally to the Findern family in Derbyshire, and dated to the mid-15th century, shows the interests of women readers, whose names are written into the margins of the manuscript. The manuscript contains works by Chaucer and Gower, but also includes some lyrical poems that might have been written by women poets, one of which is a lament for the absence of a loved one.

Such absence is treated pragmatically by one of the writers in the Paston family, whose extensive collection of letters and legal documents gives a wonderful insight into life in the turbulent 15th century. These papers belonging to three generations of the family from Norfolk attests to the expansion and importance of literacy at this time. Among the family members was Agnes Paston, who in the 1440s and 1450s devoted time to writing to her children once they had left home. In her letters to her son John, who was living in London, she tells him all her gossip, recounting words she exchanged with angry neighbours and letting him know the local news. In lively (and my modernized) prose, she narrates that

On Tuesday, Sir Jon Henyngham went to his church and heard three masses, and came home again never merrier, and said to his wife that he would go say a little devotion in his garden and then he would dine. And forthwith he felt a fainting in his leg and sat down. This was at nine of the clock, and he was dead before noon.

Other letters are less dramatic: Agnes informs John of the various legal cases with which she is involved; reminds him to settle his accounts; and sends him love and blessings. But these kinds of text, rare practical and everyday demonstrations of literacy, remind us of the lives and concerns of real medieval people, whose lives we can indirectly detect in the vibrant and diverse poetry and prose that forms the great canons of British and Irish literature.