John Lydgate

John Lydgate , c.1370-c.1450, English poet, a monk of Bury St. Edmunds. A professed disciple of Chaucer, he was one of the most influential, voluminous, and versatile writers of the Middle Ages. His works may be divided into three classes: (1) poems written in the Chaucerian manner, such as the Complaint of the Black Knight, which resembles Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, and the allegory The Temple of Glass; (2) lengthy translations, of which the Troy Book (from the Latin of Guido della Colonna), The Fall of Princes (from the French of Laurent de Premierfait), and The Siege of Thebes (also from the French), are the best known; (3) short pieces, including fables, saints' lives, and devotional, philosophic, and occasional poems. After Lydgate's death his fame diminished rapidly. His poetry has been criticized for its prolixity and prosaic style.

Bibliography: See his Poems, ed. by J. Norton-Smith (1966); biography by L. A. Ebin (1985); study by D. A. Pearsall (1970).

Lydgate, John (c.1370–c.1450). Poet. Born in Lydgate, a village in Suffolk south of Newmarket, he became a Benedictine monk at Bury St Edmunds. In 1421 he was made prior of Hatfield Broad Oak in Essex, but from 1432 spent the rest of his life back at Bury. Lydgate's enormous output—twice the size of Shakespeare's—was written under the patronage of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Henry V, but has not been greatly admired. His main work is a long poem describing the siege of Troy. The Falls of Princes, a paraphrase and translation of Boccaccio, established that discord was dangerous in a state—a truth which could have been conveyed in less than 36,000 lines. Joseph Ritson, an 18th-cent. commentator, thought him a ‘voluminous, prosaick and drivelling monk’: a less savage critic referred to his ‘prosodic incompetence and long-winded prolixity’—serious defects in a poet.

J. A. Cannon

Lydgate, John (?1370–1449), spent nearly all his life in the monastery at Bury. He is one of the most voluminous of all English poets. Of his more readable poems, most were written in the first decade of the 15th cent. in a Chaucerian vein: The Complaint of the Black Knight (originally called A Complaynt of a Loveres Lyfe and modelled on Chaucer's The Book of the Duchess); The Temple of Glas (indebted to The House of Fame); The Floure of Curtesy (a Valentine's Day poem); and the allegorical Reason and Sensuality. As he grew older his poems became longer. His bulkiest works are his Troy Book (1412–20), a 30,000-line translation of Guido delle Colonne; The Siege of Thebes (1420–2), translated from a French prose redaction of the Roman de Thebes; The Pilgrimage of Man (1426–30), translated from Deguileville; and The Fall of Princes (1431–8), a translation of a French version of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. He was almost invariably coupled for praise with Chaucer and Gower up to the 17th cent.