ELH

Nolan, Maura.
"Now Wo, Now Gladnesse": Ovidianism in the Fall of Princes
ELH - Volume 71, Number 3, Fall 2004, pp. 531-558

The Johns Hopkins University Press

Maura Nolan - "Now Wo, Now Gladnesse": Ovidianism in the Fall of Princes - ELH 71:3 ELH 71.3 (2004) 531-558 "Now Wo, Now Gladnesse": Ovidianism In The Fall of Princes Maura Nolan University of Notre Dame Considering the sheer volume of verse he produced, one of the most neglected English poets is John Lydgate -- and one of the most neglected works is his Fall of Princes, a monumental, 36,000 line collection of "tragedies," or stories of great men brought low by Fortune. When he set out to translate Laurent de Premierfait's translation of Boccaccio's De Casibus Virorum Illustrium at the behest of his patron, Humphrey of Gloucester, Lydgate embarked upon an ambitious journey through world history, starting with Adam and Eve and ending with King John of France. He left his readers in little doubt as to the purpose of his translation: it is designed to educate princes, to "shewe the chaung off wordli variaunce," and it does so over and over again. As a result, the Fall of Princes seems impervious to critical attention; since Lydgate preemptively discloses the meaning of each exemplum, he leaves little room for interpretation beyond the singular and rigid reading of history enforced in the text. The raw material of the past -- embodied in the figures of fallen princes -- is revealed, almost providentially, to have always already conformed to a moral mold that it is Lydgate's task to describe. But first impressions are often misleading, particularly where...