Translating Thebes: Lydgate's Siege of Thebes and Stow's Chaucer

John Stow’s 1561 edition of The Workes of Geffrey Chaucer prints John Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes among the “diuers addicions” that amplify and enhance the prestige of the Chaucer canon. The effect of this addition is also to translate Lydgate’s poem to a new context. Stow relocates a work of Lancastrian dynastic propaganda within an early-Elizabethan discourse on governance. Stow’s textual sources, the make-up of his book, and the specific readings he adopts reflect his concerns with antiquities and citizen history; and they open up broad questions about the nature of monarchy, nationhood, and political authority.