Fifteenth-Century Flamboyant Style and The Castle of Perseverance

Fifteenth-Century Flamboyant Style and The Castle of Perseverance Michael R. Kelley Historians of continental art, architecture, and literature who have investigated flamboyant style find that it was originally a product of the Franco-Burgundian culture, which flourished from the late fourteenth through the fifteenth century in the geographi­ cal region including Flanders, the Duchies of Burgundy and Ber­ ry, and most of Northern France.1 Since England was closely allied both politically and economically with the Burgundian court during this same time, it is not surprising that many characteristics of continental flamboyant style should be found in English art and literature. What is surprising is that although striking illustrations of flamboyant style have been noted in French morality plays of the fifteenth century,2 there have been few if any published studies that view the English moralities in light of all the features of flamboyant style. Certainly, no study of this type has been made of the earliest complete English morality— The Castle of Perseverance.3 Yet, it is apparent that the morality play genre, as typified by this early fifteenth-century work, is a result of the flamboyant stylistic process, and can be much more fully understood as a literary phenomenon when viewed in this context. The major characteristics of flamboyant style are easily outlined, though we must keep in mind, of course, that the con­ cept of an epoch style represents a generalization. Thus, even when grounded in particular examples, such generalizations can never be rigorously precise or totally representative. The greatest value of such a concept would seem to lie in the fact that it re­ veals basic trends in taste, and provides a cultural overview of a period which can aid in determining the extent to which an in­ dividual work in a given age is representative of its time. Such 14 Michael R. Kelley 15 an overview can also help to explain, in terms of the tastes of an age, the existence of stylistic features in individual works which to modem tastes may seem strange or even artless. The most readily distinguishable feature of flamboyant style is its ornamental merger of two stylistic modes. This dualism is manifested in various ways in the literature, art, and architecture of the period. The term “flamboyant” used to characterize the style of this epoch is unfortunately not helpfully descriptive when applied to literary works of the time. It was initially used to describe the cathedral architecture of the period, which, as Helmut Hatzfeld has noted, exchanged the pointed arches and rounded curves of the high Gothic period for complex and elabo­ rately ornate flame-like curves and counter curves in the decora­ tion of the cathedral facades.4 The rose windows of the cathedrals at Chartres (c. 1150) and Sens (c. 1490)5 are striking examples of the differences. Once past the elaborate fifteenth-century facades, and inside the cathedrals, the forests of pillars which predominated in the high Gothic period give way to spacious and open areas far more practical and realistic in their utilization of space.6 The result is thus a merging of elaboration with func­ tional realism. Similar manifestations of such opposites in orna­ mental combination comprise the essence of flamboyant dualism in all the arts of the fifteenth century, and although the term itself is perhaps too specialized in scope, the fundamental ob­ servation as noted in architecture is valid for the other arts as well. In his study of the art and literature of this period, J. Huizin­ ga notes that during the fifteenth century “the tendency to sym­ bolize and to personify was so spontaneous that nearly every thought, of itself, took a figurative shape.”7 Every idea was con­ sidered an entity and given a personal form.8 This characteristic mode of thinking symbolically and allegorically was accom­ panied by a desire to depict every minute detail,9 which produced a scrupulous and rather ornate realism. Taking note of this realism, Professor Hatzfeld has viewed it as “an expression of the joy of direct observation.”lO The two contrasting modes of symbolism and realism are found together in the Flemish paint­ ings of the period and result in an...