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Abstract
Some Shorter Satirical Poems in English from the Thirteenth to the Early
Sixteenth Centuries
Kathleen A. Fahey
St. Hugh's College, Oxford
D. Phil.
Trinity Term 1991
The aim of this thesis is to provide a thorough introduction to shorter
satirical poetry in Middle English, and also to provide stimulus and
material for further study in this somewhat neglected area of medieval
English literature. The thesis presents 83 newly transcribed, edited and
annotated shorter (approximately 200 11. or less) poems, which have never
before been collected. Strictly political poems, more properly the subject
of a separate study, are not included, nor are the poems of Dunbar,
Skelton, Henryson and Hoccleve, which are available in excellent editions.
The poems are loosely grouped according to the subjects they satirize:
clergy, women and marriage, money and venality, rogues and fools, specific
people, and medical recipes. A lengthy introduction briefly discusses the
problem of defining satire in the Middle English period before going on to
discuss the background of medieval satire for each group. For each poem
there are notes which clarify difficult points as well as give information
on the manuscripts and editions in which the poem appears. Appendix A
prints a not hitherto recognized parody of Lydgate's A Valentine to Our
Lady with the text of Lydgate's poem facing, and discusses some of the
difficulties of recognizing parody in Middle English in light of this
particular example. Appendix B is an index which attempts to list all non-
narrative satirical verse in English which appeared between the thirteenth
and early sixteenth centuries. A glossary of difficult words in the texts
is included.
Acknowledgments
My work on this thesis was made easier by the assistance of a great
many individuals and institutions. In regard to my manuscript work I would
like in particular to thank the British Library; the Bodleian Library,
Oxford; the libraries of Balliol and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford; the
Cambridge University Library; the libraries of Trinity, St. John's,
Gonville and Caius, and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge; the National Library of
Scotland; and the National Library of Wales for allowing me access to their
holdings. I would also like to acknowledge the help of the staffs of these
libraries in actually obtaining the manuscripts I needed. For their
financial support I would like to thank the Committee of Vice Chancellors
and Principals of the United Kingdom, who awarded me a three-year Overseas
Research Studentship; Lincoln College, Oxford, for generous travel
allowances; and St. Hugh's College, Oxford, who awarded me a Moberly
Graduate Scholarship. For very helpful discussion of sections of my
introduction and notes I wish to thank Professor Anne Hudson of Lady
Margaret Hall, Oxford; and for help with manuscript questions Dr. Malcolm
Parkes of Keble College, Oxford. I also benefitted from participating in
the medieval English literature graduate seminar at Oxford, at which I
presented parts of my introduction in its earlier stages; the advice and
criticism I received from other graduate students and particularly from
Professor E. G. Stanley was most valuable. Finally and most importantly, I
wish to acknowledge my great debt to Professor Douglas Gray, who supervised
my work and gave unstintingly of his time, advice and expertise. To him I
offer my most sincere thanks.
Contents
1
Introduction
83
Treatment of the Texts
8*t
Texts
296
Notes on the Texts
Appendix A -- A Middle English Parody of Lyrigate's Valentine
Appendix B -- An Index of Middle English Satiric and Parodic Verse
466
Bibliography
Index of First Lines and Titles
Abbreviations of Works Frequently Cited
Glossary
INTRODUCTION
The shorter Middle English satirical poems contain much material of
interest to students of medieval English literature and history, yet
little critical attention has so far been given to these poems as a
group. While reference is often made to such poems in studies on
related subjects, such as G. R. Owst's Literature and Pulpit in Medieval
England and V. J. Scattergood's Politics and Poetry in Fifteenth-Century
England, and all have been printed (with varying degrees of accuracy)
since the late nineteenth century, the majority remain poorly edited and
uncollected. In contrast to the neglect these shorter satiric and
parodic pieces have received, longer poems in which satire predominates,
such as Piers Plowman, Mum and the Sothsegger, and Winner and Waster, as
well as many of Chaucer's poems, are frequently studied. These seem to
offer a larger scope for the study of medieval satire, yet when the
shorter poems are looked at as a group they provide a field for study no
less broad or diverse. In the general context of Middle English
literature the shorter poems are especially important when seen in
conjunction with the longer satiric poems, since they frequently treat
the same subjects, and so provide a background for these poems as well
as a broader perspective on the satirical temper of the age. Whether
considered for their own sake or as adjuncts to other works, the shorter
satiric poems of the late medieval period form an interesting and
important part of Middle English literature.
Any discussion of satire had best attempt to define the term at the
outset. The importance of the definition of satire and the satirical is
stressed in studies of literary genres or of literature with some claim
to the terms; it can hardly be any other way as the term satire is
applicable to a variety of literary forms. The word itself is derived
from the Latin satura, denoting a mixture or mixed dish, although
English writers in the Renaissance and after associated satire with
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satyr, partly due to othographic confusion, partly because roughness was
thought to characterize both the literary form and the mythical beast.
Modern critics on the whole have been less concerned with satire's
literary form than with its tone and purpose, and the tendency in
criticism has been to increasingly restrictive definitions of satire as
a kind of literature which explicitly desires some improvement of morals
or conditions, or as being directed at society in general and not at a
non-representative individual. While definitions that require satire to
be consciously directed at moral or social improvement may be suitable
for (and tailored to) post-medieval satires, they should not be applied
to the literature of a period which lacked a practical, unified theory
of satire as an instrument of reform, and whose writers ridiculed
contemporary institutions and figures without the constraints of one.
Another difficulty in defining Middle English satire is that of
distinguishing between satire and complaint. Here we have a problem
which is almost the opposite of the one we encounter in applying later
definitions of satire to medieval poems, for it is precisely the overtly
moralistic qualities of complaint poetry which, according to some
critics, disqualify it as satire. Satire by its very nature is a
complaint, as a verbal reaction to something or someone the writer finds
disagreeable, for whatever reason. Any distinction that can be made
between satire and complaint is not relevant to this study.^
Middle English satire thus cannot be adequately defined in terms of
either later satire or contemporary complaint. OED, however, defines
satire as 'A poem, or in modern use a prose composition, in which
prevailing vices or follies are held up to ridicule; also, the
employment in speaking or writing of sarcasm, irony, ridicule etc. in
exposing, denouncing, deriding, or ridiculing folly, vice, indecorum,
abuses, or evils of any kind 1 ; it seems to me that Middle English satire
requires a definition of this breadth. One modern critic's description
of verse satire is also helpful for illustrating the diversity of the
Middle English satire:4
...it fluctuates between the flippant and the earnest, the
completely trivial and the heavily didactic; it ranges from extremes of
crudity and brutality to the utmost refinement and elegance; it employs
singly or in conjunction monologue, dialogue, epistle, oration,
narrative, manner-painting, character-drawing, allegory, fantasy,
travesty, burlesque, parody, and any other vehicle it chooses; and it
presents a chameleon-like surface by using all the tones of the satiric
spectrum, wit, ridicule, irony, sarcasm, cynicism, the sardonic, and
invective.
For the purposes of describing the shorter Middle English poems which
concern us here, satire will be defined loosely, following OED.
A definition of literary parody can be included within this
definition of satire. While it is still based upon the idea of
ridicule, the definition of parody must be narrower than that of satire;
concerning Middle English parody OEDl s generous definition again seems
to me the most suitable: 'a composition in prose or verse in which
characteristic turns of thought or phrase are imitated in such a way as
to make them appear ridiculous, especially by applying them to
ludicrously inappropriate subjects; an imitation of a work more or less
closely modelled on the original, but so turned as to produce a
ridiculous effect. 1 Parody can thus be seen as a more specific type of
satire, involving ridicule through imitation of some kind, but as E. G.
Stanley has cautioned, 'The dividing-line between linguistic, mimicking
mockery and literary parody is not to be discerned readily. Another
difficulty arises in recognizing parodies of texts or songs which were
familiar to medieval audiences but are unknown to us today. Paul
Lehmann accepts as parody only intentionally and obviously humorous
imitations of texts, views, events and people which may be assumed to be
familiar. 6 While this definition makes the guidelines for determining
parody somewhat clearer, it risks excluding parodies of texts, views,
and so on which were not well-known in their day or whose significance
has been lost. I therefore prefer to apply OED1 s definition of parody
to the shorter poems, which de-emphasizes the need for the subject
parodied to be generally familiar. The definitions I have given here
might be thought of as marking off the outer boundaries of satire and,
within those boundaries, parody, while avoiding subdivisions and
distinctions unnecessary to the topic.
Defining Middle English satire so broadly allows a very large body
of Middle English poems to be classified as satirical. (D. S. Brewer,
speaking about the association between realism and the comic, has even
said that 'It is not unexpected to find that most medieval comedy
(perhaps most comedy?) is satirical. 1 )' Even so, we may assume that the
surviving poems represent only a percentage, probably quite a small one,
of the satirical verse Middle English writers produced. Such literature
tends to be ephemeral, vanishing along with the conditions that caused
it to be written. What we have has survived by chance; rarely do the
shorter poems exist in more than one manuscript copy. Despite the
difference between what was written and what has come down to us, we are
still left with an unwieldy amount of satirical material, which has had
to be sifted through and arranged. This thesis is concerned only with
the 'shorter' poems: by 'shorter' I mean poems of about 200 lines or
less (in practice a fairly clear group of surviving poems). I have not
treated this as an inflexible rule, though, and if a poem seemed
particularly important or interesting and slightly exceeded this length
I tended to include it. I have left out those poems which treat
exclusively political subjects, as their historical allusions are more
properly the subject of a separate study. I have also left out some of
the less interesting poems satirizing women or the so-called follies of
the age; there are many of these and I thought it unnecessary to include
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those which only reiterate what has been said better elsewhere. Short
satirical poems by Chaucer, Dunbar and Skelton are not included because
they are readily available in excellent editions; these poems are listed
in Appendix B. The year 1550 makes a convenient endpoint for my
collection, as several manuscripts containing texts I have included
appear to date from the mid-sixteenth century, although the poems
themselves could very well have been composed before then. I do not
intend my collection to reflect the proportions of poems on each subject
which survive; instead, I wish to give an overview of shorter verse
satire in Middle English, and to allow readers easy comparison of
satirical methods and treatments across subjects.
The overall arrangement of the poems is determined by the subjects
they satirize. Not wishing to give the impression of hard and fast
categorization, I have arranged the poems according to subject group but
with consecutive numbering throughout. Once the political poems, which
form an extensive group in themselves, are eliminated, the remaining
shorter satirical poems tend to fall neatly into six subject areas:
women, clergy and clerical matters, money and avarice, rogues and fools,
specific people, and medical recipes. No poem falls completely outside
these areas, but sometimes a poem belongs to more than one subject area,
in which case I have tried to place it on the border between the
relevant subject groups where possible. Arrangement by subject, while
imposing a modern order on poems which were not usually ordered in such
a way in the original manuscripts (although some of the poems on women
and the clergy appear grouped in twos or threes in certain
manuscripts), 8 brings out similarities and differences between various
treatments of the same subject while allowing comparison between
satirical treatments of various subjects. It seems to me the most
convenient and sensible arrangement for a collection whose aim is to
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demonstrate the scope of shorter Middle English satirical poetry in
regard to both its subjects and methods.
Before going on to the literary backgrounds of the subjects
themselves, something needs to be said about the satirical methods and
then about the forms of the shorter Middle English poems. The methods
are varied and by no means always used as primitively as some studies
touching on them would suggest. Although their results are certainly
not as polished or sophisticated as most later English verse satire, the
methods themselves are often the same. Many of these techniques are
also the same as those used in earlier medieval Latin poetry, which in
turn seem to derive from methods of classical satire; there are
precedents for the Middle English poems in some Old French satire as
well.
Chiasmus, inversion, and cataloguing, the methods used in the poems
Robbins calls 'the Abuses of the Age 1 , are venerable and prevalent in
the English satirical tradition. Many variations on the 'abuses' poem
survive; the type is represented in poem 72:
Bissop lories,
Kyng redeles,
Sung man rechles,
Old man witles
Womman ssamles.
I swer bi heuen kyng
t>os be|) fiue li|)er jn'ng.
The inversion on which such poems depend, the 'basic formal
principle of "stringing together impossibilities'" (or what the satirist
thinks should be impossibilities) has its origins in antiquity. ^
Curtius traces its first appearance to Archilochus, a Greek satirist of
the seventh century B.C. who was claimed as a model by many Elizabethan
satirists. 12 Curtius says of twelfth-century Latin literature that 'The
frame of the antique adynaton serves both censure of the times and
denunciation of the times. Out of stringing together impossibilia grows