The illustrations of Lydgate’s "Troy Book": The visual revitalization of a literary tradition in fifteenth-century England

185 Pages·2015·1.308 MB·English

by  Tammy Y. Whitehead

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF LYDGATE’S TROY BOOK:

THE VISUAL REVITALIZATION OF A LITERARY TRADITION

IN FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND

By

TAMMY Y. WHITEHEAD

A Dissertation submitted to the
Program of Interdisciplinary Humanities
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

2015
ProQuest Number: 3724403
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Tammy Y. Whitehead defended this dissertation on April 16, 2015.

The members of the supervisory committee were:

David F. Johnson

Professor Direction Dissertation

Jack Freiberg

University Representative

David Gants

Committee Member

Svetla Slaveva-Griffin

Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and
certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ iv

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................v

INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER ONE – TROJAN NARRATIVES ..............................................................................14

CHAPTER TWO – TROJAN LEGEND IN ENGLAND .............................................................49

CHAPTER THREE – TROJAN IMAGES ....................................................................................86

CHAPTER FOUR – MS. ROYAL 18. D. II & MS. RYLANDS ENGLISH I ...........................117

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................155

APPENDIX A - IMAGES ...........................................................................................................163

Bibliography ................................................................................................................................166

Biographical Sketch .....................................................................................................................178

iii
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure One – King Enthroned, (c) The British Library Board, Royal 18. D. II f6 ......................163

Figure Two – Wheel of Fortune, (c) The British Library Board, Royal 18. D. II f30v ...............164

Figure Three – Greek Tents Overthrown, (c) The British Library Board, Royal 18. D. II f82v .164

Figure Four – Priam (c) The British Library Board, Royal 18. D. II f93 ....................................165

Figure Five – Calchas, (c) The British Library Board, Royal 18. D. II f74 ................................165

iv
ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines the ways in which John Lydgate’s Troy Book, both the textual and
visual narratives, functioned in fifteenth-century England. As Henry V sought to legitimate his
claim to the throne usurped by his father, he capitalized on the burgeoning sense of an English
national identity by patronizing literature in the English vernacular as a means to glorify both
nation and language. In an age in which genealogical claims were the most important indicator
of a person’s right to rule, Henry exploited the Trojan origin myth, which had circulated in
England and other European communities since the early Middle Ages, not only to glorify
England as an inheritor of Rome’s imperial mission and to solidify the Lancastrian claim, but
also to help solidify and renew the English claim to the French throne.
The Troy Book was immensely popular in the fifteenth-century and was reproduced in at
least twenty-three manuscripts, including fragments. Eight of these manuscripts received
illustrations, and a basic visual program can be detected in each of them. However, two of these
manuscripts are exceptional for the inclusion of illustrations beyond this basic program –
London, British Library, MS Royal 18 d. ii (c. 1455-62) and Manchester, John Rylands Library,
MS English 1 (c. late 1440s). Because the manuscripts were produced at different points in the
fifteenth century, a careful examination of the images in light of contemporary historical events
helps establish the patron’s views and ambitions that may have helped shape the pictorial
narrative. I will argue that the anomalous images in the Royal manuscript must be read in light
of both the recently failed war with France and the current civil war between the houses of York
and Lancaster and that these images represent aristocratic anxieties and desires for peace. This
argument will culminate in an examination of the images in the Rylands manuscript, the most
sumptuous of the Troy Book manuscripts, which includes sixty-nine miniatures. It was
v
commissioned slightly earlier than the Royal manuscript during the waning fortunes of the
Hundred Years War and conforms most closely to the purposes of the original text: to glorify
Trojan origins and England by identifying Henry V with Hector, to act as a manual for chivalry
and proper war practices, to emphasize the role of fortune in worldly events, and to provide
moral instruction to both the aristocracy and the nobility.
vi
INTRODUCTION

This dissertation examines the ways in which John Lydgate’s Troy Book, both the textual
and visual narratives, functioned in fifteenth-century England. As Henry V (1413-1422) sought
to legitimate his claim to the throne usurped by his father, he capitalized on the burgeoning sense
of an English national identity by patronizing literature in the English vernacular as a means to
glorify both nation and language during the early fifteenth century. In an age in which
genealogical claims were the most important indicator of a person’s right to rule, Henry, as
Prince of Wales commissioned Lydgate’s Troy Book in 1412, in order to exploit the Trojan
origin myth, which had circulated in England and other European communities since the early
Middle Ages, not only to glorify England as an inheritor of Rome’s imperial mission and to
solidify the Lancastrian claim, but also to help solidify and renew the English claim to the
French throne.
The Troy Book was immensely popular in the fifteenth-century and was reproduced in at
least twenty-three manuscripts, including fragments. Eight of these manuscripts received
illustrations, and a basic visual program can be detected in each of them. However, two of these
manuscripts are exceptional for the inclusion of illustrations beyond this basic program –
London, British Library, MS Royal 18 d. ii (c. 1455-62) and Manchester, John Rylands Library,
MS English 1 (c. late 1440s). Because the manuscripts were produced at different points in the
fifteenth century, a careful examination of the images in light of contemporary historical events
helps establish the manuscript patron’s views and ambitions that may have helped shape the
pictorial narrative. I will argue that the anomalous images in the Royal manuscript must be read
in light of both the recently failed war with France (1337-1453) and the current civil war
between the houses of York and Lancaster (1455-1485) and that these images represent
1
aristocratic anxieties and desires for peace. This argument will culminate in an examination of
the images in the Rylands manuscript, the most sumptuous of the Troy Book manuscripts, which
includes sixty-nine miniatures. It was commissioned slightly earlier than the Royal manuscript
during the waning fortunes of the Hundred Years War and conforms most closely to the purposes
of the original text: to glorify Trojan origins and England by identifying Henry V with Hector, to
act as a manual for chivalry and proper war practices, to emphasize the role of fortune in worldly
events, and to provide moral instruction to both the aristocracy and the nobility.
The Troy Legend in Medieval Europe:
In order to legitimize conquests in the Mediterranean, Roman historians had traced the
founding of cities in Italy and the ancestry of the nobility to Trojan heroes long before Virgil
cemented the relationship between Augustus and Aeneas and propagated the divine right of
Rome’s imperial project.1 Richard Waswo argues “their purpose was to provide a newly
powerful nation with a glorious lineage and an ancient past, establishing Rome’s claims to
independent prestige in the Hellenic world.”2 During the imperial period, this practice
continued, and the divine ancestry of the emperor tracing backward to Aeneas became a litmus
test for legitimacy.
The fall of the Roman Empire did nothing to change this sensibility, and those who
conquered the lands and aspired to reunite the empire under their rule replicated this tradition of
imperial ideology by appropriating the Trojan myth and creating an uninterrupted genealogical
relationship to Aeneas. Thus, in his sixth-century History of the Goths, Cassiodorus attempted to

1 Waswo, R. “The History that Literature Makes,” New Literary History 19 (Spring 1988): 549, identifies fifth-
century Greek poet Hellicanus of Lesbos as the earliest surviving reference of the relationship between Troy and
Rome. See also Margaret R. Scherer, The Legends of Troy in Art and Literature (New York: Phaidon Press, 1963),
pp. 220 ff., for an identification of third-century B.C. Latin poet Naevius and second-century B.C. Latin scholar
Varro as Virgil’s predecessors for Trojan ancestry.
2 Waswo, “History,” 549.
2
assimilate the history of the Roman people and the Gothic tribes as a means to lay claim to the
idea of translatio imperii et studii by providing Theodoric with a Trojan pedigree. Although it
lay dormant for a couple centuries, this Vergilian topos was unveiled anew and expanded upon at
the Carolingian court in an attempt to validate the transfer of the Roman Empire to the Franks in
800. Marie Tanner effectively demonstrates how this influenced the mythic imagery of the
emperor until the last descendant of the Hapsburg line in the sixteenth century such that “the
Roman legitimacy of future rulers required only that they trace their bloodline to this Frankish
ancestor [Charlemagne].”3 When the last of the Carolingians died, and Hugh Capet seized the
French throne severing the Frankish empire into what would later become France and Germany,
claimants to the throne capitalized on Trojan descent; whoever could claim the strongest tie to
Charlemagne, and thus Aeneas, was the most legitimate ruler.4
Each emergent nation-state appropriating the ancestral myth did so in order to legitimize
its right to rule over its people and land. Although these traditions of Trojan descent were in
circulation during the early Middle Ages, especially for those who, like the Normans, were
essentially lineage-less, genealogical constructions became increasingly important in the twelfth
century as “kings, aristocrats, and the protonational communities that aristocrats did so much to
define increasingly claimed or buttressed power over land by appeal to their relationship to
time.”5
The greatest evidence for English Trojan descent is Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-
century Historia regum Britanniae (ca. 1136) , in which he recounts the founding of London,
New Troy, by Aeneas’s great-grandson Brutus. After freeing captive Trojans in Greece, he

3 Tanner, M. The Last Descendant of Aeneas: The Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1993), 70-75.
4Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas, 91.
5 Ingledew, F. “The Book of Troy and the Genealogical Construction of History: The Case of Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae,” Speculum 69 (July 1994): 668.
3