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 2 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 5 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 6 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