John Lydgate, The Fall of Princes

J. Allan Mitchell (University of Victoria)

Ed. by Hugh Magennis, Queen's University Belfast
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.02: English Writing and Culture: High and Late Medieval, 1066-1485.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Rory Critten (Université de Lausanne), David Fuller (University of Durham), Natalie Hanna (University of Liverpool), Hugh Magennis (Queen's University Belfast), Jamie McKinstry (University of Durham), Sarah Peverley (University of Liverpool), Sebastian Sobecki (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

Dates

First circulation or publication c. 1431 - 1438

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

John Lydgate's Fall of Princes (c. 1431-38) recounts the lamentable tragedies of famous men and women, compiled in nine books and over 36,000 lines of verse, beginning with Adam and Eve and ending with King John of France. A rich and varied treasury of biblical narrative, classical lore, and medieval chronicle, Lydgate's Fall is an English rendering of Laurent de Premierfait's Des Cas de nobles hommes et femmes (1409), itself a prose redaction of Boccaccio's De casibus virorum illustrium (1355-60). Lydgate's poem is therefore an early and ambitious English foray into de casibus tragedy, an encyclopedic genre that collects …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

1849 words

Citation: Mitchell, J. Allan. "The Fall of Princes". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 March 2007; last revised 10 October 2007. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=909, accessed 31 October 2024.]

Save this article