SOURCE: Ebin, Lois. “Lydgate's Views on Poetry.” Annuale Mediaevale 18 (1977): 76-105.

In the following essay, Ebin argues that Lydgate developed a new critical language to describe his craft, that his view of poetry differs substantially from that of his English predecessors, and that his language points to the beginnings of a new English poetic.

Scattered through the more than 145,000 lines of Lydgate's poetry are numerous references to the process of writing and to his role as a poet. These lines, for the most part Lydgate's original additions to his sources, introduce assumptions about poetry which are at once significantly different from Chaucer's and also central enough to an understanding of fifteenth-century writing to warrant more careful attention than they have received. In these passages Lydgate not only develops a new critical vocabulary to define the qualities of good poetry, but he articulates ideas about poetry, particularly his conception of...