[T]he institutional simplifications and centralizations of the sixteenth century provoked correlative simplifications and narrowings in literature. If literary history and criticism is, as I believe it should be, ancillary to the complex history of freedoms, then this is a narrative of diminishing liberties. (1; italics mine)Simpson proceeds to work this theme of reformist/medieval vs. revolutionary/renaissance in relation to the prominent genres and themes of literature. I will not trace each of these paths, but only touch on such as intersect with my own interests.
[C]oncentrations of power that simplify institutional structures also simplify and centralize cultural practice, by stressing central control, historical novelty, and unity produced from the top down. […] In the field of literary history, the main features of ‘medieval’ cultural practice turn out to be as follows: a sense of long and continuous histories; an accretive reception of texts, where the historicity of the reader receiving the old text is not at all suppressed; clearly demarcated and unresolved generic, stylistic, and/or discursive divisions within texts; and, above all, an affirmation of the possibility of human initiative, whether in politics of theology. Later medieval English, no less than European, society was characterized by a complex set of adjacent, overlapping institutions, each with its own history, and each often competing for cultural power. Such institutional complexity in England developed, in part at least, within the period of this history: fraternities, guilds, and parliament all, for example, became culturally active and articulate after 1350. I have called this culture ‘reformist’ by way of accentuating its inherently self-regulating energies.
By contrast, ‘cultural revolution’ had been used to imply the wide range of cultural practices characteristic of those moments, sometimes actual, sometimes imagined, in which power is suddenly centralized. Legitimization of such newly centralized power demands both repudiation of the old order and a vigorous affirmation of novelty. Because accretive reception of texts implies historical continuity, a revolutionary order must repudiate such reception; it must institute in its place the possibility of complete textual recovery of a founding text in its original purity, whether that text be the Aeneid or the Bible. A revolutionary order must also stress its own unity, a unity that flows from a central, organizing source. In literary practice the effects of this will be disciplined observation of stylistic and discursive coherence. Above all, revolutionary texts tend to stress central intelligence and initiative: whether in politics or in theology, the first half of the sixteenth century witnessed a newly conceived transcendence of power. (558-9)
The first chapter is an account of 'John Leland’s (and, later, John Bale’s) attempt to preserve and refashion the literary heritage of England during the reign of Henry VIII. The resulting work depicted Henry VIII’s Protestant England as the new era of light and knowledge, in contrast with the darkness and ignorance of the Middle Ages. Such medieval authors as were mentioned were treated as luminaries in an age of barbarism for either preserving classical wisdom (Leland’s interest) or anticipating the dogmatic purity of Protestantism (Bale’s interest). This view of England’s (then recent) past was, and continues to be, widespread.
The second chapter discusses later critics’ (Renaissance and following) characterization of John Lydgate of the boring, typical medieval, whose only virtue was his uninspired attempt to imitate Chaucer, the true medieval genius. Lydgate becomes a foil for Chaucer, whose uniqueness is emphasized by Lydgate’s pathetically conformist medievalism. Simpson contests this view, and suggests that Lydgate is underappreciated—just like medieval England itself.
The third chapter deals with a succession of Middle English war narratives, which Simpson dubs “tragic”. His larger thesis is still at work, but here is specified further: “the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century examples of such narrative marked out their opposition to militarist, imperial pretensions in a variety of ways. Translation of Virgilian epic in the early sixteenth century, by contrast, revived ideals of imperial conquest” (68). His examples of the former are Lydgate’s Troy Book and Siege of Thebes, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Malory’s own Arthurian epic. Lydgate’s works are seen as especially anti-imperialist because (1) they make little of the Troy-Brutus-Britain connection so important to the Galfridian chronicle tradition, and (2) they depict “history [as] the story of societies imploding under the pressure of poor decisions and the cumulative weight of events”, as opposed to the foundation of empire. These “poor decisions” are often pointed out by “clerical” voices within the texts, who speak in opposition to the martial and aristocratic voices. The AMA and Malory’s anti-martial/ imperialist bent is, in Simpson’s view, more subtle: the AMA slides in the “clerical” perspective in the Wheel of Fortune scene, while Malory subverts the importance of Arthur’s European wars by treating them as a diversion from the really interesting stuff, the internal collapse of the Round Table. I detract from Simpson re: the AMA, however: he seems to view it as largely uncritical of war and empire-building until the Wheel scene. Instead, I believe that the AMA undercuts both Arthur’s chivalry and imperial ambitions pretty much constantly throughout the entire text.
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