Dullness and the Fifteenth Century (David Lawton)

Lawton's article sheds light on the "dullness" of Chaucer's successors: both the apparent commonplace nature of their material and their own self-confessed ignorance or inability. In fact, dullness is a “guise”, a rhetorical pose:

The guise of dullness in the English fifteenth century, then, has many strands, and it is probably a mistake to examine any of them in isolation. On the immediate social level, it is almost always disingenuous, often implicated with problematic sociopolitical intervention; on the moral level, toward which it frequently drives, it is both decorous and philosophical, a concealed act of Boethian knowledge staking out ethical and theological ground. (770)

The poet sets himself up as an “Everyman”, disavowing special status, and even identity, as a poet. He suffers with everyone else in the world, and offers the “consolation of philosophy” to his fellow man. By conforming his own suffering to that of a Boethian model, the poet confirms its meaningfulness: “it is true because of, not in spite of, its conformity to a cultural pattern” (773).

More potently, Lawton suggests that poets used the pose of dullness and the presentation of traditional matter to address specific contemporary concerns with subtly. Specifically, in 1412 there was disagreement between Henry IV and Prince Henry over policy. Hoccleve (in his Regiment) seems to take the prince’s side: even in his commonplace advice that a king should “remain close to his people”, he cites as examples Edward III and John of Gaunt, but not Henry IV, because he “was accessible only to a narrow circle of advisors” (777). Thus the particular advice given, even if otherwise thoroughly traditional, and the particular exempla chosen may in fact indicate a narrow contemporary application. The broader principle is this: while many critics have taken the “dull and commonplace” 15^th century poetry as little beyond the recital of traditional maxims, this view strips the poetry from its context, which (Lawton argues) the poetry engages sharply, albeit obliquely.

A related issue is the strong emphasis in much “Chaucerian poetry” (Chaucer himself, but also Lydgate, Gower, and Hoccleve) on the value of peace and the pointless waste of war, anchored firmly in the contemporary context of repeatedly renewed conflict with France. This leads Lawton to a connection with the Boethian themes of “dull” poetry: “[I]t seems to me that the de casibus genre is directed to princes as kind of revenge on war, an assignation of ill repute: a divine revenge, with the full poet acting as moral agent” (782). Lydgate in particular does not shy away from exempla in his Fall of Princes that could have uncomfortably close resemblances in current political situations, reminding his own princes of how imminent the wheel’s turning may be.

After these points, Lawton presents an objection: “[I]f public writing of the sort I have described was a courageous and hard-hitting as I have claimed, how can it have been at the same time so popular, so socially acceptable and so safe?” (789). He gives three responses: first, that the “dull” poet can say what a wise man cannot, like a medieval fool; second, that Boethian themes of fortune and fall were common throughout the culture, and especially fascinating to those in power who rode the wheel; third, that kings are dependent on poets for the extension and celebration of their own reputation: “The Renaissance poet confers fame in return for attention to his moral lessons: the exchange is mutually satisfactory” (791).