1. THE TECHNE OF VERSE-
MAKING: POETRY’S
TERMES IN MIDDLE
ENGLISH
Jenni Nuttall (St Edmund Hall, Oxford)@Stylisticien
2. John Metham, Amorys and Cleopes (1459)
‘My mastyr Chauncerys, I mene, that
longe dyd endure / In practyk off rymyng’
3. Masters and apprentices in 15thC poetry
May God ‘preserve yow [Lydgate] longe
on lyve / That yet I may be yowr prentise.’
(Benedict Burgh, verse letter)
‘As I can, I shall now lerne and practise /
Not as a master but as a prentise.’
(George Ashby, Active Policy of a Prince)
5. Chaucer and verse termes
metres; rhymes
The Man of Law: Chaucer knows little
about ‘metres and…rymyng craftily’
The God of Love, F Prologue, Legend of
Good Women: ‘Make the metres of hem
as the lest’
‘roundel’ (PF); ‘balade’ (Pro, LGW)
6. The lenvoy
Clerk’s Tale: ‘Lenvoy de Chaucer’
six six-line stanzas rhyming ababcb
- a final element more formally complex
than the main body of the text
- in some way separate from the main
narrative
- used for direct address to real and
imagined audience
7. Duke Humfrey’s instructions to Lydgate, Fall of
Princes
‘[…] I sholde in eueri tragedie,
Afftir the processe made mencioun,
At the eende sette a remedie,
With a lenvoie conueied by resoun,
And afftir that, with humble affeccioun,
To noble pryncis lowli it directe,
Bi othres fallyng thei myht themsilff
correcte.’
(Bk II, Prologue)
8. meanings of Middle English balade
- tune and/or lyrics of a song for
singing/dancing
- non-musical poem based on French
form
- the stanza form used in balades
- a stanza
- to write ‘in balade wise’ is to write
stanzaically
- a short poem written in stanzas, often
with refrain
9. James I of Scotland, The Kingis Quair
‘…all the gardyng and the wallis rong
Ryght of thair song and of the copill next
Of thair suete armony; and lo the text:’
(KQ, 229–31)
copill here means not ‘couplet’ but
‘stanza’
10. Stanzas 189, 190, 191: through-rhymed
two further stanzas (192 + 193)
Stanzas 194–96, beginning ‘Go litill tretise’
And thus endith the fatall influence
Causit from hevyn quhare powar is commytt
Of gouirnance, by the magnificence
Of him that hiest in the hevin sitt
To quham we thank that all oure lif hath writt,
Quho couth it red agone syne mony a yere
‘Hich in the hevynnis figure circulere’. (Stanza
196)
Stanza 197: final stanza directing the work to the poems
of Gower and Chaucer
11. THE TECHNE OF VERSE-
MAKING: POETRY’S
TERMES IN MIDDLE
ENGLISH
Jenni Nuttall (St Edmund Hall, Oxford)@Stylisticien
