Lydgate Matters: Poetry and Material Culture in the Fifteenth Century

This collection re-evaluates the work of fifteenth-century poet John Lydgate in

light of medieval material culture. Top scholars in the field unite here with

critical newcomers to offer fresh perspectives on the function of poetry on the

cusp of the modern age, and in particular on the way that poetry speaks to the

heightened relevance of material goods and possessions to the formation of late

medieval identity and literary taste. Advancing in provocative ways the emerging

fields of fifteenth-century literary and cultural study, the volume as a whole

explores the role of the aesthetic not only in late medieval society but also in

our own.