Laureates and Beggars in Fifteenth-Century English Poetry: The Case of George Ashby

Abstract

The story of the poet laureate has not yet been fully told, and, until it is, fifteenth century English poetry will continue to appear a precursor to nothing.1 Although recently much of this long-disparaged poetry has been ably recuperated, one largely retains the sense that, as complex and well crafted as it now sometimes appears to be, it has scarce, if any, relation to the tradition that succeeds it. With the notion of the poet laureate, however, one may trace a continuous line of in fluence from Chaucer to the present that not only includes the fifteenth century but also finds there-apart from Chaucer's brief prompting-its English point of origin. The ideals and problems attending this notion do not die out when the fifteenth-century Chaucerians are eclipsed by the courtly makers of the next cen tury but rather persist more or less visibly in the latter's work and in that of succeeding generations of English poets. The notion of the laureate, of course, is not static but takes a distinct form and is associated with a specific set of practices for each poet who takes it up. In addition, it possesses a long history prior to its first explicit appearance in English verse, in the prologue to Chaucer's Clerk's Tale (1390s?). To tell its story-even just that part that includes the fifteenth century-would therefore be a formidable task, one beyond my ambitions in this essay. My aim instead is to demonstrate the critical utility of this story for the reassessment of the value and interest of George Ashby, one of the most neglected poets of the tradition. Under the lens of this story, the work of this mid-fifteenth-century poet-which for the most part has been dismissed in the manner Plato dismissed all poetry, as an imitation of an imitation-appears at once historically important, formally sophisticated, and thematically profound. Other lenses could be-and in a few instances have been