Materializing Latinate Prayers: John Lydgate’s Aureate and Paraliturgical Poems in a London Merchant’s Booklet

Abstract

ABSTRACT While John Lydgate’s aureate style is commonly recognized as one of the significant features of his poetics, its reception among medieval audiences has not been closely assessed. This article is a case study that explores early readerly responses to Lydgate’s aureate and paraliturgical lyrics collected in a late-fifteenth-century short anthology, Booklet IX of Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.21. Produced for a wealthy London merchant, this booklet reflects, at least partially, its first owner’s literary interests, and its mise-en-page presents the aureate and paraliturgical lyrics as material objects. Such material presentations embed the texts in the sociocultural milieu of late-fifteenth-century London and presumably helped the first owner of the booklet to establish his social profile by performatively intertwining his devotional and literary agency with the sophistication of the poems contained in the volume