Reading Courtesy Texts in Late Medieval England: The Audience of Lydgate’s Stans puer ad mensam

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the reception of John Lydgate’s courtesy text Stans puer ad mensam, which survives in twenty-three manuscripts. Scholars of courtesy texts have tended to focus on the type of audience constructed by the text itself, but this article examines what the manuscript evidence tells us about actual readers. The manuscripts show that Lydgate’s poem appeared in numerous sorts of codicological environments, indicating that a broad range of reading environments was receptive to it. Based on close archival research, this article also surveys the provenance evidence, which shows that Lydgate’s attested readers belonged to the lower end of the late medieval English elite—primarily middling landowners and middling merchants. Such an audience maps nicely onto Stans puer’s scripting of behaviors for social advancement.