Saints’ Lives and Miracles of The Virgin

Abstract

AbstractThe fifteenth century saw a marked increase in the number of saints’ lives, both of those written in older literary forms as well as of those written in newer styles. Many fifteenth-century legends, by anonymous writers, continued the narrative forms of an earlier period. At the same time, monastic poets like John Capgrave, Henry Bradshaw, and Laurence Wade composed lengthy works modelled on earlier Latin hagiographic traditions. Other writers, such as John Lydgate and Osbern Bokenham, chose to write in a post-Chaucerian ‘high style’, and engaged in ambitious new metrical, rhetorical, and stylistic projects. Other poets composed hagiographic works from a different literary tradition, employing rhymed alliterative verse to achieve their effects.