The Memorial Form of John Lydgate’s Troy Book

Abstract

This essay argues that both sides of the continuing debate about whether Lydgate’s Troy Book is more interested in political legitimation or admonition have not understood the form of the poem. It claims that this form is, surprisingly, akin to that of postmodern memorial monuments, such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which provide a framework for a trans-temporal communal negotiation of values that is ambivalent and underdetermined by design. Scrutinizing Lydgate’s use of the term memorial and depiction of memorial monuments (especially those for Hecuba and Hector) across the breadth of the poem and in light of its source, the essay demonstrates how the poem’s apparent contradictions or confusions are in fact expressions of its informing idea. In conclusion, the essay reflects on the implications of its argument and anachronistic methodology for the conceptual and methodological confines of synchronic historicism and, more generally, for the relation between historical contingency and aesthetic objects.