The Poetics of Caxton's “Publique”: The Construction of Audience in the Prologues of William Caxton

Abstract

Studies of Caxton's readership have focused largely on issues of patronage and book ownership. This essay examines the construction of a public readership within the prologues and epilogues that William Caxton appends to his publications. In these prologues certain concepts emerge in the gradual formulation of a print “publique”, the most significant being Caxton's aesthetics of access—a principle of framing and reformulating previous texts in order to render them readily intelligible to all and suitable to the “publique wele, as well of the nobles as of the comyn people”. This aesthetic cuts across class and dialect barriers to the extent that it would seem to obviate them. Thus a totalizing language abounds in Caxton's writing: each publication is profitable for all manner of people, or it behooves every estate and degree, or it contains all matters good and profitable, or it shall be understandable to every man, and so on. Along with the construction of his public readership, Caxton's repeated emphasis on his own “symplenes” serves as a stand-in for his public audience—the interested lay reader. The essay concludes with a discussion of the prologue to Caxton's most famous and influential publication, Le Morte Darthur, arguing that the imperative of access best explains the printer's motive for publication and the rationale for his editorial handling of Malory's text.