The Provocations of Orthodoxy: Lydgate and Late-Medieval Books of Hours in Literary Culture

Abstract

Theologically conventional, books of hours nonetheless participate in cultures of formal and aesthetic experimentation that we would, under other circumstances, call literary. This article explores those provocations by examining the intersections of devotional and literary reading cultures visible in John Lydgate’s “Fifteen Joys of Our Lady,” a small poem that appears in a variety of manuscript contexts. One of these is a book of hours, British Library MS Egerton 3088. But the poem’s other manuscript contexts, ranging from a psalter (Oxford, Bodleian MS Lat. Liturgy. e 47) to an anthology of vernacular poetry (Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.21) reveal how malleable it is. Finally, another poem of Lydgate, “The Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Our Lady,” provides a vision not only of how devotional reading works, but also of devotional literary production itself.