The Provocative Fifteenth Century

Abstract

This double issue of Exemplaria suggests that fifteenth-century literary culture in England promoted a sensibility of provocation, where not only authors but also scribes, translators, readers, recipe-makers, bookmakers, and others engaged in literary-textual-material practices that might be understood as agitative in a speculative or inquisitive way. Of particular importance to this development was the work of John Lydgate, whose poetry agitated his contemporary readers as much as it has his modern critics. In consideration of aesthetic theories by scholars Sianne Ngai, Fred Moten, and Simon Jarvis, this introduction asks that we rethink the ramifications of our responses to Lydgate’s work, and especially the “ugly feelings” that have historically characterized Lydgatean reception. Revisiting written responses to Lydgate’s work from his lifetime and shortly after his death, I explore evidence that the poet deliberately cultivated mixed responses to his work, and that its capacity to perplex, irritate, and rebuff its readers was part of a larger aesthetic strategy more often seen in much later avant-garde writers and artists.