Middleton, Anne, 'The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II', Speculum 53 (1978), 94-114

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Quick Summary

A new form of poetry emerged during the reign of Richard II that appealed to the common experience rather than the abstraction of chivalric ideals

  • Public poetry is exemplified by the works of Geoffrey Chaucer
  • A similar ‘bourgeois style’ is found in other late-fourteenth century literature
  • Pubic poetry appealed to ideas of ‘common good’ rather than outdated chivalric ideals
Key Conclusion

Middleton explores ‘public poetry’ in late medieval England – a form of poetry which makes its first appearance in England during the reign of Richard II. Public poetry is defined by ‘a constant relation of speaker to audience within an ideally conceived worldly community’ (p. 95). Furthermore, Middleton describes public poetry as ‘vernacular, practical, wordly, plain, public-spirited, and peace-loving – in a word, “common,” rather than courtly or clerical’ (p. 96). Examples of public poetry primarily include the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, but Middleton also observes some of the characteristic features of public poetry in the works of Chaucer’s contemporaries.

Content Overview

The presence of a poetic speaker in a literary work became a stylistic means of representing a “common voice” to serve the “common good”. This amounted to a ‘new kind of experientially based didactic poetry, tonally vivid and often structurally unstable’ (p. 95). While the ‘social and literary values’ that underpin this public poetry are presented only in Chaucerian fiction, Middleton observes a similar ‘bourgeois style’ in other late-fourteenth century works of literature such as John Gower’s Confessio Amantis and William Langland’s Piers Plowman. This comprised a set of ethical attitudes towards the world that amount to a ‘high-minded secularism’: ‘experientially based, vernacular, simple, pious but practical’ (p. 95).

Further Findings

Although Middleton resists the temptation to speculate on the causes for the emergence of public poetry, the article suggests that it may have been driven by the ‘high hopes entertained for the boy king Richard’, and the perception of a ‘king in need of council’. This led to an ‘outpouring of large-minded, paternal, and heartfelt guidance’ in the form of public poetry (p. 112). Middleton also observes that the social station of the major poets – commoners rather than members of the nobility – may have influenced a form of poetry that embraced the ‘pubic’ for the first time, and appealed to ‘common experience rather than to abstract, and now largely non-functioning, chivalric literary ideals’ (pp. 112-13).

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