Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Homo Viator: Guillaume de Deguileville's Pèlerinage de vie humaine
- 2 Chivalric Transformations in Fifteenth-Century France
- 3 Stephen Hawes: The Secularised Quest
- 4 Stephen Bateman: The Apocalyptic Quest
- 5 William Goodyear: Everyman's Quest
- 6 Lewes Lewkenor: The Humanist Quest
- 7 Edmund Spenser: The Poetic Quest
- Coda: Reflections on the Unfinished Quest
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Chivalric Transformations in Fifteenth-Century France
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Homo Viator: Guillaume de Deguileville's Pèlerinage de vie humaine
- 2 Chivalric Transformations in Fifteenth-Century France
- 3 Stephen Hawes: The Secularised Quest
- 4 Stephen Bateman: The Apocalyptic Quest
- 5 William Goodyear: Everyman's Quest
- 6 Lewes Lewkenor: The Humanist Quest
- 7 Edmund Spenser: The Poetic Quest
- Coda: Reflections on the Unfinished Quest
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The four works discussed in this chapter are derived from the model of Deguileville's Vie. Structural and thematic parallels in all four works unmistakeably point either directly to Deguileville, or possibly to other derivative texts in his tradition. In the case of René d'Anjou's Livre du cuer d'amour espris (1457–77) and Olivier de La Marche's Chevalier délibéré (1483) this can be confirmed with reference to the presence of Deguileville manuscripts in the environment in which the poets wrote. Jean de Courcy's Chemin de vaillance (1424) is more obviously derivative, and the debt to Deguileville is immediately apparent, whilst Thomas de Saluces's Livre du chevalier errant (1494–6) entertains a more complex but no less intense relationship with Vie. The four works may be said to constitute a sub-genre by themselves but are also crucially important for the later development of the tradition in sixteenth-century England. So de Courcy's Chemin survives in a single manuscript prepared for King Edward IV of England, which was in the Royal Library and appears to have been used, I argue, by Stephen Hawes. Thomas's Chevalier, on the other hand, was a model for Jean de Cartheny, author of the Voyage du chevalier errant (1552–7), which was in turn translated by William Goodyear in 1581 and will be discussed in Chapter 5. Olivier de La Marche's Chevalier délibéré was translated on two occasions, by Stephen Bateman as The Travayled Pylgrime (1569) and Lewes Lewkenor as The Resolved Gentleman (1594), discussed in Chapters 4 and 6 respectively.
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- Information
- Allegorical Quests from Deguileville to Spenser , pp. 45 - 73Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012