Imagery of the natural world in political poetry produced in England between 1370 and 1415

This thesis explores the use of imagery of the natural world in political poetry produced in England between 1370 and 1415. The corpus of poetry examined in this thesis is designed to include both canonical works of political poetry, such as Gower’s Cronica tripertita and Langland’s Piers Plowman, and lesser studied texts. In this latter group I include Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger as well as shorter texts such as ‘O Deus in Celis’ and ‘Up on an Hylle’. This project adopts a critical approach which supports historically informed readings with the careful application of modern methodologies, and seeks to demonstrate the benefits of applying modern linguistic theories to medieval texts. Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Cognitive Integration Theory are used in combination to produce a flexible model which can provide new insight into the imagery of these poems.
After introducing the methodology employed in Chapter One, the next three chapters focus on the tradition of representing historical figures by their heraldic animal. Chapter Two explores the presence of this imagery in Gower’s Cronica tripertita, analysing the Cronica in the context of historical and vaticinal discourse to determine the origin of Gower’s imagery and the discourses his text participates in. Chapter Three considers the heraldic animal imagery in Passus II of Richard the Redeless and demonstrates that although it is similar to the imagery in the Cronica, it is derived from Richard’s use of livery badges, rather than vaticinal literature. The fourth chapter considers a selection of shorter poems which also use heraldic animal imagery. It investigates the origins of this imagery, its political significance, and its relationship to the imagery of Richard the Redeless and Gower’s Cronica. Chapter Five explores the use of the APIAN metaphor in Mum and the Sothsegger and the significance of the gardener who explains the imagery to the dreamer. This chapter aligns the gardener in Mum with the tradition of representing God as a gardener who tends the garden of man’s heart or soul. The final chapter develops on the theme of the garden of man’s heart or soul by examining how the self can be represented as a landscape in religious discourse, and how these ideas can inform our understanding of the natural environments in the dream vision of Mum.
This project explores some of the striking and subtle ways in which imagery was used in political poetry in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. By examining the origins and associations of this imagery the thesis demonstrates how political poetry used features of different discourses and traditions to construct its political significance. The close analysis of the imagery provides greater insight into its meaning and significance, highlighting previously unnoticed features of its political commentary. This poetry does not provide a transparent statement of political fact but instead offers a nuanced commentary on the political turmoil seen in England at the end of the fourteenth and the beginning of the fifteenth centuries, including the Appellants Crisis, the deposition of Richard II, and the problems faced during Henry IV’s rule.

Advisor: Perkins, N