Shakespearean Medievalism

Abstract

This essay studies the narrative strategies by means of which Lydgate and Shakespeare historicize their authorial models, thereby investigating medieval and early modern constructions of temporal alterity within the history of authorship. A localized reading of Troy Book and Richard II reveals Lydgate's and Shakespeare's historicizing of the hybridization of transparent poetry and opaque performativity into self-concealing, translucent counter-authors (Cheney). Lydgate veils his Chaucerian sources, backdating his authorial model to ancient theatre, while Shakespeare seems to stage a chronological development: the transparent medieval poet-king Richard begins to render himself opaque as he recognizes the efficacy of Bullingbrook's modern performativity. Shakespeare's intertextual references to a 15th-century poetics of translucence belie such a teleology, unveiling the medieval origins of Shakespeare's modern counter-authorship.

Keywords:

• Shakespeare
• Lydgate
• authorship
• medievalism
• periodization
• intertextuality