Young Man Reading Caxtons Book of Curtes
Young Man Reading Caxtons Book of Curtes
Young Man Reading Caxtons Book of Curtes
1
The Babees Book … &c., ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, London: Trübner, 1868;
Queene Elizabethes Academy, A Booke of Precedence, &c, ed. Frederick J.
Furnivall, London: Trübner, 1869.
2
Charles Homer Haskins, Studies in Mediaeval Culture, Oxford: Clarendon, 1929,
p.73. As Haskins notes, the book was probably written in Paris in the first half of the
thirteenth century (Pseudo-Boèce. De disciplina scolarium, ed. Olga Weijers,
Leiden: Brill, 1976).
3
On this point see Jonathan Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy. Medieval Courtesy
Books and the Gawain Poet, Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985, p.2. See also Mary
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But in other, longer texts this mnemonic purpose is by no means evident, and
the text is accommodated into verse only in order to ensure readability; poetry
often was simply the most obvious way of writing in the fifteenth century,
whatever the actual subject matter, and we may imagine both public and silent,
private readings rather than the school-room recitation we naturally associate
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Young man, reading: Caxton’s Book of Curtesye
with the alphabet-poem just quoted. The writers themselves seem conscious of
poetry as a deliberate choice for their treatise, as we can see from these lines:
The choice of poetry is seen as part of the child’s education, something to which
he must get used as soon as possible.
As for the content of these books, the focus is on social behaviour; the two
moments of the child’s everyday life on which the treatises concentrate are the
meeting with the lord, and the meal. It is easy to see why these two events
should be central to the treatises: the noble child’s education often consisted in
his serving as a page in the household of a lord, his father’s equal or superior; in
some cases he might even find himself engaged at the king’s court.8 The child’s
daily obeisance in his master’s presence reflected the structure underlying the
society in which he lived; his behaviour in the meeting with his lord carried a
high symbolic significance. On the other hand, meals were “the most important
function in social life”,9 and showed people at their most public. Unlike what
happens in a procession or a coronation, a meal fuses natural animal behaviour
with social ritual. Chaucer comes to our help to explain this attitude: in the
Canterbury Tales the Prioress’s dainty behaviour sets the standard of table
manners (though we might suspect the writer of some irony);10 but even more
significant is the way Chaucer the pilgrim praises the Franklin for his liberality
(a typically chivalric characteristic) focussing on a single detail, his ever-ready
table (ll.353-54). As the Franklyn realises the importance of a table ready to
satisfy the needs of friends and neighbours, so the writers of courtesy books
realise the centrality of the ritual of sharing food, and the complexity of rules
meant to curb the instinctual, anti-social facets of eating. In these poems the
young reader is advised not to pick his nose at meals, not to put his knife in his
7
The Babees Book, ll.40-42 (printed in Babees Book, pp.1-9).
8
Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, p.49.
9
Nicholls, p.14.
10
General Prologue, ll.127-36 (The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
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mouth,11 not to grasp the best bit of food available.12 The importance of a correct
behaviour at meals is stressed through a reference to social status:
But the tone becomes quickly secular, the advice practical. The writers do
not seem interested in establishing a general doctrine of manner, but rather in
touching upon single details, in guiding the reader in his everyday behaviour
through a number of set scenes.16
11
The Babees Book, ll.150-51, 162.
12
Urbanitatis, ll.49-50, in Babees Book, pp.11-13.
13
The Babees Book, ll.176-82.
14
The Young Children’s Book, ll.27-28, in Babees Book, pp.17-25.
15
The Lytylle Childrenes Lytil Boke, ll.1-6, in Babees Book, pp.16-24.
16
John E. Mason, Gentlefolk in the Making. Studies in the History of English
Courtesy Literature and Related Topics from 1531 to 1774, Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 1935, p.14.
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Of course, not all courtesy books adhere strictly to these rules, and the longer
treatises show their originality in a number of different ways. John Russell’s
Boke of Nurture is an obviously professional manual of household management,
aimed not at children but at young men employed as servants of a nobleman.17 It
tells us very little about education, but offers precious material on the
complicate symbolism of a medieval banquet. On the other hand, Peter Idley’s
Instructions to his Son (1445-50), much more articulate than traditional courtesy
poems, lessens the pressure on manners and deportment, and is more interested
in the ethics of everyday life, offering discussions not only on general behaviour
and on virtues, but on the commandments and the deadly sins.18 As for one of
the few courtesy books addressing non-aristocratic children, How the Wise Man
Taut his Son,19 it pays far less attention to niceties of manner, and is more
interested in general rules of behaviour: beware what you say, do not be idle, do
not bear false witness, do not marry for money. But the book highlighted in the
present discussion has quite different, though equally original characteristics.
While the publication of the Babees’ Book was in progress, Furnivall
happened to stumble upon a copy of Caxton’s edition of the Book of Curtesye,
composed some time after 1452.20 His account of how he celebrated the
serendipitous discovery makes good reading – he writes, “I drank seven cups of
tea, and eat five or six large slices of bread and butter, in honour of the event”21
– but one is even more struck by the scholarly care with which Furnivall collated
this edition (printed at Westminster in 1477-78) with two manuscript copies of
the same treatise,22 offering the reader the possibility of a parallel reading and a
17
Printed in Babees Book, pp.117-99. The very length of the poem speaks of its
uniqueness. Furnivall’s inclusion of this book in his collection may be partly
responsible for modern confusion on the matter.
18
Charlotte d’Evelyn, ed., Peter Idley’s Instructions to his Son, London: Oxford
University Press, 1935.
19
Printed in Babees Book, pp.48-52.
20
Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, p.138.
21
Preface to Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, London: Oxford
University Press, 1868.
22
The earliest, probably preceding Caxton’s edition, is Oxford, Oriel College MS
79, ff.79r-89v (included in a fifteenth-century manuscript of The Vision of Piers
Plowman; described in Henry O. Coxe, Catalogus Codicum mss. qui in collegiis
aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur, Oxonii: E Typographeo Academico,
1852); the other is Oxford, Balliol College MS 354, ff.160r-165r (included in the
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comparison between the three texts. Partly for this reason, the Book of Curtesye
does not belong to either of Furnivall’s collections, and deserved a volume all to
itself; but its editorial isolation can only accentuate its unique status. This is not
the only book of table manners published by Caxton: in 1476 he had published
John Lydgate’s Stans Puer ad Mensam, a free English version of a popular
thirteenth-century Latin treatise attributed to Robert Grosseteste, scholar and
Bishop of Lincoln.23 In both cases we have small volumes (the Lydgate text is
“a quarto pamphlet of four leaves of 23 lines of print without a title-page or
illustrations”)24 probably aimed at a fairly wide readership (fifty copies survive
of Lydgate’s treatise in Caxton’s edition, and there were reprints); as was the
usual practice in the case of these slim publications, Lydgate’s Stans Puer
appears together with a Salve Regina in English, a set of precepts for good
living, a four-line poem on the Virgin and some gnomic couplets.
In an early analysis of the Book of Curtesye, Orme calls it “a typical
example” of the genre.25 It would be more correct to say that, while it
encompasses (as Orme rightly notices) most of the topics generally covered by
courtesy books, it also strikes an original note. In this perspective, a comparison
between Lydgate’s poem and the anonymous Book of Curtesye may be useful.
Given its author and his literary reputation, we might expect Stans Puer ad
Mensam to stand out in the tradition of courtesy books, but this is not the case. It
is simply a variation on a traditional type, insisting on table manners and on the
child’s behaviour in the presence of his lord; its only moment of interest occurs
towards the end, when the speaker stops addressing children and discusses them
instead, introducing what could be read nowadays as notations on child
psychology; thus children are variable in their humour, soon moved and soon
forgiving, but there is no violence in their quarrels, and no desire for revenge:
after a fight “Withe an apple the parties be made atone” (l.84). The poem
concludes with a short envoy, in which the “litel bille, bareyn of eloquence”
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Young man, reading: Caxton’s Book of Curtesye
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with a double envoy, to the child and, in a more decidedly literary vein, to the
“lytil quaier” itself. The pace is more leisurely than in traditional courtesy
poems, and the use of the imperative less insistently reiterated: here the writer
aims at universality in his precepts, underlining the fact that details of behaviour
might change with times and fashions, while we should concentrate on
immutable principles:
By the same principle, though both Caxton’s version and the Balliol
manuscript begin their text with the words “Lytyl Iohn” (Oriel has “Lytle
childe”), the writer clearly is not addressing a specific child or class of children;
John is a young Everyman whose diversified needs are accommodated with
great flexibility. The absence of an individual addressee might explain why the
writer often feels the need to justify his statements: so the child is invited to
listen because his tender age makes it easy to receive the imprint of teaching,
and in infancy one’s inclination for vice or virtue might be irrevocably
established (ll.1-14); looking a man in the face while speaking to him is a sign of
honesty, as no-one will think well of a shifty eye (ll.99-112); against the vice of
slandering and backbiting, St Augustine is called upon as an auctoritas (ll.155-
68), while an obscure “clarke” is invoked as recommending a moderate diet
(ll.220-21), and “the poet” advises the reader on how to present a cheerful
appearance at a poor table (l.258-59).
Tracy Adams notes that “although most conduct books were originally
composed for aristocratic readers, many were later appropriated and re-deployed
by non-noble readers for their own self-fashioning”.29 There might be some
proof in this text, which seems to have been originally written for noble readers
(or at least readers at court) and then adapted to include a wider readership – a
successful enterprise if, after Caxton’s edition, Wynkin de Worde printed it
twice.30 Partial proof of its intended readership may be the fact that, of the two
28
Lines 440-41. Quotations are taken from the Oriel MS version, as printed in
Furnivall’s edition.
29
Tracy Adams, “‘Noble, wyse and grete lordes, gentilmen and marchauntes’:
Caxton’s Prologues as Conduct Books for Merchants”, Parergon 22 (2005): 53-76,
p.53.
30
Preface to Furnivall’s edition, p.xi. On this point see also Mark Addison Amos,
“‘For Manners Make Man’: Bourdieu, de Certeau, and the Common Appropriation
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Thus the Oriel manuscript; Caxton’s version (like Balliol) rewords the last
three lines:
The reference to the sovereign is eliminated. The same happens in stanza 17,
with the writer discussing the child’s attendance at table, “Whiche is to
souereyne thyng of gret plesaunce” (l.119, Oriel), or “Wherein ye shal your self
best auaunce” (l.119, Caxton), while a more generic version to “the gret astate”
(l.122) remains almost unchanged in Caxton. The child is enjoined to pay
attention to the face “of youre master, or of youre souereine” (l.128), as the case
may be, and to be mannerly “in euery pres, in euery company” (l.150); the
reminder that God is the lord “whom to serue is grettest liberte” (l.98) sounds as
of Noble Manners in the Book of Courtesy”, Medieval Conduct, ed. Kathleen Ashley
and Robert L.A. Clark, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 2001, 23-48,
p.38. See also Lisa H. Cooper, “Urban Utterances: Merchants, Artisans, and the
Alphabet in Caxton’s Dialogues in French and English”, New Medieval Literatures
7, ed. Wendy Scase, Rita Copeland and David Lawton, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005, pp.127-61.
31
Mynors, p.354.
32
Amos, p.25.
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individual self-assertion. Even in its earlier version the Book of Curtesye lays a
fair claim for freedom from the constricting norms of earlier treatises in the
name of a greater flexibility in the child’s upbringing, and indicates an attempt
at educating rather than teaching manners, insisting on principles of good
behaviour rather than details of ceremony. This may explain the invocation of
auctoritates such as St Augustine, a novelty for the genre.
In the section dedicated to the child’s pastimes, after recommending the harp
or lute, over a hundred lines are devoted to reading, and a list of authors is
provided. Books should be “enournede with eloquence” (l.310), and should join
teaching with pleasure, becoming a suitable occupation for moments of idleness.
Seth Lerer sees here an exhortation to find in books “examples of good topics of
conversation and models of eloquence with which to shape [one’s] speech”,33
and in fact the writer follows this initial advice with a reference to the child’s
ability at communication, seen as a direct derivation from his familiarity with
books:
This is a novelty in courtesy poems, which generally avoid the subject; Hugh
Rhodes’s Book of Nurture (1554) urges the opposite, thus exhorting parents:
Take them often with you to heare Gods word preached, & then enquyre of
them what they heard, and vse them to reade in the Bible and other Godly
Bokes, but especyally keepe them from reading of fayned fables, vayne
fantasyes, and wanton stories, and songs of loue, which bring much
mischiefe to youth.34
33
Lerer, Children’s Literature, p.77.
34
In Babees Book, p.64.
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35
See The Goldyn Targe, ll.253, 262 (The Poems of William Dunbar, ed. W.
Mackay MacKenzie, London: Faber, 1932, pp.112-19); and The Garland of Laurel,
ll.387-91 (John Skelton. The Book of the Laurel, ed. F.W. Brownlow, Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1990).
36
Bornstein, Mirrors of Courtesy, p.81.
37
As Adams writes, “acutely aware of social differences […] Caxton does not
promote unrestrained imitation of the nobility. Rather, drawing upon his own
success as a merchant mingling with the nobility, Caxton shows his merchant
readers how to modify the chivalric values described in romances and his other
printed works of chivalry for their own use even as they maintain deference towards
their social superiors” (p.56). The same principle can be applied to this treatise.
38
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61.
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the same level as a meal, just as it is hard to imagine that the youngest member
of a household, rather than older and more experienced persons, should be asked
to read aloud. The fact that in the poem the child is encouraged to read rather
than listen to his elders, and to read in order not to be idle, rather implies that the
writer is thinking of a silent, individual form of reading.
In mentioning these four writers, the book also tells us something of their
worth, employing the metrical forms beloved by Chaucer and Lydgate and
echoing passages from their works.39 As Charlotte d’Evelyn notes, we find
something similar in Peter Idley’s Instructions to his Son, in which “his stanza-
form, his four and five-syllabled words, his rhetorical flourishes, and his very
disclaimer of ‘floresshed eloquence’ show him to be an amateur in the post-
Chaucerian, mid-Lydgatian school of versification”.40 In the case of the Book of
Curtesye, however, the imitation is far more subtle: the passage on table
manners includes the line “Lete no fatte ferthyng of youre lippe be sen” (l.186),
evoking the passage from the Canterbury Tales on the Prioress’s cup, on which
“ther was no ferthyng sene / of grece” (ll.134-35). The writer is echoing
Chaucer’s parody of books of table manners. This instance announces an
experienced reader, conversant with the texts he recommends. Elsewhere, as in
the use of proverbial phrases or mottoes (such as “maner maketh man”, l.238),
and in other examples mentioned above in which he refers explicitly to
auctoritates, he reveals the derivative nature of the book, but also the erudition
underlying its composition.
Overall, the book pays great attention to the influence these writers have on
language: all these are writers in the vernacular, a language proudly vindicated
as “oure toung” (l.350); a partial exception would be Gower, but the reference to
the Confessio appears to limit the interest of the reader to his production in
English. Even in the case of advice literature, a recommendation to read books
in English is practically unknown, even long after English established itself as
the language of Chancery and national literature: for instance, Sir Thomas
Elyot’s Boke Named the Governour, first published as late as 1531, devotes
sections x-xv of book 1 to specific advice on reading, offering a long list of
authors; but they are all classical writers (almost the only exception is Erasmus’s
Institutio principis christiani), while the writer quite clearly states that Latin
39
On this point see Kuskin, p.144.
40
D’Evelyn, p.47.
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41
A Critical Edition of Sir Thomas Elyot’s The Boke Named the Governour, ed.
Donald W. Rude, New York: Garland, 1992, I.v.
42
James I of Scotland, The Kingis Quair, ed. John Norton-Smith, Leiden: Brill,
1981, l.1374.
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poete laureate”). The word appears first in the Prologue of the Clerk’s Tale, in
which the Clerk acknowledges his debt to Petrarch:
Neither Chaucer nor Lydgate use the epithet for themselves; Lydgate uses it
to refer to Chaucer, establishing the phrase “poets laureate” in English.43 In The
Floure of Curtesy Lydgate, lamenting Chaucer’s death, joins the reference to the
poetic laurel to the image of the fountain of eloquence:
43
John Lydgate, A Mumming for the Mercers of London, l.35, in The Minor Poems
of John Lydgate, Part II: Secular Poems, ed. Henry N. MacCracken, London:
Oxford University Press, 1934, pp.695-98.
44
The Floure of Curtesy, ll.236-42, in The Minor Poems, Part II, pp.410-18. See
also Lydgate’s Life of Our Lady, ll.1628-37 (A Critical Edition of John Lydgate’s
Life of Our Lady, ed. J.A. Lauritis, R.A. Klinefelter, and V.F. Gallagher, Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University Press, 1961).
45
Christopher Cannon notes that enluminer is “new to English in Chaucer’s use”
(The Making of Chaucer’s English. A Study of Words, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998, p.171).
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46
Lois Ebin, “Lydgate’s Views on Poetry”, Annuale Mediaevale 18 (1977): 76-105,
pp.76-80; Alessandra Petrina, “Excuse my French: Bilingualism and Translation in
Lancastrian England”, in The Medieval Translator. Traduire au Moyen Age, Volume
12, ed. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead, Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, pp.121-
31.
47
Kuskin, p.138.
48
Blake, William Caxton and English Literary Culture, p.127.
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49
Seth Lerer, “William Caxton”, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English
Literature, ed. David Wallace, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999: 720-
38, p.724. See also Lerer’s Chaucer and his Readers, pp.85-93.
50
Lerer, “William Caxton”, p.727.
51
Thomas Hoccleve. The Regiment of Princes, ed. Charles R. Blyth, Kalamazoo:
Medieval Institute Publications, 1999, l.4978.
52
N.F. Blake, Caxton’s Own Prose, London: Deutsch, 1973, p.59. A similar
sentiment is expressed in Caxton’s Prologue to his second edition of the Canterbury
Tales (c.1484), printed in Caxton’s Own Prose, pp.61-63. See also Blake, William
Caxton and English Literary Culture, London: The Hambledon Press, 1991, p.157.
53
Kuskin, p.147.
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54
As Brentano notes, this is “a considerable advance over earlier facetus writers”
(p.60).
55
“Malapert” is first attested in Troilus and Criseyde, III.87.
56
Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, Part III, ed. Henry Bergen, London: Oxford University
Press, 1924, IX.2889.
57
The Order of Fools, l.45, in The Minor Poems, Part II, pp.449-55.
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and fashions not his own, to the point that he risks losing his virility, and
looking “almost effeminate” (l.490). His description opens with this memorable
portrait:
Chappron in the late fifteenth century indicated the hood for a hawk (from
the French chaperon, “hat”). “Seint Malouse” may refer to Saint-Malo, a Breton
port and a traditional enemy of England. These details may point at an anti-
French sentiment in the description of the galaunte: perhaps the child reader is
being warned against imitating French customs. The allusion is slight: what is
important is the fundamental “honeste / Which is accordyng wyth humanyte”
(ll.482-83), evidently the key factor in the child’s education. Honest Englishness
brings together these lines and the national poets: there should be no servile
imitation of aristocratic foibles in this new gentleman, no aping of noblemen’s
reading of French books. The reference to English authors highlights the novelty
and the fundamentally national quality of the character this book is helping to
shape. The literary advice can be linked to Caxton’s highlighting of the
importance of reading and the cultural legitimation of the English tongue.
Caxton’s attitude is linked to his business as a printer: to encourage reading
from an early age ensured a readership for the next generation. Setting business
considerations aside, Caxton recognised the potentialities for self-education in
this treatise, and saw how it might be directed at a middle-class audience,
autonomous from courtly culture though acknowledging it as a model. In the
new cultural system, the decision to acquire books and read them could be
solitary, independent, and voluntary. The advice concerning reading in the Book
of Curtesye is particularly important for the legitimation of these acts. To quote
Lerer once more, “the assessments of the Book of Curtesye provided Caxton
with the aesthetic criteria and social functions of vernacular authorial writing,
and his editions were calibrated to conform to its precepts”.58
58
Lerer, “William Caxton”, p.726.
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Young man, reading: Caxton’s Book of Curtesye
But the same poet, when encouraging his addressee to have his children
learned and “lettred” (l.648), does not make any reference to any specific book,
least of all in English.
While a literary canonization of Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate was in
progress, the writer of the Book of Curtesye was concerned with their practical
value for childhood, when they would be more readily accessible and enjoyable
than Latin classics or grammars.60 The writer may have been thinking of them as
stepping stones towards more arduous, non-English reading when the child was
older and linguistically better equipped. But we may also recognise the wisdom
of a writer who, for the first time in the tradition of English courtesy books, saw
the advantage of allying pleasure and work in education, recognising the
importance of upholding national writers in the national language. Four
centuries later, Frederick Furnivall would eagerly, if perhaps unconsciously,
echo these sentiments:
59
Active Policy of a Prince, ll.1-7. George Ashby’s Poems, ed. Mary Bateson,
London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1899.
60
Or, as Furnivall writes, “not the Catechism and Latin grammar” (Caxton’s Book of
Curtesye, p.viii).
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a fit amount of natural science, we should have been a nobler nation now
than we are.61
61
Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, p.ix.
134