Alessandra Petrina

Young man, reading: Caxton’s Book of Curtesye

Students of Middle English literature are indebted to a generation of

scholars/antiquaries who, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
collected and edited an enormous number of manuscripts. Among these scholars
is Frederick James Furnivall, one of the most enthusiastic early editors; any
study of medieval children’s literature would be impossible without his
collections of medieval and early modern courtesy books, published in the
1860s: The Babees Book and Queene Elizabethes Academy.1 In these volumes
Furnivall edited the most interesting examples in English of a popular European
genre: first appearing in Latin in the twelfth century, courtesy books are
practical manuals of good manners, mostly directed at children or young
persons, whose gender is generally clearly specified. They may appear crude
and basic in outline, but doubtlessly enjoyed a high degree of popularity: one of
the most famous, De disciplina scolarium, allegedly written by Boethius, is
extant in at least eighty-two manuscripts.2 Vernacular versions of courtesy
books started to appear in the thirteenth century. English texts are rather later;
the extant manuscripts seem to be no earlier than the fifteenth century, which
may be explained by the predominance of French for written productions of this
kind.3 The purpose of this paper is to offer an overview of the genre as it

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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developed in England, before concentrating on Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, and

to highlight its unique characteristics, discussing the work in the context of
contemporary English literature.
Courtesy books, or books for babies, or books of table manners, are short
texts addressing “yonge babees”, “lytill children” or sometimes one child called
by his Christian name; these children are generally male4 and aristocratic. These
treatises are characterised by the use of verbs in the imperative, short sentences
and a simple vocabulary; and they are written in verse, sometimes divided into
stanzas, sometimes with a basic rhyme scheme. The latter trait has been
generally identified with the need for children to learn these texts by heart,5 and
this is probably true in a number of instances, especially when the poem has the
double purpose of teaching good manners and the alphabet: thus in texts such as
Lerne or be Lewde or The ABC of Aristotle the series of exhortations is set in
crude sequences of alliterating adjectives:

To Amerous, to Aunterous, ne Angre the nat to muche;

To Bolde, ne to Besy, ne Bourde nat to large;
To Curteys, to Cruelle, ne Care nat to sore;
To Dulle, ne to Dredefulle, ne Drynke nat to offte;
To Elenge, to Excellent, ne to Carefulle neythur;6

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

Theresa Brentano, Relationship of the Latin Facetus Literature to the Medieval

English Courtesy Poems, Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1935; Servus Gieben,
“Robert Grosseteste and Medieval Courtesy Books”, Vivarium 5 (1967): 47-78;
Diane Bornstein, Mirrors of Courtesy, Hamden: Archon Books, 1975; Nicholas
Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and
Aristocracy 1066-1530, London: Methuen, 1984, pp.133-41, and Medieval Children,
New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
4
An exception is How the Good Wijf taute hir Doutir, printed in Babees Book,
pp.36-47.
5
Diane Bornstein, “Courtesy Books”, in Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph
R. Strayer, 3rd volume, New York: Scribner, 1983, p.661.
6
Lerne or be Lewde, ll.1-5, in Babees Book, pp.9-10.

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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:

Also thenke nouhte to straungely at my penne,

In this metre for yow lyste to procede,
Men vsen yt; therefore on hit take hede.7

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:

Kutte nouhthe youre mete eke as it were Felde men,

That to theyre mete haue suche an appetyte
That they ne rekke in what wyse, where ne when,
Nor how vngoodly they on theyre mete twyte;
But, swete children, haue al-wey your delyte
In curtesye, and in verrey gentylnesse,
And at youre myhte eschewe boystousnesse.13

What is less easy to understand is why courtesy books appear unconcerned

with the child’s spiritual well-being: what seems to take place as the genre
develops is a more professional, sharper focussing on practical purpose. Lip-
service is paid to religious observance: some poems include an exhortation to
follow God’s precepts, or to pray Him for the writer’s sake, or, more to the
point, to thank Jesus for the food;14 sometimes there is even a half-hearted
attempt to attribute a divine origin to good manners:

Lytylle childrene, here ye may lere

Moche curtesy þat is wrytyne here;
For clerkis that the vij arte cunne,
Seyn þat curtesy from hevyn come
Whan Gabryelle oure lady grette,
And Elizabeth with Mary mette.15

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
Taut 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”

sixteenth-century memorandum book of Richard Hill, citizen and grocer of London;

described in R.A.B. Mynors, Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College
Oxford, Oxford: Clarendon, 1963, pp.352-54).
23
Table Manners for Children. Stans Puer ad Mensam. By John Lydgate, ed.
Nicholas Orme, Salisbury: Perdix Press: 1989. On other books of manners published
by Caxton, see N.F. Blake, Caxton and his World, London: Deutsch, 1969, pp.224-
39.
24
Orme, “Introduction”, Table Manners, p.7.
25
Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry, p.138.

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(l.92) is enjoined to go into the world, instructing children and submitting to

correction. Apart from this, Lydgate’s contribution to the tradition of children’s
books is conventional: he follows the rules of the genre without deviating from
the norm.
The Book of Curtesye was printed on its own, perhaps because of its length:
532 lines, against the 98 of Stans Puer ad Mensam. Both are written in rhyme
royal, a surprising choice for such pragmatic works. Most courtesy poems prefer
simpler metrical forms, such as rhyming couplets: rhyme royal, complex and
highly literary, is generally associated with more ambitious poetic undertakings,
such as Troilus and Criseyde or The Kingis Quair. However, as a devoted
follower of Chaucer, Lydgate employed rhyme royal in occasional and love
poems, making the form more accessible, and the Book of Curtesye may be
following this practice. Such literary consciousness is evident in another
intriguing passage, a metrical experiment occurring at lines 365-85. Here the
writer praises Lydgate, whom he calls “my mastire” (l.366), abandoning rhyme
royal, though maintaining the same rhyme-scheme, to take up the characteristics
of the ballad with a final burden; the praise of the master is expressed through
another Lydgatean choice.26 The imitation of Lydgate is limited to metre; while
Lydgate offers the reader pieces of advice “strung together like assorted
beads”,27 this writer organizes a more complex structure on the courtesy book
model.
After an exhortation to the child to pay attention to what he is about to read,
the first half of The Book of Curtesye (ll.15-294) follows the course of the
child’s day, from the early ablutions and prayers to his serving at Mass, the
meal, conversation and games; in the second part (ll.295-427) the child is invited
to avoid rough games and violent sports, dedicating himself to intellectual
pursuits such as playing the harp or lute, singing, dancing. But what really
interests the writer is another intellectual activity, discussed at length: reading.
The poem concludes with surprisingly lively caricatures of rustics or boors, and
26
For instance, Lydgate’s Testament, discussed by Seth Lerer in Chaucer and his
Readers. Imagining the Author in Late-Medieval England, Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993, pp.108-10, and in Children’s Literature. A Reader’s History,
from Aesop to Harry Potter, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2008,
pp.75-76. See also William Kuskin, Symbolic Caxton. Literary Culture and Print
Capitalism, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008, pp.137-38.
Brentano comments on the ballad section as “perhaps, the only passage marked by
artistic imagery in English facetus poems” (p.60).
27
Orme, “Introduction”, p.10.

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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:

Mennys werkys haue often entirchaunge,

That nowe is nurture, sumtyne had ben full straunge.28

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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extant manuscript copies, one (Balliol) is the commonplace book of a citizen of

London.31 The writer presupposes a variable social context for the child-reader:
as manners, even in the more traditional treatises, often centre on the relation
between the child and his superior, this poem leaves its options open when
touching on this point. In this, it mirrors Caxton’s policy of directing his
production at the variable and upwardly mobile upper middle class.32 Thus
different forms of behaviour are suggested, depending on the relationship
between the child and his interlocutor:

And loke, my childe, to folkys that ye mete,

Ye spekin feyre wyth wordis of plesaunce;
To youre souerayne wyth humble obeysaunce,
To hym that is youre felowe and pere,
Yevith feyre langage wyth ryght frendly chere. (ll.59-63)

Thus the Oriel manuscript; Caxton’s version (like Balliol) rewords the last
three lines:

Demure and curtoys / of your demenaunce

To hym that is your felawe and pere
Gyue ye fair langage / and a frendly chere

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:

For trusteth well, hit is a tedious thyng

For to here a childe multiplie talkyng,
Yif hit be not to the purpose applied,
And also wyth goodly termys aleyde. (ll.319-22)

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

The passage underlines the corrupting influence of books of entertainment,

whose interest resides in the pleasure they give the reader. Rhodes’s attitude is
confirmed by what books we do find recommended, particularly in advice
literature (such as mirrors for princes), which often included references to poems
and histories that could present adequate exempla to the reader. Here, too, the
fayned fables would find no favour. Light reading is not to be encouraged.

33
Lerer, Children’s Literature, p.77.
34
In Babees Book, p.64.

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 Young man, reading: Caxton’s Book of Curtesye

The Book of Curtesye strikes a unique note among courtesy books by

considering the books mentioned far from light reading, in spite of the pleasure
they provide. The list is short but accurate, concentrating on four writers: John
Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve and John Lydgate. In many ways
it is a surprising list, linking this book with sixteenth-century poems such as
William Dunbar’s Goldyn Targe or John Skelton’s Garland of Laurel,
celebrating a nascent literary tradition in the vernacular.35 Besides, Hoccleve is
the odd man out: the conventional triad of past glorious poets would not
normally include him. In fact, this is the only reference to Hoccleve in the whole
corpus of fifteenth- or even sixteenth-century literature, underlining the
extraordinary literary awareness of our writer. Attempting to explain the
inclusion of this list of writers, Diane Bornstein notes the popularity of these
“courtly poets” with the upper classes, thus deducing that knowledge of
literature “served a social function as a cultural ornament and an indication of
class status”.36 This seems, however, a simplification, setting fundamentally
false assumptions on the ideal reader. The poem tells us very little on the social
status of the child; its insistence on playing, singing and dancing posits the
courtly environment as a mirror for readers, but it remains to be seen whether it
is an ideal, a model, or an actuality.37 Whenever a courtesy poem is aimed at the
nobility, such pastimes are not even mentioned. Besides, if traditional courtesy
books stress the importance of meals as a social act, the encouragement of
reading appears doubly surprising. It is unclear whether the reading
recommended here is private and silent or public, such as the one symbolised by
the illuminated frontispiece in Troilus and Criseyde in which Chaucer is reading
aloud,38 but it is hard to imagine the child engaged in reading as a social act on

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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should be the language of the child’s education.41 By suggesting books in

English, the writer of the Book of Curtesye – a book “Playne in sentence, but
playner in langage” (l.14) – is intent on something different from the normal
course of a child’s education. Books are not “a suitable subject for polite
conversation”: they are means of intellectual improvement. Thus contemporary,
vernacular literature is preferred to the recognised auctoritates; reading can
unite entertainment and instruction. The linguistic aim of the treatise is made
evident at the end of the section on the English poets, when the writer says of
them that “of oure toung they were bothe locke and key” (l.406).
The evaluations accompanying the mention of the poets reflect conventional
wisdom, of the kind we find in Lydgate’s frequent praise of Chaucer, or in the
last stanza of the Kingis Quair, naming Gower and Chaucer as “my maisteris
dere”:42 Gower is associated with morality (but also “fulle of sentence and
langage”, l.329), and the child is encouraged to read his Confessio Amantis;
Chaucer embodies eloquence (“eternate” in Oriel, “ornate” in Caxton, l.330) and
pleasure, and is praised for his clear, pertinent and “full delectable” language
(ll.338, 341, 347); his importance is highlighted, somewhat to Gower’s
detriment. As for Hoccleve, the child is encouraged to read his Regiment of
Princes, referred to as a translacion (l.351): the poet is appreciated as a writer in
the mirror for princes tradition, writing “goodly language and sentence passing
wyse” (l.352). The last writer is John Lydgate, the present writer’s “mastire”
(l.366), described as recently deceased. As in the case of Chaucer, there is no
reference to a specific work, though the child is warned that once he starts on
Lydgate he will find volumes to peruse “that ben so large and wyde” (l.386).
Lydgate is given much more space than the others, and is dedicated, as noted
above, a three-stanza ballad (the central stanza is missing in Caxton and Balliol)
lamenting his untimely death, and mixing Christian and pagan images in
envisaging the poet now singing “Kyrie” and “Sanctus” among the nine muses
and Jupiter (ll.365-85).
Other notations are less expected: Chaucer and Lydgate are laureate: the
former was notable for his “lauriate presence” (“laureate scyence” in Caxton,
l.332), the latter, more tentatively, is “worthy to be renownede laureate” (l.367;
once again Caxton simplifies matters by printing “worthy to be renomede / as

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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Alessandra Petrina

poete laureate”). The word appears first in the Prologue of the Clerk’s Tale, in
which the Clerk acknowledges his debt to Petrarch:

Fraunceys Petrak, the lauriat poete,

Highte this clerk, whos rethorike sweete
Enlumyned al Ytaille of poetrie. (ll.31-33)

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:

Chaucer is deed, that had such a name

Of fayre makyng, that, without[en] wene,
Fayrest in our tonge, as the laurer grene.
We may assay for to countrefete
His gay[e] style, but it wil not be;
The welle is drie, with the lycoure swete,
Bothe of Clye and of Caliope.44

The Book of Curtesye will invoke “O lusty licoure of that fulsome

fountaigne” (l.333). Another interesting detail is the use of the word eluminede,
referring to Chaucer’s and Lydgate’s poetry. The former “eluminede all this
oure britaigne” with eloquence (l.331): the line clearly derives from the passage
in the Clerk’s Prologue quoted above.45 As for Lydgate, his works are
“elumynede with colouris fresshe on euery side” (l.388). The line could refer

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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 Young man, reading: Caxton’s Book of Curtesye

equally to manuscript illumination or to the flowers of rhetoric, and is an echo of

Lydgate’s usage.46
With these lexical choices the author of the Book of Curtesye inscribes
himself in a fifteenth-century tradition (whose main representative is Lydgate)
attempting a definition of the new English literary canon in a poetic line
proceeding from Chaucer. Though mentioned after Gower, Chaucer is praised as
“Fader and Founder of eternate eloquence” (l.330), and his status as the
foremost poet in English is insisted upon. It may be argued that by
acknowledging Chaucer’s authority and influence within the context of
childhood instruction the writer enters a tradition already established by Caxton
through other, contemporary publications;47 it remains to be seen whether
Caxton’s cultural project simply happened to coincide with the aims of the Book
of Curtesye, or whether the treatise sprang in some way from Caxton’s
collaboration with the writer – for the latter hypothesis, captivating though it is,
there is no proof, and the differences between Oriel and Caxton, noted above,
suggest the printer’s manipulation of the text. Probably Caxton chose this
manual since it represented so well a literary culture he knew and shared, and
expressed in clear, didactic terms what was implicit in other writers he
promoted. As Blake notes:
The major poets printed by Caxton are Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate, and
these three represent the triumvirate of the courtly tradition. Their names were
constantly linked by fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century writers who
commented on the new poetic fashion. All the other poetry printed by Caxton
may be said to be part of this new tradition. Benedict Burgh was Lydgate’s pupil
and finished some of his work; the Court of Sapience was often attributed to
Lydgate himself; and the poet of the Book of Courtesy looks back to Chaucer,
48
Gower and Lydgate as the three great poets and thus reveals his allegiance.
Caxton’s support of English writers is echoed in the Book of Curtesye, which
may have prompted its publication in the early years of Caxton’s activity, during
what Lerer calls the first of “his two concerted forays into Middle English

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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Alessandra Petrina

literature”.49 In the same years he published popular poems by Lydgate and

Chaucer as well as didactic works in English. Evidently he saw in the passage
from the Book of Curtesye discussed here a ready theoretical formulation of
what he was doing in practice, that is, establishing a canon of English poets;
Seth Lerer calls this passage “the critical instruction for their understanding”.50
That he attributed much importance to this passage is shown by what he writes
in his Prologues, echoing what he could have read here: the idea of Chaucer as
the founder of the language, probably first formulated by Hoccleve in his
Regiment of Princes, when he writes of Chaucer as “the first fyndere of our fair
langage”,51 is repeated in Caxton’s Epilogue to his edition of Chaucer’s Boece:
“the worshipful fader and first foundeur and enbelissher of ornate eloquence in
our Englissh, I mene Maister Geffrey Chaucer”.52 Later in the poem, the author
of the Book of Curtesye amplifies this concept, referring to the four poets as
“Founders of our langage, thilke fadyrs dere” (l.432): he moves from the
reverence of Chaucer alone to a first formulation of the English canon. This is
another instance in which Caxton manipulates the text in Oriel, printing
“Famous in our langage / these faders dere”.
The conjunction of Chaucerian tradition and childhood instruction has been
read as denoting a paternalistic attitude on the part of the writer: observing that
“its advice is chiefly nostalgic and evocative”,53 Kuskin detects in the
exhortation to look at the “faders Auncient” for instruction the expression of a
fundamentally conservative ideology. An educational manual is by definition
conservative, though in the tradition of “babees books” in English the Book of
Curtesye is perhaps the most independent from Latin models: after all, it exhorts
the child to follow the rules of nurture, that is, of good breeding, “Newe
founden or Auncient whet[h]er hit be” (l.437). Yet the ideology expressed here

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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 Young man, reading: Caxton’s Book of Curtesye

is not so much conservative as nationalistic, supporting all things English to the

detriment of foreign customs. Ironically, in this it is once again following a
foreign model: “manuscripts of both the early and late versions of Urbain
preserve a passage which commends the French language as one that should be
learnt”.
Literary ambition is shown not only by the smooth-flowing prose and the
variations played on incessant exhortation, but also by the last section of the
book, which can be read as pure entertainment. Here the writer, having
expatiated upon great past writers, comes back to his former theme, this time
teaching the child by showing him examples to eschew.54 This section (ll.449-
97) is unusual: while allusions to “felde men” and other uneducated groups may
appear in courtesy books, the writers generally do not dwell on their habits.
What makes it more interesting is the pleasure this writer obviously takes in
depicting his two boors, “ruskyn galaunte” (l.451) and “Iakke mAlaperte”
(l.491), both printed with capital initials in Caxton, and both decidedly different
from the generic “felde men” of other treatises. “Iakke mAlaperte” is a
Chaucerian echo connecting this passage with the previous praise of great
English writers.55 “Malapert” is also a word we find, inevitably, in Lydgate: in
The Fall of Princes it refers to a rude Ethiopian,56 while in the didactic The
Order of Fools the personification of Spendthrift is compared to a caged jay,
“Malapert of cheer and off vysage”.57 Given his familiar name, Jack, we may
take Malapert as a country boor, impudent and presumptuous.
“Ruskyn galaunte”, the man counterfeiting courtesy (ll.451-90), is more
interesting. His name combines the adjective ruskyn, probably deriving from
Old French rous (“red” or “russet”, also “a redhead”) and generally referring to
the reddish fur of some types of squirrel (such as the Sciurus vulgaris, once
common in Western Europe), with the name galaunte, the man of exaggerated
fashion, used by Lydgate in his Fall of Princes (V.2446). We may imagine a
squirrel-fur-wearing fop. Other details (the gallant is “braced so straytly that he
may not plie”, l.470), make this portrait individual, possibly recognisable to
contemporary readers. The ruskyn galaunte is a counterfeit, using mannerisms

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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Alessandra Petrina

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:

Wynter ne somer to his souerayne

Chappron hardy no bonet lust avale,
For euery worde yeuyng his maister tweyne,
Vaunparlere in euery mannes tale,
Absolon with the disculede heres smalle;
Lyke to A presener of seint Malouse,
A sonny bush might cause hym to goo louse. (ll.456-62)

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

Of course, much as Caxton was indebted with the theoretical statements of

the Book of Curtesye, it would be a mistake to confuse the aims of the printer
with those of the writer. What is unique to this writer is that he inserted this
praise in a courtesy poem, thus transforming a descriptive, conventional praise
of English poets into prescriptive statements. An almost contemporary poem,
George Ashby’s Active Policy of a Prince, probably written in 1470 as advice
for Edward, Prince of Wales, opens with very similar praise:

Maisters Gower, Chauucer & Lydgate,

Primier poetes of this nacion,
Embelysshing oure englisshe tendure algate,
Firste finders to oure consolacion
Off fresshe, douce englisshe and formacion
Of newe balades, not vsed before,
59
By whome we all may haue lernyng and lore.

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:

If the time wasted, almost, in Latin and Greek by so many middle-class

boys, had been given to Milton and Shakspere, Chaucer and Langland, with

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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Alessandra Petrina

a fit amount of natural science, we should have been a nobler nation now
than we are.61

To acknowledge the importance of children’s education is a basic step in the

construction of a modern nation. It is not the least merit of the writer of the Book
of Curtesye to have recognised this, making the national language a fundamental
part of his educational program.

61
Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, p.ix.

134