To judge from the reception of Troy Book and the marginal commentary recorded in the manuscripts, medieval and early Renaissance readers understood Lydgate's moralizations on the level he intended them and not necessarily in their fuller, tragic implications. On the fly leaf at the end of one Troy Book manuscript (Rawlinson poet. 144), an anonymous sixteenth-century reader takes to heart Lydgate's protest that he writes true meaning but with little craft. Ancient English books, says this reader, show little art; ignorance darkened understanding in those earlier times, "but mark the substance of this book / In wiche this mownk such paynes hath vndertook" (Bergen 4:52). He then goes on, without any sense of contradiction, to connect Lydgate with precisely the poetic fabrication from which he strives to distinguish Troy Book in his Prologue: Cotton Augustus A.iv is the base text chosen for this edition of selections from Troy Book, as it was for Henry Bergen's complete edition of the poem prepared for the Early English Text Society early in this century. Cotton Augustus offers the most complete early text. Written on vellum leaves measuring 26 x 15 inches, the manuscript is composed of 155 folios, gathered in eight-leaf quires. The script is an Anglicana formata, with the characteristic double-lobed a, e, and g. The letter d is looped. Both s and long s are used. The two-shaped r replaces the regular r after the letter o, but the forked r does not appear. Cotton Augustus contains only Troy Book. The text is arranged in double columns of 49 lines, except for the rhyme royal stanzas of the Envoy and the two eight-line stanzas of the final Envoy and Verba translatoris. The first miniature (fol. 1ra) contains the arms of Sir Thomas Chaworth (d. 1458) and his second wife, Isabella de Ailesbury below the portrait of Lydgate and Henry V. A short description of the manuscript appears in the British Museum catalogue compiled by H. L. D. Ward and J. A. Herbert. A more extensive description is contained in Bergen's edition (4:1-4). Ambrisco, Alan S., and Paul Strohm. "Succession and Sovereignty in Lydgate's Prologue to Troy Book." Chaucer Review 30 (1995-96), 40-57. The link with Henry also has some enticing biographical dimensions. Lydgate spent time at Oxford in Gloucester College, which the Benedictines maintained for monks engaged in university study. Henry had studied at Queen's College in 1394, and sometime between 1406 and 1408 wrote Lydgate's abbot asking for permission for Lydgate to continue his studies, either in divinity or canon law. Henry's letter mentions that he has heard good reports about Lydgate; it does not indicate necessarily that the Prince of Wales and the monk had a personal acquaintance. John Norton-Smith proposes, however, that Lydgate resided in Oxford from approximately 1397 to 1408 and that he met Henry (p. 195n). The rubrics of Lydgate manuscripts owned by the fifteenth-century antiquarian John Shirley suggest that Lydgate and Henry shared interests in the liturgy, but these are textual sources that postdate Troy Book. Henry's religious fervor matched his enthusiasm for tales of chivalry. Schirmer argues that Lydgate's attitude differs from his patron's endorsement of military adventure. He contends, for example, that Lydgate initially invokes Mars (Pro. 1-37) but reproves him (4.4440-4536) after Henry becomes king. In his view, the line "[a]lmost for nought was this strif begonne" (2.7855) refers not just to the Trojan War but also to the pointlessness of the French war. Lydgate's peace sentiments seem, however, more the expression of commonplace counsel than a rejection of Henry's policies. To be sure, there are profound tensions and contradictions in Troy Book, but they grow out of the narrative that Lydgate recounts and embellishes and not from a kind of authorial resistance. In its immediate historical context, the poem aims to affirm chivalric virtues, offer examples and moral precepts, and celebrate the national myth of Trojan origins.

Finlayson, John. "Guido de Columnis' Historia destructionis Troiae, the 'Gest Hystorial' of the Destruction of Troy, and Lydgate's Troy Book: Translation and the Design of History." Anglia 113 (1995), 141-62. A Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Illuminating Shop and Its Customers." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968), 170-96. I relied on a hilariously over-poetical translation by the prolific Arthur Sanders Way, who in a long life (1847-1930) translated just about every classical work he could lay his hands on.” Although nestled in the Cornish landscape and its lore, the beliefs and practices described within this book are rooted also in the traditional witchcraft current and an ‘Old Craft’ of multiple British streams. Its magic and charms are comparable also to those found elsewhere in the British Isles and beyond, making this a book adaptable for practitioners in any land.Renoir, Alain, and C. David Benson. "John Lydgate." In A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500. Ed. J. Burke Severs and rev. Albert E. Hartung. 9 vols. New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967-. 6: 1809-1920, 2071-2175. The experience of reading Homer—unless you decide to learn ancient Greek—will always be deeply affected by the skill of the translator. Fortunately Stephen Fry has some recommendations. He writes, “There are so many books of the historical facts behind Troy and its fall, and many magnificent translations of Homer. I particularly recommend Emily Wilson’s Odyssey and either Stephen Mitchell or Robert Fagles’s Iliad.” A bronze limited edition of 50 of The Horned Hand – an ancient symbol of power and protection, a traditional Apotropaic Charm against the Evil Eye in Italian folk magic. The story of a great city, plunged into a 10-year war over the abduction of the most beautiful woman in the world, is irresistibly dramatic and tragic. This allure has sent adventurers and archaeologists in quest of the lost city, which is now widely believed to have existed. A masterpiece of early Chinese figure painting, from the fifth to seventh century AD, displayed annually at the British Museum.

Payne, Robert O. "Late Medieval Images and Self-Images of the Poet: Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Henryson, Dunbar." In Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages. Ed. Lois Ebin. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984. Pp. 249-61. To have protection from enemies and ill-influence – ‘Who so beareth this sign about him, let him fear no foe, but fear God’ – one of the famous twin seals from Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of witchcraft (1584), a popular source for traditional cunning folk. An amiable meander through the historic sources . . . Fry's light and graceful tone helps to ease the unfamiliar reader through the complicated genealogies The Times Boffey, Julia. "The Reputation and Circulation of Chaucer's Lyrics in the Fifteenth Century." Chaucer Review 28 (1993), 23-40. Atwood, E. Bagby. "Some Minor Sources of Lydgate's Troy Book." Studies in Philology 35 (1938), 25-42.The text of Troy Book survives in twenty-three manuscripts and fragments. Pynson's first edition seems to have relied on another early manuscript with a good text. Despite the claims to sober editorial judgment made in Braham's prefatory epistle, the 1555 edition printed by Marshe reproduces Pynson's text and emends it freely with no manuscript authority. An extract from Lydgate's reproval of Priam (2.1849-56) appears in one manuscript of the Canterbury Tales (Royal 18.C.ii). In two late manuscripts (Douce 148 and Cambridge Kk.V.30), fragments of a fifteenth-century Scots translation of Guido are inserted. Douce 148 was "mendit" by John Asloan, and both manuscripts descend from the same exemplar that was the ancestor of Arundel 99. A portrait of Lydgate presenting Troy Book to Henry appears in Cotton Augustus A.iv, Digby 232, Rawlinson C.446, Rylands English 1, and Trinity College, MS 0.5.2. The same themes and details of the portrait reappear in a woodcut from Pynson's edition; Pynson also introduces Lydgate's complaint on Hector's death with a portrait of the poet writing at a desk. The earliest manuscripts, it has been suggested, might have been written and illustrated at Bury St. Edmunds for the monastery's great poet, but the London booktrade now seems a more likely source.