2 - The Familiar Patron: Collaboration and Conflict in Chaucer and Late Medieval European Courtly Writing

Summary

In this chapter I explore forms of imagined collaboration between European court poets and their Luxembourg patrons, with a special emphasis on Chaucer’s oeuvre. The congenial setting for this kind of familiarity between poet and patron came about through the international court culture of the fourteenth century. In a document dating from 1368 Charles V of France referred to his court painter as “nostre ami Jehan de Bondolf, dit de Bruges” (“our friend Jean de Bondolf, of Bruges”). Charles’s young brother, John, duke of Berry, patron of the Très Riches Heures, also entertained friendly relations with the artists who worked for him, including the Limbourg brothers who illuminated his famous Book of Hours. He bestowed favors upon them, and they in turn were generous with their gifts to him. A similarly informal ambience prevailed at the court of the Luxembourg Emperor Charles IV in Prague. The court poet Heinrich von Mügeln enjoyed cordial relations with the emperor; and his encomium Der Meide Kranz (The Maiden’s Wreath) flatteringly assigned the role of judge to Charles in what was probably a conscious imitation of Machaut’s decision to make John of Luxembourg the judge of the love dispute in Le jugement du roy dou Behaingne. Although Machaut did not serve Emperor Charles, he dedicated his poem La Prise d’Alixandre (The Capture of Alexandria) to him, perhaps with the hope of securing the emperor’s patronage.

John Gower and Chaucer

This spirit of familiarity between the court writer and the royal patron also became part of the literary landscape of the Ricardian court. Richard Maidstone’s panegyric to Richard II celebrating his triumphal entry into London in 1392 and known as the Concordia facta inter regem et cives Londonie begins with an affirmation of friendship between the author and the patron based on classical models such as Cicero’s De amicitia (On Friendship). Maidstone highlights that both men are bound together by the same name (Richard) and by companionship (“Nomen et omen habes: sic socius meus es”). Another Ricardian writer who appears to have partaken of this spirit of poet–patron familiarity was John Gower. In the first recension of his English poem Confessio Amantis Gower describes a chance encounter with King Richard on the river Thames.