Walter Map,De nugis curialium: Courtiers’Trifles, ed. and trans. M. R. James,
rev. edn. C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983 ), 2 – 3. Map here
cites Augustine,Confessions, xi. 25 ; see the edition by James J. O’Donnell, 3 vols.
(Oxford, 1992 ),i, 160.
Greg Walker,“John Skelton and the Royal Court,”Vernacular Literature and
Current Affairs in the Early Sixteenth Century: France, England and Scotland, ed.
Jennifer and Richard Britnell (Aldershot, 2000 ), 1 – 15 ( 2 ). Walker’s sensitive
adjudication of the matter suggests multiple subcultures and a “courtly-
metropolitan ecosystem”( 4 ).
G. R. Elton claims the“true Court”to be an essentially Tudor phenomenon,
not seen until the reign of Henry VII. See“Tudor Government: The Points of
Contact III. The Court,”Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5 th series
26 ( 1976 ), 211 – 28 ( 212 ).
D. A. L. Morgan defines the beginnings of courtly self-consciousness in
England as a Yorkist legacy:“The House of Policy: the Political Role of the
Late Plantagenet Household, 1422 – 1485 ,”The English Court: From the Wars of
the Roses to the Civil War, ed. David Starkey et al. (London and New York,
1987 ), 25 – 70 ( 67 – 68 ). C. Stephen Jaeger,The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing
Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals 939 – 1210 (Philadelphia, 1985 ),
describes the Carolingian and clerical formation of a“courtly”mentalité.
The idea that medieval England possesses a distinctive“court culture”is ques-
tioned inEnglish Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages,ed.V.J.Scattergoodand
J.W. Sherborne (London, 1983 ). In particular, see Scattergood’sown“Literary
Culture at the Court of Richard II,” 29 – 43 ;DentonFox,“Middle Scots Poets
and Patrons,” 109 – 27 ;A.I.Doyle,“English Books in and out of Court from
Edward III to Henry VII,” 163 – 81. At the latter end of thefifteenth century–the
period covered by this study–distinguishing between reading audiences on a
social basis is in any case notoriously problematic. Derek Pearsall notes that
“‘court poetry’by provenance becomes‘courtly poetry’by dissemination, in turn
providing models for provincial composition”:Old English and Middle English
Poetry(London, 1977 ), 213 .InManuscripts of Courtly Love Lyrics in the Later
Middle Ages(Cambridge, 1985 ), Julia Boffey stresses that of the hundred or so
English manuscripts containing love lyrics she discusses,“genuinely‘courtly’
associations–with members of the royal family or the higher nobility–are very
few”( 116 ). On the complex social affiliations of so-called“courtly”poetry in the
fifteenth century, see further Boffey,Manuscripts, 113 – 41 ; Richard Firth Green,
Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Later Middle Ages
(Toronto, 1980 ), esp. 8 – 10 ; Peter J. Lucas,“The Growth and Development of
English Literary Patronage in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance,”The
Library, 6 th series 4 ( 1982 ), 219 – 48 ( 242 – 44 ); Carol M. Meale,“Patrons, Buyers
and Owners: Book Production and Social Status,” Book Production and
Publishing in Britain 1375 – 1475 , ed. Jeremy J. Griffiths and Derek Pearsall
(Cambridge, 1989 ), 201 – 38. For a reading of the Henrician court, see Seth
Lerer,Courtly Letters in the Age of Henry VIII: Literary Culture and the Arts of
Deceit(Cambridge, 1997 ).
