This collection re-evaluates the work of fifteenth-century poet John Lydgate in
light of medieval material culture. Top scholars in the field unite here with
critical newcomers to offer fresh perspectives on the function of poetry on the
cusp of the modern age, and in particular on the way that poetry speaks to the
heightened relevance of material goods and possessions to the formation of late
medieval identity and literary taste. Advancing in provocative ways the emerging
fields of fifteenth-century literary and cultural study, the volume as a whole
explores the role of the aesthetic not only in late medieval society but also in
our own.