John Lydgate (1370 - 1450 / Lidgate, Suffolk)

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John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.

Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is prodigious, amounting, at a conservative count, to about 145,000 lines. Life at the monastery of Bury St. Edmund's, where he spent most of his life, gave him a leisure that many another poet might have envied, and enabled him to explore and establish every major Chaucerian genre,... more »

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