ABSTRACT
In one respect the Siege of Thebes may be considered peculiarly representative of its author’s ways of thinking: it is the only major secular work of John Lydgate to have been composed outside the patronage system. The Siege of Thebes is further representative of its author in two other ways. In the first place, it is not a translation in the modern sense, but rather an exceptionally free and elaborate adaptation of a mediocre French prose romance. Since Lydgate seems to have felt no responsibility toward the French beyond that of using it as a basis for his own story, the English text may be considered a sample of his own creativity. There is an additional reason why the story of Thebes may have attracted Lydgate. Lydgate reveals in yet another way his attachment to the rhetorical devices of the Middle Ages. Like the other works of Lydgate, the Siege of Thebes draws its narrative devices largely from mediaeval tradition.
