Compilation, Translation and Vernacular Composition after Arundel: John Lydgate's Life of Our Lady.

This article examines John Lydgate's *Life of Our Lady* (1416–1421), a devotional poem centered on the Virgin Mary, to reassess the impact of Archbishop Thomas Arundel's Constitutions of 1409 on vernacular religious writing. Contrary to views that the Constitutions had limited direct censorship effect, the poem demonstrates how Lydgate neither straightforwardly obeyed nor disobeyed these regulations but was creatively stimulated by them, using compilation and translation to negotiate authority in vernacular theology. Lydgate exposes the interpretative risks inherent in passive compilation and translation, ultimately asserting his own authorial voice through original vernacular composition, notably in the poem's "Magnificat" section. The work reflects the fluidity of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in the early fifteenth century and highlights the complex interplay between regulatory pressures and literary innovation in devotional literature under royal patronage.