Function of the Jeweled Bridle in Gower's 'Tale of Rosiphelee'

Author/Editor
Bratcher, James T.

Title
Function of the Jeweled Bridle in Gower's 'Tale of Rosiphelee'

Published
Bratcher, James T.. "Function of the Jeweled Bridle in Gower's 'Tale of Rosiphelee'." Chaucer Review 40 (2005), pp. 107-110. ISSN 0009-2002

Review
Bratcher contrasts Gower's "Rosiphelee to the 13th-century French "Lai du Trot," which, he asserts, despite the many differences, “in some form . . . must have contributed” to Gower’s tale, for these are the only two known versions of the medieval “purgatory of cruel beauties” in which a lone woman is punished for her neglect of love. The differences between the two reflect Gower’s “deliberate reworking” of the earlier tale. The most significant of these is the attribution to the woman in the vision of a richly decorated bridle as a token of her (unhappily too tardy) submission to love. The introduction of the horse’s headgear makes possible a pun on the ME word for bridle (< OE brīdel) and that for bridal (< “bride-ale,” the custom of drinking in celebration of a wedding) in the woman’s admonition to the heroine, “To godd, ma Dame, I you betake, / And warneth alle for mi sake,/ Of love that thei ben noght ydel, / And bidd hem thenke upon mi brydel” (CA 4.1431-34). The pun, judging from the citations in both OED and MED, appears to be completely plausible, though the spelling of the two words remains distinct and Gower nowhere else uses “bridale” in the marital sense (but cf. the “Cook’s Tale,” CT I.4375). As far as I can tell, it has gone unnoticed, and it is more significant than Bratcher realizes, for however subtle, it introduces the only allusion in the tale to marriage as the goal of one’s submission to love (Bratcher’s summary is incorrect in this regard), and it thus anticipates Genius’ counsel, in the passage that immediately follows, that “thilke love is wel at ese, / Which set is upon mariage” (4.1476-77). As Bratcher notes, a complete edition of the "Lai du Trot" by Glyn S. Burgess and Leslie C. Brook is available at http://www.liv.ac.uk/sml/los/narrativelays.pdf. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1].

Date
2005

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis