Gower--Chaucer's Heir?
- Author/Editor
- Axton, Richard
- Title
- Gower--Chaucer's Heir?
- Published
- Axton, Richard. "Gower--Chaucer's Heir?" In Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer. Ed. Morse, Ruth and Windeatt, Barry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp. 21-38.
- Review
- Admitting that his endeavor "at first looks unpromising," Axton proceeds to consider ways in which Chaucer may have influenced Gower. His argument includes commentary on their common sources, especially Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and French poetry, as well as their mutual involvement in the "tangles of the law" (22), characterizing the poetic relationship of the two men as "mutual attraction and responsiveness" (23), considering their "rivalry" as well as their interdependencies. Axton observes that Chaucer preceded Gower in finding "an English voice" and in "cultivating a sophisticated attitude towards both his reader and his subject matter" (24), especially when writing about love. Specific bits of diction and imagery are found earlier in Chaucer than in Gower, Axton avers, and Chaucer's first-person pose as an "outsider" in love may have inspired Gower, particularly in CA, to create a "mild and complaining, deferential, courtly" voice, different from the more familiar "admonitory voice of moral authority" found in Gower's earlier poetry and returning in the voice of Venus in Book 8 of CA. While raising these suggestions, Axton comments at length on Chaucer's uses of and attitudes toward Gower, particularly those evident in the Prologue to the Man of Law's Tale and in Manciple's Tale--evidence of Gower influence on Chaucer, rather than the reverse which his title implies. [MA]
- Date
- 1990