Readings of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis" in Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Scotland.
- Author/Editor
- Martin, Joanna/
- Title
- Readings of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis" in Fifteenth- and Early Sixteenth-Century Scotland.
- Published
- Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Oxford, 2002. Dissertation Abstracts International C70.34.
- Review
- From Martin's abstract: This thesis is the first full study of the transmission and reception of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Scotland. It examines the cultural and political applicability of the 'Confessio' in Scotland, the channels through which the poem reached Scottish audiences, and the literary responses to Gower generated in the texts of Older Scots writers . . . . [T]he thesis re-examines the thematic and poetic complexity of the 'Confessio,' the reasons for its popularity in Lancastrian England, and its transmission, both as a complete work in manuscript and print form, and as expected tales . . . . [I]t provides the first full account and interpretation of the extant evidence for the circulation of copies of Gower's poetry in Scotland from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century." The remaining chapters address the "political and admonitory agenda" of the CA and "its simultaneous interest in love and kingly duty, in particular in kings as lovers, [which] was fundamental for the formulation of the discourses on kingship and self-sovereignty . . . in the works of Older Scots writers," including "The Kingis Quair," "The Quare of Jelusy," "Lancelot of the Laik," "the Gowerian presentation of the amorous monarch" in Roberts Henryson's "Orpheus and Eurydice," the "Thre Prestis of Peblis," and "King Hart," with a brief consideration of "how the Gowerian concerns identified as being taken up by fifteenth-century Scots writers were absorbed and pursued by later sixteenth-century poets such as Gavin Douglas and John Rolland."
- Date
- 2002
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Influence and Later Allusion