"And of Great Reverence": Chaucer's Man of Law.
- Author/Editor
- Delasanta, Rodney.
- Title
- "And of Great Reverence": Chaucer's Man of Law.
- Published
- Delasanta, Rodney. "'And of Great Reverence': Chaucer's Man of Law." Chaucer Review 5, no. 4 (1971): 288-310.
- Review
- Delasanta finds many "errors about things literary" (292) in the Man of Law's Prologue and Tale, errors and emphases voiced by Chaucer's fictional lawyer in ways that undercut the character ironically. Among these, Delasanta cites "the famous denigration of Gower" that has been found in the Man of Law's references to incest in the tales of Canace and of Apollonius, often treated as Chaucer's jibes against Gower who tells both of these tales in the "Confessio Amantis." However, quoting from Gower's account of Antiochus's assault on his daughter in CA, Book 8, 288-300, Delasanta finds a "tone of prudish petulance" (292) in the Man of Law's horrified summary and identifies details that reflect his (not Chaucer's) "misremembering" of both of Gower's tales (293). This and a number of other incorrect or inappropriate uses of texts, Delasanta tells us, characterize the Man of Law as a "kind of ersatz Christian man: the housetop shouter, the sober brow who blesses and approves with a text, the Pharisee who thanks God that he is not as other men, the whited sepulchre" (309-10).] [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.]
- Date
- 1971
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations