"The Legend of Good Women": Some Implications.
- Author/Editor
- Frank, Robert Worth, Jr.
- Title
- "The Legend of Good Women": Some Implications.
- Published
- Frank, Robert Worth, Jr. "The Legend of Good Women: Some Implications." In Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Chaucer at Albany (New York: Burt Franklin, 1975), pp. 63-76.
- Review
- Frank considers Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women" as "Chaucer's first collection of tales told" (66), using Gower's "Confessio Amantis" for comparison in one instance, and observing more generally that the stories in each work "have a point"--in the case of Gower, a "moral scheme" which he "takes seriously"; in Chaucer, a "simple value scheme" which "he takes lightly." The individual tales in both collections, moreover, share an "easy, unimpeded succession of events" (67) that is not particularly consistent with modern taste and concerns, Frank tells us, and he offers a summary of Gower's "Mundus and Paulina" (CA, Book I, 761ff.) as an example. He details a "variety of possibilities for expanded treatment" in the tale--issues of "character and psychology" (68) irrelevant in Gower's brisk narrative which epitomizes for Frank the "power" and "appeal of bald story" (69). Chaucer's legend of Cleopatra is not quite as successful in this regard, even though both tales exemplify the "perfectly legitimate activity" of "the brief recording of a story" (71). The moral concerns of the CA and the love concerns of LGW--even the multiple concerns of "The Canterbury Tales"--Frank maintains, are fundamentally excuses to tell stories. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.]
- Date
- 1975
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations