Vernacular Authorship and Public Poetry: John Gower.

Author/Editor
McCabe, T. Matthew N.

Title
Vernacular Authorship and Public Poetry: John Gower.

Published
McCabe, T. Matthew N. "Vernacular Authorship and Public Poetry: John Gower." In Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. Pp. 563-79. Unrestricted access at https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199582655.013.38; accessed September 18, 2022.

Review
McCabe's fundamental argument in this essay is that Gower asserted himself as a major national poet, self-consciously positioned and proclaimed, sometime around 1390 in Latin "metatextual" materials that accompany the "Confessio Amantis," and anticipated in related materials found earlier in Gowerian texts and manuscripts. The argument is an extension of McCabe's previous, lengthier discussions of Gower's use of English in the CA, with increased emphasis on the poet's "extraclergial" lay didacticism through which he addressed and cultivated a broad public audience as well as patrons. For the earlier discussions, see McCabe's 2010 University of Toronto dissertation and his 2011 "Gower's Vulgar Tongue" (JGN 31.2), the latter duly cited in this essay. Presented in the "Oxford Handbook of Chaucer" (chapter 30), McCabe's essay is framed by aspects of Gower/Chaucer relations: opening with discussion of how the poets' "bids for a quasi-Petrarchan position as national author are mutually dependent . . . [and] also contestative" (564) and closing with suggestions that Chaucer's "Retraction" was deeply influenced by Gower's "combining of an earnest, Christian public address with the poetic resources of elite European culture as the twin bases of the new edifice, English poetry" (574). Chaucer aside, the center of the essay is close readings of "various authorial signatures found in the [Gower] manuscripts," particularly "the poems 'Quam cinxere', 'Explicit iste liber', 'Eneidos bucolis', the . . . corpus-sealing [prose] colophon 'Quia vnusquisque'," and the Gower-as-archer illustration found in several early manuscripts of "Vox Clamantis," discussing them as evidence of Gower's "self-positioning" relative "to an English public . . . [and] individual patrons" which serves as "the main platform for his self-presentation as an elite author" (564). In McCabe's readings, for example, "Explicit iste liber" marks England as Gower's "literary field" while "Quam cinxere" declares that his works "have already become the property of the nation" and "makes explicit Gower's claim to have gained a Chaucer-like national stature as an author" (565). "Quia vnusquisque" raises the topic of Gower's "didactic mission" in his three major works and makes this mission "the very grounds of Gower's claim to literary celebrity" (566). McCabe tells us that such didacticism "unmistakeably plays a central role in Gower's self-promotion as an author," made even clearer in "Eneidos bucolis," which like the triple headrest on Gower's tomb, presents the three works as a trilogy that with their Christian moral seriousness and English accessibility outdoes even Virgil's works: "English is privileged as the tongue of origin and consummation alike" in "Eneidos," even though the poem's "argument is promulgated in the traditional language of intellectual authority, Latin." That final qualification or concern (and several others along the way, including the question of the authorship of "Eneidos," the Christian seriousness of CA, and more) give us all cause to pause, McCabe acknowledges, but he insists that as an "embodiment of a species of vernacular theology," the "metatextual packaging" of Gower's works has "important implications for Gower's audience's taste, at least insofar as that taste was anticipated and cultivated by Gower and the collaborators and scribes responsible for promoting his works" (567). Later, and more pointedly, McCabe declares that "'Eneidos bucolis' valorizes not only public access but, specifically, the access to truth which the mother tongue grants to English Christians" (573). Switching gears somewhat, McCabe explores Gower's appeals to and for both elite and popular audiences, acknowledging his "self-identification with the social elite" (569) and his seemingly contradictory speaking as a "vox populi." For McCabe, this is made possible by a kind of anticlericalism that supports and gains rhetorical authority through an "extraclergial stance" which offers the "extraclergial wisdom" (573) of a poetic, lay theology of grace. Tracing these threads in Gower's works (including the Gower-as-archer illustrations that accompany VC), McCabe returns to "Eneidos," but only after having deduced that Gower claims "authority for himself . . . [in a] manner in which he . . . presupposes a considerable degree of lay solidarity and in turn effects a quite substantial extension of agency to the laity," inviting his audience to practice "public criticism" and "equipping such readers for this practice" (572), even on theological topics. In CA and "In Praise of Peace," McCabe says, English "emerges as a tongue whose chief resources for expressing theological truth reside . . . in intimacy, polysemy, and affect," although "this is not the place to examine either work in detail." He cites "In Praise of Peace," 337–57 and CA II.3187–497 as instances where "Gower juxtaposes natural human 'pite' and divine 'grace' in ways that frequently assign the natural passion a salvific function" and then refers us to his own "Gower's Vulgar Tongue" for "many similar moves" (573) that emphasize pious affect rather than clerical instruction. Before closing with comments on how Gower's "ostentatious piety" is likely to have influenced Chaucer's "Retraction," McCabe declares that "Gower's ability to push the boundaries of vernacular cultural mediation even as he reshapes the resources of an elite European poetry gave his poetry a quality not found in contemporary writings, and this distinction may explain the success of his poetry during his lifetime, as well as why, by 1390, he should have felt justified in claiming to have achieved the standing of a nationally significant author" (574). In addition to Chaucer, the "contemporary writings" McCabe's refers to here include "Piers Plowman," Langland's "alliterative imitators" (568), Usk, Clanvowe, "The Prickynge of Love," "Pore Caitif," and more, so his arguments are widely grounded. Similarly, his references to other critics range widely, although he does not mention Michael P. Kuczynski's "Gower's Virgil" (2007) which also discusses "Eneidos" and its Christian "outdoing" of Virgil in the poem without resolving the question of its authorship. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.]

Date
2020

Gower Subjects
Backgrounds and General Criticism
Confessio Amantis
Minor Latin Poetry
Vox Clamantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Influence and Later Allusion
Language and Word Studies