Healing, Accountability, and Community in Gower's "Confessio Amantis."
- Author/Editor
- McShane, Kara.
- Title
- Healing, Accountability, and Community in Gower's "Confessio Amantis."
- Published
- McShane, Kara. "Healing, Accountability, and Community in Gower's Confessio Amantis" Accessus 7, no. 1 (2022): n.p.
- Review
- McShane opens with a discussion of the role of storytelling as narrative medicine, expanding this idea to include narrating as a way of making sense of events. Then, beginning her discussion of Gower in particular, McShane argues, "Gower gives us models in which interpersonal violence is a community concern and accountability requires community intervention." McShane focuses her study on the "Tale of Mundus and Paulina" and "Tale of Lucrece": "Social healing in both tales begins with believing women and ends with the community's demand for accountability--a model that is still aspirational, not realized, in our own moment." McShane succinctly points to the first connection between these two tales--that "women are believed and trusted"--before delving into the text. She provides thorough close readings of both tales to show how the community surrounding these women trust and believe what they are saying about the sexual assault they have faced. McShane notes a crucial difference between the tales, however, in that Paulina controls her narrative whereas Lucrece, by and large, does not, which could leave us to conclude, as McShane writes, "Lucrece's own resolution is, at best, only partial." Continuing her analysis, McShane demonstrates how personal harm becomes social and political harm. From this harm, then, and the accountability that the community seeks, we see structural change. As McShane nicely puts, speaking to "The Tale of Lucrece," "When those in authority are themselves responsible for social rupture, Gower suggests, structural change is necessary." For the "Tale of Mundus and Paulina," we instead see good leadership initiating change. McShane concludes by returning to her assertion that Gower's tales can still tell us a lot about our own society's issues--that he "offers flashes of healing possibility in narrative and other potential ways of being in community." [JGS. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis