Old English and Middle English Poetry.

Author/Editor
Pearsall, Derek.

Title
Old English and Middle English Poetry.

Published
Pearsall, Derek. Old English and Middle English Poetry. Routledge History of English Poetry, vol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977. Pp. 208-12.

Review
As his title suggests, Pearsall's book is a survey that covers a broad ground. Gower is one part of a six-part chapter on "Court Poetry" that also includes four sections on Chaucer and "Fifteenth-Century Court Tradition." His overall assessment of Gower is at once qualified and complimentary: " . . . he exerted little influence in the fifteenth century, was not much imitated, and seems to have been more respected than read, a misfortune which we may both understand, for he is exceedingly well-mannered and has a sense of decorum which can sometimes lead to monotony, and deplore: the example of his purity and integrity of style and the ease of his versification, which quite matches that of Chaucer within the simpler confines of the octosyllabic couplet, might have been more salutary for a lesser breed of writers than Chaucer's extravagant and inimitable singularity" (208). Unsurprisingly, except for a single mention each of the "Mirour" ("a lengthy moral treatise in Anglo-Norman") and the "Vox Clamantis" (a "violent diatribe in Latin on the ills of contemporary society"), Pearsall's focus is the "Confessio Amantis": "[Gower's] great claim as a poet is that in the frame of the 'Confessio' and in the inset narratives he responds to human situations with a warmth and range of imaginative sympathy which enables him to 'realise,' in a way more compelling than any prescription, the gentleness, courtesy, nobility, and generosity of spirit that lie at the heart of 'fyn lovynge' and, with that, of fine living" (211). Pearsall's summation is perceptive and instructive: "Gower, for whatever role as moralist or guardian of the nation's conscience he cast himself for, understood in his poetry the 'civilisation of the heart'" (212). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.]

Date
1977

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis