Late Medieval Images and Self-Images of the Poet: Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Henryson, Dunbar.
- Author/Editor
- Payne, Robert O.
- Title
- Late Medieval Images and Self-Images of the Poet: Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Henryson, Dunbar.
- Published
- Payne, Robert O. "Late Medieval Images and Self-Images of the Poet: Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Henryson, Dunbar." In Lois Ebin, ed. Vernacular Poetics in the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1984). Pp. 249-61.
- Review
- This article deals with five late medieval English poets, focusing on their choice to "present themselves to us in the speaking voice of . . . a framing persona" (250). Payne begins with a warning against our post-Romantic expectation that the author-persona's voice will disclose the personal feelings of the author himself (249). For Payne, the question to ask is how the poets used their author-persona to propose their own "alternative models of the poetic process," with "significantly different models . . . seen." In general, both Chaucer and Gower preferred the model whereby "readers of poems . . . listen to other fallible men speaking" rather taking in ideas from an unquestioned voice of authority (250). Both Chaucer and Gower used their persona-voices to communicate--or so they tell their readers--the wisdom of ancient sources, never acknowledging a recent or an English source (252). Both use humility topoi--e.g. the befuddled "Geffrey" in the "Hous of Fame," doddering old Gower in the "Vox" and the "Confessio"--to humanize their voice, yet still convey wisdom (253). There are differences. Per Payne, Chaucer changes his persona from poem to poem to fit his purposes, while "Gower" is one character throughout, and unlike Chaucer, Gower is "never comic" (253). There is no acknowledgment of the way that Gower himself used the term "persona" as he switched personas to speak as the ludicrous Amans. Despite his frailties, the Gower-persona has wisdom to impart--from his "auctores . . . [like himself] a succession of good old boys" (254). In his discussion of the three later poets, Payne describes the persistence of the "speaking" voice in their use of the persona, while noting a watershed difference--all three poets present themselves as legatees of a great English tradition, mainly personified by Chaucer (255-60). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]
- Date
- 1984
- Gower Subjects
- Style, Rhetoric , and Versification
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Vox Clamantis
Confessio Amantis