Authorial Work.
- Author/Editor
- Robertson, Kellie.
- Title
- Authorial Work.
- Published
- Robertson, Kellie. "Authorial Work." In Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English. Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Pp. 441-58.
- Review
- In chapter 27 of Paul Strohm's "Middle English," Kellie Robertson discusses the role of authorship and the labor of writing in the fourteenth century, specifically with regard to Chaucer, and what Robertson calls the "paradigmatic social space of non-work" (457) of pilgrimage in the "Canterbury Tales." In contrast to this space, Robertson argues that John Gower creates a "third space" (448) outside of the space of labor for the poet, a space represented by the well-known image of the author as archer aiming his arrows at the world in the "Vox Clamantis." According to Robertson, "the space of writing for Gower is a disembodied and hence unregulatable one" which is also "precarious" (448). This positioning of the concept of the work of the poet in Gower is notably different from the usual positioning of his poetic voice as either prophet or scold, and while the focus of the chapter is Chaucer, the liminal space Robertson claims for Gower is intriguing and provocative. [NG. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations