The Date and Style of John Gower's "Ecce patet tensus."
- Author/Editor
- Weiskott, Eric.
- Title
- The Date and Style of John Gower's "Ecce patet tensus."
- Published
- Weiskott, Eric. "The Date and Style of John Gower's 'Ecce patet tensus'." Notes and Queries 69 (2022): 277-81.
- Review
- Weiskott pegs the date of "Ecce patet tensus" at "c. 1400," envisioning "with our 'heart's eye' an aged Gower receding none too comfortably into the penumbra of advancing blindness" (281). He thus strikes a cautious middle ground between those viewing the poem as earlier work (Fisher, Rigg, Carlson--though the latter also finds a later date acceptable) and those preferring late composition (Yeager, Sobecki). Dating a poem lacking any historical reference is tricky work, yielding at best speculative results. Significantly, Weiskott separates "Ecce patet tensus" from "Est amor in glosa," with which it appears in London, British Library MS Additional 59495 (olim Trentham)--a decision putting him again in good company, but one that also further complicates his endeavor. In order to arrive at "some slight incentive to regard 'Ecce patet tensus' as a poem of c. 1400" (281), Weiskott contextualizes it with more readily datable manuscripts (for Add. 59495 is itself not fixedly dated), Oxford, All Souls College MS 98, British Library Cotton Tiberius A.iv, and works: "Henrici quarti primus," the "Epistle to Arundel," "Quicquid homo scribat," and the "Vox Clamantis," which shares many lines with "Ecce patet tensus." [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Minor Latin Poetry
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Manuscripts and Textual Studies