Gower's Quatrains: Language, Rhyme, Occasion.
- Author/Editor
- Weiskott, Eric.
- Title
- Gower's Quatrains: Language, Rhyme, Occasion.
- Published
- Weiskott, Eric. "Gower's Quatrains: Language, Rhyme, Occasion." English Studies 103 (2022): 777-86.
- Review
- Weiskott argues that six late, quatrain-length Latin poems--"Ad mundum mitto" (the "Archer poem"), "Quam cinxere freta" (linked to "Eneados, bucolis," about which he asks "Can this poem . . . possibly be serious?" [780]), "Explicit iste liber," "H. aquile pullus," "Armigeri scutum" (for his tomb), "Quam bonitas, pietas" (for his wife's tomb, recorded as Gower's by Bale, but not found elsewhere)--are all definitely Gower's and should be read as a group: "They all form a set. They are in Latin, either hexameters or hexameters + pentameter ('elegiac couplets') or two hexameters followed by an elegiac couplet. All employ internal rhyme ('leonine' lines)" (777) and they are all "jingly poems" (777). They show Gower mastering the craft of the quatrain, and "comment on the vastness of his life in poetry" (778). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Minor Latin Poetry
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification