Studien zu John Gower.
- Author/Editor
- Wickert, Maria.
Meindl, Robert J., trans.
- Title
- Studien zu John Gower.
- Published
- Wickert, Maria. Studien zu John Gower. Köln: Kölner Universitäts Verlag, 1953. Trans. Robert J. Meindl, Studies in John Gower, 2nd. ed. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies: 2016.
- Review
- The stated purpose of Wickert's "Studies in John Gower" is to understand the spirit of Gower's poetry through analyses of: The development of the "Vox Clamantis" and its vision of the Great Uprising (Chapters 1 and 2); The poem's connection to sermon and devotional literature (Chapter 3); Gower's political ideas as expressed in the VC (Chapters 4 and 5); and Gower's narrative technique in the "Confessio Amantis" (Chapter 6). Her book makes three major contributions to Gower studies. Chapter 1, "The Text and Development of the Vox Clamantis," is Wickert's greatest contribution to the study of the VC. Her patient sorting out of the available sources relevant to the problem of dating the poem is essential to understanding both its genesis and purpose. Wickert presented the evidence not only for separating the "Visio" (as she termed Book 1) from the rest of the poem but also for understanding the stages by which the poem evolved. The poem clearly has three beginnings and Wickert shows that three phases of composition can therefore be postulated: Books 3-6 (the core poem, begun 1377, occasioned by the death of Edward III and the accession of Richard II, for whom, as the Mirror for a Prince in Book 6 suggests, it is intended); Books 2-7 (the core poem framed by preliminary [Book 2] and concluding considerations [Book 7]); Books 1-7 (the final assemblage: the core plus the frame plus a prequel intended to certify the poem's conclusions, completed late 1381 or early 1382 depending on how long it took Gower to write Book 1). Revisions at several points containing judgments of Richard II reveal that there are in places two versions of the poem, which Wickert characterizes as A- and B-Texts. The different versions of the colophon listing Gower's works found in various manuscripts of the VC and the CA show by their contents that 1390 must be the "terminus post quem" for the B-Text and that during the decade 1390-1400 Gower altered the political tendency of the VC to fault the king for England's troubles and make the VC appear to be aligned with the judgments of the "Cronica Tripertita," written soon after Richard's deposition in 1399 (p. 7).
Wickert's second substantial contribution to our understanding of the Vox is her recognition that Gower adopts the posture of a poetic preacher and delivers an extensive Johannine homily showing "the firm outlines of a system, the essence of which is popular theology, that gives the class critique sense and significance" (p. 53). In the guise of his namesake John the Baptist, the preacher who made ready the way of the Lord, Gower shoots at the world missives that are designed to correct it through exhortation, invective, and the threat of punishment. Seen this way, Book 2 is "exhortatio," Books 3-6 "increpatio," and Book 7 'comminatio," the whole constituting an extensive versified literary sermon. Book 1 was then prefixed to this assemblage as its historical proof and thereby gave the VC its claim to a place among the most important works of English literature. "From a princely 'vade mecum' . . . [the VC] became a substantial work of edificational literature that differs from similar efforts only in that it undertakes to explain a concrete historical situation, the Peasants' Rebellion, in its metaphysical bases and earthly consequences" (p. 164).
Wickert's third concern, Gower's political views, focuses on the person of the king as the embodiment of the state and largely ignores the poet's views on the judicial and legislative components of government. She concludes that Gower's aim in the Mirror of a Prince is to show Richard how the "rex iustus" guarantees "iusticia" in the realm by his own ethical conduct. Gower has "no conception of the historical character and true nature of the state" and the "responsibility of individuals as well as of classes is not to the state but directly to God" (p. 133). Thus his class critique, calling for political regeneration, necessarily develops into a homily because its goal is the restoration of the proper relationship between the individual and God. Man's responsibility for this task is clarified by the renunciation of Fortune in Book 2 and the consequences for him are made clear in Book 7, the two books that form the frame of the class critique.
Wickert's final topic concerns Gower's narrative technique in the CA, concluding that he employs a plain style, direct and taut, that is largely concerned with the tempo of storytelling in order to drive narratives to moments of moral choice upon which the outcome for the protagonists depends. [RJM. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]
- Date
- 1953
2016
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis
Cronica Tripertita
Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confession Amantis
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification