The Influence of Ovid on John Gower's "Vox clamantis."
- Author/Editor
- Mish, Frederick Crittenden.
- Title
- The Influence of Ovid on John Gower's "Vox clamantis."
- Published
- Mish, Frederick Crittenden. "The Influence of Ovid on John Gower's 'Vox clamantis'." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Minnesota, 1973. Dissertation Abstracts International 34.11: 7198A. Full text available at ProQuest.
- Review
- Rather than focusing upon merely the subject matter Gower derived from Ovid, Mish addresses how Gower's poetry in the "Vox Clamantis" is influenced by Ovid's poetic art. Mish posits that certain poetic aspects as well as elements of Ovid's life account for the fact that Ovid's "example is at work in the poem in so many direct and indirect ways that his is, quite simply, the most pervasive and significant poetic influence" on the VC (18.). Apart from analyzing "the function of the Ovidian borrowings in the poem," Mish addressed "the ways, both direct and indirect, in which Ovid's example affected the poetry which Gower himself composed in this work: indirectly, in the shaping of Gower's conception of his role as a poet; directly, in the development of his metrical technique, his sense of structure, and his style" (18) Mish includes an appendix with 217 lines from Ovid which Mish argues Gower incorporated or adapted in the VC (primarily in Book 1, which is the focus of much of Mish's study) not accounted for in Macaulay's edition or Stockton's translation. [BWG. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]
- Date
- 1973
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification