The Long and the Short of It: On Gower's Forms.
- Author/Editor
- Echard, Siân.
- Title
- The Long and the Short of It: On Gower's Forms.
- Published
- Echard, Siân. "The Long and the Short of It: On Gower's Forms." In John Gower in England and Iberia: Manuscripts, Influences, Reception. Ed. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and R. F. Yeager. Publications of the John Gower Society X. Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Pp. 245-60.
- Review
- Echard questions the continuing critical focus on Gower's long poems and consequent "dismissal of [his] talents" (246) by many scholars; she draws attention to Gower's variety of forms and inclusion of "moments of short within the long" (247), such as prayers, letters, and other self-contained verbal episodes in "Confessio Amantis." She analyzes in detail some of Gower's shorter Latin verse, such as "O Deus immense" and "Ad mundum mitto," noting in these Gower's "self-reflexive exploration of voice" (258). "O Deus immense" returns to themes of kingship, and especially the king's responsibility to uphold the law, that Gower treats at much greater length in his long Anglo-French poem, "Mirour de l'Omme." "Ad mundum mitto" refers to the poet's vast corpus as a "mirror" and associates it with his Gower's self, by a "sequence of strong stresses and 'm' sounds" around the Latin word "mea." This "turning the mirror on the poet himself" (259) thus recalls the mirror that Venus holds up to Amans at the end of the CA: another interplay of short and long forms. [MPK. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2014
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
Minor Latin Lyrics
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditatntis)
Confessio Amantis