Hengist's Tongue: Remembering (Old) English in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis."
- Author/Editor
- Irvin, Matthew W.
- Title
- Hengist's Tongue: Remembering (Old) English in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis."
- Published
- Irvin, Matthew W. "Hengist's Tongue: Remembering (Old) English in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Sharon M. Rowley, ed. Writers, Editors and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Pp. 251-79.
- Review
- Irvin's explication of Gower's Latin verse that opens "Confessio Amantis" (Prologue i, 1-6) discloses a great deal about the poet's attitude toward English (versus Latin in particular) and his use of the language in the poem at large. Irvin opens by clarifying that "Gower was a man interested in memory" (251), citing his gifts to St. Mary Overie and discussing in some detail his memorial tomb which, Irvin argues, Gower "expected to be 'read' by multilingual readers, both the 'public' and the canons [of St. Mary], the coterie of remembrancers" (253). But the Latin verse that opens CA is Irvin's real target here, and it is perhaps best to quote his thesis in full: "By examining one of Gower's Latin verses from the "Confessio Amantis," a verse that deals, through a riddle, with the relationship between English and Latin, I shall argue that the difference in tongues articulates differences between memory and history and stands in a central place in Gower's understanding of poetic form and intention. Moreover, I suggest that Gower's use of English in the 'CA' is itself a linguistic riddle to be solved, one hidden by how we remember Gower in the history of specifically 'English' letters" (254). The Latin verse includes references to Hengist, Brutus, and Carmentis before echoing one of the apocryphal Proverbs of Alfred (concerning the boneless tongue), all of which Irvin examines carefully in the process of answering a question that he poses: "How does one remember (in) English?" (254). Negotiating a rich congeries of contexts and critical and theoretical perspectives--most extensively Ovid's "Fasti" 1 as the source of Gower's reference to Carmentis; Aristotelian and nominalist understandings of interpretation; the perceived stability of Latin grammar versus English variability; Walter Benjamin on translation; Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace on Hengist's English language and treachery; differences between "translatio studii" and "causal" history; and proverbs as "translatable knowledge" (265)--Irvin concludes that, for Gower, "the English of the 'Confessio' always exists between Latin and French: it tears the French music from love poetry, and it deprives Latin of its grammar. It is not a language to be remembered but a language in which the memory of the 'original' languages always lurk[s], a literary language that 'comes after' in history. While English is a language in which 'fewe men endite' [few men write] (CA Prol.22), that is, few use English for 'literary' purposes, it is for that reason a perfect language for a critical approach to law and love: it involves the game of remembering source texts, the strenuous lexical exercise of considering what Latin and French terms certain English words represent--and it is for a coterie: not Latinate monks, like those at St. Mary's, but a specifically English readership, the 'fewe' who can use the craft of English to interpret the discourses of erotics and politics" (275). N.B.: Irvin emphasizes via italics that, in Gower's Latin verse, Hengist's tongue sings ("canit") "in the present tense" (265), a notable correction to translations that use the past tense in this instance. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2021
- Gower Subjects
- Language and Word Studies
Confessio Amantis
Minor Latin Poetry
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations