John Gower: Balzac of the Fourteenth Century.
- Author/Editor
- Knapp, Ethan.
- Title
- John Gower: Balzac of the Fourteenth Century.
- Published
- Knapp, Ethan. "John Gower: Balzac of the Fourteenth Century." 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. 215-27.
- Review
- Knapp argues that Gower shares with the nineteenth-century French novelist, Honoré de Balzac, a conservative political outlook, an analytical approach to economics, and a distrust of social conflict. In these concerns, he is "preeminent among the major Ricardian poets" (217). Gower focuses his satire in the "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox Clamantis" on mercantilism and on distinguishing between good and bad merchants. Merchants are a powerful "structuring force" (221) in society, influencing both the circulation of money and the circulation of narrative. In VC, Gower uses the trope of metamorphosis to suggest the chaos is caused by the peasantry, when it refuses its "proper role in the market relations between city and country" (224). But mercantile structures, while necessary, can be corrupted. In the CA's "Tale of Vergil's Mirror," a Book V exemplum of avarice, the philosophers who use a hidden store of gold to manipulate Emperor Crassus are fraudulent. They represent a "perverse danger underlying the world of exchange" (227). This danger has its analogue in mercantilism. [MPK. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2014
- Gower Subjects
- Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis)
Vox Clamantis
Confessio Amantis