Gower's Gifts.
- Author/Editor
- Ladd, Roger A.
- Title
- Gower's Gifts.
- Published
- Ladd, Roger A. "Gower's Gifts." 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. 229-41.
- Review
- Ladd uses gift exchange to analyze a range of exempla in the "Confessio Amantis." Some of the gifts in Gower's tales are "incidental" while others "cluster . . . around the concept of magnificence" (230). Societies have gradually moved, according to gift theorists, from a gift-based to a profit economy. In the CA, gifts can be monetary or not and are exchanged within and across classes: "Aristocratic gifts could be expressions of authority over their recipients" (232). In the "Tale of Antigonus and Cinichus" (Book VII), King Antigonus denies Cinichus either a small or a large gift, demonstrating his honor and the honor due to him outside a material context. Gifts also establish commercial relationships: how "creditworthy" (238) a person is can depend on withholding or giving gifts. In the "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre" (Book VIII), Apollonius generously prevents a famine by a gift of wheat, acquiring honor thereby. The essay concludes with a chart of Gower's use of the words "gift" and "give" across the CA. [MPK. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2014
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Language and Word Studies