Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower.
- Author/Editor
- Langum, Virginia.
- Title
- Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower.
- Published
- Langum, Virginia. "Medicine, Passion and Sin in Gower." In Rachel Falconer and Denis Renevey, eds. Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Science and Medicine. SPELL: Swiss Papers in Language and Literature, no. 28. Tübingen: Narr, 2013. Pp. 117-30.
- Review
- In this brief essay, Langum sketches several rudiments common to medieval medical and pastoral thought on the interrelations between illness and sin, with discussion of the role of human passions, particularly the passions of envy and wrath--also considered to be vices or sins--as they were explained generally in various medieval sources and as they are used in Gower's "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Confessio Amantis." Such passions, Langum shows, were used both figuratively and literally, and raise questions about the "responsibility for sin" (119) insofar as passions are natural to humans (and to some animals) but need to be subdued in moral creatures: "It falls to reason to rule the passions" (121). As passions, both wrath and envy "may be unavoidable conditions of human psychology" but, left unchecked by reason, they are vicious or sinful; at times, it is even unclear "whether what is being described is the vice or the passion or a conflation of the two" (122). To illustrate details of her discussion, Langham uses Gower's works recurrently, along with other secular writers and a number of medical and pastoral authorities and encyclopedists. Admitting that Gower does not "use the word 'passion' to denote the physiological forces of emotion in the body" (126), Langum nevertheless addresses Gower's "medically specific descriptions of wrath and envy as passions" through which, she tells us rather unclearly, "Gower extends beyond the figurative to suggest a more material relationship between the body and ethics" and thereby "raises the question: do these allusions to wrath and envy as passions contradict [the poet's] argument for human responsibility and culpability?" (125). Her answer is a qualified "no": "In my view, Gower encourages the reader to recognize physiological forces at work in human choices and actions, if not ultimately excusing him for bending to these forces." The particular "physiological" force Langham cites here is Amans's advanced age, in spite of which, he "still actively desires to love against reason" (126)--a passion, therefore, that is presumably sinful by being unreasonable, although Langum leaves this unsaid. Instead, she closes her essay with a brief reading of the "Tale of Constantine" from Book II in which "Gower uses the story to reflect upon human bodily weakness" (126). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2013
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditatis)