Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature.
- Author/Editor
- Lightsey, Scott.
- Title
- Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature.
- Published
- Lightsey, Scott. Manmade Marvels in Medieval Culture and Literature. (Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
- Review
- Through a thorough exploration of manmade marvels in late medieval English literature, Scott Lightsey "bring[s] familiar works by Chaucer, Gower, and Langland into the conversation on marvels and wonders, often for the first time" (7). He devotes a chapter to Gower's "Confessio Amantis," which he argues "carries the traces of marvelous artifice" (7), particularly the figures of Alexander and Arion and their literature. Lightsey suggests that the first recension of the CA was inspired by the marvelous appearance of a dolphin in the Thames in 1390 (108). Describing Gower's political allegory as containing manmade mirabilia which contribute to the "symbolization of flawed kingship and the misdirection of common profit" (107), Lightsey focuses extensively on Gower's depiction of Alexander the Great, a negative exemplar who contrasts with Arion's "positive potential" (108). Lightsey identifies Gower's Alexander as the "personification of sin, misrule, marvels, and misguided progress" (113), but also claims he is crucial to the "moral program" of the CA, and links Books VI and VII. Gower establishes Alexander's marvelousness in Book VI, and proceeds to connect it with the envisioned technical marvels mentioned in Book VII, all the while highlighting the "internal division and man's position in Christian redemption history" (134). Lightsey concludes that Gower "displayed his anxieties about the relationship between technological pursuits and social ills through comparison between the measure of Arion and the chaos of the marvel-saturated Alexander legend" (159-60). [CR. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2007
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis