Imagining Peace: A History of Early English Pacifist Idea.
- Author/Editor
- Lowe, Ben.
- Title
- Imagining Peace: A History of Early English Pacifist Idea.
- Published
- Lowe, Ben. Imagining Peace: A History of Early English Pacifist Ideas. (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997).
- Review
- Lowe's book is divided roughly into halves, the latter portion focusing mainly on the rise of humanism during the late fifteenth century and the reigns of the pre-Elizabethan Tudors. The medieval portion presents adherents and arguments concerned with two discourses on war that governed in the period--"jus ad bellum" and "jus in bellum," i.e., "law or right to go to war" and "ethical behavior in war" (2). John Gower, Lowe argues, whom he inexplicably deems "'a man of peace' (as opposed to …'pacifist')," which--his book title notwithstanding--he considers "anachronistic" (36), "developed the most substantial appraisals of the just war" (36), being more committed to, and more sophisticated in his understanding of, the issues--particularly economic--involved in waging war and bringing peace during the Hundred Years' War, than his contemporaries Chaucer, Langland, or Lydgate. Although, as a good Augustinian, Gower probably took no issue with the idea of some wars being just "in theory" (38), by 1369 his views of the French War were changing, so that "over the next twenty years Gower turned completely against the war and in both major works of the period, 'Vox clamantis' and 'Confessio amantis,' condemned the bloodshed on strictly moral grounds" (82). In the latter work, "Gower complained vehemently about the use of the just war by the nobility and 'greedy lords' to amass great wealth" at the expense of the common people (142). Lowe sees Gower's critique becoming "standard over the next century" (142-43) and, through the publication by Caxton and Berthelette of the CA having an impact on the "pacifism" of early humanists, like Erasmus (147-50). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 1997
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
Vox Clamantis
Confessio Amantis
Influence and Later Allusion