The Censorship Trope in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Manciple's Tale" as Ovidian Metaphor in a Gowerian and Ricardian Context.
- Author/Editor
- Obermeier, Anita.
- Title
- The Censorship Trope in Geoffrey Chaucer's "Manciple's Tale" as Ovidian Metaphor in a Gowerian and Ricardian Context.
- Published
- Obermeier, Anita. "The Censorship Trope in Geoffrey Chaucer's Manciple's Tale as Ovidian Metaphor in a Gowerian and Ricardian Context." In Stephen Partridge and Erik Kwakkel, eds. Author, Reader, Book: Medieval Authorship in Theory and Practice. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press; 2012). Pp. 80-105.
- Review
- Despite the use of "Gowerian" in its title, Obermeier's essay has relatively little to do with Gower's works. The "Ricardian Context" to which she refers, however, is her presentation of indications of Richard II's despotism during his reign and--much the bulk of the essay--argument that Chaucer's "Manciple's Prologue and Tale" comprises a veiled critique of Ricardian tyranny, with Apollo representing Richard and the crow's punishment signifying Chaucer's awareness of the need for self-censorship and, by extension, a warning to Gower to do the same. Building on her previous discussions of censorship and self-criticism in Chaucer's Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women" and his Retraction in "The Canterbury Tales," Obermeier explores several complex ways in which Ovid's poems in exile underlie, she contends, Chaucer's notions of royal power and poetic caution in ManPT. Almost as a coda, and quoting James Simpson at some length on Ricardian and Henrician Ovidianism ("Breaking the Vacuum: Ricardian and Henrician Ovidianism." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (1999), pp. 325-355), Obermeier observes a similar "power struggle with an Ovidian root" (95) in Richard's command that Gower write "Som newe thing" in the original Prologue of the "Confessio Amantis." Further, quoting Gower's "O deus immense" and observing its second-person-singular advice to kings, Obermeier accepts R. F. Yeager's suggestion that the composition of the poem was at least begun "during Richard's reign," and therefore, Obermeier adds, Chaucer's warning against reporting "tydynges," false or true, in the "Manciple's Tale" "could have been meant for his friend Gower, who might have been too bold for Chaucer in this authorial approach" to royalty (98). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 2012
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Minor Latin Poetry