Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval.

Author/Editor
Reid, Lindsay Ann

Title
Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval.

Published
Reid, Lindsay Ann. Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018.

Review
This valuable study ". . . deliberately diverges from existing scholarship on Shakespeare's reception of Ovid by looking at yet also [sic] beyond the Roman poet's place of primacy in the humanist schoolroom. It equally diverges from scholarship on Shakespeare's reception of Chaucer and Gower by considering how their spectral presences can be perceived in Shakespeare's texts other than 'Troilus and Cressida,' 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'The Two Noble Kinsmen,' and 'Pericles'--in other words, those dramatic pieces whose plots have overt Chaucerian or Gowerian analogues" (49). Reid finds that much of what she calls "the under-acknowledged, spectral presence of the medieval" (2) in Shakespeare's work turns out to be from the "Confessio Amantis." She notes especially (chapter 5) that the close affiliations of "the interactions between Olivia and Viola in 'Twelfth Night' build not only upon the 'Metamorphoses' . . . but also upon a strikingly different tradition . . . that seems to have entered English literary tradition by way of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'" (7). By way of making her larger argument, Reid offers a uniquely insightful analysis of the little-known "Chaucer's Ghoast" (which proves to be largely extracts from CA), presenting thereby a compact survey of early Modern readers' engagement with Gower (9-38, and Appendix 1). She finds Gower's "spectre" significantly influential on many well-known Shakespearean scenes (e.g., in "The Taming of the Shrew": "When Petruccio boasts that he is ready to take on a rich wife, whether she be 'as foul as was Florentius' love,' his reference is seemingly to Gower's tale of the knight, Florent, from the 'Confessio Amantis'") (67), and argues for the influence of the CA on Caxton's edition of the "Metamorphoses" (177-78), with major implications, in her view, for much sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry, including Sidney's "Old Arcadia" (esp. 188-92). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]

Date
2018

Gower Subjects
Influence and Later Allusion
Confessio Amantis