Poet and Peasant.
- Author/Editor
- White, Beatrice.
- Title
- Poet and Peasant.
- Published
- White, Beatrice. "Poet and Peasant." In F. R. H. Du Boulay and Caroline M. Barron, eds., The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack. (London: Athlone, 1971). Pp. 58-74.
- Review
- In this essay, Beatrice White surveys medieval depictions of the third estate, ranging widely among works by French, German, and English writers, but focusing on Langland, Chaucer, and Gower as the "outstanding English poets of the fourteenth century." She comments on works by some of their near-contemporaries as well, "the rank and file of versifiers" (69), and concludes, rather sweepingly, that "medieval poets, as might be expected, were often prejudiced and unreliable witnesses to the hard lot of the peasant, tending to present him as humble saint, surly, embittered serf, carousing bumpkin, patient toiler, or menacing figure of evil" (73). Stereotyping abounds, White shows, especially in the recurrent association of labor with poverty and, in her conclusion, she contrasts the poets' views with those of chroniclers, to the disadvantage of the former. Gower, in particular, for White, is a "theoretical liberal and practical conservative . . . moralist and landowner [who] looked at the peasant with distrust and suspicion, if not positive dislike" (65). She cites passages from the "Mirour de l'Omme" as predecessors to the "brutal and raging" peasants of "Vox Clamantis," while in "Confessio Amantis" there is "no room for them at all" (66-67). White concedes that Gower--like Chaucer and Langland--"resorted to" a "commonplace concerning equality" (67) but offers no citation. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 1971
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis