Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England.
- Author/Editor
- Sobecki, Sebastian.
- Title
- Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England.
- Published
- Sobecki, Sebastian. Last Words: The Public Self and the Social Author in Late Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
- Review
- Sobecki brings together studies of five poets--Gower, Hoccleve, Caudray, Lydgate, and Ashby--as, in a sense, test cases for a theory of the medieval self as what he terms "indexical": "the indexical self is not a discrete entity . . . it is comprised of social interactions, contexts, and relationships. It could even be argued that the indexical self is not strictly a self in that it cannot exist outside of its social context" (11). To illustrate this via Gower, Sobecki focuses on London, British Library, MS Additional 59495 (olim Trentham), owned by Gower at his death, and more specifically two poems from that manuscript, "In Praise of Peace" and "Henrici Quarti primus" (also known as "Quicquid homo scribat" or "In fine"). The argument of the chapter on Gower (19-64) is primarily the same as presented in a previously published article, "Ecce patet tensus': The Trentham Manuscript, 'In Praise of Peace,' and John Gower's Autograph Hand," Speculum 90 (2015): 925-59 (see online Gower bibliography), although recast to reflect the book's different, and larger, purpose. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1]
- Date
- 2019
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
In Praise of Peace
Minor Latin Poetry