The Backward Look: Retrospectivity in Medieval Literature.
- Author/Editor
- Waterhouse, Ruth.
Stephens, John.
- Title
- The Backward Look: Retrospectivity in Medieval Literature.
- Published
- Waterhouse, Ruth, and John Stephens. "The Backward Look: Retrospectivity in Medieval Literature." Southern Review: Essays in the New Humanities 16.3 (1983): 356-73.
- Review
- Waterhouse and Stephens discuss the principle of retrospectivity, by which they mean how the poet organizes the poem to cause readers at the end of a poem or passage to reassess what they thought they learned at its beginning. They suggest that medieval writers differ from others in subsequent periods in that they were content to leave readers in suspense at the end of their poems without necessarily a conclusion that reconciles the whole work. They identify three kinds of retrospectivity: simple (information at the end of a passage changes what one thought at the beginning: e.g., "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"); complex (what seemed like a minor detail now appears major: e.g, "The Tale of Florent"); cumulative (one needs to constantly reconsider what one is reading throughout: e.g., "Beowulf"). The authors focus on "Florent" as an example of complex retrospectivity by suggesting that the description of the hag is suppressed when she first appears and her loathliness is determined throughout the tale by Florent's attitude toward her. Similarly, in the "Confessio Amantis," Gower writes in Book 1 about what he did "in his youth," a statement that seems more significant when Venus shows him in Book 8 that he is an old man. [CEB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1]
- Date
- 1983
- Gower Subjects
- Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Confessio Amantis