Errant Individualism in Late Medieval English Literature: The Poetics of Failure.
- Author/Editor
- Smyth, Benjamin Michael.
- Title
- Errant Individualism in Late Medieval English Literature: The Poetics of Failure.
- Published
- Smyth, Benjamin Michael. Errant Individualism in Late Medieval English Literature: The Poetics of Failure. Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Liverpool, 2009. Dissertation Abstracts International A81.01(E). Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Fully accessible via https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3174137/.
- Review
- "This thesis explores issues regarding the oft-debated 'discovery of the individual', specifically in relation to the literature of the late medieval period. Critical debates concerning whether a medieval person was able to conceptualise a sense of individual self that was distinct from social norms, the accepted models or personae of being that were instantiated in culture and propagated as patterns around and within which a life should be led, have become confused because they have not properly addressed the related question of whether that awareness led to a specific ideology of 'individualism', in which, akin to modern Western notions of the self, to be a person uniquely distinct from all pre-existing forms of being was affirmed as desirable . . . . Chapter two [pp. 105-98] discusses John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' This chapter contests claims made by recent critics that Gower's poem shows that the human faculty of reason is enough to correct personal sin and error. Instead, it is shown that the 'Confessio' advocates a much more traditional, even theologically extreme, position concerning the route via which the fallen human condition might achieve its goal of spiritual salvation." In Smyth's reading of CA, human reason is limited and "divine revelation is necessary" (178), so that "Hope lies not in the capacity of man to save himself, but simply in the willingness to have faith that there is a guiding benevolence that encompasses the confusion and division, and that it can and will bring men, and perhaps society at large, to their salvation" (177). [MA]
- Date
- 2009
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis