The Subject of John Gower's "Dicunt Scripture."
- Author/Editor
- Weiskott, Eric.
- Title
- The Subject of John Gower's "Dicunt Scripture."
- Published
- Weiskott, Eric. "The Subject of John Gower's 'Dicunt Scripture'." Notes and Queries, 69 [267], no. 3 (2022): 196–98.
- Review
- Likely composed contemporaneously with Gower's making of his will in 1408, "Dicunt Scripture" "exhorts its reader, but in effect the poet himself, to make premortem preparations for worldly goods and for [sic] soul" (196). Weiskott determines a two-part, balanced structure, in which "the moment of death arrives precisely at the line-break between the two stanzaic quatrains" (196). Manuscript marginal notes cited by Macaulay in his edition identify the target of the poem as unscrupulous executors. Weiskott argues instead that, while Gower's larger purpose near the end of his life is always self-memorializing, here it means not merely "not to entrust one's memory wholly to friends who live on" (197), but rather more seriously, represents Gower's genuine struggle to reconcile being "both wealthy and devout" (198). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Minor Latin Poetry
Biography of Gower