Absence Is Presence: "The Confessio Amantis" and "The Faerie Queene."
- Author/Editor
- Yeager, R. F.
- Title
- Absence Is Presence: "The Confessio Amantis" and "The Faerie Queene."
- Published
- Yeager, R. F. "Absence Is Presence: The Confessio Amantis and The Faerie Queene." Spenser Studies: A Renaissance Poetry Annual 38 (2024): 73-87.
- Review
- Yeager begins by observing several scholarly comments on composition, style and the place of marriage in thought, philosophy and poetry--all written about Spenser but which equally could apply to Gower. Yeager's argument throughout this essay is that there are parallels between Gower and Spenser's work which have hitherto been neglected, perhaps unsurprisingly given that Spenser only refers to Gower once, and Gower has only relatively recently been studied in earnest in modern scholarship. Nevertheless, Gower's CA would have been readily available to Spenser, whether in manuscript form--"manuscripts in general were ordinary and available to the Elizabethans" (76), Yeager notes, and there were likely more manuscripts of the CA in the sixteenth century than the forty-nine whole witnesses extant today--or in print, in the three printed editions by Caxton and Berthelette. Given Spenser's reputation for being widely read, it is unlikely that he would not have encountered Gower, and indeed Rosemond Tuve established that Spenser may have had access to the CA based on the signature "Spenserus" next to lines from Ovid in a fifteenth-century CA manuscript. Yeager then traces possible references and allusions in "The Faerie Queene" to the CA, while acknowledging that Spenser could have drawn on other similar texts and traditions. The hypocritical priest Archimago in FQ, Book I, has traditionally been linked with Faus Semblant in the "Roman de la Rose," but could also be connected with Falssemblant in Book II of the CA and throughout the "Mirour de l'Omme." This Gowerian link is strengthened by figures (Archimago and Falssemblant) that Spenser and Gower both present as emblems of Envy. Yeager further suggests that the story of Paridell and Hellenore in Book III of FQ parallels Gower's version in Book V of the CA. Yeager concludes by considering why Spenser, typically an avid name-dropper, may have consciously avoided referring to Gower. Spenser was keenly aware of his literary reputation and afterlife, and may not have wished to associate his name with Gower's Catholicism. Gower was also not as authoritative a name for Spenser to invoke as Chaucer, who had emerged as the "Father" of English poetry. [RM. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2]
- Date
- 2024
- Gower Subjects
- Influence and Later Allusion
Confessio Amantis