The Figure of Venus in Late Middle English Poetry.
- Author/Editor
- Schreiber, Earl George.
- Title
- The Figure of Venus in Late Middle English Poetry.
- Published
- Schreiber, Earl George. "The Figure of Venus in Late Middle English Poetry." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Illinois, 1969. Dissertation Abstracts International 31 (1970): 767A. Full-text available at ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.
- Review
- Schreiber's dissertation comprises four studies on the place and function of Venus in individual Middle English narratives--one each on Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Lydgate's "Temple of Glas," Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," and the "Kingis Quair"--prefaced by a survey of the goddess in medieval mythographic tradition. Each of these stands on its own but Schreiber throws up his hands when he thinks about pulling them together in his conclusion: "the poetic values of the goddess are most difficult to delineate, and thus, I suggest, a summary of the 'figurae' of Venus would entail restatement of the analyses which I have already given" (140). The plural "figurae"/"figures" mentioned here might well have appeared in the title of Schreiber's dissertation, as he states and reiterates Venus's variety and ambiguities throughout--description and source study rather than synthesis. In his discussion of the CA Schreiber grounds an argument for the unity of Gower's work--which he considers "well unified"; its "vision consistent" (35)--upon the idea that Amans undergoes "self-discovery through the process of confession," with Venus playing a role "much like Lady Philosophy who told Boethius that he had forgotten his true identity" (48), even while she is "highly ambiguous" (49). As with Venus, Schrieber says, "we are also unsure of the true character of her priest Genius" (50). Surveying the double (or triple) nature of Venus and similar background to Genius in medieval philosophy and "philosophical poetry" (John Scotus Erigena, Alain de Lille, Bernardus Silvestris, the "Roman de la Rose," and more), Schreiber suggests that Amans' eventual self-recognition and progress from lower to higher love are signified in Book VIII, when Venus re-appears with her mirror, with its multiple "traditional functions"; she then disappears again because she does not "participate in the new dispensation, wherein understanding becomes wisdom only by the infusion of divine charity. Instead, she is . . . Scotus' 'bonae ac naturales virtues' and Bernardus' 'musica mundana,' the good Venus of Alan's 'De planctu' who represents the proper exercise of man's natural virtues in the economy of Creation" (60-61). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2]
- Date
- 1969
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis