The "Romance of the Rose" in Fourteenth-Century England.
- Author/Editor
- Knox, Philip.
- Title
- The "Romance of the Rose" in Fourteenth-Century England.
- Published
- Knox, Philip. The "Romance of the Rose" in Fourteenth-Century England. D.Phil. Dissertation. University of Oxford, 2015. v, 281 pp.; 10 illus. Dissertation Abstracts International C75.01. A redacted version (without illus.) is fully accessible via https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d55e2158-a9ee-4bf2-b8e4-98d7e0c6a598. Abstract available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses International.
- Review
- "This thesis traces the afterlife of the 'Romance of the Rose' in fourteenth-century England. Whether it was closely imitated or only faintly recalled, I argue that the 'Rose' exercised its influence on fourteenth-century English literature in two principal ways. Firstly, in the development of a self-reflexive focus on how meaning is produced and transmitted. Secondly, in a concern with how far the author’s intentions can be recovered from a work, and to what extent the author must claim some responsibility for the meaning of a text after its release into the world of readers. In the 'Rose,' many of these issues are presented through the lens of a disordered erotic desire, and questions of licit and illicit textual and sexual pleasures loom large in the later responses. My investigation focuses on four English writers: William Langland, John Gower, the 'Gawain'-Poet, and Geoffrey Chaucer. In my final chapter I suggest that the Rose ceased to be a generative force in English literature in the fifteenth century, and I try to offer some explanations as to why" (i). Knox's assessment of the influence of the RR on Gower includes attention to the archer "portrait" and Latin texts that accompany it and to aspects of "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," "Traitié pour les Amantz Marietz," and relations between Gower's late-life marriage and his "Est amor." Generally, however, Knox focuses on "Confessio Amantis" and ways that the "Rose" was Gower's "model" for treating Ovidian myth as "unallegorised narrative with an exemplary moral" while also investigating "the proliferation of plural--perhaps unwelcome--meanings" (118). In treating these concerns, Knox addresses various tales (e.g., Narcissus and Pygmalion, Arion and Orpheus, Iphis and Iante) and the disclosure of Amans as Gower at the end of the poem. For a broadly revised version of Knox's thesis, see his monograph, "The Romance of the Rose" and the Making of Fourteenth-Century English Literature (2022). [MA]
- Date
- 2015
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues and Literary Relations
Confession Amantis
Mirour de l'Omme
Vox Clamantis
Traitié pour Essampler les Amantz Marietz
Minor Latin Poetry