John Gower: The Minor Latin Works.
- Author/Editor
- Meindl, Robert J., trans.
Riley, Mark T., trans.
- Title
- John Gower: The Minor Latin Works.
- Published
- Meindl, Robert J., and Mark T. Riley, trans. "John Gower: The Minor Latin Works." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 8, no. 1 (2024): 61 pp.
- Review
- This article is a retranslation of and brief commentary on Gower's Latin works other than VC and CrT. It introduces and translates all the poetic works in R. F. Yeager's 2005 edition and translation, plus two further Latin snippets by Gower. The first is "Electus Cristi," seven rhyming Latin lines prefixed to "In Praise of Peace" and included (and translated) in Michael Livingston's 2005 edition, bound with Yeager's. The second is the dedicatory "Epistola" to Archbishop Thomas Arundel found in Oxford Bodleian MS All Souls 98. Meindl and Riley's headnote to the "Epistola" is of especial interest, constituting some of the only analysis of this poem outside of a book chapter by Yeager ("Gower's 'Epistle to Archbishop Arundel,'" 2019). "Gower's admiration for Arundel," Meindl and Riley write, "puts a seal of sorts on his own position in the English intellectual world" (2.43). The introductory section of the article gives a not entirely accurate summary of David R. Carlson's metrical arguments dating Gower's minor Latin works (2.2–3). As befits a journal named "Accessus," Meindl and Riley's headnotes to each poem are summaries of the poems' content as opposed to close contextualizations or critical arguments. The tone can be chatty: "The good king will be generous, of course, but to his loyal citizens, not those who tell him what he wants to hear." (2.25). The translations are freer and more self-consciously elevated than Yeager's. For example, for "Ecce patet tensus" 3–4 Yeager has, "Love conquers all, but, being blind he strays to all places / And knows not whither his trail will lead," whereas Meindl and Riley offer, "Blind Love conquers all, but goes astray everywhere, / Unable to find himself the straight way." Yeager's syntax is much closer to Gower's, registering details such as the placement and function of the predicate adjective "cecus" in line 3 and the verb "nescit" in line 4, whereas Meindl and Riley remodel the syntactical relations of Gower's words in pursuit of a coherent line of English poetry, attaching "cecus" to "amor" ("Blind Love") and transferring the negative force of "nescit" to an adjective ("Unable") that does not correspond to any word in the Latin. Appendix A presents two poems about Gower but ascribed to a "philosopher," incipit "Quam cinxere freta" and "Eneidos Bucolis." The second of these had appeared in an appendix to Yeager's edition and translation. Yeager there indicated tentative support for Gower's covert authorship of the highly flattering "Eneidos Bucolis," but Meindl and Riley project confidence that Gower didn't write either "philosopher" poem (2.51). Appendix B is a four-page descriptive overview of Gower's Latin styles, with "O recolende" supplying illustrative lines. Appendix C lists self-borrowings from VC in "Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia" and indicates a few other possible Latin sources or analogues for "Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia." Apart from Appendix B, which assumes knowledge of Latin and of classical quantitative prosody, and Appendix C, which is primarily of interest to source-hunters, this article would be most useful to undergraduate students coming to Gower for the first time. [EW. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.2]
N.B. The editors of "Accessus," Georgiana Donavin and Eve Salisbury, provide an appreciative Preface to Meindl and Riley's translation that includes a Table of Contents: Accessus 8, no. 1 (2024): 6 pp. [MA]
- Date
- 2024
- Gower Subjects
- Minor Latin Poetry
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations