Gower, Richard II, Henry of Derby, and the Business of Making Culture

Author/Editor
Staley, Lynn

Title
Gower, Richard II, Henry of Derby, and the Business of Making Culture

Published
Staley, Lynn. "Gower, Richard II, Henry of Derby, and the Business of Making Culture." Speculum 75 (2000), pp. 68-96.

Review
There are two unequal parts to this lengthy essay. The first, and shorter, considers the ways in which CA, "The Legend of Good Women," and Clanvowe's "Boke of Cupid" address issues of royal prerogatives and power. Since Gower's dedication of his poem records his relation with the king most explicitly (Chaucer's and Clanvowe's are encoded in their relations with the god of Love), he gets the least amount of attention of the three. Staley argues, however, that all three were engaged in a conversation with Richard that was possible in the mid-1380's but that would have been impossible after the Merciless Parliament of 1388. The second part considers the circumstances of Gower's revision of the dedication, when "Gower attempted to salvage a poem whose original conditions were no longer apparent” (p. 79). Staley gives more than merely passing regard to the events in the early 1390’s that have been cited in the past to justify his change of view of the king, particularly to the quarrel with London in 1392. But the greatest amount of attention (indeed more than half this essay) is reserved for the role of John of Gaunt during this period and for his possible influence on the literary culture of the time. Staley cites Gaunt’s longtime interest in acquiring a throne that he might pass on to his son, his care for improving Henry’s position while retaining the good will of the king, his sponsorship of Henry’s expeditions on the continent, and his efforts to acquire the prestige associated with his own court; and then points out the reversal of expectations that he must have suffered because of a series of unexpected events in 1394. Much of what Staley offers is speculative but closely enough grounded in documented fact to be interesting and at times intriguing. The consequences for Gower are disappointingly slight, however, and Staley’s conclusion, expressed in an interrogative, can be quoted in full: “Are Gower’s changes to the 'Confessio' a sign, possibly of dissatisfaction with Richard, but also of Gaunt’s subtle co-opting of a poet’s allegiance? To dedicate a poem about the state of England to Henry of Derby in 1392-93 served as one more indication of his status as protector of those virtues of ethical self-government that were memorialized in the poem itself and perhaps of a ‘court’ (even a virtual one) whose reality demanded an utterance that only a man with Gower’s reputation for integrity could supply” (p. 96).
The reviewer is cited in note 25 on page 78 as expressing in a series of essays published between 1984 and 1987 a view of the textual history of CA that Staley rejects, and so is perhaps not in the best position to offer an objective judgment of the merits of her argument. A few things do jump out, though. First, though she concedes that Gower finished CA in 1390 (p. 78), her entire discussion of the dedication is based on the assumption that it was written in 1385 or 1386, suggesting that she believes, somewhat implausibly, that Gower would have written the dedication first and then maintained it, despite its inappropriateness at the time of the poem’s completion. Somewhat more seriously, when she states (on p. 71), that the F Prologue to LGW was written “at about the same time as the 'Confessio',” she allows us to infer that she believes that the entire poem was finished before 1388. Since all of her comments about the dedication depend upon its precise historical setting, the date is obviously not a small matter. Regarding the revisions in the text: despite the subtlety with which she reads between the lines of every other text that she considers, she refuses to see anything at all problematic about the dates contained in the margins of the revised passages in the Prologue and Book 8 in some MSS, and gives an account of Gower’s rewriting that is pleasingly simple and straightforward and that may be correct, but that appears to be adopted more because of its convenience than because of a careful consideration of the complexities of the early textual history of the poem. One also has to wonder about her characterization of the "Confessio" as a whole. On page 70, she speaks of it as “a poem about the education of a prince,” and on page 79 she appears to place the entire poem in the “Mirror for Princes” genre. Such a designation helps justify her attention to the dedication, but it also suggests that a more inclusive view of the poem’s contents might make her entire argument somewhat less compelling. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 19.2.]

Date
2000

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis
Manuscripts and Textual Studies