Chaucer and the Art of Storytelling.
- Author/Editor
- Koff, Leonard Michael
- Title
- Chaucer and the Art of Storytelling.
- Published
- Koff, Leonard Michael. "Chaucer and the Art of Storytelling." Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1988
- Review
- On pp. 88-100, Koff cites Gower a number of times in his desciption of Chaucer's relation with his audience as part of his general argument on the way in which Chaucer's poetry creates its own community of understanding. Chaucer's choice of English, like Gower's, may be part of an attempt to incorporate his English readers into a broader international community of letters. Gower's account of the commissioning of CA may reveal the impetus behind LGW as well; and Chaucer's only political commentary, in the F Prologue of LGW, reflects similar concerns revealed in all of Gower's works. Chaucer's interest in edification may be more oblique than Gower's but is just as real: both share a sense of the importance of books, and the well-known T&C frontispiece showing Chaucer reading his work to the court suggests an attempt to give instruction to young King Richard that echoes Gower's in CA. All of Koff's citations of CA are taken from the Prologue and epilogue; consequently he has little directly to say about Gower and the art of storytelling. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 8.1]
- Date
- 1988
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis