Love Imagery in Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

Author/Editor
O'Callaghan, Tamara Faith

Title
Love Imagery in Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde

Published
O'Callaghan, Tamara Faith. "Love Imagery in Benoit de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, and Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde." PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 1995.

Review
"This thesis examines the imagery of love as it is depicted in three medieval versions of the story of Troy. The result is an attempt to determine to what extent Benoit, Gower, and Chaucer use love motifs and language to distinguish between the gendered experiences of the passion and to what extent love, as it is expressed by the various characters of both sexes, is considered to be the motivational force behind the events at Troy. . . . "In his Confessio Amantis, John Gower restructures the story of Troy around other tales of love and kingship which exemplify the same sin. By presenting the history of Troy out of sequence, by eliminating some of the traditional imagery and language, and by developing his own unique set of images and vocabulary, he effectively disassociates the love episodes from the war narrative. The love stories of Jason and Medea and of Paris and Helen become exempla of the sin of avarice, connected not so much by parallels in plot, but by similarities in the love experience of the main characters. . . .

Date
1995

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis