Love and Marriage in the Confessio Amantis
- Author/Editor
- McCarthy, Conor
- Title
- Love and Marriage in the Confessio Amantis
- Published
- McCarthy, Conor. "Love and Marriage in the Confessio Amantis." Neophilologus 84 (2000), pp. 485-499.
- Review
- Under this broad title McCarthy takes up some broad topics indeed: the relation between nature and reason in CA; that nature and background of Genius' ethical counseling; and the value of his recommendation of "honeste love” to a man (1) whose love is identified as sinful, (2) has no prospect of marriage with the woman that he loves, and (3) is revealed at the end to be elderly and impotent anyway. McCarthy does about as well at sorting out the many conflicting statements in the poem on each of these issues as many earlier critics who have gone over the same ground, the most important of whom he cites. He explains how nature might appropriately be governed by reason in the case of man while in other contexts nature might be said to be opposed to reason, a valuable concession to the lack of strictness in some of Gower’s most important terms. He resorts nonetheless to blaming Genius for some of the other apparently conflicting advice in the poem, though conceding that his “moral authority,” especially suspect at the beginning, improves as the poem goes on, and that he transcends his limitations as priest of Venus in Book 7. Genius’ most important advice to Amans, occurring throughout the poem, not just at the end, is his recommendation of “honeste love,” which comes to be equated with marriage, the place in which nature is most fully restrained by reason. McCarthy places that advice within the context of medieval discussion of the sacrament of marriage, and concludes from his examination of the different cases presented in the poem, “If Gower condemns extramarital love, he offers marriage primarily as a remedy for lust, as something that can make love honeste, rather than as something good in itself, and even marital intercourse is presented as something potentially sinful” (p. 495). This advice turns out not to apply to Amans, however: because of his age, the only reasonable course for him is to abandon his love entirely. Abstinence such as Genius advocates for Amans is only for the few, McCarthy notes; for the rest, for whom the lengthy argument in the poem is apparently intended, “the best that can be hoped is that they will love in accordance with the natural urge to procreation, and that they will modify that urge by the exercise of reason within lawful marriage” (p. 497). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 19.2.]
- Date
- 2000
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis