Narratives of Incest and Incestuous Narratives: Memory, Process, and the Confessio Amantis's 'Middel Weie'

Author/Editor
Nowlin, Steele

Title
Narratives of Incest and Incestuous Narratives: Memory, Process, and the Confessio Amantis's 'Middel Weie'

Published
Nowlin, Steele. "Narratives of Incest and Incestuous Narratives: Memory, Process, and the Confessio Amantis's 'Middel Weie'." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005), pp. 217-244. ISSN 1082-9636

Review
For Nowlin, "To read Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' is to read about incest. It is also to read incestuously” (p. 217). What Nowlin means by “incest” is transparent, given that the focus of his study is the “Tale of Apollonius;” but his notion of “reading incestuously” is a bit more complicated. Essentially he argues that Gower’s description of “Apollonius” as “a long process” (Bk. VIII, 269)--the only use of the word in the CA--should be taken seriously, as a calculated announcement of a literary practice applicable not only to the tale but to the CA itself, and to Gower’s entire poetic project as well. “Put most simply, that project is to repair the discord of human history manifested as late-fourteenth-century England’s particular cultural and historical moment,” using “a memorial process through which narratives of the past are redistributed through a poetics of the ‘middel weie’ in order to educate readers on how to use knowledge to improve themselves and their society (Pro. 17)” (p. 217). The “most insidious threat” to this poetic project is “the destructive consumption of memory” which can be defined, according to its retrogressive character, as incestuous, and facilitative of “incestuous reading.” To counter this destructive process, Gower depends on Augustine’s argument in the "Confessions" (II.23) against the existence of either the future or the past, but for the present only, on the grounds that neither the future, which has yet to be, nor the past, which exists only in the present, in memory, has real-time existence. Hence, according to Nowlin, Gower attempts to retell old stories, in order to “restructure the present through the reconfiguration of the past” (p. 238). By this means, although we are forced to “read incestuously,” Gower’s focus on “process” “transforms that act of incestuous, consumptive reading into something generative and productive” (p. 238). Particularly interesting is Nowlin’s extended reading of Antiochus’ riddle (pp. 224 ff.) as a prime example of incestuous narrative on several levels. One caveat regarding the notes: Nowlin has some difficulty keeping straight work belonging to Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (identified correctly in n. 16, as the author of “Betwene Ernest and Game”: The Literary Artistry of the Confessio Amantis) and Kurt Olsson (author of "John Gower and the Structures of Conversion," as in n. 10); eventually all “Olsens” blend to “Olssons” (viz., nos. 34, 40). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1.]

Date
2005

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis