Duke or Duck: Reading the Stories in John Gower's Confessio Amantis.
- Author/Editor
- Zaerr, Linda Marie
- Title
- Duke or Duck: Reading the Stories in John Gower's Confessio Amantis.
- Published
- Zaerr, Linda Marie. "Duke or Duck: Reading the Stories in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Willamette Journal of the Liberal Arts 4 (1988), pp. 1-9. ISSN 0740-6789
- Review
- Zaerr uses her own youthful misreading of the first line of the tale of "Mundus and Paulina" as an exemplum on the possibilities of misreading the entire poem: believing from the reference to the villain as a "duck" that she was reading a beast fable, only on consideration of the entire context did she realize that he was a duke. The "duck" in the interpretation of the entire poem is the superficial acceptance of Genius' claim to present a coherent morality of fin amour. This is a reading that quacks and waddles because of the tediousness of many of the stories viewed in this light and because of the persistent contradictions between the tales and the frame. A closer examination of how Gower's purposes build upon Genius' stumbling reveals the "duke." The examples that Zaerr uses are the two pairs of tales about Aeneas and Ulysses in Book 4. The first pair, which Genius evidently thinks offer parallel lessons, actually set up two contradictory situations. Aeneas never professes a love for Dido, and her protests against his "slowthe," cast within the vocabulary of "fin amour," reveal her own sensuality. Ulysses is genuinely guilty of slowthe and knows it; Penelope, however, forgives rather than blames him. Unknown to Genius, they illustrate both a more solidly based "honeste" love and also a spirit of forgiveness that is modeled on God's mercy. In the two later tales, Genius blames Ulysses for sloth because of his initial unwillingness to leave Penelope rather than for the tardiness of his return, and he credits Aeneas for his accomplishments after he abandons Dido. "Sloth, defined in terms of fin amour, is revealed to be a contradictory concept” (p. 7), and the scaffolding of Genius’ moral system disintegrates. In its place, however, we are able to see the true moral system of the poem. “These shifts in meaning work together to exemplify a flexible alternative, provided by divine mercy, to the conflicting rules and simplistic contradictory proofs provided by the moral system of 'fin amour'. . . . Gower uses the complexity and contradiction in his 'Confessio Amantis' to convey an idea of the complexity and comprehensiveness of the working of God’s redemptive love” (p. 9). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 19.1.]
- Date
- 1988
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis