Truth-Telling and the Tradition of Mum and the Sothsegger.
- Author/Editor
- Wawn, Andrew
- Title
- Truth-Telling and the Tradition of Mum and the Sothsegger.
- Published
- Wawn, Andrew. "Truth-Telling and the Tradition of Mum and the Sothsegger." Yearbook of English Studies (1983), pp. 270-287. ISSN 0306-2473
- Review
- Waen includes a brief comparison with Gower's Vox Clamantis and Cronica Tripertita: "Richard the Redeles shares with [Gower's works] a strong though less statuesque Lancastrianism; the fusion of the beast symbolism and literalism; and the attempt to protect the poem and the poet from official wrath . . . . Yet there are some significant differences between the works, suggesting that the association of Richard the Redeles with the Gowerian chronicle-tradition was not slavish and that it had within it the seeds of a different development within the truth-telling tradition. Compared with Gower's works, Richard the Redeles carries a less insistent burden of raw incident; its indignation is more analytic, less descriptive; it offers flickerings of undeveloped but developable allegory beyond the severe limitations of beast symbolism (notably in the sections relating to the King's household); it offers flickerings of undeveloped but equally developable themes (notably the dangers and the desireability of speaking the truth); lastly, unlike Gower's works, Richard the Redeles is unfinished." [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.2]
- Date
- 1983
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis
- Cronica Tripertita
- Influence and Later Allusion