Volpone and the Confessio Amantis

Author/Editor
Friedenreich, Kenneth

Title
Volpone and the Confessio Amantis

Published
Friedenreich, Kenneth. "Volpone and the Confessio Amantis." South Central Bulletin 37 (1977), pp. 147-150.

Review
In 1927, Karl Brunner recognized the CA as a source for Ben Jonson's "Volpone," an attribution disregarded by subsequent editors. Friedenreich believes that Brunner was right in pointing to a story from Book 5 of the CA where a greedy steward panders his wife to the king. In Volpone, too, sleeping with a young woman is proposed as a medical remedy, and a number of verbal parallels between the two accounts are quite striking. Other connections between the two works include references to avarice and jealousy, two themes of Gower's Book 5. [CvD]

Date
1977

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis
Influence and Later Allusion