Chaucer's and Gower's Stories of Lucretia and Virginia
- Author/Editor
- Weiher, Carol
- Title
- Chaucer's and Gower's Stories of Lucretia and Virginia
- Published
- Weiher, Carol. "Chaucer's and Gower's Stories of Lucretia and Virginia." English Language Notes 14 (1976), pp. 7-9.
- Review
- Weiher argues that Gower and Chaucer write "Lucretia and Virginia stories that closely resemble one another" (7), despite the fact that they modify their classical sources in distinctive ways. In the former story, Gower's chief interest "lies in the sins of Aruns, not in the chastity or saintliness of Lucrece" (7-8). Most of Gower's alterations to this tale thus strengthen its similarity to the tale of "Virginia," where Apius Claudius's scheming is the central issue. Chaucer, by contrast, "adapts his classical sources in inverse fashion" (8). In each narrative he "uses the sinfulness of men to point up his real concern, the heroine's virtue" (9). [CvD]
- Date
- 1976
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
- Confessio Amantis