Gower's Knowledge of Poetria Nova
- Author/Editor
- Ito, Masayoshi
- Title
- Gower's Knowledge of Poetria Nova
- Published
- Ito, Masayoshi. "Gower's Knowledge of Poetria Nova." Studies in English Literature 162 (1975), pp. 3-20. Reprinted in Ito's John Gower, The Medieval Poet (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 272-90.
- Review
- Ito argues against James J. Murphy's controversial thesis that Chaucer and Gower did not know Geoffrey of Vinsauf's "Poetria Nova" directly. Ito points out that in addition to the well-known play on the acephalous name in VC 3.955-56, there is a further passage in Gower that is clearly indebted to Vinsauf. In VC 6.979-84, Gower's advice to Richard to avoid timidity is a detailed and skilful borrowing from Vinsauf's third example of apostrophe or "exclamatio." Ito also provides a number of other possible echoes, particularly in the description of a beautiful woman in VC 5.79-128) and in Gower's frequent use of the wordplay on "onus"/"honos" (labour/honour). While not many manuscripts of the "Poetria Nova" are known to have circulated in England, it is suggestive that a manuscript of the "Aurora" (a major source for Gower) also contained Vinsauf's work on rhetoric. [CvD]
- Date
- 1975
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
- Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
- Vox Clamantis