Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background
- Author/Editor
- Legge, M. Dominica
- Title
- Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background
- Published
- Legge, M. Dominica. "Anglo-Norman Literature and its Background." Oxford: Clarendon, 1963
- Review
- Gower's name is "the last name on the roll of Anglo-Norman writers" (360). Even though his language and versification are influenced by continental French, Gower's French works can be said to have provided a "magnificent" (357) end to Anglo-Norman literature. Despite the praise, Legge dedicates only a couple of pages to the MO (consisting mostly of summary). Her discussion of the Traitie and the CB is a little longer and involves more close-reading. Legge dates the Traitie to just before Gower's marriage in 1398 and the CB to sometime after Henry IV's accession in 1399. The latter were written for the court. In each text Gower's versification is "freer than continental writers in making grammar give way before the requirement of metre and rhyme, [and] he has more feeling for rhythm and a tendency to write in iambics" (360). [CvD]
- Date
- 1963
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
- Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
- Cinkante Balades
- Traité pour Essampler les Amants Marietz
- Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis)