The Margins in the Iberian Manuscripts of John Gower's Confessio Amantis: Language, Authority and Readership
- Author/Editor
- Pérez-Fernández, Tamara
- Title
- The Margins in the Iberian Manuscripts of John Gower's Confessio Amantis: Language, Authority and Readership
- Published
- Pérez-Fernández, Tamara. "The Margins in the Iberian Manuscripts of John Gower's Confessio Amantis: Language, Authority and Readership." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 29-44. ISSN 0210-9689
- Review
- Pérez-Fernández examines the use of language in the poem itself, in its original form and in the Portuguese and Castilian translations, as Gower's multilingual work became (somewhat ironically) monolingual as the translators either ignore or translate into their vernaculars the Latin apparatus that accompanies Gower's English text. The manuscripts in which the two translations are contained also add another type of apparatus, in the form of a detailed table of contents, constructed from the marginal summaries to the tales. Pérez-Fernández considers some of the puzzles posed by these indexes (in the Portuguese version, the table is in Spanish, though the surviving Spanish translation is based on the Portuguese), but she is most concerned with the alteration of the experience of reading the poem, as Gower's role both as learned auctoritas and as commentator is reduced with the loss of Latin and the reduction of the glosses to mere summaries, and his role as compiler is heightened, as the dialogue frame is de-emphasized and the stories themselves assume greater prominence. [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1]
- Date
- 2012
- Gower Subjects
- Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
- Language and Word Studies
- Confessio Amantis