'The Voice of One Crying': John Gower, Christine de Pizan, and the Tradition of Elijah the Prophet

Author/Editor
Burke, Linda Barney

Title
'The Voice of One Crying': John Gower, Christine de Pizan, and the Tradition of Elijah the Prophet

Published
Burke, Linda Barney. "'The Voice of One Crying': John Gower, Christine de Pizan, and the Tradition of Elijah the Prophet." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 117-35. ISSN 0210-9689

Review
Burke focuses on the way in which the two nearly precisely contemporary poets adopted, and adapted, the role of prophet, the one who "speaks truth to power," from biblical tradition, Gower in his VC and CA, Christine in her "Lamentacion sur lex maux de la France," which was written during a time when Christine feared that on-going disputes between the factions of Armagnac and Orléans might lead to civil war. Burke explains how each poet made a strategic selection of tropes associated with the "vox clamantis," as she depicts two writers "who struggled to engage with the moral and political challenges of their troubled situation. Clearly, neither saw any contradiction between their role as poets crafting works of pleasure and instruction, and as prophets calling on the powerful to repent and mend their ways, for the salvation of all their people. Indeed, they may have perceived the two roles as practically one and the same" (130-31). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 246-57.

Date
2012

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis
Vox Clamantis