Secrecy and Fear in Confessional Discourse: Subversive Strategies, Heretical Inquisition, and Shifting Subjectivities in Vernacular Middle English and Anglo-French Poetry.

Author/Editor
Moreno, Christine M.

Title
Secrecy and Fear in Confessional Discourse: Subversive Strategies, Heretical Inquisition, and Shifting Subjectivities in Vernacular Middle English and Anglo-French Poetry.

Published
Moreno, Christine. "Secrecy and Fear in Confessional Discourse: Subversive Strategies, Heretical Inquisition, and Shifting Subjectivities in Vernacular Middle English and Anglo-French Poetry." PhD thesis, The Ohio State University, 2012. Open access at http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1354665293 (accessed January 23, 2023)

Review
"This project looks at confessional moments in three texts from the late Fourteenth and early Fifteenth centuries in which the subjectivities of the central figures shift noticeably in relation to challenges to orthodox behaviors and beliefs, both on a secular and a sacral level: John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,' the anonymously translated 'Partonope of Blois,' and Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde.' In all these confessional moments, which involve secrecy and fear, the interiority of the confessant and that of the confessor contour the confession and reveal potentially subversive and political criticisms. Late medieval English poets use the very discourses of the institutions under scrutiny in order to challenge institutional corruption as well as cultural, social, and political corruption. By bringing an insular mechanism to challenge itself, such as confessional discourse to challenge confessional efficacy, poets enable a dual dialectic in order to illuminate the inefficacy of ideologies, social and cultural codes and structures, and institutional hierarchies; once brought under scrutiny, poets can position various subjectivities through mobile figurations in order to posit reformation on an individual level." [JGN 33.2.]

Date
2012

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis