'Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ceo forsvoie': Gower's Anglo-Norman Identity.
- Author/Editor
- Ingham, Richard,
- Ingham, Michael
- Title
- 'Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ceo forsvoie': Gower's Anglo-Norman Identity.
- Published
- Ingham, Richard, and Ingham, Michael. "'Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ceo forsvoie': Gower's Anglo-Norman Identity." Neophilologus 99 (2015), pp. 667-84. ISSN 0028-2677
- Review
- [In grammar, Gower followed insular practices in preference to those of continental French, the Inghams argue. The insular features that they identify are the use of "quell" as a relative pronoun, the use of "qe" or "que" instead of "qui" as a relative pronoun in subject position, and the use of "nul" as a negative marker without an accompanying "ne," all of which are abundantly illustrated in Gower's French verse. While such choices could have been largely unconscious, they note, Gower may also have been aware of how his language differed from that of his French contemporaries, especially in his later works; and citing Yeager (1990) on Gower's attempt to "engage with the continental French poetic mainstream" for the purpose of correcting and reforming it, they suggest that "his linguistic identity as an insular writer came to serve an authorial purpose . . . when he was much less interested in joining his continental contemporaries than beating them." Finally, Gower's use of contemporary insular French, they maintain, demonstrates that Anglo-Norman could serve as a vehicle for serious writing "longer than has sometimes been supposed." [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2]
- Date
- 2015
- Gower Subjects
- Language and Word Studies