Chaucer's Boethius and Thomas Usk's Testament of Love: Politics and Love in the Chaucerian Tradition

Author/Editor
Carlson, David R

Title
Chaucer's Boethius and Thomas Usk's Testament of Love: Politics and Love in the Chaucerian Tradition

Published
Carlson, David R. "Chaucer's Boethius and Thomas Usk's Testament of Love: Politics and Love in the Chaucerian Tradition." In The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle. Ed. Taylor, Robert A. and Leyerle, John. Studies in Medieval Culture (33). Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, 1993, pp. 29-70.

Review
Gower is very much in the background in this excellent survey of Usk's debt to Chaucer for the conception and place of love in his Testament, but Carlson does revive a suggestion (first made by J.A.W. Bennett in his edition of Selections [1968]), that Venus' appeal to Chaucer to make his own "testament of love" (CA *8.2955) may echo the title of Usk's work, which may already have been circulating as Chaucer's, as it did later, at least from the time of Thynne until Skeat finally established its true authorship in 1893. "Gower may have meant to suggest that Chaucer had better do something to rectify the impression of himself that Usk's writing would have fostered" (p.31). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 14.2]

Date
1993

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis