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