Knowledge as Therapy: A Comparison Between the Confessio Amantis of Gower and the Breviari d'Amor of Matfre Ermengaud

Author/Editor
Ricketts, Peter T.

Title
Knowledge as Therapy: A Comparison Between the Confessio Amantis of Gower and the Breviari d'Amor of Matfre Ermengaud

Published
Ricketts, Peter T.. "Knowledge as Therapy: A Comparison Between the Confessio Amantis of Gower and the Breviari d'Amor of Matfre Ermengaud." In The Court Reconvenes: Courtly Literature Across the Disciplines. Selected Papers from the Ninth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society . . . 25-31 July 1998. Ed. Altmann, Barbara K and Carroll, Carleton W.. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2003, pp. 57-69.

Review
The "Breviari d'Amor" by Matfre Ermengaud is a late thirteenth-century Medieval Occitan poem of 34,600 lines in rhyming couplets. Like CA, it can be considered a summa of love, and it probably derived from some of the same sources. It is structured very differently, however. Rather than a confession, the last part of the poem consists of a dialogue between the poet and the troubadours who have asked him to instruct them on the origin and nature of love. This section is preceded by a long expository treatment of the creation of the world and a recitation of biblical history which serves to situate the origins of love. The poem also contains an introduction in which the poet describes the "Tree of Love” (a device also used, according to Ricketts, by the pseudo Hugh of St. Victor and Raimon Llull) in which love between man and woman, love of children, the love of God and one’s neighbor, and love of things are all represented as branches springing from a single trunk, having their origin in God by way of Nature. The tree is elaborated with the fruits that one may hope to obtain on each branch and with the leaves that one must pick in order to obtain the fruits. The fruits of sexual love are thus obtained by picking leaves that are labeled with virtues such as “largueza.” The poet invokes the image of this tree again in the final part of his work. Ricketts’ comments on CA are few. He steers his way between Minnis and Simpson on the relation between the Prologue and the rest of the poem, and he describes the “plot” involving Amans’ education in terms largely drawn from Peck. (These three are the only commentators on CA to appear in Rickett’s very brief bibliography.) The comparison between the Breviari and CA works largely in Gower’s favor: by using a genuine dialogue and by embellishing it with tales drawn from “romance,” Gower has created a more sophisticated structure, both artistically and morally.
Someone with a great deal of patience might find it possible to mine the Breviari for analogues to some more specific aspects of Gower’s poem, particularly for his notions of Nature and for his framework of the sins and virtues of love. [PN. Copyright. Th John Gower Society. JGN 23.2]

Date
2003

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis