The Flower, the Leaf, and Philippa of Lancaster
- Author/Editor
- Coleman, Joyce
- Title
- The Flower, the Leaf, and Philippa of Lancaster
- Published
- Coleman, Joyce. "The Flower, the Leaf, and Philippa of Lancaster." In The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception. Ed. Collette, Carolyn P. Chaucer Studies (36). Cambridge: Brewer, 2006, pp. 33-58. ISBN 9781843840718
- Review
- As part of a vigorous defense of the role of Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, in the literary culture of the late fourteenth century, both in England and on the continent (and implicitly of the importance of other royal female contemporaries as well), Coleman argues that Philippa not only served, after her marriage to João I, King of Portugal, as the means by which Gower's CA became translated into both Portuguese and Spanish, but that she also, much earlier, as the recipient and presumed disseminator of Deschamps' ballade 765, in which she is named as the queen of those who hold with the order of the flower, helped provide the occasion for the commissioning of both CA and LGW, each of which makes allusion to the cults of the flower and the leaf. Coleman promises more on the circumstances of the commissioning of these two poems in an essay forthcoming in On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium, ed. R.F. Yeager, scheduled to be published in April 2007. The present essay gathers a great deal of information about Philippa's life, particularly about the many attempted betrothals arranged by her father on her behalf. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1]
- Date
- 2006
- Gower Subjects
- Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
- Confessio Amantis