Afterwords: Forms of Death.

Author/Editor
Butterfield, Ardis.

Title
Afterwords: Forms of Death.

Published
Butterfield, Ardis. "Afterwords: Forms of Death." Exemplaria 27 (2015): 167-82.

Review
Ardis Butterfield links John Gower's use of the ballade sequence to Guillaume de Machaut's innovative use of the same genre, especially considering how each poet uses language. Butterfield begins with Derrida's and Bakhtin's definitions of genre to bring us into her argument that Gower and Machaut using genre in much the same way, centuries earlier. Comparing Gower's "Cinkante Balades" to Machaut's "Voir Dit," Butterfield explains she will try to determine the differences between each poet's French and, for Gower, how his French relates to his English (170). Butterfield briefly cites Julia Kristeva, "in a spirit of retro-fashionability," on intertextuality, to come to the conclusion that "all discourse presupposes another discourse"--propelling Butterfield into an examination of cliché (172). Specifically, by way of illustration, she cites Gower's use of French cliché (providing lists of them in her article) to argue that such use demonstrates his mastery of the French language (175). Butterfield then compares aspects of the CB with Machaut's "Voir Dit." Within this "closed system of medieval French courtly language," Butterfield asserts that "Gower is making specific reference to the 'Voir Dit,' and seeking to engage with some of Machaut's aims, structures, and linguistic devices as he invents his own work" (177-78). Furthermore, in a coda on cliché, Butterfield suggests we might consider Gower's " Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz" as "a response to the 'Confessio amantis' . . . and hence a decision by Gower to trump the Englished erotic discourse with French preaching on adultery" (180). She concludes (quoting Frank Kermode's "The Sense of an Ending"): "In shaping our ends, the formula, the fixed form is a vital tool for living, a daily death, and a generic practice that meets our 'permanent need to live by the pattern rather than the fact'(11)" (180). [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]

Date
2015

Gower Subjects
Sources, Analogues, and LIterary Relations
Language and Word Studies
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Cinkante Balades
Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz