The Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower's Confessio Amantis.
- Author/Editor
- Gastle, Brian.
- Title
- The Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower's Confessio Amantis.
- Published
- Gastle, Brian. "The Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature. Ed. Craig E. Bertolet and Robert Epstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 127-42.
- Review
- Drawing obliquely on Andrew Galloway's assertion that medieval "social thought was often framed in terms of an economy of need," Gastle examines what must have been Gower's anxiety as a practicing poet in a time when writing poems wasn't an established profession. Gastle frames his argument in economic terms: does a poem qualify as a legitimate artifact of labor? His answer: "The construction of an economic or fiscal identity within his poetry allows Gower to define a new role for poetic work in the changing economies of medieval England; in short, Gower needs 'economy' and mercantile or commercial tropes in order to define his own poetic identity" (128). The essay thus extends Gastle's previous work on Gower's uses of business terminology. In this context, Gastle reads the meeting on the Thames with Richard II and the king's request for "som newe thinge" as a commission to labor--in essence, a business transaction which thereby valorizes the poetic work that becomes the "Confessio Amantis." Gastle bolsters his broader claim with a detailed analysis of Gower's tale "The Trump of Death" in Book I, arguing by way of "lucus a non lucendo" that the King who abases himself before two beggarly pilgrims, is condemned by his court and brother for doing so, and punishes his brother by way of instructing him in humility is actually acting not out of strength but rather out of a particular need (pace Galloway): "The King is interested in using the pilgrims to establish his economic authority as well as his temporal authority, under the guise of his own act of humility" (136). For Gastle, the King temporarily takes on the role of the "other," the impoverished, to show that all have value; simultaneously, by recognizing what he is not, he re-establishes himself as ruler. Gastle equates this process to Gower's acceptance of the commission to produce a good for Richard, ostensibly expecting payment of some kind, as recognition on Gower's part that no "skill or profession is too important, too elevated, or too sacrosanct to be paid for"--which, in Gower's view would be "tantamount to saying that it has no value" (138). Thus, Gastle concludes, Gower's "interaction with economic and mercantile issues . . . are necessary to his project of defining poetic identity and labor" (139). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 2018
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Biography of Gower