"The broken schippus he ther fonde": Shipwrecks and the Human Costs of Investment Capital in Middle English Romance.
- Author/Editor
- Richmond, Andrew M.
- Title
- "The broken schippus he ther fonde": Shipwrecks and the Human Costs of Investment Capital in Middle English Romance.
- Published
- Richmond, Andrew M. "'The broken schippus he ther fonde': Shipwrecks and the Human Costs of Investment Capital in Middle English Romance." Neophilologus 99 (2015): 315-33.
- Review
- Focusing on depictions of shipwrecks, Richmond examines "how the littoral space of the seashore is cast as a source of perilous and problematic material bounty" (316) in four Middle English romances: "Sir Amadace," "Emaré," Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale," and Gower's "Tale of Constance" from Book II of CA. He first explores the Middle English semantics of "wrek" and "wrak,"and shows that in medieval English legal and historical records "shipwrecked property was a site of contested claims" (316). Similar contestation appears in the romances in various ways, recurrently depicting the "mercenary motivations of a notably English shore-dweller" (328). In "Amadace," the rights of the living are in conflict with those of the dead; in "Emaré," the eponymous protagonist and her marvelous gown represent survival and treasure in a single figure. Chaucer's version of Custance's shipwreck in Northumberland, Richmond tells us, emphasizes the "human cost behind this wreck" (329)--cost both to Custance and to the constable who seeks treasure from her ship. Notably, Richmond does not comment on Gower's version of this episode, perhaps because Constance's landing does not involve a wreck in Gower. He does discuss, however, the landing of Gower's Constance and her son in the realm of Theloüs (along with the analogous landing in Chaucer), even though Gower does not mention a shipwreck here either (Chaucer's mention is, at best, slight). Both versions of the tale include a threat of rape in this episode, which Richmond assesses as a "particularly disturbing and violent iteration" of the motif of the "vulnerability of crews washed up in foreign lands" and the "pillaging" of wrecks (329), a claim that cannot be made convincingly of Gower's tale since there is no mention of either wreck or pillage. Even less convincing is Richmond's further claim that the "perverted spirit of capitalist competition" proves to be the "downfall" of Theloüs's steward, even when the claim is qualified by acknowledgement that the "will of God" operates here. It is fair to say that Gower's scene "illustrates the dangerous position of stranded ships" but it is harder to find in it a shipwreck, much less a collocation of rape and pillage, or a depiction of "the dangerous consequences of blindly pursing the salvaging desire and anxiety over commercial competition" (331). Generally, Richmond's argument is persuasive and/or provocative, but it runs aground here. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 2015
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations