The Myth of Philomela from Margaret Atwood to . . . Chaucer: Contexts and Theoretical Perspectives.
- Author/Editor
- Trivellini, Samanta.
- Title
- The Myth of Philomela from Margaret Atwood to . . . Chaucer: Contexts and Theoretical Perspectives.
- Published
- Trivellini, Samanta. "The Myth of Philomela from Margaret Atwood to . . . Chaucer: Contexts and Theoretical Perspectives." Interférences Litteraires / Literaire Interferenties 17 (2015): 85-99. Available at http://www.interferenceslitteraires.be. Last accessed November 9, 2020.
- Review
- Trivellini considers four frame-tale "re-mediations" of the Philomela story derived ultimately from Ovid's "Metamorphoses": Margaret Atwood's "Nightingale" in "The Tent" (2006), George Pettie's in "A Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure" (1576), Chaucer's in Legend of Good Women, and Gower's in Book V of "Confessio Amantis," focusing on how analysis of "the 'mise en discours' of the narrative material" (n.p.; quoted from the English abstract, also included in French) reveals "elaborate forms of discursivity that serve a wide range of generic purposes" (99). Concerned more with reception theory than with source study or with the individual works, Trivellini discusses the medieval works last and briefly, focusing on Chaucer's aesthetic concerns and on Gower's ethical ones, describing the "self-aware game with his readers" (96) that she finds in Chaucer's elliptical treatment of the narrative and the pragmatic approach to ethics and the "psychological realism" (97) evident in Gower's relatively vivid characterizations and his emphasis on the generative nature of speech acts. The abused sisters speak more, and more vividly, in Gower than in Chaucer, Trivellini maintains, and Tereüs's punishment is emphatically verbal--ongoing defamation rather than the death (and eating) of his child. To Trevellini, this emphasis on the ethical nature of language underlies much of CA: the "combination of intimate confession and didactic explanation in the exchanges between Genius and Amans finds a parallel in the tale of Philomela, specifically in the sisters' speeches and Genius's detailed explanation of their metamorphoses" (97).] [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 2015
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations