The Chaucer-Gower Analogues: A Study in Literary Technique.
- Author/Editor
- Lundberg, Marlene Helen Cooreman.
- Title
- The Chaucer-Gower Analogues: A Study in Literary Technique.
- Published
- Lundberg, Marlene Helen Cooreman. "The Chaucer-Gower Analogues: A Study in Literary Technique." Ph.D. Diss. Indiana University 1981. DAI 42(9): 3993A.
- Review
- "A comparison of the Chaucer-Gower analogues in the light of their sources and analogues reveals differences between the poets' stances toward 'auctoritee' in matters of moral reasoning, epistemology, and poetics. Gower's preoccupation with social ills, expressed in his Prologue to the 'Confessio Amantis,' influences his reshaping of his sources. He uses the stories of Thisbe, Dido, Lucrece, Philomela, Ariadne, Medea, and Phyllis as exempla of the seven deadly sins intended to serve as remedies for the lovesick Amans and, implicitly, for a sick society. In Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women' these stories are exempla of saints of love betrayed by men. Because the exemplum as a form frustrates Chaucer's expressed concern with truth, he tells these stories with ambiguity, humor, and irony. While Gower continued to use the exemplum, Chaucer turned to the 'Canterbury Tales' which freed him from presenting a predetermined moral from a single narrative point of view. Gower's version of the "loathly lady" story, the 'Tale of Florent,' is narrated by Genius, merely a persona for Gower himself, and serves as an example of obedience in love, emphasizing the knight's exemplary 'trowthe.' Chaucer tailors the story to fit the Wife of Bath so as to make the tale Alice's wish fulfillment, a burlesque of courtly romance conventions, and a satire of the tricky rhetoric of manipulative preaching. Gower tells the 'Tale of Appius and Virginia' as an exemplum of how a ruler should practice chastity. Following tradition, his version implies that death is better than loss of chastity, even if it means a father killing his own daughter. In Chaucer's 'Physician's Tale,' a juxtaposition of incongruities such as the Physician's cold-blooded inappropriate moral and the Host's compassion for Virginia raises questions about the traditional 'moralitas' and the real lesson of the tale. Chaucer, feeling conflict between his own experience and the teaching of 'auctoritee,' equivocates by juxtaposing incongruities and encouraging questions in the mind of the reader, while Gower is mainly concerned with maintaining auctoritee, the conventional ethos. Gower is more concerned with Order, Chaucer with Justice and Truth." [eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 1981
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations