Counseling the King: Scenes of Monarchic Instruction in the Age of Richard II.
- Author/Editor
- Stallcup, Stephen Burr.
- Title
- Counseling the King: Scenes of Monarchic Instruction in the Age of Richard II.
- Published
- Stallcup, Stephen Burr. "Counseling the King: Scenes of Monarchic Instruction in the Age of Richard II." Ph.D. Diss. Princeton University 2000. DAI 61(1): 172-73.
- Review
- "This study examines four scenes of monarchic instruction in late-fourteenth-century England in light of the "mirror for princes" tradition. It suggests that these texts reflect a political climate in Ricardian England that simultaneously promoted the ethic of the necessity of advising the king while sometimes punishing voices of political dissent. Ricardian writers negotiated this tension by employing techniques of representation, structure, and camouflage that would allow them to articulate advice in a politically safe manner. Chapter 1 examines the Prologue to the B-text of William Langland's 'Piers Plowman,' whose scene of monarchic instruction serves as a formal paradigm for the test of this study. Here, Langland articulates a vision of limited monarchy in a scene that camouflages the instruction to the Visio King by placing in the mouths of three seemingly contrary interlocutors, a lunatic, an angel, and a goliard. The chapter argues that this trio of speeches is actually unified and shows how Langland represents the King as a student who knows to accept wise counsel. Chapter 2 explores similar scenes in Book 7 of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' It shows how Gower creates a series of layers that separates the poet from the political speech voiced by his characters. Using two biblical scenes of instruction, Gower rewrites the narratives of Ahab and Rehoboam to illustrate (negatively) the importance of wise counsel. Chapter 3 finds a similar dynamic at work in the final section of the seemingly apolitical 'Cleanness.' It argues that the 'Cleanness'-poet was fully aware of the political valance of the stories of Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, and Belshazzar and suggests that two discourses, the political and the homiletic, are at work here. The poet's rewriting of these stories, which includes subtle references to medieval England, allows them to be read as positive and negative examples of royal counseling. Chapter 4 examines the dynamic of advice-giving from the royal perspective. It argues that Richard II designed his tomb in Westminster Abbey as a political monument that responds to concerns voiced by contemporary literary texts and itself attempts to function as a political mirror. A close reading of the epitaph shows how that text participates in the genre of 'Fürstenspiegel'." [eJGN 39.1]
- Date
- 2000
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis