Blanche Fever: The Grene Sekeness.
- Author/Editor
- Byrd, David G.
- Title
- Blanche Fever: The Grene Sekeness.
- Published
- Byrd, David G. "Blanche Fever: The Grene Sekeness." Ball State University Forum 19.3 (1978): 56-64.
- Review
- Byrd describes four instances in early English literature where the phrase "blanche fever," or a variant, occurs--Gower's CA VI.39, Chaucer's TC 1.916; "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale "41, and William Caxton's translation of Raoul le Févre, "The History of Jason." Setting out to explore the "importance of blanche fever and its relation to courtly love" (57), Byrd does not distinguish blanche fever ("fevers whyte" in "Cuckoo") from other forms or stages of love sickness, and he tallies familiar symptoms of chills (sometimes alternating with high temperatures), sleeplessness, thirst, loss of reason, and growing pale. He mentions that the English phrase derives from French usage (pp. 57 and 63), and aligns blanche fever with another term associated with love-sickness--"access" or "accesse"--observing that the two have "the same symptoms," that they "are obviously related," and that "poets used the two terms interchangeably to refer to love-sickness in the courtly love system" (62). He also equates blanche fever with "the grene sekeness" without discussing the latter phrase, treating them as a single disease which "like any sickness . . . has definite symptoms" (64), once again leaving blanche fever indistinct. Byrd does observe that "Gower's thirstiness," which characterizes blanche fever in CA VI.236-43, is "caused by Love-Drunkenness, a vice which belongs to Gluttony" (59), the topic of Book VI. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2]
- Date
- 1978
- Gower Subjects
- Language and Word Studies
Confessio Amantis