Gower's Early Latin Poetry: Text-Genetic Hypotheses of an "Epistola ad Regem "(ca. 1377-1380) from the Evidence of John Bale.
- Author/Editor
- Carlson, David R.
- Title
- Gower's Early Latin Poetry: Text-Genetic Hypotheses of an "Epistola ad Regem "(ca. 1377-1380) from the Evidence of John Bale.
- Published
- Carlson, David R. "Gower's Early Latin Poetry: Text-Genetic Hypotheses of an Epistola ad Regem (ca. 1377-1380) from the Evidence of John Bale." Mediaeval Studies 65 (2003): 293-317.
- Review
- It is generally known that the "Visio" of the "Vox Clamantis" and the "Cronica Tripertita" were combined with an earlier shorter version of VC, and Carlson makes the case in this essay that an early, independent version of the "Epistola ad Regem" was also added and currently comprises "the imposed chapters 8-18 of the received book 6" of VC (VI.581-1200), described by Carlson as "some remnant (at least) of a once separate piece of writing--a coherent 'speculum principis' cast in epistolary form." The suggestion that an early "Epistola" was added to an early VC is not a new one; it was broached, though inconclusively, by John Fisher, for example, as Carlson reports. Yet, Carlson offers strong supporting arguments for the case while reviewing the structure and rhetoric of the passage as internal evidence for the claim, exploring the "quasi-internal evidence of the transmitted prose headings" (295) that clarify a self-standing structure (295). He also offers as a kind of external evidence John Bale's lists of Gowerian works found in his manuscript notebook "Index Britanniae Scriptorum" and his "Scriptorum Illustrium Catalogus," where, as Carlson puts it, "Bale sometimes reports having seen writings and kinds of manuscripts of Gower that do not now survive" (298). Bale reports in his "Catalogus," for example, the incipit line from a work he lists as "De eodem de Herico," a line which Carlson locates both in the "Epistola" of VC and in an independent 56-line poem by Gower, leading Carlson to compare closely the two versions and show, among other things, that the "Epistola" "embedded" in the VC "underwent revision, at some point or some several points, to better fit" into the larger poem (304). A second example, Bale's quotation of the incipit to what he labels Gower's "De regimine principum"--"O deus immense, sub quo dominator"--is a near match with that of an independent Gowerian poem of 104 lines. No version of this incipit, Carlson makes clear, is found in either the "Epistola" or the VC at large, but he also makes clear that there is a relation between a prose heading that accompanies the independent poem in one manuscript and several features of VC, raising the possibility that an early version of the "Epistola" can be "supposed to have begun with a prayer--something like the surviving 'O deus immense'" (306). Tracing another of Bale's incipit lines from Gower to its source in Peter Riga's "Aurora," Carlson locates the line in the "Epistola" section of VC and, again through close comparison, shows that Gower reworked Riga's original to a new purpose, for which "Bale's evidence" indicates circulation "as a separate poem" (309). Carlson characterizes the reworking he describes as a "standard, school-boyish exercise in Latin verse composition" (308), evidence in support of a general hypothesis that when such "scholastic exercises" are found in the VC they may be regarded as "the remains of originally independent shorter poems" (309). Carlson considers it a "plausible supposition" that Gower produced such "adaptations earlier rather than later in his career as a Latin poet" and proceeds to offer further plausible "supporting evidence" (310) by comparing Bale's listings, Riga's "Aurora," and related material--again from the "Epistola" section of VC. The material in this section eulogizes Edward, the Black Prince, in ways that Carlson finds similar to a eulogy for Edward III ("Epitaphium Edwardi tertii," 1377) and that, he claims carefully, "may be an embedded fragment of a once independent eulogy of the Black Prince, written at the time of his death" (312) in 1376. He offers a version of what this independent eulogy might have looked like, reconstructed from lines in the "Epistola" that praise the Black Prince and that echo the language and imagery of praise in the "Aurora," albeit largely reordered. We are not encouraged to accept Carlson's reconstruction as a new piece of Gower's Latin verse, but to accept it as a model of how Gower may have adapted an early Latin poem in the making of the "Epistola," itself revised when incorporated into the VC. And this is what Carlson ultimately offers: an approximate chronology and sequenced reconstruction of Gower's habits as a Latin poet--first, school-boyish exercises that adapt traditional material; next, modification of these exercises into what (following Fisher) Carlson calls "laureate" (317), occasional poems; and finally, further adaptation of these poems for incorporation into the capacious project of the VC. In the final section of this intricate argument (314-17), Carlson sets his hypotheses against social practices and political events of Gower's lifetime to offer a provisional history of Gower's habits with his Latin poetry. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2]
- Date
- 2003
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis
Minor Latin Poetry
Influence and Later Allusion
Biography of Gower