How Gower Found His "Vox": Latin and John Gower's Poetics.

Author/Editor
Echard, Siân.

Title
How Gower Found His "Vox": Latin and John Gower's Poetics.

Published
Echard, Siân. "How Gower Found His "Vox": Latin and John Gower's Poetics." Journal of Medieval Latin 26 (2016): 291-314.

Review
In her first paragraph, Echard sets out the subsequent course of her argument with characteristic clarity: "This essay considers the development and significance of [Gower's] Latin voice. It focusses first on two short Latin poems, "Est amor in glosa" and "De lucis scrutinio," arguing that in these Gower explores the limits of poetic language in an explicitly Latinate tradition. It next turns to his Latin "Vox Clamantis" and his Middle English "Confessio Amantis," showing that the Latin poem is more likely to turn to the vocative to admonish, condemn, or express outrage, while the English poem is more likely to employ the vocative in moments of pathos. It concludes by considering "Rex celi deus," "O recolende bone," and "In Praise of Peace," poems addressed to King Henry IV, and argues that in them the resources of Latin and English come together to craft a uniquely multilingual, multipositioned speaker who is at once intimate and detached, warm advisor and stern critic, truly suited to function as the voice of England" (291). Among the many insightful observations in this article are these: "Gower's Latin is best understood as acting in constant relation to his vernaculars, because he is, fundamentally, a trilingual poet. His trilingualism makes him all the more aware of the failures of every language, including Latin" (292). Both "Est amor" and "De lucis scrutinio" are "self-consciously concerned with poetic technique . . . deploying repetition and variation with considerable deliberation and flare" (299); but "As in 'Est amor,' it is possible to see ['De lucis''] stance as simultaneously invested in, and uncertain about, the display of poetic skill; in each case, it brings the speaker near to the desired goal but must finally, it seems, be laid aside" (300). Placing "Gower's Latin alongside his English, to show the development of what [she] calls the Gowerian 'voxative,' the voice that, despite Gower's concerns about the limits of poetry, nevertheless seeks to speak in the public arena" (300). "Gower presents himself in Latin as the voice of one crying, and in English as the voice of England" (302), "Address to a king is clearly a particular focal point of vocative structures in the Latin work" (308). While "the sequence in some . . . manuscripts suggests a kind of deliberate, progressive structure of admonition, record, and advice . . . the unpredictability of manuscript culture can undermine even a carefully orchestrated organizational plan" (308). "If 'O' can signal, particularly in Latin, the admonitory voice, then we might wonder if under these 'O's' of praise [in "Rex celi deus"] there is also some warning; that is, Gower also plays with the multiple meanings of words . . . . I am suggesting he is also playing with the multiple meanings/effects/affects of structures" (310). The Trentham manuscript [London, BL MS Additional 59495], while appearing free from Gower's "admonitory voice," does in fact "channel that voice even in a collection that must be understood in the context of patronage and precarious politics, . . . by merging the resources of English and Latin" (311). The evidence for this last statement is to be found in "In Praise of Peace": "Where once Latin tilted towards admonition and outrage, and English towards lament and carefully suggestive exemplarity, the linguistic and formal layering here offers a new voice, a uniquely multilingual, multipositioned speaker who is at once intimate and detached, warm advisor and stern critic" (314). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2]

Date
2016

Gower Subjects
Minor Latin Poetry
Vox Clamantis
Confessio Amantis
In Praise of Peace
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Language and Word Studies