Echo and Her Medieval Sisters.
- Author/Editor
- Harrison, Ann Tukey.
- Title
- Echo and Her Medieval Sisters.
- Published
- Harrison, Ann Tukey. "Echo and Her Medieval Sisters." Centennial Review 26 (1982): 324-40.
- Review
- Harrison summarizes the plot and emphases of Ovid's account of Narcissus and Echo in "Metamorphoses" and those of six "fully developed renditions of the tale" (324): the twelfth-century Old French lay of Narcissus, the version in Guillaume de Lorris's portion of the "Roman de la Rose," the account at the end of Robert of Blois's "Floris et Liriope," the section in "Ovide Moralisé," Gower's separate accounts of the "misadventure" of Narcissus in Book I of "Confessio Amantis" and Echo's "encounter" (333) with Juno in Book V, and the sixteenth-century French play, "Jeu de Narcisse." Harrison concentrates on how and where the post-Ovidian versions vary from Ovid and observes their particularities, with recurrent comments on gender. The summaries are descriptive rather than analytical, but Harrison does observe in her conclusion that, even though the post-Ovidian narratives of Echo "occasion very little overt misogyny," she is "[r]arely . . . an explicit role model for women" (340). Discussing Gower's "bifurcated" (335) version, Harrison says that each "exemplum has its own distinct moral, and they are connected only by one common image"--the bell image at 1.2391 and 5.4640--and a "Latin side note" (333), which Harrison quotes, untranslated and undiscussed, in a footnote. She calls the bell image "arresting because it is the only explicit link" between Gower's two stories (334). His account of Narcissus, Harrison remarks, cautions against "excessive presumptive pride" (333), while the story of Echo is, more expansively, "addressed to men, not women, and it is supportive of woman's claim to monogamous fidelty [sic] in her spouse. The villain of the piece is herself a woman, discovered and punished by another woman who has been duped, and both are hardly positive feminine figures" (335). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2]
- Date
- 1982
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations