Gower, the Chorus, as a Fictional Character in "Pericles."
- Author/Editor
- Miyashita, Yayoi.
- Title
- Gower, the Chorus, as a Fictional Character in "Pericles."
- Published
- Miyashita, Yayoi. "Gower, the Chorus, as a Fictional Character in Pericles." Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University 117 (2005): 89-108.
- Review
- Miyashita examines the choric role assigned to Gower in Shakespeare's "Pericles" and argues that he differs markedly from other Shakespearean choruses in that he is endowed with a distinct personality. Although Gower describes the primary purpose of his storytelling as to give pleasure to the audience in his opening speech, Shakespeare deliberately preserves his identity as "moral Gower" by having him constantly moralize over the action he presents. Miyashita demonstrates, however, that, instead of providing the audience with "necessary and trustworthy information" (p. 98) as the choruses do in Shakespeare's other plays, Gower's comments only reveal discrepancies between the events unfolding on stage and his evaluation of them. His moralization thus "works antithetically to the audience's reception of the play," but precisely because his moral judgments are proven to be subjective and therefore limited, the audience is given "an opportunity for retrospection" at the end of the play and encouraged to "reconsider" its "true significance" (107). This essay originally appeared in Japanese in The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences in 2003. See Yayoi Miyashita, "Pericles ni okeru Chorus, Gower no hataraki," Hokkaidō Daigaku Bungaku-bu Kiyō/The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences110 (July 2003): 113-28. [YK. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2]
- Date
- 2005
- Gower Subjects
- Influence and Later Allusion