John Gower and the Artists of M. 126.
- Author/Editor
- Driver, Martha.
- Title
- John Gower and the Artists of M. 126.
- Published
- Driver, Martha. "John Gower and the Artists of M. 126." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 99-115.
- Review
- Driver argues that, unlike other surviving illustrations of the CA, the illuminations of Morgan M. 126 ". . . do not act precisely as guides to Gower's meaning. Rather, they perform alternative readings or elaborate imaginatively on the stories they introduce" (99). Further, she suggests that "these pictures are consciously used to highlight some of Gower's own oddities in the text and to focus the reader's attention that are sometimes otherwise overlooked; for example, Gower's absolute fearlessness in addressing subject matter (none of Chaucer's prim pussyfooting around the story of Canace, for example) and the surreal transformation, often drawn from Ovid and other sources, of certain of Gower's characters." (99). Thus, rather than emphasizing the "moral" aspects of Gower's tales, "the artists embellish, even celebrate the more unsavory, taboo, or violent aspects of Gower's narrative" (100). Driver pursues this reading both through a fascinating exegesis of several of the images in M. 126 as well as a comparison of these images with a similar program of illustrations in the Rosenbach Lydgate. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1]
- Date
- 2020
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations