Studies in Gower's Age: Ciceronian Echoes in "Confessio Amantis."
- Author/Editor
- Rogers, William.
- Title
- Studies in Gower's Age: Ciceronian Echoes in "Confessio Amantis."
- Published
- Rogers, William. "Studies in Gower's Age: Ciceronian Echoes in Confessio Amantis." 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. 143-58.
- Review
- This essay uses both the tools of source study and the modern insights of disability studies to return to the much-discussed question of the significance of Gower's representation of himself as an old man at the end of the CA. Rogers follows R. F. Yeager and others in emphasizing that the roots of this image of age lay in Gower's own very real ailments as an old man. Further, Rogers argues that it is Cicero, rather than Gower's more frequent sources such as Ovid and Aristotle, who lies behind Gower's depiction of old age as a turn away from passions but, emphatically, not a turn away from the possibility of political action. Indeed, as Rogers shows in a reading of the brief narrative "The Trump of Death," an acknowledgement of the universality of aging may be a necessary component in the creation of a virtuous political community, a corrective to the erratic passions of youth embodied in the young Richard II and the celebration of a wisdom and humility that comes only at the end of life. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1]
- Date
- 2020
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations