"Watte vocat": Human and Animal Naming in Gower's "Visio Anglie'."
- Author/Editor
- Parsons, Ben.
- Title
- "Watte vocat": Human and Animal Naming in Gower's "Visio Anglie'."
- Published
- Parsons, Ben. "'Watte vocat': Human and Animal Naming in Gower's 'Visio Anglie'." JEGP 119 (2020): 380-98.
- Review
- Parsons takes up ll. 782-95, the list of names of the rebels-turned-beasts in Book I of the Vox Clamantis. His conclusion offers perhaps the best summary of his thoroughly learned article: "Reading the Visio's list of names against medieval naming conventions allows a number of significant points to emerge, in relation both to the text and to the norms on which it draws. In the first place, it shows that the sequence does not need to be treated as a suspension of Gower's allegory since his catalogue calls on the stock of names commonly given to medieval beasts. It also offers evidence against the tenacious view that medieval onomastics separated human from non-human creatures, as the text muddies rather than clarifies this putative divide. Taking a slightly wider view, Gower's use of these names also brings into view some of the mechanics of animal naming in the period, revealing a complex understanding of naming and its implications. In reaching for these terms while dissolving the rioters into an indistinguishable mob, Gower seems to be utilizing their 'general singular' qualities: they allow him to strip the rebels of personhood and specificity at a stroke, simply because they carry out such a process automatically. Alongside these details, however, Gower also gives us access to a further aspect of medieval animal naming, one worth raising as a final point. His inclusion of these sixteen names in this context demonstrates what sorts of anthroponym was deemed appropriate for non-human beings. The names he cites carry strong social overtones. After all, it is not for nothing that the names have invariably been read as 'plebeian': there is abundant proof of their association with the peasantry, even at a purely stereotypical level. As a result, Gower's selection of names indicates that not just any human name could be transferred to beasts. When medieval people applied human names to animals around them, they reached for names that were customarily associated with the lower social classes. This fact further suggests why the names should prove so attractive to Gower. They already express many of the same judgments formulated by his allegory, being founded on the same sense that peasants are subhuman 'ab ovo' that runs through his text. While the 'Visio' shows that the boundary between human and animal was more porous than is sometimes admitted, it also makes clear that this was a limited confusion, and that the points at which the two categories converged were themselves directed by political factors" (397-98). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1]
- Date
- 2020
- Gower Subjects
- Vox Clamantis