Gower and the Incestuous Father: The Intimate Author in "Pericles."
- Author/Editor
- Segall, Kreg.
- Title
- Gower and the Incestuous Father: The Intimate Author in "Pericles."
- Published
- Explorations in Renaissance Culture 34 (2008): 248-68.
- Review
- In this article Kreg Segall focuses exclusively on Gower's choric role in "Pericles." His Gower here is Shakespeare's Gower. Segall argues that in the play Gower is "highly aware of his textual status" (248) which is "marginal-yet-mediating" (248). Segall explores the ways this textual awareness, sometimes evident in moments when Gower distances himself from the story, conveys an uneasiness about the incest theme that "underscores the prime anxiety of the play--the fear of becoming too intimate" (249). Throughout the play Gower tries "to redefine his choric position away from paternal author-figure" (250). Unlike Antiochus, whose incestuous desire seeks complete control of his daughter, Gower, who sometimes appears as author/father of the text, at times also appears to release this role and "drop the responsibility for narrative coherence onto the actors and the audience" (252). Gower, in other words, distances himself from Antiochus by distancing himself from his text. Pericles in turn learns to negotiate intimacy with his daughter in non-incestuous ways through his relationship with his retainer Helicanus. The article also draws a compelling parallel between releasing authorial control over a text and death or "Gower's desire to die away at the appropriate time" (261), as Segall puts it. While an in-depth analysis of the ways in which Shakespeare's Gower echoes writer John Gower's own authorial explorations may have been, understandably, beyond the scope of the article, one wishes Segall had gestured toward such echoes. [MB-F. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.]
- Date
- 2008
- Gower Subjects
- Influence and Later Allusion