Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650.
- Author/Editor
- Weiskott, Eric.
- Title
- Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650.
- Published
- Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
- Review
- Weiskott's project lacks neither ambition nor targets. As he sets it out in the Preface, "The goal is to think of English metrical traditions as themselves unfolding historical times, whose experiences initially bore no relation to the later historical accretions through which we inevitably conceptualize English poetics today, such as the canonization of Chaucer, the dominance of pentameter, the usurpation by English of the social and intellectual spaces of Latin, Enlightenment historiography, nationalism, the institution of English departments, and free verse" (xviii). To encompass all this, he identifies four "Ages": of Prophecy, Alliterative Meter, Tetrameter, and Pentameter. The first, as he says, "represents a genre" (197), the other three metrical traditions, and he argues for mapping all four across the literature of his chosen three hundred years as a fresh approach to marking the passage of time. Weiskott identifies Langland (who perfected alliterative verse) and Chaucer (who invented English pentameter) as "the two most prominent fourteenth-century English poets" (4), but he allows occasional spaces for Gower scattered throughout, primarily (and not surprisingly) in chapter 10, "Chaucer's English Metrical Phonology: Tetrameter to Pentameter." Weiskott avers that the Age of Tetrameter began in the thirteenth century, "under influence from French octosyllables and Latin accentual-syllabic tetrameter" (163), and in the fourteenth "appeared as the best alternative to alliterative meter for serious compositions" (74); hence Gower used it for the "Confessio," and Chaucer for the "Book of the Duchess," "Hous of Fame," and "Romaunt of the Rose." In this their practices followed "Francien preference": early on, "Chaucer deployed his French- and Italian-derived English verse forms according to French metrical decorum. (Gower observed the same decorum throughout his career, across English and French: tetrameter/octosyllables for the narrative "Confessio Amantis" and "Mirour de l'Omme," pentameter/decasyllables for the lyric "Cinkante Balades," "Confessio" 8.2217-300, "In Praise of Peace," and "Traitié pour les amantz marietz")" (175-76). Several of Weiskott's most interesting observations concerning Gower occur in the notes. Of particular interest in this regard is the comment (247-48, n. 13) that three lyric styles that he, following Martin Duffell, identifies as exclusively Chaucerian and Italian, Gower also employs in the "Cinkante Balades." Similarly: pentameter being for Weiskott the badge of modernity, he would on metrical grounds "expand" claims for Chaucer's modernity made (for other reasons) by A. C. Spearing "to cover Gower, Clanvowe, Walton" and several others (253, n. 49); and (251, n. 52) he reflects on uses of "poete/poetical/poesie/poetrie" in Chaucer and Gower, in whose work the first two don't appear, and the second pair, with the exception of Venus' reference to Chaucer, alludes "exclusively to Ovid." His final Gower-related observation is to Quixley's fifteenth-century translation of the "Traitié" into Yorkshire English, arguing, following Yeager, that its unique production outside of the London ambit (albeit with probable Augustinian connections with St. Mary Overye) underscores how localized the work of Chaucer, Gower, and the rest were (183-84). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.]
- Date
- 2021
- Gower Subjects
- Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Confessio Amantis
Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis)
Cinkante Balades
In Praise of Peace
Traitié pour les amantz marietz