Lust and Lore: Figures of Speech in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Author/Editor
Greene, Linda Louise.

Title
Lust and Lore: Figures of Speech in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Published
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Arkansas, 1978. Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 3567A.

Review
"The present study examines the traditional figures of speech--metaphor, simile, personification, metonymy and synecdoche, and oxymoron, along with certain subcategories--in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' Two chapters discuss the figures in some detail. They consider, as well, some important themes and tones in the 'Confessio' and the way in which Gower's figurative language either creates or emphasizes these themes. The core of the study, however, is provided by four appendices. Appendix A breaks the poem into its separate books and examines the occurrence of figurative language within the three main contexts: Amans, Genius, and Tales. The appendix offers both a line-count of figurative language and the percentages that these lines make up. Appendix B provides a visual representation of the information presented in Appendix A. In B the different contexts are represented by different colors of shading. By breaking the entire poem into ten-line segments and by charting how many lines in each segment are involved in figurative language, the chart vividly shows the peaks and valleys of figurativeness in the 'Confessio.' Appendix C examines one type of figure at a time. Again, breaking the poem into separate books and separate contexts, it lists the location of each figure of speech, its type, the "literal term" (what the poet is talking about, as nearly as it can be determined) and the 'figurative area' (the realm from which the poet has drawn his imagery for his figure of speech). Finally, Appendix D examines again the imagery content of Gower's figures, but from a different angle. Breaking down the figure by content rather than by type, the appendix makes certain patterns of occurrence more readily visible than they are in other appendices." [eJGN 40.2.]

Date
1978

Gower Subjects
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification