"Cinkante Balades": A Garland for a New King.

Author/Editor
Itô, Masayoshi.

Title
"Cinkante Balades": A Garland for a New King.

Published
Itô, Masayoshi. "'Cinkante Balades': A Garland for a New King." In Itô's "John Gower, The Medieval Poet" (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 156-80.

Review
Surveys criticism of CB, discusses its subject matter as "generally conventional," and analyzes its "formal excellence" and unity (158) as a matter of "concantenation" of "topics, moods, associations, imagery, key words of phrases, allusions, sources, and various metrical devices" (163). Reads the individual ballades seriatim to show how they deal with "three kinds of love" (conjugal, courtly, and divine; 164), and constitute a "ballade sequence" that "has no end but a circular completeness and a peculiar unity" (179) reminiscent of the Middle English "Pearl" and some of "The Harley Lyrics." [MA]

Date
1976

Gower Subjects
Cinkante Balades
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification