Gower's "Ovidian" Source for Line V.1283 of the "Confessio Amantis."
- Author/Editor
- Sharp. David.
- Title
- Gower's "Ovidian" Source for Line V.1283 of the "Confessio Amantis."
- Published
- Sharp, David. "Gower's 'Ovidian' Source for Line V.1283 of the Confessio Amantis." Notes and Queries 66 (2021): 162-64.
- Review
- CA V.1283, in the "Tale of Proserpina," reads: "And lerne forto weve and spinne." Ceres, her mother, has hidden her away in a secret chamber below Mt. Aetna, to protect her virginity. Following Venus to pick flowers while her mother was away, Proserpina is spotted by Pluto and ravished. Neither the detail of the chamber below Aetna nor that of weaving/spinning occurs in the "Metamorphoses" proper, but rather both are in Gower's main source, the "Ovidius moralizatus." Berchorius' own source for his mention of weaving/spinning, however, not being in Ovid's version, has eluded discovery. Sharp locates it in Claudian's "De raptu Proserpinae" ("a foundational text in the medieval curriculum," [163]), Book I, ll. 244-53, citing the passage as "the narrative building block from which Berchorius could have drawn for his own moralization of Ovid" (164). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1]
- Date
- 2021
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis