Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1962 A Critical Evaluation of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'. Donald Gustave Schueler Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Schueler, Donald Gustave, "A Critical Evaluation of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." (1962). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 756. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/756 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This dissertation has been 62-6324 microfilmed exactly as received SCHUELER, Donald Gustave, 1929- A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF JOHN GOWER'S CONFESSED A MANTIS. Louisiana State University, Ph.D., 1962 Language and Literature, general University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF JOHN GOWER'S CONFESSIO A MANTIS A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Donald Gustave Schueler B. A. , University of Georgia, 1951 June, 1962 AC KNOWLEDGMENT I wish to thank Dr. Thomas A. Kirby, the director of this dissertation, for his patient and invaluable assistance in its prep­ aration. I would also like to acknowledge the helpfulness of the other members of my committee: Dr. Nathaniel M. Caffee, Dr. William J. Olive, Dr. Melvin R. Watson, and Dr. John Hazard Wildman. TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgment - . i A b stra c t ................................................................................................................iii Introduction...........................................................................................................1 Chapter I Gower: His Life .............................................................. 6 Chapter II Gower: The Conscience of the Times ...................37 Chapter III Gower: The Man of Learning ....................................74 Chapter IV Gower and the Subject of Love ................................115 Chapter V The Structure of the Confessio Amantis ... .155 Chapter VI Gower: The Storyteller ................................................199 Chapter VII Gower's Poetic Craftsmanship ...............................253 C onclusion......................................................................................................... 285 Bibliography .....................................................................................................296 V ita .................... 297 ABSTRACT Only a very limited amount of literary criticism has had John Gower's Confessio Amantis as its subject in the more than half century since George C. Macaulay produced the definitive edition of this and the poet's other works. Of the few studies that have been written, most have been concerned with particular, isolated aspects of Goweir's many-sided English poem. In the opinion of some critics this general neglect has been deserved. The present writer feels otherwise, but in order to prove his point it has been necessary for him to begin with an important reservation: the Confessio Amantis is admittedly an anachornism; for the most part it lacks those univer­ sal and timeless elements that make Chaucer's work still seem fresh and vital. Yet it is in this direction that much of the value of the Confessio Amantis lies. When we read Chaucer it is only as an afterthought that we remember that he was "medieval. " When we read Gower, it is the central thing. His work is, in other words, an introduction to those elements which gave the age in which he lived its unique character. As such as introduction, the Confessio Amantis has no, peer in Middle English literature. It is a veritable compendium of the ideas and ideals that set medieval England apart from that Renaissance which Chaucer in many ways anticipated. The author of the present study has attempted to prove that, within the framework of its own age, the Confessio Amantis is quite as excellent a work as Gower's contemporaries believed it to be. Its controlling purpose, which is to combine entertainment and lore; its structure, which is complex and sometimes bewildering; its subject matter, which is prodigiously diverse and often dated--all these dements contrive to make the poem alien to the modern temper- ment. Yet to understand it and appreciate it is to understand and appreciate the world in which Gower--and Chaucer--lived. In the present study, various aspects of the Confessio Amantis are dealt with in separate chapters; its ethical content, its didactic purpose, its structure, its representation of romantic love, and its narrative and poetic techniques. However, none of these sub­ jects is considered in', isolation. The present writer has been con­ cerned to explain the manner in which the varied elements in the poem are related to each other and to Gower's age, and to argue that, contrary to the usual critical opinion, they form a masterful and im­ posing design. TheCpnfessio Amantis is in fact a truly monumental work, partly because of its considerable poetic qualities, and partly because, as a monument, it commemorates, a veritable host of ideas and ideals, some of them beautiful and profound, which have vanished from our world. iv INTRODUCTION John Gower has been so overshadowed by the reputation of his great contemporary, Chaucer, that even his name, outside the circle of a specialized group, has been virtually unknown until quite recently. This was not always the case. In his own time, and during the two centuries that followed, he was often paired with Chaucer and mentioned with an equal reverence--a fact which will be con­ sidered in detail a little later on. Time, of course, is the final arbiter in these matters; it brooks no argument except from still more time. However, in that connection it is worth noting that Gower's star, eclipsed for centuries, has acquired a modest shine of late. The intelligent but almost incidental praise that Macaulay gave the poet more than a half century ago* has, in the last decade, had its careful echoes; I have no greater ambition as far as these pages are concerned than to add a little depth to them. The Confessio Amantis, Gower's one important English work, will be the center of this study. The reader will do well to know be­ forehand the particular point of view from which the poem will be dealt with. The argument here is that Gower ranks as a major poet in 2 the history of English literature, a fact which the modern reader may find less than obvious, and, furthermore, that he is an ex­ clusively mediaeval poet, a fact which the reader will readily con­ cede. The point to be made is that Gower cannot be read and understood unless these statements are taken in conjunction. His work cannot be extricated, as Chaucer's can, from the world in which it was created. Chaucer was infinitely the more universal of the two poets. In his ability to use much that is enduring in human experience as his subject matter he shares with Shakespeare and one or two others the highest eminence of English poetry. But granting Gower's position in the second range, the present study will nevertheless urge that the long neglect of him has been due to the effect of time more than to his own poetic limitations. The one factor does not necessarily dovetail with the other. Contrary to the popular platitude, we are not the products of all that has gone before. We lose much along the way. And among the things that are lost are many of the very qualities that seem ed-- that were--m ost representative, most distinctive, most beauti­ ful, to the particular cultures that produced them. Gower's art has been among the casualties} there have been others-- Spenser's, Pope's, even Wordsworth's--not so forgotten as Gower's chiefly because they are a little closer to us in time. It will never be possible for the Confessio Amantis to be read, as Hamlet or the Canterbury Tales can be, by a sophomore. But for those who are attracted to the Middle Ages, not because of the seemingly unchanging human element that is common to all times and places', but because of what was special and unique about that bygone time--for those, Gower is the man. When we read Chaucer it is only as an after-thought that we remind ourselves that he was "medieval. 11 When we read Gower, it is the central thing. The world of the Confessio Amantis is as removed from our everyday experience as the lost Atlantis; the ideas that Gower dealt with, the structure that he chose for his poem, the very music of his lines, seem respectively quaint, unwieldly, and naive to us. As a matter of fact they are none of these things. They are simply different because they no longer exist in our own time, and only by a conscious effort on our part can they be resurrected. My purpose, then, is to make this "conscious effort, " and, in the process, to perhaps persuade the student of the Middle Ages that the Confessio Amantis is worthy of his atten­ tion. Anyone who would understand the medieval world, and particularly the world of England in the fourteenth century, that is, its special genius, might do well to reconsider the ideas, the architectonic daring, the poetic grace and ease with which 4 Gower once challenged and delighted the most perceptive and in­ telligent people of that long ago time. FOOTNOTES ^The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. George C. M acaulay, II (Oxford, 1901), x-xxi. Henceforth designated as Works. 5 I GOWJER: HIS LIFE John Gower's character will never emerge to any meaning­ ful extent from the documents that are now available or from any that are likely to be discovered in the future. Even the cold facts concerning his life are few; they leave us with little insight into the life of the man and virtually none at all into the life of the poet.