Like Chaucer in Canterbury Tales, Gower too uses a frame narrative within which he has many tales, he has a naive first person narrator and a third person figure of authority. But he doesn't have different voices telling his tales from different sources- the tales are all told by Genius and they are mostly Ovidian. While Chaucer plays around with authority and meaning, all the time trying to break hierarchies and moulds, trying to prove that there is no single 'truth' or meaning, but that there are multiple dimensions to every point of view (thus each tale tries to 'quite' the previous one), Gower is eager to establish authority even seeing himself as one, perhaps because he needs to. he is extremely concerned about his political situation, and his poem is closely related to it. He is concerned with issues of kingship and uses the universal theme of love to talk about the need for a balance between excess and deficiency (ie. virtue). Gower has a perfectly structured poem to show the possiblity of harmony in the world. Compare this with the attitude of the Pearl-poet who shows that humans cannot find this harmony, but it is only found in heaven. Gower needs to show that harmony is possible in the secular real world, and interestingly he does not resort to spiritual or religious imagery to prove his case, but instead turns to the pagan classics. One point of comparison between Chaucer and Gower is that the latter allows his tales to be read only through a particular moral, whereas Chaucer's tales open up many layers of meaning. Gower tries to place everything within context; Chaucer argues that the contexts are limitless. but Gower is not all that direct about his frame and context. He has all these 'digressions' on kingship, which suggests to me that their is a greater implicit frame which includes the Prologue. So there are two frameworks, overlapping:
1. Gower + his treatise on kingship
2. Amans, Genius, vices
Gower becomes Amans, Amans becomes Gower.
He uses the lover (individual) to talk about the king (public figure) because they are two aspects of the same person. Man is both social and individual (Dhira Mahoney) thus the kingship and lover aspects are related, and the two frames overlap.
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6 comments:
I liked this, it's very well-thought-out :).
I thought your comparison with Chaucer (and also the Pearl-poet) was interesting, and something I hadn't thought of before. :)
"he is extremely concerned about his political situation, and his poem is closely related to it"... Do you think in your essay, you'd want to expand on this, maybe talk about the different retractions?
"interestingly he does not resort to spiritual or religious imagery to prove his case, but instead turns to the pagan classics." This is worth expanding... why do you think this is? And why then, the 'confessor' theme/framework?
"Gower becomes Amans, Amans becomes Gower." How so?
"Man is both social and individual (Dhira Mahoney) thus the kingship and lover aspects are related, and the two frames overlap." Would you want to relate this to Richard II and his relationship with Anne of Bohemia, or would you rather not tie it down like that?
I really liked your work Lali...
:)
xxxxx
i dont know anything about Richard and Anne. I think i used to, but my mind is blank right now. Could you elaborate?
Gower actually does become Amans and then Gower again- literally. In the Latin gloss to Book 1 of Confessio, he writes that the poet 'feigns' himself as Amans...and in the last book, in the english text itself, he becomes Gower again (though i have to re-read this part, not sure what happens exactly)My point in saying this was that the two aren't separated the way in which Chaucer is from his persona, there is no clean split. Well, i suppose that raises questions on whether there is a clean split in Chaucer either.But that's another story.
Just because you know, all those things they said about Richard and his men being better in bed than on the battlefield...and his close relationship with Anne, etc.
What you say about the persona is interesting, and worth expanding in your essay. :)
oh oh... yes...i know about that! you're right, i should talk about that as well. and you lie ayoush, when you say that this is "well thought out", coz really, it isnt!!!
Hmm. Controversial! Interestingly I find this very convincing, but it's almost exactly the opposite of what I'd say about Gower and his 'voices'. Chaucer certainly has lots of voices who disagree, but it's clear that they're all separate, and they represent viewpoints on society from different members of society. In Gower, on the other hand, you have this external, ultimate narrative voice, John Gower. Then inside you have Genius, who makes strange judgements about things like Canace's incest. Then you have the voices of the characters in the tales, and the problem that all these tales are functioning in contexts different to that of JOhn Gower, poet. Then you're problematised further by the revelation (for the educated readers) that Amans *is* Gower. So if Gower is at once an old man and a young one, how far can we trust the authoritative voice of the prologue, if he's as oblivious as Amans has been all the way through? How reliable is any of it? What about the Latin glosses, and Gower's announcement that he's writing 'somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore' so that it can be read as something clever for wise men, and something straightforward for foolish ones?
the big difference between chaucer and gower, i feel, is that chaucer really is trying to entertain despite whatever profound point he is trying to make. Gower isn't. Even though he writes 'somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore' i dont think he is really aiming for a non-educated audience. Gower comes across as someone who's trying a bit too hard.
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