Function of the Jeweled Bridle in Gower's 'Tale of Rosiphelee'

Review

Bratcher contrasts Gower’s “Rosiphelee? to the 13th-century French "Lai du Trot," which, he asserts, despite the many differences, “in some form . . . must have contributed? to Gower’s tale, for these are the only two known versions of the medieval “purgatory of cruel beauties? in which a lone woman is punished for her neglect of love. The differences between the two reflect Gower’s “deliberate reworking? of the earlier tale. The most significant of these is the attribution to the woman in the vision of a richly decorated bridle as a token of her (unhappily too tardy) submission to love. The introduction of the horse’s headgear makes possible a pun on the ME word for bridle (< OE brīdel) and that for bridal (< “bride-ale,? the custom of drinking in celebration of a wedding) in the woman’s admonition to the heroine, “To godd, ma Dame, I you betake, / And warneth alle for mi sake, / Of love that thei ben noght ydel, / And bidd hem thenke upon mi brydel? (CA 4.1431-34). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 25.1]