Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life. Medieval Lives.
- Author/Editor
- Adler, Gillian.
Strohm, Paul.
- Title
- Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life. Medieval Lives.
- Published
- Adler, Gillian, and Paul Strohm. Alle Thyng Hath Tyme: Time and Medieval Life. Medieval Lives. London: Reaktion, 2023.
- Review
- Alder and Strohm explore the complexities of medieval understandings and experiences of time, clearly and succinctly addressing various notions of time and related topics (e.g., aging, time-keeping, planetary motion, eternity, the end of time) as reflected in medieval material objects as well as philosophy and literature. In a section on "Timescapes" the authors examine time as a theme and device in works by Julian of Norwich, Margery of Kempe, and Thomas Usk. Gower and his works are considered, more briefly, in three separate sections. One on "Allegorical Time" addresses Lachesis in "Confessio Amantis," Book 4, and the "erroneous sense of time as recoverable" (138) entailed in "borwe" at 4.8-10. The second, on "The Ages of Humankind," includes remarks on the "incompatibility" of old age and idealized love in CA and observes where Gower uses "nature-based analogies" (179) to distinguish between youth and age in the Latin opening of CA, Book 8, and, in "Henrici Quarti primus," to keep a "degree of philosophical distance from the malady [blindness] caused by old age" (181). In their closing section, "The End of Time," Adler and Strohm observe Gower's eschatological concern with time in Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the Prologue of CA, with its emphasis on decline and destruction derived from the Book of Daniel and exegetical tradition. Notably, this last concern is accompanied by a full-page, full-color reproduction of Nebuchadnezzar dreaming of the statue mentioned in Daniel and presented here as similar to Dante's "Old Man of Crete" (198). The illustration reproduces London, British Library, MS 3869, fol. 51. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1]
- Date
- 2023
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
Confessio Amantis