Chaucer and Gower.
- Author/Editor
- Bridges, Venetia.
- Title
- Chaucer and Gower.
- Published
- Bridges, Venetia. "Chaucer and Gower." In Corinne Saunders and Diane Watt, eds. Women and Medieval Literary Culture from the Early Middle Ages to the Fifteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 342-376.
- Review
- Constituting chapter 17 in the volume, this addresses the question "how do women 'mean' in these literary contexts [Chaucer and Gower as "pan-European" poets engaged with multi-lingual sources]" (342). The plan of the article indicates its extremely ambitious range: "[it] reviews Chaucer's key poetic works and genres ("The Canterbury Tales," "Troilus and Criseyde," and the three major dream visions) and Gower's major works (the "Confessio Amantis," "Vox Clamantis," "Mirour de l'Omme," and "Cinkante Balades"), and concludes with a comparative analysis of major female figures that both Chaucer and Gower portray (Dido, Medea, Constance, the 'loathly lady,' and Alcyone)" (342). Common to both poets is a "discourse [that] depicts women and femininity as subordinated to masculine hermeneutic needs" through a focus on "women's meaning in ethical terms," a meaning that is generally reductive, seeing femininity . . . in binary terms as 'good'/'bad'" (343). While Gower is famously known as "moral," Chaucer is equally concerned with morals and ethics (354), albeit more "play[fully]" than Gower (369). In VC and MO Gower adhered to the simplistic archetype of women as temptresses (VC) (356-57), or framed them as Eve or Mary (MO) (358-59). In the CA, where almost every story exemplifies a Deadly Sin, he tends to erase "the voices and agency" of women characters, compared to their sources (356). In CB, women speakers are reduced to already-established "signifiers" such as the woman betrayed (357-58). Per Bridges, only Gower's Medea is a "more complex construction" than her counterpart in Chaucer, as her varied life choices can't always be explained in terms of "conventional femininity and its morals" (363). By contrast, Chaucer truncated the story of Medea in his "Legend of Good Women," reducing her life journey to exemplify the innocent woman abandoned (362). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1]
- Date
- 2023
- Gower Subjects
- Backgrounds and General Criticism
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis
Vox Clamantis
Mirour de l'Omme
Cinkante Balades