Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England.
- Author/Editor
- Giancarlo, Matthew.
- Title
- Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England.
- Published
- Giancarlo, Matthew. Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Review
- Giancarlo claims a close connection between the developing nature of parliament as a body at once "of the people" but with a distinct Pentecostal element (esp. 52), thus offering a functional re-interpretation of "Vox populi, vox dei" that becomes a major motif throughout the book. He variously expands and contracts this construct of parliament to characterize the development of poetry from the thirteenth century, although poets of the fourteenth occupy him primarily. He treats Gower in his third chapter (90-128), focusing largely on the second part of the "Mirour de l'Omme" and the "Cronica Tripertita," with a brief coda on several parliaments' appearances in the "Confessio Amantis." The "Septvauns Affair" becomes the lens through which Giancarlo characterizes the MO Part II--the "Devil's parliament"--and the CrT (the three sections are described as parliaments of different sorts); going further, he finds evidence of an overriding "tension" in Gower's writing, an insecurity about place (social, national, moral) and voice that mirrors parliamentary anxiety in the years between the depositions of Edward II and Richard II. "As the 'Mirour' and the 'Cronica' demonstrate, from the start of his career to the end of it, Gower represented a collective voice in his poetry that bore a complicated relation to the specifically parliamentary tropes of his contemporary social environment. It was not just the problems of 'kingship,' but the conflicted role of parliament and 'parlement,' which stand at the formal base of the poet's efforts to speak" (125). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1]
- Date
- 2007
- Gower Subjects
- Mirour de l'Omme
Cronica Tripertita
Confessio Amantis