Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition.
- Author/Editor
- Perry. R. D.
- Title
- Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition.
- Published
- Perry. R. D. Coterie Poetics and the Beginnings of the English Literary Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024.
- Review
- Perry seeks to establish "a new way of understanding the English literary tradition by focusing on the essential role that coteries played in the tradition's beginning and maintenance" (4). By the "tradition" he means Chaucer, Hoccleve, Lydgate, Dunbar, Roos, Skelton, Surrey and Wyatt. It's a big-name list, especially when each move chronologically forward also mandates discussion of those left out, like Gower (in Perry's view, due to Lydgate [152]), and attendant "coteries"--"a sociological term denoting a gathering of like-minded individuals of the same class, actual historical persons in relation with one another . . .that also depend upon a rhetorical pose involving distinct literary features" (8). How can one recognize a coterie? "There are two general means by which a literary work may signal its involvement in a coterie: specific forms of allusion and a particular way of using proper names" (9). Gower, unsurprisingly, thus figures early as a prominent--perhaps the most prominent--member of "Chaucer's London coterie" which included Thomas Usk until his execution, and possibly the Oxford philosopher-turned-lawyer, Ralph Strode. Gower is the one Chaucer names (in "Troilus and Criseyde") who also names Chaucer in return (Venus' request to Gower to greet Chaucer when they meet, in CA 8 (38-49), establishing coterie connection, and (incidentally) dismissing the idea of a quarrel between the two. Identifying allusions, Perry concedes, is "a necessarily more speculative enterprise" than name-checking (49). By way of examples he cites the Man of Law's "humorous" criticism of Gower's "incest tales" (42-43, 49-52), (which he reads as indicative of the two poets' "jovial competitiveness" [51]). Thereafter, in chapter 2, Gower appears to have been of small importance for Hoccleve and is mentioned sporadically, e.g., when Hoccleve is "didactic," he's "Gowerian" (113). In chapter 4, however, Perry presents Lydgate as "indebted to John Gower, especially the latter's form of political poetry and its pacifism" (126), and "a model of the poet as political commentator and advisor to princes, an exemplary poetic voice aimed at enhancing the common good" (127). Part of this admiration devolved from Gower's pacifism: "Lydgate tries to ensure that Gower's pacifism gets a fair hearing, even if Gower the man is silenced" (127); and "one finds Lydgate appropriating French culture to speak back to his English patrons, including Chaucer's family, in the form of Gowerian critique" (127). Perry sees Lydgate identifying with Gower as a poet writing for a Lancastrian king, just as did Lydgate (142-43), who borrowed techniques of address from "In Praise of Peace" that allowed him to envision a "double mode of address" (148), "a means to praise the Lancastrian nobility while simultaneously critiquing their actions" (144). Nonetheless, Lydgate's "double mode" differs from Gower's, "inverting" it: "Gower's dual address speaks for a class" of which he was a member, while "Lydgate's [speaks] for a coterie" (149). Yet while he borrows so extensively from Gower, Lydgate never mentions him, thereby bolstering "Chaucer's position in literary history while diminishing Gower's" (152). In chapter 5, discussing Dunbar's "Lament for the Makars," Perry notes that Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate are named together, distributing "the praise afforded to one of the three to the other two as well" (183). Skelton connects the three again in "The Garlande of Laurell," speaking with each in turn, beginning with Gower, whom he praises for "garnishing" the English language (188-89). With the poets of "Tottel's Miscellany"--Surrey and Wyatt--in chapter 6, "the need to bolster Chaucer's reputation by providing him with the attendant figures of Gower and Lydgate is no longer acute, and Chaucer begins to stand for the foundation of the English literary tradition as such. It is at this moment . . . that the Chaucerian tradition has become the English literary tradition" (198). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1]
- Date
- 2024
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Influence and Later Allusion