Gower's Amans and the Curricular Maximianus.
- Author/Editor
- Carlson, David Richard.
- Title
- Gower's Amans and the Curricular Maximianus.
- Published
- Carlson, David Richard. "Gower's Amans and the Currricular Maximianus." Studia Neophilologica 89 (2017): 67-80.
- Review
- The depiction of impotence as an inevitable consequence of old age in the conclusion to the CA is not found in any of Gower's other sources, but derives directly, Carlson argues, from the elegies of Maximianus. More specifically, Carlson traces Gower's "Qui cupit id quod habere nequit, sua tempora perdit. / Est vbi non posse, velle salute caret" (VIII.2376 vv. 1-2) and Venus' paraphrase, "Min herte wolde and I ne may" (VIII. 2412), to Maximianus' "nec quod possum, non voluisse meum est" (4.55), which Carlson translates, somewhat freely, as "my part is not to want what I am incapable of"; and he traces Venus' punning declaration that "The thing is torned into was" (VIII.2435) to Maximianus' "Non sum qui fueram; periit pars maxima nostri" ("I am no more what once I was; the best part of me has perished") (1.3). The largest part of this essay, however, is concerned with introducing Maximianus to modern readers: the little-known contemporary of Boethius whose reflections upon his sexual exploits, successful and unsuccessful, in youth and old age, were included, along with other products of a phallocentric Latin culture, in the medieval school curriculum. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 36.1]
- Date
- 2017
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations