Confessio Amantis
Encyclopedia
Confessio Amantis is a 33,000-line Middle English
poem by John Gower
, which uses the confession
made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus
as a frame story
for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II
. It stands with the works of Chaucer
, Langland
, and the Pearl poet as one of the great works of late 14th century English literature.
In genre it is usually considered a poem of consolation, a medieval form inspired by Boethius
' Consolation of Philosophy
and typified by works such as Pearl
. Despite this, it is more usually studied alongside other tale collections with similar structures, such as the Decameron
of Boccaccio
, and particularly Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
, with which the Confessio has several stories in common.
after a chance meeting with the royal barge
on the River Thames; the epilogue dedicates the work to Richard and to Chaucer, as the "disciple and poete" of Venus. This version of the work saw widespread circulation, perhaps due to its royal connections (Peck 2000), and was the most popular of Gower's works, with at least 32 of the 49 surviving manuscripts of the Confessio containing this version.
The subsequent history is complicated and not entirely certain. Much revision took place, some of it by Gower and some probably by individual scribes. What follows is the conventional history as formulated by Macaulay
(1901). The true story is probably somewhat more complicated (see e.g. Watt 2003:11–13 for an overview of recent work).
According to Macaulay, a second recension was issued in about 1392, with some significant changes: most notably, most references to Richard are removed, as is the dedication to Chaucer, and these are replaced with a new dedication to Henry of Lancaster, the future Henry IV
. It has naturally been commonly assumed that this reflects a shift in the poet's loyalties, and indeed there are signs that Gower was more attached to Henry's party from this period; but while he did attack Richard later in the decade, there is no evidence that these early changes indicate any particular hostility towards either Richard or Chaucer (Peck 2000), and it has been argued that the revision process was not politically motivated at all, but begun rather because Gower wished to improve the style of the work (Burrows 1971:32), with the dedications being altered as a purely secondary matter.
A third and final recension was published in 1393, retaining the dedication to Henry. While only a few manuscripts of this version survive, it has been taken as representing Gower's final vision for the work, and is the best-known version, having served as the basis of all modern editions.
and Latin
. It is not certain why he chose to write his third long poem in English; the only reason Gower himself gives is that "fewe men endite In oure englyssh" (prol.22–23). It has been suggested that it was the influence of Chaucer, who had in part dedicated his Troilus and Criseyde
to Gower, that persuaded him that the vernacular
was a suitable language for poetry, and the influence of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women
has been detected in the Confessio (Macaulay 1908:166).
With the exception of a 74 line letter "unto cupid and to venus" in Book VIII, Gower did not adopt the new pentameter
with which Chaucer had recently been experimenting, and which was in the 15th century to become the standard metre for English rhyme. He retained instead the octosyllabic line that had previously been the standard form for English poetry, and wrote it in couplets, rather than in the stanzas he had employed in his previous works. Gower characterised his verse in the Confessio as the plain style.
This decision has not always met with appreciation, the shorter lines being sometimes viewed as lending themselves to monotonous regularity, but Gower's handling of the metre has usually been praised. Macaulay (1901) finds his style technically superior to Chaucer's, admiring "the metrical smoothness of his lines, attained without unnatural accent or forced order of words". The work's most enthusiastic advocate was C.S. Lewis, who, though admitting that the work can be "prosaic" and "dull" in places, identifies a "sweetness and freshness" in the verse and praises its "memorable precision and weight" (Lewis 1936:201). Not all assessments have been so positive: Burrow (1971:31) describes it as "not so much plain as threadbare", and notes that the selective quotations of previous critics have served to draw attention to sections that are better poetry, but unrepresentative examples of the work as a whole.
The language is the same standard London dialect in which Chaucer also wrote. Gower's vocabulary is educated, with extensive use of French and Latin loans
, some of them apparently original; for example, the Confessio is the earliest work in which the word "history" is attested in English (OED). That the work was aimed at a similarly educated audience is clear from the inclusion of Latin epigraph
s at the start of each major section.
, and the individual tales which make up the bulk of the work.
(government, church, and people) of his time. This section ends with an account of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar (which draws on a similar passage in the Vox Clamantis
), identifying the statue's feet of iron mixed with clay with the medieval world that Gower perceives as hopelessly divided and in danger of imminent collapse. Tens of thousands of lines later, the epilogue returns to these concerns, again touching on the matters Gower believes each estate needs most urgently to attend to.
In this context, the plan of the work given in the prologue is one of the most-quoted passages of the poem:
This is essentially what he does; the external matter and parts of the narrative frame, together with some long digressions (most notably the whole of Book 7, discussed below) make up the "lore", while the majority of the tales are wholly concerned with "lust".
and Cupid
, who promptly appear and demand to know the reason for his sorrow. Upon being told that he is on the verge of dying from love, Venus insists that he be shriven, and summons her chaplain Genius to hear his confession
. When at last Genius pronounces Amans absolved
of all his sins against love, Venus cures him of his infatuation.
As the work's title implies, therefore, the bulk of the work is devoted to Amans' confession. This broadly follows the pattern of Christian confessions of the time. Genius leads Amans through the seven deadly sins
, interpreting them in the context of the courtly love
tradition. He explains the various aspects of each one with exempla, and requires Amans to detail any ways in which he has committed them. The design is that each book of the poem shall be devoted to one sin, and the first six books follow the traditional order for the first six sins: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, and gluttony.
At this point, however, Gower breaks his form and digresses: at the end of Book 6 Amans requests that Genius give him a break from the confession and teach him wisdom instead, and Genius responds in Book 7 by discoursing at length on the education given by Aristotle
to Alexander the Great. In Gower's hands this becomes a treatise on good kingship, and it is in this book that it is most obvious how the work is intended to answer the royal commission. This notwithstanding, the digression, and the consequent flaw in an otherwise strict plan, is the most frequently criticised aspect of the poem's structure (see e.g. Pearsall 1966:476).
Book 8 returns to the confession. According to the traditional system, the final sin should be lechery, but since this can hardly be considered a sin against Venus, the topic of the final book is narrowed to the single perversion of incest. Though this is one sin Amans is innocent of, Genius contrives to fill a book nonetheless by telling the longest and best-known story in the Confessio, namely Apollonius of Tyre
(VIII.271–2008).
or the Legend of Good Women
.
None of Gower's tales are original. The source he relies on most is Ovid
, whose Metamorphoses
was ever a popular source of exempla; others include the Bible and various other classical and medieval writers, of whom Macaulay (1908) lists Valerius Maximus
, Statius
, Benoît de Sainte-Maure
(the Roman de Troie), Guido delle Colonne
(Historia destructionis Troiae
), Godfrey of Viterbo
, Brunetto Latini
, Nicholas Trivet
, the Romans des sept sages
, the Vita Barlaam et Josaphat, and the Historia Alexandri Magni.
The best-known tales are those that have analogues in other English writers, since these are often studied for comparison. These include the Apollonius, which served as a source for the Shakespearean
Pericles
, and the tales shared with Chaucer, such as the tales of Constance (II.587–1603, also told by the Man of Law
) and Florent (I.1407–1875, also told by the Wife of Bath
).
Book 2
(80 copies) and Troilus and Criseyde
(16 copies). Nonetheless, Gower, perhaps more than any poet of his period, has suffered through his close association with Chaucer, who as the preeminent maker of the English Middle Ages overshadows his peers in the same way that Shakespeare dominates the turn of the 17th century. And despite this apparent popularity, critical reactions to the work have often been unfavourable.
In the fifteenth century, Gower and Chaucer were invariably regarded together as the founders of English poetry. John Lydgate praised "Gower Chaucers erthly goddes two", The Kings Quair was dedicated to "Gowere and chaucere, that on the steppis satt/ of rethorike", and George Ashby
called Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate "premier poetes of this nacion" (quoted by Fisher, 1965: 3).
The first known criticism is an apparent reference in Chaucer's 'Man of Law's Prologue
': the eponymous Man, praising Chaucer, observes that
Both these examples are references to the Confessio (Canace is III.143–336), and it has sometimes been thought that this passage was the direct cause of the removal of the dedication to Chaucer from the later editions of the work (see "Textual History" above). It should be noted that this veiled criticism of the Confessio
Later generations have been equally unkind. The influential assessment of Puttenham
(1589:50) found Gower's English verse inadequate in every respect:
By the 19th century, the Confessio was regarded by some as an established "monument of dulness and pedantry" (quoted by Coffman 1945:52). While Macaulay (1901, 1908) was cautiously appreciative, his contemporary Crawshaw (1907:61) attributed to the work "a certain nervelessness or lack of vigor, and a fatal inability to understand when he had said enough". Even C.S. Lewis, who has been quoted above admiring the style of the work, was unconvinced by its structure, describing the epilogue as "a long and unsuccessful coda" (Lewis 1936:222).
Gower has also been given his share of appreciation. A 15th-century treatise printed by Caxton
describes "his bookes, called Confessionalle" as
In some cases he is praised and damned at once; Jonson
(1640) considers him dangerously attractive, and liable to damage young writers who might be tempted to imitate his style:
Peck (2000) manages to read this as unambiguous praise. And even the structure of his work has been declared perfect by some: Coffman (1945:58) argues that
Watt (2003:11) sums up the divided critical reactions as "reflecting . . . the complexity of both the poem itself, which invites conflicting interpretations and contradictory reactions, and its textual history".
, where the influence is conscious borrowing: the use of Gower's characteristic octosyllabic line for the character of Gower himself.
While not of immense importance as a source for later works, the Confessio is nonetheless significant in its own right as one of the earliest poems written in a form of English that is clearly recognizable as a direct precursor to the modern standard, and, above all, as one of the handful of works that established the foundations of literary prestige on which modern English literature is built.
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
poem by John Gower
John Gower
John Gower was an English poet, a contemporary of William Langland and a personal friend of Geoffrey Chaucer. He is remembered primarily for three major works, the Mirroir de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis, three long poems written in French, Latin, and English respectively, which...
, which uses the confession
Confession
This article is for the religious practice of confessing one's sins.Confession is the acknowledgment of sin or wrongs...
made by an ageing lover to the chaplain of Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
as a frame story
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
for a collection of shorter narrative poems. According to its prologue, it was composed at the request of Richard II
Richard II of England
Richard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
. It stands with the works of Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, Langland
William Langland
William Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.- Life :The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin...
, and the Pearl poet as one of the great works of late 14th century English literature.
In genre it is usually considered a poem of consolation, a medieval form inspired by Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, commonly called Boethius was a philosopher of the early 6th century. He was born in Rome to an ancient and important family which included emperors Petronius Maximus and Olybrius and many consuls. His father, Flavius Manlius Boethius, was consul in 487 after...
' Consolation of Philosophy
Consolation of Philosophy
Consolation of Philosophy is a philosophical work by Boethius, written around the year 524. It has been described as the single most important and influential work in the West on Medieval and early Renaissance Christianity, and is also the last great Western work that can be called Classical.-...
and typified by works such as Pearl
Pearl (poem)
Pearl is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the "Pearl poet" or "Gawain poet", is generally assumed, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Cleanness or...
. Despite this, it is more usually studied alongside other tale collections with similar structures, such as the Decameron
The Decameron
The Decameron, also called Prince Galehaut is a 14th-century medieval allegory by Giovanni Boccaccio, told as a frame story encompassing 100 tales by ten young people....
of Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, and his poetry in the Italian vernacular...
, and particularly Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
, with which the Confessio has several stories in common.
Textual history
Composition of the work probably began circa 1386, and the work was completed in 1390. The prologue of this first recension recounts that the work was commissioned by Richard IIRichard II of England
Richard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
after a chance meeting with the royal barge
Royal barge
A royal barge is a ceremonial barge that is used by a monarch for processions and transport on a body of water.Royal barges are currently used in monarchies such as the United Kingdom, Sweden and Thailand....
on the River Thames; the epilogue dedicates the work to Richard and to Chaucer, as the "disciple and poete" of Venus. This version of the work saw widespread circulation, perhaps due to its royal connections (Peck 2000), and was the most popular of Gower's works, with at least 32 of the 49 surviving manuscripts of the Confessio containing this version.
The subsequent history is complicated and not entirely certain. Much revision took place, some of it by Gower and some probably by individual scribes. What follows is the conventional history as formulated by Macaulay
George Campbell Macaulay
George Campbell Macaulay , also known as G. C. Macaulay, was a noted English Classical scholar. He was the father of the well-known English author Rose Macaulay.-Family:...
(1901). The true story is probably somewhat more complicated (see e.g. Watt 2003:11–13 for an overview of recent work).
According to Macaulay, a second recension was issued in about 1392, with some significant changes: most notably, most references to Richard are removed, as is the dedication to Chaucer, and these are replaced with a new dedication to Henry of Lancaster, the future Henry IV
Henry IV of England
Henry IV was King of England and Lord of Ireland . He was the ninth King of England of the House of Plantagenet and also asserted his grandfather's claim to the title King of France. He was born at Bolingbroke Castle in Lincolnshire, hence his other name, Henry Bolingbroke...
. It has naturally been commonly assumed that this reflects a shift in the poet's loyalties, and indeed there are signs that Gower was more attached to Henry's party from this period; but while he did attack Richard later in the decade, there is no evidence that these early changes indicate any particular hostility towards either Richard or Chaucer (Peck 2000), and it has been argued that the revision process was not politically motivated at all, but begun rather because Gower wished to improve the style of the work (Burrows 1971:32), with the dedications being altered as a purely secondary matter.
A third and final recension was published in 1393, retaining the dedication to Henry. While only a few manuscripts of this version survive, it has been taken as representing Gower's final vision for the work, and is the best-known version, having served as the basis of all modern editions.
Style and language
Gower's previous works had been written in Anglo-Norman FrenchAnglo-Norman language
Anglo-Norman is the name traditionally given to the kind of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period....
and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. It is not certain why he chose to write his third long poem in English; the only reason Gower himself gives is that "fewe men endite In oure englyssh" (prol.22–23). It has been suggested that it was the influence of Chaucer, who had in part dedicated his Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it...
to Gower, that persuaded him that the vernacular
Vernacular
A vernacular is the native language or native dialect of a specific population, as opposed to a language of wider communication that is not native to the population, such as a national language or lingua franca.- Etymology :The term is not a recent one...
was a suitable language for poetry, and the influence of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women
The Legend of Good Women
The Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer.The poem is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, after The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets...
has been detected in the Confessio (Macaulay 1908:166).
With the exception of a 74 line letter "unto cupid and to venus" in Book VIII, Gower did not adopt the new pentameter
Pentameter
Pentameter may refer to:*the iambic pentameter of the modern period*the dactylic pentameter of antiquity...
with which Chaucer had recently been experimenting, and which was in the 15th century to become the standard metre for English rhyme. He retained instead the octosyllabic line that had previously been the standard form for English poetry, and wrote it in couplets, rather than in the stanzas he had employed in his previous works. Gower characterised his verse in the Confessio as the plain style.
This decision has not always met with appreciation, the shorter lines being sometimes viewed as lending themselves to monotonous regularity, but Gower's handling of the metre has usually been praised. Macaulay (1901) finds his style technically superior to Chaucer's, admiring "the metrical smoothness of his lines, attained without unnatural accent or forced order of words". The work's most enthusiastic advocate was C.S. Lewis, who, though admitting that the work can be "prosaic" and "dull" in places, identifies a "sweetness and freshness" in the verse and praises its "memorable precision and weight" (Lewis 1936:201). Not all assessments have been so positive: Burrow (1971:31) describes it as "not so much plain as threadbare", and notes that the selective quotations of previous critics have served to draw attention to sections that are better poetry, but unrepresentative examples of the work as a whole.
The language is the same standard London dialect in which Chaucer also wrote. Gower's vocabulary is educated, with extensive use of French and Latin loans
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
, some of them apparently original; for example, the Confessio is the earliest work in which the word "history" is attested in English (OED). That the work was aimed at a similarly educated audience is clear from the inclusion of Latin epigraph
Epigraph (literature)
In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component. The epigraph may serve as a preface, as a summary, as a counter-example, or to link the work to a wider literary canon, either to invite comparison or to enlist a conventional...
s at the start of each major section.
Structure and argument
The Confessio is divided into a prologue and eight books, which are divided thematically. The narrative structure is overlaid on this in three levels: the external matter, the narrative frameFrame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
, and the individual tales which make up the bulk of the work.
External matter
The external matter comprises the prologue, which spills over briefly into the start of Book 1, and an epilogue at the end of Book 8. Unlike the bulk of the Confessio, these have much in common with Gower's previous works (Pearsall 1966:475). In the prologue he details at some length the numerous failings he identifies in the three estatesEstates of the realm
The Estates of the realm were the broad social orders of the hierarchically conceived society, recognized in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period in Christian Europe; they are sometimes distinguished as the three estates: the clergy, the nobility, and commoners, and are often referred to by...
(government, church, and people) of his time. This section ends with an account of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar (which draws on a similar passage in the Vox Clamantis
Vox Clamantis
Vox Clamantis is a Latin poem of around 10,000 lines in elegiac verse by John Gower that recounts the events and tragedy of the 1381 Peasants' Rising. The poem takes aim at the corruption of society and laments the rise of evil...
), identifying the statue's feet of iron mixed with clay with the medieval world that Gower perceives as hopelessly divided and in danger of imminent collapse. Tens of thousands of lines later, the epilogue returns to these concerns, again touching on the matters Gower believes each estate needs most urgently to attend to.
In this context, the plan of the work given in the prologue is one of the most-quoted passages of the poem:
- Bot for men sein, and soth it is,
- That who that al of wisdom writ
- It dulleth ofte a mannes wit
- To him that schal it aldai rede,
- For thilke cause, if that ye rede,
- I wolde go the middel weie
- And wryte a bok betwen the tweie,
- Somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore...
- (prol.12–19)
This is essentially what he does; the external matter and parts of the narrative frame, together with some long digressions (most notably the whole of Book 7, discussed below) make up the "lore", while the majority of the tales are wholly concerned with "lust".
Narrative frame
The frame story as such is easily summarised. The narrator of this section, conventionally referred to as Amans or the Lover, wanders through a forest in May, as medieval lovers typically do, and despairs at his lack of success. He invokes VenusVenus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
and Cupid
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...
, who promptly appear and demand to know the reason for his sorrow. Upon being told that he is on the verge of dying from love, Venus insists that he be shriven, and summons her chaplain Genius to hear his confession
Confession
This article is for the religious practice of confessing one's sins.Confession is the acknowledgment of sin or wrongs...
. When at last Genius pronounces Amans absolved
Absolution
Absolution is a traditional theological term for the forgiveness experienced in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This concept is found in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Anglican churches, and most Lutheran churches....
of all his sins against love, Venus cures him of his infatuation.
As the work's title implies, therefore, the bulk of the work is devoted to Amans' confession. This broadly follows the pattern of Christian confessions of the time. Genius leads Amans through the seven deadly sins
Seven deadly sins
The 7 Deadly Sins, also known as the Capital Vices or Cardinal Sins, is a classification of objectionable vices that have been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct followers concerning fallen humanity's tendency to sin...
, interpreting them in the context of the courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
tradition. He explains the various aspects of each one with exempla, and requires Amans to detail any ways in which he has committed them. The design is that each book of the poem shall be devoted to one sin, and the first six books follow the traditional order for the first six sins: pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, and gluttony.
At this point, however, Gower breaks his form and digresses: at the end of Book 6 Amans requests that Genius give him a break from the confession and teach him wisdom instead, and Genius responds in Book 7 by discoursing at length on the education given by Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
to Alexander the Great. In Gower's hands this becomes a treatise on good kingship, and it is in this book that it is most obvious how the work is intended to answer the royal commission. This notwithstanding, the digression, and the consequent flaw in an otherwise strict plan, is the most frequently criticised aspect of the poem's structure (see e.g. Pearsall 1966:476).
Book 8 returns to the confession. According to the traditional system, the final sin should be lechery, but since this can hardly be considered a sin against Venus, the topic of the final book is narrowed to the single perversion of incest. Though this is one sin Amans is innocent of, Genius contrives to fill a book nonetheless by telling the longest and best-known story in the Confessio, namely Apollonius of Tyre
Apollonius of Tyre
Apollonius of Tyre is the subject of an ancient short novella, popular during medieval times. Existing in numerous forms in many languages, the text is thought to be translated from an ancient Greek manuscript, now lost.-Plot summary:...
(VIII.271–2008).
The tales
The treatment given to individual stories varies widely. The Apollonius is nearly 2,000 lines long, but at the other extreme, the distinction between tale and allusion is hard to define; for example, summaries of the story of Troilus and Criseide appear in three places (II.2456–2458, IV.7597–7602, VIII.2531–2535), but none can really be described as a "tale". It follows that it is hard to produce a definite figure for the number of tales in the Confessio, since the line between allusion and tale is hard to define. Even excluding the very shortest, however, there are over 100 individual stories (Macaulay 1908), making them more numerous than the strict 100 of the Decameron, and much more so than the Canterbury TalesThe Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
or the Legend of Good Women
The Legend of Good Women
The Legend of Good Women is a poem in the form of a dream vision by Geoffrey Chaucer.The poem is the third longest of Chaucer’s works, after The Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde and is possibly the first significant work in English to use the iambic pentameter or decasyllabic couplets...
.
None of Gower's tales are original. The source he relies on most is Ovid
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
, whose Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)
Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem in fifteen books by the Roman poet Ovid describing the history of the world from its creation to the deification of Julius Caesar within a loose mythico-historical framework. Completed in AD 8, it is recognized as a masterpiece of Golden Age Latin literature...
was ever a popular source of exempla; others include the Bible and various other classical and medieval writers, of whom Macaulay (1908) lists Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus
Valerius Maximus was a Latin writer and author of a collection of historical anecdotes. He worked during the reign of Tiberius .-Biography:...
, Statius
Statius
Publius Papinius Statius was a Roman poet of the 1st century CE . Besides his poetry in Latin, which include an epic poem, the Thebaid, a collection of occasional poetry, the Silvae, and the unfinished epic, the Achilleid, he is best known for his appearance as a major character in the Purgatory...
, Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Benoît de Sainte-Maure
Benoît de Sainte-Maure was a 12th century French poet, most probably from Sainte-Maure de Touraine near Tours, France. The Plantagenets' administrative center was located in Chinon - west of Tours....
(the Roman de Troie), Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne
Guido delle Colonne was an early 13th century Sicilian writer, living at Messina, who wrote in Latin...
(Historia destructionis Troiae
Historia destructionis Troiae
Historia destructionis Troiae or Historia Troiana is a Latin prose narrative written by Guido delle Colonne, a Sicilian author, in the early 13th century. Its main source was the Old French verse romance by Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Roman de Troie...
), Godfrey of Viterbo
Godfrey of Viterbo
Godfrey of Viterbo was a Roman Catholic chronicler, either Italian or German.-Biography:He was probably an Italian by birth, although some authorities assert that he was a Saxon German like his imperial patrons...
, Brunetto Latini
Brunetto Latini
Brunetto Latini was an Italian philosopher, scholar and statesman.-Life:...
, Nicholas Trivet
Nicholas Trivet
Nicholas Trivet was an English Anglo-Norman chronicler.Trivet was born in Somerset and was the son of Sir Thomas Trevet , a judge who came of a Norfolk or Somerset family...
, the Romans des sept sages
Seven Wise Masters
The Seven Wise Masters is a cycle of stories of Sanskrit, Persian or Hebrew origins.-Story and Plot:...
, the Vita Barlaam et Josaphat, and the Historia Alexandri Magni.
The best-known tales are those that have analogues in other English writers, since these are often studied for comparison. These include the Apollonius, which served as a source for the Shakespearean
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
Pericles
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio...
, and the tales shared with Chaucer, such as the tales of Constance (II.587–1603, also told by the Man of Law
The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale
The Man of Law's Tale is the fifth of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written around 1387.-The Summary:...
) and Florent (I.1407–1875, also told by the Wife of Bath
The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" and prologue are among the best-known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They give insight into the role of women in the Late Middle Ages and are probably of interest to Chaucer himself, for the character is one of his most developed ones, with her prologue twice as...
).
List of the Tales
Book 1- The Tale of ActeonActaeonActaeon , in Greek mythology, son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. Like Achilles in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron....
(I.330-388) - The Tale of MedusaMedusaIn Greek mythology Medusa , " guardian, protectress") was a Gorgon, a chthonic monster, and a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto. The author Hyginus, interposes a generation and gives Medusa another chthonic pair as parents. Gazing directly upon her would turn onlookers to stone...
(I.389-462) - Aspidis the Serpent (I.463-480)
- The SirenSirenIn Greek mythology, the Sirens were three dangerous mermaid like creatures, portrayed as seductresses who lured nearby sailors with their enchanting music and voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. Roman poets placed them on an island called Sirenum scopuli...
s (I.481-530) - The Tale of Mundus and Paulina (I.761-1076)
- The Trojan HorseTrojan HorseThe Trojan Horse is a tale from the Trojan War about the stratagem that allowed the Greeks finally to enter the city of Troy and end the conflict. In the canonical version, after a fruitless 10-year siege, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, and hid a select force of men inside...
(I.1077-1230) - The Tale of Florent (I.1407-1882)
- The Tale of Capaneus (I.1980-2020)
- The Trump of Death (I.2021-2253)
- The Tale of NarcissusNarcissus (mythology)Narcissus or Narkissos , possibly derived from ναρκη meaning "sleep, numbness," in Greek mythology was a hunter from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was exceptionally proud, in that he disdained those who loved him...
(I.2275-2366) - The Tale of Albinus and Rosemund (I.2459-2647)
- Nebuchadnezzar'sNebuchadrezzar IINebuchadnezzar II was king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, who reigned c. 605 BC – 562 BC. According to the Bible, he conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and sent the Jews into exile. He is credited with the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and also known for the destruction...
Vainglorious Punishment (I.2785-3042) - The Tale of Three Questions (I.3067-3402)
Book 2
- The Tale of Acis and GalateaAcis and Galatea (mythology)In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Acis was the spirit of the Acis River in Sicily, beloved of the nereid, or sea-nymph, Galatea . Galatea returned the love of Acis, but a jealous suitor, the Sicilian Cyclops Polyphemus, killed him with a boulder. Distraught, Galatea then turned his blood into the river...
(II.97-200) - The Tale of the Travelers and the Angel (II.291-372)
- The Tale of Constance (II.587-1612)
- The Tale of Demetrius and Perseus (II.1613-1860)
- The Tale of DeianiraDeianiraDeïanira or Dejanira is a figure in Greek mythology, best-known for being Heracles' third wife and, in the late Classical story, unwittingly killing him with the Shirt of Nessus...
, Hercules, and NessusNessusNessus can have a number of meanings:* Nessus , a famous centaur from Greek mythology* The Tunic or Shirt of Nessus, the poisoned shirt of the centaur Nessus, in the story of Hercules...
(II.2145-2307) - The Tale of Geta and Amphitrion (II.2459-2500)
- The Tale of the False Bachelor (II.2501-2781)
- The Tale of Pope BonifacePope Boniface VIIIPope Boniface VIII , born Benedetto Gaetani, was Pope of the Catholic Church from 1294 to 1303. Today, Boniface VIII is probably best remembered for his feuds with Dante, who placed him in the Eighth circle of Hell in his Divina Commedia, among the Simonists.- Biography :Gaetani was born in 1235 in...
(II.2803-3040) - The Tale of Constantine and SylvesterPope Silvester IPope Sylvester I was pope from 31 January 314 to 31 December 335, succeeding Pope Miltiades.He filled the See of Rome at a very important era in the history of the Catholic Church, but very little is known of him....
Reception
The Confessio was apparently popular in its own time; its 49 surviving manuscripts suggest a popularity about halfway between Chaucer's Canterbury TalesThe Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
(80 copies) and Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde
Troilus and Criseyde is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer which re-tells in Middle English the tragic story of the lovers Troilus and Criseyde set against a backdrop of war in the Siege of Troy. It was composed using rime royale and probably completed during the mid 1380s. Many Chaucer scholars regard it...
(16 copies). Nonetheless, Gower, perhaps more than any poet of his period, has suffered through his close association with Chaucer, who as the preeminent maker of the English Middle Ages overshadows his peers in the same way that Shakespeare dominates the turn of the 17th century. And despite this apparent popularity, critical reactions to the work have often been unfavourable.
In the fifteenth century, Gower and Chaucer were invariably regarded together as the founders of English poetry. John Lydgate praised "Gower Chaucers erthly goddes two", The Kings Quair was dedicated to "Gowere and chaucere, that on the steppis satt/ of rethorike", and George Ashby
George Ashby (poet)
-Life:He was born about 1390, and was from Warwickshire. He was clerk of the signet, first to Henry VI from the beginning of his reign, and afterwards to Margaret of Anjou, in whose service he evidently travelled abroad. Margaret named him steward of Warwick in 1446...
called Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate "premier poetes of this nacion" (quoted by Fisher, 1965: 3).
The first known criticism is an apparent reference in Chaucer's 'Man of Law's Prologue
The Man of Law's Prologue and Tale
The Man of Law's Tale is the fifth of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written around 1387.-The Summary:...
': the eponymous Man, praising Chaucer, observes that
- no word ne writeth he
- Of thilke wikke ensample of Canacee
- That loved hir owene brother synfully—
- Of swiche cursed stories I say fy!—
- Or ellis of Tyro Appollonius,
- How that the cursed kyng Antiochus
- Birafte his doghter of hir maydenhede,
- That is so horrible a tale for to rede
- (Canterbury Tales, II.77–84: Bradley et al. 1988)
Both these examples are references to the Confessio (Canace is III.143–336), and it has sometimes been thought that this passage was the direct cause of the removal of the dedication to Chaucer from the later editions of the work (see "Textual History" above). It should be noted that this veiled criticism of the Confessio
Later generations have been equally unkind. The influential assessment of Puttenham
George Puttenham
George Puttenham was a sixteenth-century English writer, literary critic, and notorious rake. He is generally considered to be the author of the enormously influential handbook on poetry and rhetoric, The Arte of English Poesie ....
(1589:50) found Gower's English verse inadequate in every respect:
Gower [...] had nothing in him highly to be commended, for his verse was homely and without good measure, his wordes strained much deale out of the French writers, his ryme wrested, and in his inuentions small subtilitie: the applications of his moralities are the best in him, and yet those many times very grossely bestowed, neither doth the substance of his workes sufficiently aunswere the subtiltie of his titles.
By the 19th century, the Confessio was regarded by some as an established "monument of dulness and pedantry" (quoted by Coffman 1945:52). While Macaulay (1901, 1908) was cautiously appreciative, his contemporary Crawshaw (1907:61) attributed to the work "a certain nervelessness or lack of vigor, and a fatal inability to understand when he had said enough". Even C.S. Lewis, who has been quoted above admiring the style of the work, was unconvinced by its structure, describing the epilogue as "a long and unsuccessful coda" (Lewis 1936:222).
Gower has also been given his share of appreciation. A 15th-century treatise printed by Caxton
William Caxton
William Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...
describes "his bookes, called Confessionalle" as
- Ful of sentence / set ful fructuosly
- That hym to rede / shal gyue you corage
- He is so ful of fruyt, sentence and langage
- (Book of Curtesye, 327–329: Furnivall 1868)
In some cases he is praised and damned at once; Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
(1640) considers him dangerously attractive, and liable to damage young writers who might be tempted to imitate his style:
...beware of letting them taste Gower, or Chaucer at first, lest falling too much in love with Antiquity, and not apprehending the weight, they grow rough and barren in language onely
Peck (2000) manages to read this as unambiguous praise. And even the structure of his work has been declared perfect by some: Coffman (1945:58) argues that
[it] has a large integrity and unity based on a defense of [Gower's] ethical scheme for the universe . . . Gower tells in the Prologue exactly what he is going to do. He does it well. It is worth doing. And he recapitulates in the Epilogue.
Watt (2003:11) sums up the divided critical reactions as "reflecting . . . the complexity of both the poem itself, which invites conflicting interpretations and contradictory reactions, and its textual history".
Legacy
To his contemporaries, Gower's work was generally as well-known as the poetry of Chaucer: Caxton printed Gower's work alongside Chaucer's, and Caxton became part of the early canon of English literature. But it was Chaucer's works which became the model for future poets, and the legacy of the Confessio has suffered as a result. It is hard to find works that show signs of direct influence: the only clear example is Shakespeare's PericlesPericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio...
, where the influence is conscious borrowing: the use of Gower's characteristic octosyllabic line for the character of Gower himself.
While not of immense importance as a source for later works, the Confessio is nonetheless significant in its own right as one of the earliest poems written in a form of English that is clearly recognizable as a direct precursor to the modern standard, and, above all, as one of the handful of works that established the foundations of literary prestige on which modern English literature is built.
Editions
- Macaulay, G.C.George Campbell MacaulayGeorge Campbell Macaulay , also known as G. C. Macaulay, was a noted English Classical scholar. He was the father of the well-known English author Rose Macaulay.-Family:...
, ed (1901). The Works of John Gower. Oxford: Clarendon Press. - Peck, Russell A., ed (2000, 2003, 2005). Confessio Amantis. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications.
Criticism
- Burrow, J.A. (1971). Ricardian Poetry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
- Coffman, George R. (1945). 'John Gower in His Most Significant Role', in Elizabethan Studies in Honor of George F. Reynolds, pp.52–61. University Press of Colorado.
- Crawshaw, William H. (1907). The making of English literature. Boston: DC Heath and Co.
- Fisher, John (1965). John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer. London: Methuen.
- Jonson, Ben (1640). Timber: or, Discoveries made vpon Men and Matter. E-text from University of Toronto.
- Lewis, C.S. (1936). The Allegory of Love: a study in medieval tradition. Oxford University Press.
- Macaulay, G.C.George Campbell MacaulayGeorge Campbell Macaulay , also known as G. C. Macaulay, was a noted English Classical scholar. He was the father of the well-known English author Rose Macaulay.-Family:...
(1908). 'The Confessio Amantis', in Ward, A.W., and Waller, A.R., eds. The Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. II The End of the Middle Ages, pp.166–176. Cambridge University Press. - Pearsall, Derek (1966). 'Gower's Narrative Art', in PMLA 81, pp.475–484.
- Pickles, J.D. & J.L. Dawson, A Concordance to John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987.
- Puttenham, George (1589). The Arte of English Poesie. E-text from University of Virginia.
- Watt, Diane (2003). Amoral Gower: Language, Sex, and Politics. University of Minnesota Press.
Editions of other texts
- Benson, Larry D. et al. eds (1987). The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford University Press.
- Furnivall, F. J. ed. (1868). Caxton's Book of Curtesye, EETS E.S. 3. Oxford University Press.
Further reading
- Nicholson, Peter, ed (1991). Gower's Confessio Amantis: A Critical Anthology, Bury St. Edmunds: D.S. Brewer.
- Nicholson, Peter (2005). Love and Ethics in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
External links
- Amantis at Archive.org (based on Macaulay 1901)
- A Portion of the Confessio Amantis from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
- Volume 1 of the Confessio Amantis (containing the Prologue, Book 1, and Book 8); Volumes 2 (Books 2-4) and 3 (Books 5-7) can be accessed at the Complete Catalogue of TEAMS texts