Vernacular Translation in 
John Gower's Prologue to Confessio Amantis

Ming-Tsang Yang
National Taiwan University

Studies on Confessio Amantis have for the most part been confined to issues of unity and morality--whether Gower yokes together disparate materials of love on the one hand and moral and political themes on the other. In the introduction to his edition of Gower's works which has remained the basis for the study of the Confessio since its appearance in 1901, G. C. Macaulay, while acknowledging the work's importance as a collection of tales, does not give much credit to its other contents: he dismisses the Prologue, and registers a classic disquiet about the poem's many digressions and about the difficulties posed by the role of Genius regarding the concerns of morality and the affairs of love (1901: xix). In The Allegory of Love, C. S. Lewis begins with a critical practice to view the poem as a whole. Recognizing Gower's artistry, he defends the attempt to combine love and morality and praises the way in which Gower has made the diversity of his material cohere (1936: 198-222). Subsequent critical attention has been placed on the moral issues in the poem. In his representative work (1964), John H. Fisher regards Gower's most significant role as an advocate of moral responsibility. For Fisher, the poem is the culmination of Gower's ethical plan to preach to his countrymen on their moral and social duties. However, this traditional emphasis on the moral aspect, as Fisher's subtitle "Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer" indicates, downplays Gower's role as poet.¹ Two decades later, A. J. Minnis reiterates Lewis's approach, arguing that Gower's materials are not incompatible and that it is a unified work as a whole: "For Gower, the virtues of the good lover were indistinguishable from those of the good man" (1983: 1). Minnis further suggests that Gower was not original in placing the materia of love in a moral perspective but that he was simply following the tradition of the scholastic study of Ovid's love poetry in which materials were regarded as quite compatible by the learned medieval reader (1988: 183). In this way, the subversive tradition of Ovidian love poetry is subsumed by or harmonized with the moral, political and ultimately philosophical frame of the work. However, there are still critics who refuse to endorse consistency of the poem. James Simpson, for example, points out that despite the obvious and powerful influence of the tradition of the moralized Ovid, "it is clear that Ovid continues to be vulnerable to moral attack, and particularly by comparison with classical satirists" (1988: 623).

More recently, Rita Copeland vigorously addresses the problems of rhetoric and vernacular translation in the poem (1991: 202-20), while R. F. Yeager explores the poem's complexities as a heterogeneous text (1993: 203-16). Larry Scanlon (1994) has also challenged the modernist antithesis of poetry and morality, emphasizing Gower's interest in moralizing as a form of poetry. By calling attention to the important issue of lay authority, Scanlon suggests that the poem is a rhetorical project as Gower is "searching and self-conscious about poetic language" (1994: 246). 

Studies on the poem have for the most part been confined to issues of unity and morality of the poem and the quality and relevance of individual tales. Despite its contribution to the understanding of the design of the poem as a whole, modern endeavor to recuperate the unity and wholeness of the poem tends to ignore one central theme in the poem: division and difference. The problem lies mainly in the failure to address the force and significance (rather than unity) of the structural design and the crucial issues of rhetoric and translation in the poem. In reconsidering the Confessio, therefore, this paper hopes to recast the critical interest onto the rhetorical project and vernacular translation so as to obtain a deeper insight into Gower's poetic project.

The problems of translation and vernacularity in the Confessio are closely related. Gower's decision to write in the vernacular, in "oure englissh," is rather significant since he was the last major English practitioner of Latin and Anglo-Norman verse and each had its special function for him, as his three major works-the Anglo-Norman Mirour de l'Omme, the Latin Vox Clamantis and the English Confessio Amantis-testify.² As Wetherbee points out, "the moral Gower of the earlier works coexists with the Gower who, together with Chaucer, adapted the learned, classicizing poetry of the European tradition to the English vernacular" (1999: 590). Like The Canterbury Tales, the Confessio contains a wide spectrum of short stories within the context of a framing tale, and as such it is also a treasure house of Middle English literary materials.³ Viewed in this light, Gower was not simply a "friend" of Chaucer, but also an intellectual colleague who shared with Chaucer the vision of the vernacular literary project, and here might lie Chaucer's most important motive of dedicating the English Troilus to Gower.

Gower announces what he engages in at the very beginning of the poem. The Prologue begins with an affirmation of his own poetic project in the midst of a profound sense of historicity:

Of hem that writen ous tofore
The bokes duelle, and we therfore
Ben tawht of that was write tho:
Forthi good is that we also
In oure tyme among ous hiere
Do wryte of newe som matiere,
Essampled of these olde wyse
So that it myhte in such a wyse,
Whan we ben dede and elleswhere,
Beleve to the worldes eere
In tyme comende after this. (Prol. 1-10)

Powerfully articulating the crucial mediating connection between past, present and future, this opening statement foregrounds the complex relationship between past authority, present writing and future emulation. Larry Scanlon suggests that "Essampled of these olde wyse" can mean "drawing exempla from these old books" or "following the example of older writers." Granted that writing has the power to convey authority from the past to the present, Gower here highlights "the exemplary authority of the new vernacular tradition itself, and the importance of its powers of transmission" (1994: 250-1). Thus, Gower's invocation of the topos of the authority of old books does not simply reinscribe a continuum of past authority but rather assert his contributions to and refashioning of the tradition by injecting or reinventing new material. As such it entails a bold claim of dignified present, of future authority of his poetry, which aspires to be an agent of cultural change. This reinvention of the vernacular tradition and the inauguration of subsequent transmission may explain the significance of Gower's choice of "middel weie," which brings together the "lore" of clerical traditions and the "lust" of vernacular poetry. In this way, he presents his native language not only as appropriately a "median tongue" but also as a somewhat novel vehicle for major poetry, for the coalescing of high and low stylistic and literary traditions implies an elevation and empowerment of the originally "low" vernacular tradition. As Scanlon puts it, "Gower intends nothing less than a clericalization of the vernacular, the production of a lay textuality with an authority separate from but analogous to the Latin traditions of the Church" (1994: 251).

This acute sense of historicity, together with its new form of authority, powerfully illustrates Gower's employment of a medieval device, the translatio imperii, to give authority to London and England.⁴ In the account that relates the poem's genesis to the chance encounter with King Richard II (Prol. 24*-92*), Gower describes London as "the toun of newe Troye," and cites the eponymous Brut. This invocation of a tradition of noble genealogy puts the chance encounter on an epic footing and thereby invests the poem with national significance.⁵ Concomitant with the translatio imperii is the translatio lingui. As Dhira B. Mahoney argues, "The establishment of the new society is also linked in Gower's Ricardian prologue with his choice of the vernacular for his book" (1998: 26). Although Gower does not make it clear that King Richard commanded him to write in English, the royal commission and the choice of the vernacular are closely related. This vigorous incorporation of translatio imperii and translatio lingui brings forth a new form of vernacular authority, an important agent of cultural change that provides a decisive counterpoint to the depiction of the images of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and the myth of Babel (Prol. 585-1044) which occupy much of the Prologue. In his dream, Nebuchadnezzar saw an image with the head and neck of gold, the breast and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of brass, the legs of steel, and the feet of mixed steel and decay. According to Daniel's interpretation, this strange image "Betokneth how the world schal change/ And waxe lasse worth and lasse,/ Til it to nought al overpasse" (Prol. 628-30). Following Daniel's prophetic lead, Gower further draws on John's authority with an apocalyptic tone in identifying the present world with the end of the world as it stands now divided like the feet of the image:

Thapostel writ unto ous alle
And seith that upon ous is falle
Thende of the world; so may we knowe,
This ymage is nyh overthrowe,
Be which this world was signified,
That whilom was so magnefied,
And now is old and fieble and vil,
Full of meschief and of peril,
And Stant divided ek also
Lich to the feet that were so,
As I tolde of the Statue above. (Prol. 881-891)

Noting that division is the cause of evil and destruction, the poet goes on to trace the major source of the confusion to the confounding of tongues in the aftermath of the building of Babel tower. Since the description of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream and the tower of Babel occupies much of the Prologue, its significance deserves our attention.⁶ Despite the apocalyptic association of the dark, ominous account, the inclusion of the two images carries a special function. For if the idea of the decline of empires and the vicissitudes of world history seems to belittle the present era, it also suggests the crucial role Britain can play at this critical moment as the early allusion to the tradition of noble genealogy of Troy and Brutus indicates. The references to the turning of Fortune's wheel in the Prologue also strongly support this idea. The subtle implication of the sentimental nostalgia for the golden past in Prol. ii is writ large in Prol. v, which concerns Daniel's exposition of Nebuchadnezzar's dream:

Prosper et aduersus obliquo tramite versus
Immundus mundus decipit omne genus.
Mundus in euentu versatur vt alea casu,
Quam celer in ludis iactat auara manus. 
Sicut ymago viri variantur tempora mundi,
Statque nichil firmum preter amare deum. (Prol. v)
(In crooked circuit turning, good then bad,
The sordid world deceives each race of men.
The world is tossed and turned by chance, as dice
Are quickly thrown by greedy hands at play.
So in man's image earthly seasons shift,
And nought stands firm except the love of God.)⁷

Vulnerable to the crooked turning of Fortune's wheel and thus subject to constant changes, the world can go from good to bad but can also go from bad to good again, just like the pattern of seasonal change. Therefore, if the present time is dark and grim, the implication is that it is likely to become better later. What is more, since only the love of God is true and reliable, Gower, to make this "dream" come true, further prays to God for the grace of England at the end of the poem (VIII. iv and Explicit).

On the other hand, if the myth of Babel in the Prologue is an emblem of the division or fragmentation of languages, it also calls attention to the fact of vernacularity. For vernacularity, though a consequence of "evil" division, is the indispensable means to cultural recuperation or regeneration, and indeed it is the state by which the poet voices out his prophetic concerns. As Copeland keenly suggests, the description of Nebuchadnezzar's dream and the myth of Babel expresses both Gower's view of the inevitable decline of empires and the process of linguistic and cultural translation that legitimizes the new prominence of the vernacular (1991: 212-20). The emphasis on the myth of the Babel thus correlates issues of language, politics and civilization. 

Indeed, the poem not only speaks about division, but, as a vernacular text, also speaks through the historical condition of division. In this way the myth of Babel is not just an emblem for linguistic difference, but also an emblem of vernacular translatio studii in Gower's enterprise. Though a consequence of linguistic and historical division, the condition of vernacularity also brings about linguistic and cultural transmission and as such reinvigorates forces of cultural regeneration. In this regard, the translatio imperii and the translatio lingui work side by side in the poem.

Furthermore, the context of the description of the statue and the tower also offers an important clue to its significance, for the description is sandwiched between the audacious claim of a new vernacular authority (as discussed above) and the climactic call for the poet musician Arion, who is able to charm men and animals alike with his harp. It is especially noteworthy that in the Prologue the concluding prayer to God for a new Arion immediately follows the apocalyptic description. Arion is not a popular figure in medieval literature, but this relative obscurity allows Gower to make an unprecedented poetic claim. As Yeager points out, "By choosing Arion from among better-known musician/poet figures such as Amphion, David and Orpheus, Gower struck out freshly into territory which he claimed for his own" (1990: 240). Arion, whose song "the bestes wilde/ Made of his note tame and milde" (Prol. 1057-58), promises the way to conjoin a divided society, then and now:

That was a lusti melodie,
Whan every man with other low;
And if ther were such on now,
Which cowthe harpe as he tho ded,
He myhte availe in many a stede
To make pes wher now is hate. (Prol. 1070-75)

Just as Arion can charm men and animals with his musical instrument, so Gower the poet here implies that he will charm people to harmony with his poem. In so doing, he "will celebrate both England's cultural connections with antiquity and the possibilities of a new society governed according to the right principles" (Mahoney 1998: 26). Gower's "newe thing," written in the vernacular, thus aspires to overcome division in its various forms. For Gower, "divisioun" is the disease, whether in the microcosm of the individual man or in the macrocosm of society: 

The man, as telleth the clergie,
Is as a world in his partie,
And whan this litel world mistorneth,
The grete world al overtorneth. (Prol. 955-58)

If the little world (the man) is closely related to the great world, then Amans's (the Latin word "Amans" curiously embeds the English word "man") search for healing and repose is parallel to the need for peace and unity in England.

The search for a new Arion is therefore critical, and Yeager even argues that it is the key to the poem (1990: 238). The search becomes even more urgent as the poet's old age mirrors the world's decadence (e.g., Prol. 61-3, VIII. 3126-28). In fact, the unidentified authorial voice calling in the Prologue for Arion's return is revealed in the Epilogue to be at once Amans/Gower and the poet John Gower himself. In this way, Gower imagines himself as an Arion and his Confessio becomes new Arion's song, capable of reinstating a near-Edenic bliss and goodwill in a world striated both naturally and socially. The important consequence of this daring implication is that the goal of universal peace can be fulfilled by a poetry appropriately expressed in a vernacular of increasing stature and availability for presenting serious subjects. 

On the other hand, Arion also presents a different possibility from the prophetic vision that comes before its introduction in the Prologue. Scanlon's comment is rather pertinent here: "As the representative at once of poetry and the pre-sacral authority of the classical, Arion stands in stark contrast to Daniel, an exegetical and clerical figure drawn from biblical tradition. Where clerical tradition can offer only a vision of secular decay, Arion raises the possibility of social harmony effected from within human history by the power of poetry" (1994: 254-5). The search for a new vernacular Arion implies that what England needs now is a poet or a poet as clerical exegete, a "burel" clerk like Gower rather than a clerical exegete per se. The poetic and the clerical are identified even more thoroughly in the de facto second prologue, the frame tale that opens Book One, as Genius "the priest" sets forth to tell a series of exemplary tales to Amans, thus closely integrating clerical ministrations with poetic project.

Gower's Prologue, beginning with a professed awareness of historicity and ending with another valorization of poetry by invoking the power of Arion, therefore turns out to be a declaration of vernacular poetics. The Epilogue further echoes the theme of vernacular poetic production by repeating the main concerns in the Prologue (VIII. 3106-14). Although the Epilogue comes in the form of an apology, the apology of the "Englishness" of the book, while reiterating the inadequacy of the vernacular within the domain of learned culture, actually points back to the vernacular project the poet sets out to accomplish at the beginning of the poem.

One remarkable example of Gower's celebration of vernacular poetry is the "Tale of Florent," in which he adapts the vernacular romance in the framework of the exemplum tradition. For Gower, romance is closely associated with the vernacular tradition.⁸ Although the general outline of Gower's plot is familiar from Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale and some other popular versions,⁹ critics have been aware of its critical difference from the analogue versions; most notably, Gower's young hero is upright and guiltless.¹⁰ Instead of the violent transgression of Chaucer's knight, Florent's initial wrongdoing is killing another knight in self-defense. Although this places him in jeopardy, no one doubts his sincerity in the course of his trial, and it is apparent that Genius the priest and Gower the poet also believe so. That is why the tale is included in Book I as a counter-example to illustrate "Murmur and Complaint," two divisions of "Inobedience," the second minister of Pride. As Yeager suggests, even though Florent is far from morally perfect, his familiar weakness and admirable strength make him more human (1990: 139-40). Through the human, vernacular Florent, who in the course of the narrative learns not to complain but to accept his love's commands, Gower charts a course for his audience to follow. Genius extends the applicability of the tale's moral lesson and claims its auctoritas by introducing his interpretation by reference to "clerkes that this chance herde" (I. 1856). He then has recourse to these authorities:

Thei writen it in evidence,
To teche how that obedience
Mai wel fortune a man to love
And sette him in his lust above,
As it befell unto this knyht. (I. 1857-61)

Viewed in this light, the ultimate transformation in Gower's version of the "Tale of Florent" is not the "physical" transformation of the old hag, but rather the "literary" transformation of the vernacular romance. In other words, Gower "ennobles" the tradition of vernacular romance and turns it into an exemplum by appropriating the auctoritas of more prestigious Latin models. Patricia Batchelor is quite right in making this comment: "Gower's use of a story rooted in secular and vulgar traditions for a didactic purpose allows the whole of his vernacular work to share in the textual auctoritas of the ancient exemplum tradition. Moreover, this appropriation of the authority of tradition for the work more subtly implies a validation of the traditions of vernacular romance as well" (1998: 5). 

What Gower is doing here is therefore the transfer of power from these traditions to his vernacular work, a veritable English classic for the future generation. Gower's concluding Latin apparatus lays bare this desire of an English classic. As Pearsall notes, the Latin poems "represent the English poet in an extraordinary light, not merely kissing the steps on which the classical poets stand . . . but clambering up them" (1989: 24).

In the world of the poem, the larger penitential framework and the subsequent stories of love's woes turn out to be a backdrop for Gower's more central explorations on division. What the poem calls for is therefore a new Arion, a poet that can aspire to resolve all sorts of division and deviation and reassure cultural transmission by the restoring and enabling eloquence of vernacular translation. Indeed, the Prologue to the Confessio begins as the Vox ends, anxious about the state of England and social order. But the major language used moves from Latin to English, which epitomizes the process of vernacular translation.

With this metacritical vantage point, we can better appreciate the problem of "division" in the poem. Commenting on the design of the poem, Hugh White argues that it seems to reflect Gower's concern with division, and its development to illustrate how attempts to overcome division and the problems it brings almost inevitably end in failure (1988: 600). As mentioned earlier, there are indeed some incongruences in the poem. Besides the exemplary narratives that sometimes challenge the framework of the penitential discourse, there are inconsistencies among morals, between Latin and English, and even between a story's content and its moral. More obviously, a taste for the lurid that includes all kinds of violence and brutality unsettles the moralizing attempt itself. But these inconsistencies or divisions, rather than betokening failures, actually help present the themes in the poem. The poem not only speaks about division, but, as a vernacular text, also speaks through the historical condition of division. As a linguistically heterogeneous text, the poem calls into memory that wisdom of the ancients can be too easily lost through historical and cultural rupture (Prol. 26-60). It is precisely this sense of imminence that renders Gower's vernacular composition so significant and crucial. In this regard, it seems more relevant to take this fascination with disruption as a powerful expression of the poem's central theme. For, as Scanlon notes, "it enables Gower to justify both the need for lay authority generally, and the specifically textual dimension with which poetry provides such authority" (1994: 249). Critics once assumed that Gower supervised the manuscript production of his poem to control its meaning.¹¹ Whether or not Gower intervened the manuscript production, however, his concern remains the same. We may regard Gower's interventions, if there were any, as engagements in differences and divisions, which is in keeping with what he is doing in the poem. Even if there were no involvements on Gower's part, through the interaction of the voices of the poem Gower already inscribes in his work the potential instability of interpretation, even before the interventions of the manuscript tradition that creates complex differences.¹² Even as Gower's text invokes the ideal of continuity and undertakes the project of cultural recuperation, it embodies the very process of rupture and mutability that it denounces. Rather than evading the problem of difference, Gower chooses to engage it. This is truly Gower's enterprise of vernacular translatio studii.

Works Cited

Batchelor, Patricia. 1998. "Feigned Truth and Exemplary Method in the Confessio Amantis." Yeager 1998: 1-15.

Burrow, J. A. 1983. "The Portrayal of Amans in Confessio Amantis." Minnis  1983: 5-24.

Copeland, Rita. 1991. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Dimmick, Jeremy. 1999. "'Redinge of Romance' in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Tradition and Transformation in Medieval Romance. Ed. Rosalind Field. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 125-37.

Echard, Siân. 1998. "With Carmen's Help: Latin Authorities in the Confessio Amantis." Studies in Philology 95: 1-40.

--- and Claire Fanger. 1991. The Latin Verses in the Confessio Amantis: An Annotated Translation. East Lansing: East Lansing Colleagues.

Emmerson, Richard K. "Reading Gower in a Manuscript Culture: Latin and English in Illustrated Manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21 (1999): 143-86.

Fisher, John Hurt. 1964. Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer. New York: New York UP.

Gower, John. 1901. The Complete Works of John Gower. Ed. G. C. Macaulay. Vols 2 and 3. Oxford: Clarendon. 

Lewis, C. S. 1936. The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. Oxford: Oxford UP.

Machan, Tim. 1994. Textual Criticism and Middle English Texts. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia.

Mahoney, Dhira B. 1998. "Gower's Two Prologues to Confessio Amantis." Yeager 1998: 17-37.

McKinley, Kathryn. 1996. "Kingship and the Body Politic: Classical Ecphrasis and Confessio Amantis VII." Mediaevalia 21: 161-87.

Minnis, A. J., ed. 1983. Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

---. 1988. Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. 2nd ed. Aldershot: Scolar.

Olsson, Kurt O. 1977. "Rhetoric, John Gower, and the Late Medieval Exemplum." Medievalia et Humanistica 8: 185-200.

Pearsall, Derek. 1983. "The Gower Tradition." Minnis 1983: 179-97.

---. 1989. "Gower's Latin in the Confessio Amantis."  Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts. Ed. A. J. Minnis. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. 13-25.

Peck, Russell A. 1978. Kingship and Common Profit in Gower's "Confessio Amantis". Carbondale: Southern Illinois P.

Rigg, A. G. 1991. "Preface." The Latin Verses in the Confessio Amantis: An Annotated Translation. East Lansing: East Lansing Colleagues. xiii-xxiv.

Scanlon, Larry. 1994. Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Simpson, James. 1988. "Ironic Incongruence in the Prologue and Book I of  Gower's Confessio Amantis." Neophilologus 72: 617-32.

---. 1995. Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus and John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Wetherbee, Winthrop. 1991. "Latin Structure and Vernacular Space: Gower, Chaucer and the Boethian Tradition," Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange. Ed. R. F. Yeager. Victoria: U of Victoria P, 1991. 7-35. 

---. 1999. "John Gower." The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature. Ed. David Wallace. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. 589-609.

White, Hugh. 1988. "Division and Failure in Gower's Confessio Amantis."  Neophilologus 72: 600-12.

Yeager, Robert F. 1990. John Gower's Poetic: The Search for a New Arion. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

---. 1993. "English, Latin, and the Text as 'Other: The Page as Sign in the Work of John Gower." Medieval English Poetry. Ed. Stephanie Trigg. London: Longman. 203-16.

---, ed. 1998. Re-Visioning Gower. Asheville: Pegasus.

注釋：

1. Some critics would regard Gower himself as the initiator of the tradition. See Wetherbee 1999: 589.  [back to text]
2. On the roles of Gower's several languages, see Yeager 1993:203-16. [back to text]
3. For an account of Gower's poem and strategies of medieval compilation, see Kurt Olsson, John Gower and the Structures of Conversion (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), 1-15. [back to text]
4. For discussions on the myth of Trojan myth and its rearticulation in fourteenth-century England, please see Chapter One. [back to text]
5. There are indeed recurrent references to the Trojan theme throughout the poem. For example, I. 481-529, 1060-1189; II. 2429-2500; III. 973-1088, 1757-1856; IV. 147-233, 731-886, 1648-1814, 1815-1934, 2135-2199; V. 2961-3218, 6429-6492, 7195-7590, 7591-7640; VI. 1391-1788; VII. 1507-1640; VIII. 2460-2665. [back to text]
6. Most illustrated manuscripts of the Confessio include a miniature of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. See the discussion in Emmerson 1999: 167-9 [back to text]
7. All the English translations of the Latin verses are cited from Echard and Fanger's translations (1991). [back to text]
8. In Mirour de l'omme, Gower pairs "romance" (the French language or a work written in French) antithetically with "Latin" at ll 8150, 21,775, 27,476-7. A. G. Rigg also notes that the nearest thing to a literary genre in English was the romance (1991: xiv). And even this was mocked by Chaucer in Sir Thopas's Tale. [back to text]
9. One of the so-called "Loathly Lady Group," Gower's "Tale of Florent" has varying closeness with, besides Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, the romance The Wedding of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell and the ballad "The Marriage of Sir Gawaine." For the general categorization, see Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1955-58), D732.[back to text]
10. For critical comments on the emphasis Gower puts on Florent's integrity, see for example J. A. W. Bennett, "Preacher or Poet?" Times Literary Supplement 18 (1965), 1022; Russell Peck, Kingship and Common Profit in Gower's Confessio Amantis (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978), 46-7; R. F. Yeager, "John Gower and the Exemplum Form: Tale Models in the Confessio Amanits," Mediaevalia 8 (1982), 323.[back to text]
11. For Gower's involvements in the early manuscripts of the poem, see Fisher 1964: 58-60. See also Parkes and Doyle 1978.[back to text]
12. For informative studies of the Confessio manuscripts, see Echard 1998: 1-40 and Emmerson 1999: 143-86. [back to text]

最新更新日期：2002/04/15