ENGLISH 5250 FALL 2005
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS FOR
10/12 (N-Z)—PICK ONE:
1.
Discuss the relationship between the English and Latin portions of the Confessio Amantis. You might find one (or more) of the three
critics quoted below—who seem to disagree markedly--to be a useful starting
point.
Its exemplary narratives challenge the authority of
the penitential discourse and moralizing Latin glosses that frame them, raising
questions about the capacity of human society for peace and justice (591)….The
marginalia oscillate between authoritative commentary and a dogged,
schoolmasterly moralism, often ludicrously irrelevant in its attempts to engage
the vernacular text (599).
One may argue that the marginal “glosses” represent
Gower’s solution to the problem of didactic precision which confronts all
moralists who trust important lessons to unavoidably misreadable fictions:
Gower seeks to limit polysemy and avoid misunderstanding by directing the act
of comprehension through an expansion of the poetic text to include the margins
of his page (213).
R.F. Yeager,
“English, Latin, and the Text as ‘Other’: The Page as Sign in the Work of John
Gower”
That
this “fictive person” as Gower calls him in the Latin gloss to the poem, the
authorial voice, and that of the colophon are to all purposes identical in the
very foundations of their ethical and social style, ought to be registered…
Anne Middleton, “The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II”
2. Discuss the role of kings
and kingship in the prologue and first book of the Confessio (with reference, if you like, to Chaucer’s Legend
of Good Women).