From Larry Scanlon, “The Riddle of Incest: John Gower and the Problem of Medieval Sexuality” (1998)

Although many of the best recent studies of the Confessio Amantis stress the integral connections between Book VIII and the rest of the poem, they nevertheless do so on the basis of a variety of philosophical rationales that generally elude the question of Gower's interest in incest qua incest. Thus, Georgiana Donavin, Kurt Olsson, Russell Peck, Elizabeth Porter, and R. F. Yeager, in the course of quite distinct readings treat incest primarily as a typification or epitome of something else, such as "lack of critical governance" or "the selfishness of all sins," and even then they are interested in it mainly as a foil to the "exemplary summa" offered by the "Tale of Apollonius" and the "model of ethical self-governance" offered by its title character. In the reading to follow I take Gower's interest in incest at face value, and I argue that it is less philosophical than political in the broadest sense. (99)

Thus, I find H. A. Kelly's conclusion that Gower's attitude toward incest was "the received theological one" accurate but misleading. The claim is misleading because it imputes a stable coherence both to Church doctrine and Gower's poem, when it was precisely the variabilities and contradictions of Church doctrine that motivated his poetic redeployment of it. These contradictions were political in origin; the Church's extraordinary interest in incest proceeding from its institutional role as late medieval society's chief regulator of marriage. In the opening of Book VIII, Gower briefly charts the development of this clerical regulation. He then uses the Apollonius story to redefine the boundaries of marriage regulation in less clerical terms. (99)

If the narrative seeks a good father in Apollonius to expiate the sins of the bad father Antiochus, then what it offers as the ultimate proof of the good father is his redemption by the good daughter. This point cannot be overemphasized. In achieving its resolution the narrative does not demonstrate the essential justice of the patriarchal law of exogamy. On the contrary, the narrative comes to resolution by demonstrating the law's essential injustice, then counterpoising it with the figure of the good daughter, who absorbs that injustice and transcends it. (123)

Rank observes perceptively that "solving [the riddle] proves just as fatal as not solving it."" This paradox points to a more profound one which may provide the ultimate explanation for Apollonius's long atonement. His very attempt to solve the riddle implicates him in Antiochus's guilt, As Antiochus's barrier to his daughter, the riddle expresses his paternal power no less than the incest it at once discloses and reveals. In pitting his lore against that of Antiochus, Apollonius literally expresses a desire to displace him, a desire necessarily tainted by the guilty power which is its object. Apollonius seeks to acquire the patriarchal authority over the daughter which Antiochus holds; that authority assumes the possibility of abuse which Antiochus has made actual. Apollonius must atone for so long because Antiochus's guilt is ultimately also his own. Antiochus's secret can never be truly hidden, because it implicates in its guilt all of patriarchal authority.

What is the function of this guilty knowledge? The eventual affirmative conclusion of the story suggests that for Gower, as for the tradition he inherited, it was ultimately expiable. But the long effort which that resolution requires suggests that whatever expiation is achievable comes at a tremendous cost. Either way, this was a poet for whom incest was a nearly intractable problem implicating the mechanisms of social order in their most basic operations. (127)