Elliot Kendall
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780199542642
- eISBN:
- 9780191715419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542642.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The second of two chapters on the Confessio Amantis frame narrative, this chapter analyses political dimensions of courtly love and the relationship between Venus, Cupid, Genius and Amans, or the ...
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The second of two chapters on the Confessio Amantis frame narrative, this chapter analyses political dimensions of courtly love and the relationship between Venus, Cupid, Genius and Amans, or the lover, in Gower's poem. First, it argues that Gower laicizes penitential discourse in his technical but minimally ecclesiastic representation of confession and of Genius as confessor, which crucially embeds confession in an allegorical, great household narrative of lay lordship and petitioning. The chapter is principally dedicated to interpretation of the poem's closing scenes, in which Venus can be seen to act as the lover's good lord, to bestow on him a livery collar, and to overmatch Cupid's unilateral lordship at the climax of the poem's contest between ‘magnificence’ and ‘reciprocalism’. Venus's and Cupid's politics are illuminated by readings of The Romance of the Rose, Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls and Legend of Good Women, and Sir John Clanvowe's Boke of Cupide.Less
The second of two chapters on the Confessio Amantis frame narrative, this chapter analyses political dimensions of courtly love and the relationship between Venus, Cupid, Genius and Amans, or the lover, in Gower's poem. First, it argues that Gower laicizes penitential discourse in his technical but minimally ecclesiastic representation of confession and of Genius as confessor, which crucially embeds confession in an allegorical, great household narrative of lay lordship and petitioning. The chapter is principally dedicated to interpretation of the poem's closing scenes, in which Venus can be seen to act as the lover's good lord, to bestow on him a livery collar, and to overmatch Cupid's unilateral lordship at the climax of the poem's contest between ‘magnificence’ and ‘reciprocalism’. Venus's and Cupid's politics are illuminated by readings of The Romance of the Rose, Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls and Legend of Good Women, and Sir John Clanvowe's Boke of Cupide.
Helen Barr
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198112426
- eISBN:
- 9780191707865
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112426.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This book bridges the disciplines of literature and history by examining various kinds of literary language as examples of social practice. Readings of both English and Latin texts from the late 14th ...
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This book bridges the disciplines of literature and history by examining various kinds of literary language as examples of social practice. Readings of both English and Latin texts from the late 14th and early 15th centuries are grounded in close textual study which reveals the social positioning of these works and the kinds of ideological work they can be seen to perform. Distinctive new readings of texts emerge which challenge received interpretations of literary history and late medieval culture. Canonical authors and texts such as Chaucer, Gower, and Pearl are discussed alongside the less familiar: Clanvowe, anonymous alliterative verse, and Wycliffite prose tracts.Less
This book bridges the disciplines of literature and history by examining various kinds of literary language as examples of social practice. Readings of both English and Latin texts from the late 14th and early 15th centuries are grounded in close textual study which reveals the social positioning of these works and the kinds of ideological work they can be seen to perform. Distinctive new readings of texts emerge which challenge received interpretations of literary history and late medieval culture. Canonical authors and texts such as Chaucer, Gower, and Pearl are discussed alongside the less familiar: Clanvowe, anonymous alliterative verse, and Wycliffite prose tracts.
DOROTHY YAMAMOTO
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198186748
- eISBN:
- 9780191718564
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198186748.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
In the Bestiary, birds are treated as a self-contained and distinctive form of creation. Lévi-Strauss suggests that it is precisely because birds are so different from humans that they can be ...
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In the Bestiary, birds are treated as a self-contained and distinctive form of creation. Lévi-Strauss suggests that it is precisely because birds are so different from humans that they can be permitted to resemble them in cultural references. In medieval literature, birds often represent an ideal society, but many writers play with the fact that, although they are socially congruent, they are emphatically unlike us in their bodies — conducting their wooing not with lips but with ‘beckes’. Close readings of texts including Chaucer's Squire's Tale and Manciple's Tale; Gower's ‘Ceyx and Alcione’ and ‘Tereus’ in his Confessio Amantis; Lydgate's ‘The Churl and the Bird’, and Clanvowe's The Cuckoo and the Nightingale follow.Less
In the Bestiary, birds are treated as a self-contained and distinctive form of creation. Lévi-Strauss suggests that it is precisely because birds are so different from humans that they can be permitted to resemble them in cultural references. In medieval literature, birds often represent an ideal society, but many writers play with the fact that, although they are socially congruent, they are emphatically unlike us in their bodies — conducting their wooing not with lips but with ‘beckes’. Close readings of texts including Chaucer's Squire's Tale and Manciple's Tale; Gower's ‘Ceyx and Alcione’ and ‘Tereus’ in his Confessio Amantis; Lydgate's ‘The Churl and the Bird’, and Clanvowe's The Cuckoo and the Nightingale follow.
HELEN BARR
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198112426
- eISBN:
- 9780191707865
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198112426.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter argues that the narrative strategies and diction of Mum and the Sothsegger and The Boke of Cupide possess religious commentary because they form part of a language code whose social ...
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This chapter argues that the narrative strategies and diction of Mum and the Sothsegger and The Boke of Cupide possess religious commentary because they form part of a language code whose social significance would have been registered by audiences familiar with the ways that religious discussion was framed. It discusses that both The Boke of Cupide and Mum and the Sothsegger were written at a time in which the emergence of Lollardy generated new forms of religious writing with distinctive tropes, vocabulary, and cohesions. It clarifies that authors and audiences of texts written during the emergence and suppression of Lollardy shared assumptions about the cultural significance of certain linguistic signs in accordance with their advocacy of, or simply familiarity with, the particular form of social knowledge constituted by Wycliffism.Less
This chapter argues that the narrative strategies and diction of Mum and the Sothsegger and The Boke of Cupide possess religious commentary because they form part of a language code whose social significance would have been registered by audiences familiar with the ways that religious discussion was framed. It discusses that both The Boke of Cupide and Mum and the Sothsegger were written at a time in which the emergence of Lollardy generated new forms of religious writing with distinctive tropes, vocabulary, and cohesions. It clarifies that authors and audiences of texts written during the emergence and suppression of Lollardy shared assumptions about the cultural significance of certain linguistic signs in accordance with their advocacy of, or simply familiarity with, the particular form of social knowledge constituted by Wycliffism.
