THE PERSONAGES
!N THE MAJOR NARRATNE WORKS
OF JGHN GOWER

THESIS FOR THE DEGREE OF PH. D.
MICHEGAN STATE UNNERSITY

SAMUEL T. COWUNG
1970

THESIS LIBRARY

Michigan State
University

 

This is to certify that the
thesis entitled

THE PERSONAGES

IN THE MAJOR NARRATIVE WORKS
OF JOHN GOWER

presented by

SAMUEL TAGGART COWL ING

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

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Major professor

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Sahuel 13589rt COWling

This dissertation aims at cl rifyinfi the way Gorer's
personages function in his narrative poetry. In particular, it
explores their placement and movement between the extremes of
personality and concept.

The problem which the work attempts to resolve is pert of
the recurrent problem in the analysis of "allegorical" litera—
ture. Specifically, this dissertation tries to avoid the horns
of the dilemma represented by two conflicting descriptions of
allegory——that is, as an cpen or as a closed system——Dante's
rose or the Exodus account of the flight of the Jews out of
Egypt, as interpreted by Augustine.

While it is hardly my aim to clarify once and for all the
meaning of allegory——in fact, I have avoided using even the term
in this dissertation——the analysis of Gover's personages does
involve an approach to allegorical literature that should be
useful in more comnrehensive studies. I have attempted to fol-
low up certain suggestions made by Professor Arnold Williams,
who describes two basic kinds of personages, produced either by
personation or figuration.l Through personation a conceptual
value is embodied in a personage. The most familiar form of thfi?
mode is personification, which Gower makes elaborate use of in
the Kiroir d3 l'Omme. His delineation, however, of such person-

ages as Genius and Anans in the Confessio Anantis reveals quite

 

clearly that personation is not always a matter of simple per—
sonification. Figuration begins with a particular person, who—
ther historical or legendary. Through this mode some kind of

conceptual value becomes associated, even identified, with the

[5' .uel if i‘l 00.1.3.7“?

personage. The rebels in the Vox Clementis not only do non—

 

strous deeds; they are monsters. The personages in Gower's
narrative poetry have been classified, therefore, according as
they are develOped through these two modes of chsracterization;
and while so classifying them does not automatically make the
work of analysis easy to complete, it does make it easier to
begin.

Gower, though not a writer of the first rank, is at least

competent and certainly prolific. Especially in the Vox laman—

 

tie and in the Confessio Amantis, his personsses are the result

A. L3

 

of complex uses of both personation and figuration and contri—

bute importantly to the themes of those poems. Thus, in the Vox

Clanantis the metamorphoses of the peasant rabble support the

 

narrator's moral pronouncements upon the Peas nts' Revolt,

while in the Confessio the delineation of Venus and Cupid re—

 

sults in a delicate sacred parody, which is balanced nicely
against the poet-lover's ironic portrayal of himself at the

close of the poem.

1. In his article "hedieval Allegory: An Ooerational Ajjrogch’n
Poetic Theory/Poetic Practice, TJKLA, Io. l ( 969 , 77—34,

 

 

THE PERSONAGES
IN THE MAJOR.NAdRATIVE WORKS
OF JOdN GOWER
By

Samuel Taggart Cowling in”

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in.partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1970

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTROIUCTION

I: The Miroir g§.l'0mme

II: The Vox Clamantis

 

III: The Confessio Amantis

 

Conclusion

LIST OF REFERENCES

ii

17

63

97

137

lbs

lNTROIlJCTION

Gower's final resting place in Saint Saviour's in Southwark is
marked by a distinctive tomb. Beneath a canopy lies an effigy of the
poet in repose, and under the head of the figure are three stone vol-
umes, inscribed.with the names of the three long poems upon which

Gower's fame rests-~the Speculum Meditantis, the Vox Clamantis, and

 

 

the Confessio Amantis. Though it is unlikely that Gower would have dis-

 

approved of the mason's tribute, it seems ironic that this simple rep-
resentation should.memorialize a poet whose own works are by no means
simple nor often representational.

Macaulay, who edited those works near the turn of the century,
needed four volumes to complete the job that a mason once accomplished
in three, and the difference suggests perhaps a more accurate symbol
for the kind of writer Gower was. Still, if the quantity of his work
is forbidding, there remain qualities in it that may reward study to-
day. John H. Fisher has not necessarily resurrected Gower for modern
readers, but he has produced.a most enlightening study of the major
theme which is sounded throughout his poetry, "the degradation and
transience of temporal love, which turns reason into bestiality."1

The concern in this dissertation is not specifically with this
theme. Rather, it is with the personages Gower uses to develop his
theme. It is a concern with his art, in other words, or with a large

part of his art, in view of the number of personages that move through

the poems, rather than with.the product of that art.

The purposes of such a study are many. First, the analysis of per-
sonages should act as a check upon the analysis of thought. We are for-
tunate that Professor Fisher's masterful study of Gower's central theme
is available, but a study of the personages should reveal how that
theme is presentedr-in particular, who its spokesmen are and who,
rather than what, it is about. Indeed, as we shall find in the discus-
sion of the EEEEEE.§E.lfQEE§’ the answer to the question, What is the
poem about, cannot be given until we have determined who it is about.

A second purpose of this study of Gower's personages is to deter-
mine the quality of his art. Gower has been frequently condemned as a
dull poet, but he has rarely been accused of incompetence.2 What pre-
cisely the successes and the failures of Gower as a poet are can be de-
termined most legitimately by considering his handling of the same lit-
erary techniques that we consider when judging other writers of narra-
tive. The delineation of personages, of course, is a crucial technique
for any such writer.

A third purpose of this dissertation can only be put forward in
terms of suggestion and implication. Since Gower created such a large
number of personages and, as we shall see, did so in a variety of ways,
the analysis of his technique is likely to shed light upon the achieve-
ments of other medieval poets.

Above all, however, the approach to the subject itself, the analy-

tical method, is at the same time the primary purpose of the study.

The Miroir‘dg lmeme--to use the more familiar title of the

Speculum Meditantis or Speculum Hominis, as it was originally named-~is

 

 

an immense though incomplete poem of nearly thirty thousand lines,
written in French. Macaulay first identified Gower as the author of
this poem, and the ascription has been accepted by all later scholars.
The poem can be divided into three parts, of which only the first will
be examined in detail here. In this first part the moral condition of
man is set in a narrative form in order to show how evil has become a
part of human experience. After describing the birth of Sin and Ibath,
the plot engineered by the DEVil to gain control over Man, and the
Vices and Virtues that are marshalled on one side or the other, the
poet, in the second part of the poem, masses a series of complaints
against the specific evils infecting the various orders of society. Fi-
nally, in the third part of the poem, the last section of which is not
extant, the poet develops a lengthy treatise on the Virgin, through
whose intercession all existing evils can be eradicated.h

This brief description of the poem cannot but mislead, and a more
detailed summary of the Opening part will be provided in the next chap-
ter when the fliggig is analyzed more fully. For the present, however,
the main point to be recognized.is that the first part of the poem dif-
fers from the other two parts formally, though all three contribute to
a single, unified theme. Thus, though personifications appear through-
out the poem, they appear as personages in a narrative only in the
first part. Elsewhere, personifications function in a purely rhetorical
way. Since the narrative of the first part is not taken up again after
the poet has begun to look at the particular evils in the Papal Court
at Home or among the rustic beer brewers in England—-since, that is,

there are no personages in the last two parts of the poem--those parts

will not be analyzed in the chapter devoted to the £33213.

The three parts of the Miroir can be viewed as the poem's struc-
tural components. Each component is relatively self-contained and, in
turn, contains other smaller structures. Accordingly, the structural
components of the first part include the central action of the Ibvil's
plot against Man, several long speeches by the Soul as well as a few
shorter speeches by other personages, and two long descriptions of the
Virtues and the Vices.

The form of the first part--that is, the controlling structural
element through which the chief effect is produced--is narrative. A
story is told to eXplain how the moral universe came into being and
what it consists of. The events narrated, of course, are not histori-
cal, but moral or, perhaps more accurately, psychological--that is,
they take place in the human soul. This psychological eXperience is in-
tended to account for all the evil that appears in the worldL In par-
ticular, the specific evils singled out for complaint in the second
part of the poem are derived from the general principles of evil pic-
tured in action in the first.

Reduced to its barest terms, the doctrine of the first part can be
stated.as follows: the devil is responsible for sin and death and, ul-
timately, for all the evil that exists. He directs all this evil, more-
over, to bring about man's destruction. Man, however, is supported by
his reason and conscience and by the moral virtues that God gives to
reason. Although the form of the first part is narrative, therefore,
involving personages who perform actions and who are thematically re-
lated to one another, the narrativeis obviously translatable into an

expository statement.

Gower portrays the relationships between man, God, and the devil
by personifying the relevant terms and involving them in a narrative.
The actions performed by the personages, then, can be understood as
literalizations of the traditional submerged metaphors in the descrip-
tion of mankind's moral plight. Of the actions whereby the personages
reveal their relationship to one another, the most important are gener-
ation and marriage. The terms of the relationships are produced either
immediately or ultimately by God and the Ibvil and are acquired by Man,
who stands between the two Opposing supernatural forces at the center
of the moral universe. In effect, Gower's achievement is the poetic
classification of this moral universe. The basis for his classification
will be investigated more thoroughly in the next chapter, but the rea-
sons why such an investigation is necessary can be recognized by con-
sidering the device of personification.

"Personification is the attribution of human qualities to animals,
abstractions, or inanimate objects."5 Thus runs a typical definition,
and superficially it seems clear enough, though the inclusion of ani-
mals is perhaps an unnecessary complication. The problem with the usual
definition, however, is that it fails to distinguish among the differ-
ent kinds of concepts and inanimate objects that can be personified.
What sense does it make after all to identify such personages as Sin,
Ieath, and Pride simply as personifications, without considering the
important differences among them.

Personification is used in the {@5213 both extensively and with
great complexity. Except for the supernatural beings, God and the Ibv-
i1, all the personages in the narrative are developed by means of this

device. In general, Gower is careful to allow for the distinctions

.\

6

among his personages, but he does not do so explicitly. Instead, dis-
tinctions are indicated by the different actions the personages per-
form. Of course, the device of personification itself and the basic
metaphors of the birth of Sin and.Ibath.and the marriages of the Vices
to the werld and the Virtues to Reason were ready to the poet's hand,
but in some reSpects Gower's use of the established devices and images
is individual, if not unique.6

The theme of the §§52i£_has received careful attention from Pro-
fessor Fisher, who finds in the poem "a working out of the implications
of reason and personal virtue."7 To this statement of theme, he adds
that in the first part of the poem the chief implications worked out
include "the glorification of reason as the distinguishing feature of
human nature." Other important implications, as we shall discover, are
the cause-effect relationships between God and the Virtues and between
the Ibvil and the Vices and the opposition of these two forces in human
experience.

The special concern of the present study is the function of the
personages in developing these implications. In particular, the device
of personification will be examined, not merely in terms of the actions

of the personages, but also in terms of the natures of the things per-

sonified.

The Vox Clamantis, which Gower wrote in Latin, represents the

 

poet's response to the Peasants' Revolt. The specific historical occa-
sion of this poem, therefore, distinguishes it at once from the Miroir.
The first book, which again will alone receive detailed attention here,

is composed of two visions, connected by a narrative link. The speaker

in the poem first witnesses the transformation of various classes of
peeple into beasts. These beasts, in turn, are further metamorphosed
into monsters, who then gather tOgether to hear an address by one of
their leaders, who appears in the form of a jackdaw. The host then
marches against New Troy, the name given to the city of London, where
the rebellion reaches its climax. Frightened by what he has seen, the
narrator flees aboard a ship and escapes from the land. Once out at
sea, however, the ship is threatened by storms and monsters of the
deep. Finally, the narrator arrives on land again where he finds that
an uneasy'peace has been restored. The remainder of the poem, compris-
ing over ten thousand lines in all, consists of a series of complaints,
organized according to the pattern of the three estates. Since narra-
tive is not employed in this part of the poem, no special attention
will be given to it.

The relationship between the first book of the Vox Clamantis and

 

the rest of the work is analogous to that already noted between the
first and second parts of the £13215. As in the French.poem, so in the
Latin the first part functions as the occasion for the later discussion
of the orders of society and the relationships existing among them.
That is, the Peasants' Revolt, the immediate object of the writer's at-
tention, elicits a response which goes far beyond that particular re-
volt. Clearly, however, the two occasions, the moral condition of the
universe described in the flippig and the specific historical event that
todk place in the southeastern part of Ehgland.in 1381, are of differ-
ent orders. The first is a construct of reason; the second is history.
The first is concerned with causes and is deveIOped according to the

deductive method, while the second deals with effects and follows the

 

 

inductive method.
A second correspondence in the structure of the two works is their

use of the narrative form. Unlike the Miroir, however, the Vox Claman-

 

tis is primarily concerned.with the actions and passions of the person-
ages rather than with the personages themselves. What the personages do
rather than what they are is of importance, but more important than ei-
ther is passion--that is, what happens to them. The greater materiality

of the subject matter of the Vox Clamantis explains the treatment of

 

the personages. Obviously, the rebels cannot be personified because
they are already'persons. Besides, the problem is not to identify and
classify but to analyze the process going on within the rebels' souls.
In fact, one of the chief functions of the device of metamorphosis is
to say something about the soul of the sinner in the act of sinning.
The personages to be studied include the narrator himself, the
various groups that undergo metamorphosis, the defenders in London, and
the helmsman aboard the ship of state. Though less pervasive, the per-
sonages are considerably more complex in the Latin poem than in the
French. This is not to say that the nature of the personages is more

complex; rather, the techniques utilized in the Vox Clamantis--in par-

 

ticular, the use of a narrator who takes part in the action and the de-
vice of metamorphosis--are more involved than is personification.

The appearance of the narrator signals that the point of view here
is entirely different from that taken in therygggégy In.the French poem
the narrator, it is true, frequently comments Jeremiah-like upon the
Vices born to the seven deadly Sins, as well as upon the major Vices
themselves, but he does not have a part to play in the action of the

poem. In the Vox Clamantis, on the other hand, the narrator not only

 

comments upon what he sees but responds physically as well, as, for
example, when he runs away and hides in a cave after the appearance of
the metamorphosed rebels.

Gower's use of metamorphosis is extremely complicated, perhaps ex-
cessively so. The poet uses metamorphosis not only to indicate that
some kind of moral change takes place in the souls of the rebels, but
also to suggest the occupational classes to which the rebels belong and
even the kinds of sins of which they are guilty and which motivate them
for rebelling.

The method of develOping the personages in the Siege of London se-
quence is based upon the popular belief in the Trojan origin of the
Britons. London is New Troy and the entrance of the rebels is treated
as analogous to the treacherous sack of Troy by the Greeks. Cue-names
appear frequently in this section of the narrative.

The last method of deveIOping personages to be considered is
Gower's treatment of the helmsman in the second vision, which is part
of his general development of the ship-of—state metaphor.

Although personages in the Vox Clamantis obviously result from

 

various techniques, most of these techniques are basically alike in that
they begin with particular historical persons or classes of persons:
there is a narrator who takes part in the action; and there are other
personages who can be identified.with the different classes among the
rebels-—peasants and servants, for example--or who point to historical
persons--the Bishop of London and the king. Whereas in the EEEEiE the
poet sought to provide physical and personal characteristics for non—

physical and non-personal things, his task in the Vox Clamantis is to

 

give ideational values to personages based on actual historical persons.

10

Professor Fisher sees the vision of the Peasants‘ Revolt as "an

exemplum of the fearful effects of rebellion against universal

9
order." The first book is "not history but a poet-phiIOSOpher's medi-

tation on the meaning of history. That meaning is clearly that when or-
10
der is not maintained, chaos ensues." These statements on the theme

of the Vox Clamantis are supported by an analysis of the poet‘s methods

 

of developing personages. In particular, the uses Gower makes of meta-
morphosis reveal clearly that he sees in the rebellion a single symptom
of a more extensive moral sickness infecting the world.

Still, one might quibble with Professor Fisher's description of
the first book as a meditation, though he is clearly right when he says
that it is not history. A more accurate term might be "psychological
narrative." The first book is, in fact, the poet's attempt to describe
the spiritual alteration eXperienced by those who took part in the re-
bellion and to record his own moral judgments of the particular effects

of a general condition.

The Confessio Amantis is modelled in many respects upon the Roman

 

.92 lg Eggg. Unlike the [reamer in the French poem, however, the Lover
in Gower's poem meets but two personifications, Youthe and Elde, nei-
ther of whom.plays an important role in the action. Instead, he is con-
fronted by Venus, her priest Genius, and Cupid.

The work consists of a framing action, in the first part of which
the Lover complains to Venus of his unrequited love and is bidden by
her to confess his sins to Genius. In the second part of the frame,
after his confession, he is cured of love by the revelation that he is

an old.man. Between these two frames is the long confession-dialogue

11

between Genius and the Lover, the major portion of which consists of a
series of exempla narrated by the priest and intended to show the vari-
ety of offenses against love. In the exempla particular historical or
legendary personages appear.

The Confessio differs significantly from both the §§£233_and the

Vox Clamantis in form and structure. In the first place, it employs the

 

narrative form throughout, whereas, as we have seen, the other poems do
not. This formal characteristic, moreover, is reinforced by the numer-
ous exempla or short narratives used to illustrate or confirm general
statements which comprise most of Genius' conversation.ll C. S. Lewis
has praised Gower's organizational ability in working out the poetic
structure.l2 Central to this structure are the stories told by Genius
and organized according to the seven deadly sins. As part of his
priestly office, Genius is required to instruct the Lover concerning
the possible offenses against love. To accomplish this end, he asks the
Lover whether he has been guilty of pride, avarice, wrath, and so on in
his treatment of his lady. Each sin is accorded a book, and each book
is then subdivided according to the different particular sins classi-
fied under the generic deadly sin. The effect of this system of classi-
fication is similar to that achieved in the EEZEEZ through the marriage
of the Vices to the World for the production of progenyA-five for BaCh
deadly sins-which partake of their respective mother's nature.

Although the controlling ideas providing the organization of both
the Confessio and the Miroir are similar, more important for the pres-
ent study are the differences between the two poems resulting from con-

trasting methods of depicting personages. In the French poem the terms

designating the sins are personified, and the movement in the

12

development of those personifications is from the general nature of the
sin to the effects of the habit of sin in human behavior. In the
Confessio, on the other hand, no attempt is made to personify the terms
themselves. Instead, stories are narrated in order to clarify the mean-
ing of the sin under consideration. The movement in this case is from
the behavior of particular personages to a general conception of the
evil which their behavior exemplifies.

The personages in the Confessio can be considered under two head-
ings: those that appear in the frame and those that appear in the tales
narrated by Genius. Besides Cupid, Venus, and Genius, the Lover also
sees two companies of lovers led by Youthe and Elde respectively. The
personages in these two companies are drawn from legend and classical
or Biblical history. The personages in the frame, therefore, include
personifications, mythological deities, exemplary figures like Tristan
and Iseult and Ihvid, the Lover himself, and, though she does not ap-
pear in person, his lady. Genius, though associated with the mythologi-
cal beings in the poem, is perhaps best left outside the classification
for the present, since his deveIOpment is a considerably more complex
matter than that of the god and goddess. The personages in the tales
are invariably'particular persons, whether derived from history, myth
or legend.

The personages in the Confessio are both more varied than in the

Rfiroir and more successfully handled than in the Vox Clamantis. The ex-

 

emplary figures who appear before the poet at the end of the poem and
those developed in the exempla during his confession belong to the same
species. Each personage, whatever other meanings may be associated with

him, also includes or is made to include some ideational value having

13

to do with love.

Obviously, the same is also true of Cupid and Venus, though as de-
ities they are clearly set apart from such mortal lovers as Lancelot,
Constance, and the rest. In the delineation of both Cupid and Venus,
but especially the latter, an attempt is made to emphasize particular
aspects of love and.exclude others. Thus, Venus presents, in particu-
lar, maternal love and the power of generation in the world. Such spec-
ifying has the appearance of a freer development by the poet than does,
for example, the specification of Apollonius, whom Genius develops to
point out the nature of an already defined concept--namely, unnatural
love. We are not given any indication beforehand of the precise way in
which Venus will be develOped, as we are with Apollonius. On the other
hand, since Venus is traditionally identified as the goddess of love,
it is clear that there are limitations to the ways she can be por—
trayed.

Like the goddess he serves, Genius is to a certain extent bound by
traditional meanings. In the EEEEE g3 13 §2§e_he played the role of
priest and confessor to Nature. In Gower's poem his role is further
particularized in the direction of counsellor and teacher. The delinea-
tion of Genius, however, is not purely the result of literary tradi-
tion, for he is initially identified as a certain kind of Genius--
namely, as Venus' priest. At one point in the poem, the conflict be-
tween these two characteristics is resolved in favor of his role as
moralizer, and he reveals himself disloyal to Venus.

The delineation of the Lover is in many ways the most interesting
and complex in the poem. Indeed, in an important sense the action of

the poem can be said to effect the specification of the initially

1h

indefinite Lover as the particular poet, John Gower. Thus, the poem
can be described as the record of the making, not of a Lover, but of a
poet.

Professor Fisher sees the theme of the Confessio as one part of a
unified view develOped throughout the three works. This theme, as noted
earlier, is "the degradation and transience of temporal love, which
turns reason into bestiality." Analysis of the delineation of the Lover
in the poem, however, supports such a statement of theme only up to a
point. In that delineation, emphasis is placed upon the primacy of rea-
son in guiding man. The Lover's loss of reason prevents him from under-
standing the relevance of the exempla to his own experience. Only after

he has gained self-knowledge can his reason be restored.

The approach to be followed throughout this dissertation involves
distinguishing between two different modes of deveIOping personages,
which have been designated by the terms "personation" and "figura-
tion."13 In the former, a non-personal element is depicted as a person-
age. Strictly speaking, neither God nor the Ibvil in the {@3213 can be
called personations, therefore, because both are persons to begin with.
Under personation are included personifications of non-substantial
things or accidents-~g.‘g., Leath, Sin, and all her progeny-~0r of
substances-fig.‘g., Body and Soul; and generics like Man.

In figuration a particular person, either real or imaginary, is
the basis for the development of some conceptual value not inherently
attributable to that person. A figuration need not be specified by

name, but it is always nominally individual rather than collective or

abstract-a certain man, not everyman. Virgil in The Invine Comedy is a

 

15

good example of figuration. Obviously the personage in the poem desig—
nates a particular historical person, but his meaning just as obviously
is not limited to the historical, since he becomes a figure of the
classical tradition and the poetic art which Ihnte follows in creating
his own vision of the moral universe.

The distinction between these two modes is of considerable impor-
tance to any study of narrative in which.personages appear, but its
Special value to the study of the narrative literature of the Middle
Ages should be apparent to anyone who has tried to resolve the contra-
dictions resulting from the use of the term "allegory" to describe such

different works as The Iivine Comedy and the Roman 92.;2 Rose. The

 

chasm separating the two "allegories" is at least partly the result of
each.poet having worked.primarily with personages developed through

only one of these modes.

1.

2.

3.
h.
S.

6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

11.

12.

13.

16

Notes to Introduction

John Gower: Meral Philosopher and Friend 9f Chaucer (New York,

196E): P. 914.

G. C. Macaulay, ed. The Complete Works pf John Gower (Oxford, 1899-
1902), II, xx.

 

 

Macaulay, I, xi.
Fisher, p. 93.

Richard E. Hughes and P. Albert Buhamel, Rhetoric: Principles and
Usage (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1967), p. 358.

 

Fisher, p. 16h.
Fisher, p. 167.
Fisher, p. 168.
Fisher, p. 170.
Fisher, p. 173.
Joseph Albert Mesher, The Exemplum in the Early Religious and Id-

dactic Literature g£_England.(New York, 1911), p. l. Mosher dig:
cusses GOwer‘s use of the exemplum on pp. thff.

 

 

The Allegoryf2f_Love (Oxford, 1959): PP. 198—199.

The terms and the distinction are develOped.by Professor Arnold
‘Williams in "Medieval Allegory: An Operational Approach," Poetic
Theory/Poetic Practice, PMMLA, No. 1 (1969), 77-8h.

 

I: The Miroir dg_lf0mme

 

I
The first part of the EEIEE£.§E.liQEES extends from line 205

through line 18372. The poem has never been translated, but Macaulay
provides a summary of the whole work in the Introduction to his edi-
tion. The following summary, more detailed than his, covers only the
first part of the poem. Omitted, however, are the long expository pas-
sages in which the Virtues and the Vices are described, since these
passages neither develop the narrative line of the poem nor contribute

to the poet's own original delineation of the Virtues and Vices.

The Ievil gives birth to a hideous daughter named Sin, whom he
cherishes and raises up himself. This daughter then conceives by the
Ibvil and bears him a son, whom they name Ibath. Together, these three
begin to plot how they may gain control over Man.

In order to increase the Ibvil's progeny, the mother espouses her
son and gives birth to seven daughters--Pride, Envy, Wrath, Avarice,
Accidy, Gluttony, and Lechery. The Ibvil then sends all his children to
the World, whom he wishes to win over to his side. After gaining the
world's support, the [evil calls a parliament of all who are aligned
with him. Each one pledges his aid in the Ibvil's cause, but Leath, who
has promised to destroy the Flesh, points out that the Ibvil himself

must account for the destruction of the Soul.

17

18

At the Ibvil's suggestion, all agree that a messenger should be
sent to Man. This messenger, Temptation, speaks to the heart of Man and
urges him to join the others. Han gives in to Temptation and follows
him to attend the parliament. When Man arrives, everyone seems very
kindly disposed towards him, and the Ibvil offers him whatever he de-
sires as a reward for becoming his servant. Specifically, he offers Man
his daughter, Sin, for a companion. Sin also offers herself to Man, and
then the world adds his promise of anything in his power, if only man
agrees to the Ibvil's request. Ibath, however, conceals himself during
the meeting, since, unlike the others, he does not know how to appear
pleasant. At length, Temptation pleads with Man not to delay accepting
the Ibvil's offer, and the Flesh, for her part, gives in and.pays hone
age to the Devil.

The Soul is greatly displeased with what the Flesh has done and
complains to Conscience. Next, the Soul begins to rail against the
Flesh, warning her that they had been joined tOgether by God. The
Ibvil, she claims, merely wants to trick the Flesh, and she points out
that if the Flesh falls, she, the Soul, must fall also. Finally, she
accuses the whole parliament of being an enemy to the Flesh.

For a moment the Flesh wavers, but she soon forgets the Soul's
warning. Once again, therefore, the Soul urges the Flesh to resist her
enemies and reveals that Ieath is in hiding and waits only to destroy
her.

To counter the Soul's advice, the Ibvil orders Sin and her daugh-
ters to distract the Flesh from thinking about Ibath. The Soul now
turns to Reason and.Fear and complains to them that the Ibvil has hide

den Ibath from the Flesh. Reason and Fear try to approach the Flesh but

19

are Opposed.by Temptation, who stays so close to the Flesh that Reason
is unable to exert any influence upon her. The flesh can think only of
pleasure until Fear leads her to the place where [bath is hiding. When
she sees Ibath, the Flesh is so terrified that she asks to return to
Conscience at once. Fear leads her to Conscience, who in turn conducts
her to Reason. Reason then brings the Flesh.and.the Soul into agreemrnt
so that the latter once again enjoys spiritual health.

When the Ievil realizes that he has been overcome by Reason, he
holds another parliament with Sin and the World. Sin vows to work with
the Werld and with her seven daughters in order to ensnare the Flesh
and win Man back to the Devil's service. All their efforts are unsuc-
cessful, however, as long as Fear opposes them. Finally, the World sug-
gests that if the Seven Vices are given to him in marriage, he will be
able to bring Man under his control. Both the Ibvil and Sin agree imme-
diately to this plan, for they see that through such a marriage the
IbVil's tribe will be increased.

Accordingly, each of Sin's daughters rides to her wedding with the
‘World. First comes Pride, who is mounted on a lion that leaps at the
attendants. Pride's apparel is exceedingly rich, and she wears more
jewels than a meadow in may has flowers. On her left fist she carries
an eagle to signify her desire to outreach all others in pride.

Envy comes next. She rides upon a dog and carries a SpaPrOWhaWk in
moult on her left fist. Her face is pale with hatred, and she wears a
purple mantle on which burning hearts and serpents‘ tongues are embroi-
dered. I

After Envy comes Wrath mounted on a boar and carrying a cock on

her arm. No one accompanies her. She wears a coat of steel and over a

20

thousand.knives hang from her side.

Far behind her riding slowly on an ass, comes Accidy. This daugh-
ter holds an owl on her fist. Beside her she has her couch borne on a
litter. Even though it is her wedding day, she seems somewhat dull and
sleepy.

After Accidy'comes Avarice. She rides upon a goat and carries a
hawk upon one arm and a merlin upon the other. She also carries a great
number of purses filled'with gold.

Gluttony is next. This daughter is borne by a wolf and carries a
kite upon her fist. She also makes sure that plenty of wine is brought
along. Ikunkenness holds the reins of her mount for her and.leads her
forward.

Last of all comes Lechery, who rides upon a young kid and bears a
dove on her arm. Her face is painted and her eyes are cheerful.

At the proper time when all the others have arrived, the World ap-
proaches. It is May, when the goddess Nature revisits the woods and
fields and the birds sing among the trees. The Devil himself makes all
the arrangements for the wedding. He gives all of hell as a dowry. The
mother, Sin, is in attendance too. Only Ieath does not appear. Pluto
and Proserpine sit at the chief table, while Bacchus acts as headwaiter
andeenus takes charge of the bedrooms. Temptation regales the company
with many delightful stories and Gluttony supplies the wine. Minstrels
play music and sing.

'When Man sees the feast, the Flesh is greatly tempted to return to
the Ibvil, but the Soul resists, and so for a time they remain together
in peace. Soon, however, each of the World's nCW'WiVCS gives birth to

five daughters, whose deeds and counsels are opposed to the Spiritual

_ gfi—h ‘—————I—-

21

life. All these children are hermaphrodites.

(At this point, the narrative is interrupted and a long descrip-
tive catalogue of the daughters of the seven Vices and their companions
is inserted. At the conclusion of the catalogue, the narrative is re-
sumed.)

The Ibvil is greatly pleased with all his family and calls them to
a second parliament where he repeats his request for their help. The
‘World immediately vows to use all his strength to overcome Man. Under
attack from the World and his whole family, Flesh stOps listening to
Reason and Conscience. Each Vice plays a part in the attack. Gluttony
bears the standard for Lechery, while Avarice carries a sack of florins
and beats Man with it as if it were a flail. Overcome by these Vices,
Man is led to the castle of Accidy where he enters the Ibvil's service.
All the Vices bring their particular pleasures for the Flesh, and the
gates of the castle are closed against Reason and Conscience.

(Here the poet inserts a much shorter descriptive passage on Sin,
based upon the description of the beast in Revelation.)

When Reason and Conscience are driven from the prison where Man is
held, they go to the Almighty and tell Him all that has taken plnce.
Mercy acts as their advocate before God, who agrees to help them. He
therefore ordains a marriage between His seven daughters and Reason so
that other Virtues might be produced to combat the Vices. With the help
of these Virtues, the Soul will be enabled to free the Flesh from her
prison.

Reason rejoices when he learns what God has ordained and receives
new hope of overcoming the Vices.l On the wedding day Reason wears a

blue garment with white stripes, signifying constancy andlgurity; His

22

cap is sewn with wisdom.

The seven daughters of God are great prizes. As they go to the
church, they are attended by three minstrels--Good~thought, Good—deed,
and Goodpspeech. Conscience acts as the marshall at the wedding, and
Grace-of-God serves as the priest. The former leads the seven Virtues
to the church where they are wed to Reason.

(Here Gower launches into a long descriptive catalogue of the Vir-
tues and the thirtyhfive daughters they give birth to.) At the conclu-’
sion of the description of Chastity, however, the poet does not resume
the narrative, but simply presents a brief summary of the situation
that exists in the world, where

La Char se tret trestout as vices,
ER l'Alme voet que les services 2

Soient au Resoun soulement. (18hO9-ll)

The Flesh is drawn wholly to the Vices, and the Soul desires to be
in the service of Reason alone.

The second.part of the poem, in which the poet analyzes the dif-
ferent estates of society, begins at this point and is intended to show
the results of the continuing struggle between the vices and the vir-

tues in human eXperience.

II
In the Miroir dg'lfggme, Gower puts into human terms a theolOgical
explanation for the origin of the virtues and.vices and for man's role
in‘the great conflict between God and Satan. The human terms are, in
most cases, the result of personation--personification and similar de-

IYices--or, in the cases of God and the Ibvil, the result of attributing

23

human qualities such as speech and familial relationships to non-human
beings. These two modes of personation and figuration, as they have
been designated, are designed to allow the audience to understand more
easily a complicatedp-here, a theological-metaphysical--situation,
since the terms of the situation are either raised or lowered to the
common denominator of human personality.

While the aim of personation and figuration is to simplify the
complex, however, the different terms that are turned into personages
are not themselves defined by being made human. Both personation gener-
ally'and.the particular variety of figuration found in the Miroir in
volve setting up physical limitations for terms and beings normally
lacking such limitations, but neither mode adds to our knowledge of the
significances of these terms and beings. On the contrary, the meanings
of the virtues and vices, to say nothing of God and the devil, must be
understood.beforehand.

“we always anW'when a personification goes wrong or, at least, we
think we do, because we invariably assume a definition for any term
that is personified.against which we compare the behavior of the per-
sonage. Like Tolkien's hobbits, who enjoy reading about what they al-
ready know, we want to see our definition reinforced by the actions of
the personification. We are satisfied, therefore, when in the Psvcho-
Egghig of Prudentius the personage Long-suffering makes no assault upon
‘Wrath, even when she is attacked, because long-suffering by definition
is incompatible with such an action.

The problem for the reader, therefore, is to ascertain the prOper
definition for any term that is the subject of personation. This prob-

lem, however, does not always admit so easy a solution as our example

from Prudentius might suggest. One source of difficulty, particularly
for the student of older literature, is semantic change. Words otvious-
ly may not always have meant what they now mean, as the example of
Ihnger in the Roman de_la Eggg clearly shows. In modern French as in
English, danger means exposure or liability to injury. Its earlier

meaning, however, was domination (danger <: Lat. *dominiarum) or power.

 

Godefroy suggests that the later meaning developed from the older one,
for if someone was under the domination of another, he was liable to
injury from that person.3 In the.§2§i§.§§ la EEEE: the personage Tanger
is described as a rude and churlish old man, who bears a club to ward
off the Lover when the latter has been led to the rose by Fair Welcome.
Inasmuch as he is associated with Shame, Ihnger represents a sense of
inhibition or control that comes from within, rather than from outside,
the beloved. He is part of her psychological make-up. What kind of con-
trol Ihnger presents is indicated by his Special Opposition to Fair
Welcome. In fact, he does not even speak to the Lover; instead, he lim-
its his speech to an attack upon the folly of Fair Welcome, whom he al-
so threatens. The personage, then, suggests the power or domination
that the beloved has over herself, that emotion in her that interferzs
with her desire to greet the Lover with favor.

In the Miroir a comparable, though less extreme, situation arisrs
with the appearance of the personage I: Siecle, the sense of which is
only partly indicated by the English term ”the World." The primary med—
ern meaning of the English term is "the earth or the physical surrounde
ings," but we will get a clearer idea of what Gower has in mind here if

we look at the Old English worold, a form combining the words for ”man"

(wer) and "time" or "life" (ald) and suggesting, not merely the

25

physical surroundings, but all the conditions of existence, the realm
in which man lives.11

A second source of difficulty and one of greater importance to the
present study is the difference between popular and specialized mean-
ings of terms. A case in point is the personage Sin. In the poem Sin is
initially defined as nothing:

nient en soy comprent
Le noun du pecché soulement,
Car pecche tous biens anientist. (58-60)

Nothing, in itself, involves the name of sin alone, for sin annihi-
lates everything good.

And further:
Nient est pecche 1y desloyals,
Car par son vuill et ses consals

Volt anientir quanque fist dieux. (70-72)

Nothing is sin, the disloyal, for by its will and its counsels it
wishes to annihilate whatever God makes.

Clearly, it does not help much in this context to understand.by sin
merely the conventional meaning of a transgression against God's law.
As a matter of fact, a long tradition of theological and philosophical
discussion lies behind Gower's definition of sin as nothing. The Bibli-
cal text at the center of this tradition is John 1:3-h. The Vulgate
reads: "ania per ipsum facta sunt: et sine ipso factum est nihil, quod
factum est. In ipso vita erat." The passage can be translated: "All
things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was
made. In him was life.‘ In the Middle Ages, however, the passage was
usually read with a full stop after "nihil" and.then, 'Quod factum est
in ipso, vita erat." Tgat is, “Without him, nothing was made. What was

made in him was life." Sin, therefore, is nothing--that is, not merely

insubstantial, but non-being--and this definition of sin must be kept

26

in mind when considering the personage Sin.

If Gower's explicit identification of sin as nothing were the only
element to be considered, there would.be no difficulty in this passage.
But Sin, the personage, is also the daughter of the Ibvil:

Ly deable, qui tous mals soubtile

Et trestous biens hiet et revile,

Ib sa malice concevoit

Et puis enfantoit une file,

Q'ert tresmalvoise, laide et vile,

La quelle Pecche noun avoit. (205-10)

The Ievil, who contrives all wickedness, and hates and reviles

everything good, conceived out of his malice and afterwards gave

birth to a daughter, who was very evil, ugly, and vile and.who was

named Sin.
Here is confusion compounded, for if the relationship between the Ievil
and Sin is that of father and daughter, then, since sin is nothing, the
devil must be the father of nothing. This idea may be no easier to vis-
ualize than the earlier one of the nothingness of sin, but as before,
so now Gower is following a perfectly traditional line of reasoning
concerning the nature of angels. Unlike his eXplicit definition of sin
as nothing, however, which tells the reader exactly how the term is to
be understood, the poet's definition of the angelic nature is left un-
stated.

The devil, of course, is a fallen angel, but just as a man who
sins retains his human nature, so the devil retains his angelic nature

6
after the fall (§.‘T., I, I, Sh, 3, ad 3). The reasoning concerning
angels during the Middle Ages was not restricted to the question of how
many could dance on the head of a pin. On the contrary, that more noto-
rious question had grown out of a long tradition of metaphysical Specu-

lation. According to this tradition, an angel can be defined as an in-

corporeal and immaterial substance (§. 2,, I, I, SO, 1 and 2). Such a

 

27
substance, however, is incapable of generating another substance (§.
1., I, I, 50, h). Thus, it is perfectly logical for Gower to portray
the Ievil, a spirit, as the father of Sin, because sin is nothing and
the devil can generate nothing.

The delineation of Sin is thus a bit more complex than might at
first appear. In ordbr to understand the poet's treatment of this per-
sonage, one cannot simply consider the effect of personification. One
must first ascertain the meaning of the term-~that is, the way medieval
writers were accustomed to define sin and devils. We must approach
Gower's development of personages, therefore, in a roundabout way, by
preparing for analysis with an investigation into the terminology em-
ployed.by the poet. Only after such an investigation has been com-
pleted, can we safely consider the actions, statements, and relation-
ships attributed to the personages in the narrative.

Obviously, we cannot hope to examine every medieval work that says
something about the terms personified in the 515223) but we must consi-
der at least a few representative works if we expect to have an under-
standing of the S(MEntiC basis for Gower's personages. Our task is made
easier, fortunately, through the existence of two elaborate traditions
from the period being considered. The more pOpular of the two is the
sermon tradition, which is adequately represented for the purpose by

7

the Summa Praedicantium of John Bromyard. More remote from Gower's

 

milieu, yet of considerable importance because of the care with which
terms are defined in it, is the field of scholastic philOSOphy and the-
ology. In this field, of course, the works of Thomas Aquinas are pre-
eminent. Both writers develop specialized definitions for many of the

terms found in Gower's poem; in addition, the analysis of being into

[D

28

categories, a special province of scholasticism, is, as we have found
in the cases of Sin and the Ibvil, especially valuable for understand-
ing the relationships between different personages.

As the title of his work indicates, Bromyard discusses such terms
as world, virtue, sin, and the rest from the point of view of the prea-
cher, frequently using familiar exempla and images to clarify the mean-
ings of those terms. One of the values of his work, therefore, is as a
repository for many of the commonplaces of medieval mpral thought. For
example, a comparison of the personage Temptation with Bromyard's arti-
cle on Tentatio leads to the predictable conclusion that the descrip-
tion of Temptation as a messenger of the Ibvil is not original with the
poet. When Bromyard notes that Satan "in tempting uses many wiles some-
times . . . by sending his messengers," we are not far from the per-
sonage.

In the poem, however, Temptation, like Lady Meed, has more than
one meaning. Although sent by the Ibvil, he soon becomes the temptation
of the flesh. Man is tempted in particular by promises of pleasure and
joy. Temptation asks him:

a quoy vas tariant
De recevoir tiele ameisté,
Ibnt tu pourras toutdis avant
Avoir le corps par tout joyant
Sanz point d'aucune adversete? (SOO-SOh)
Why are you delaying to receive such friendships through which you
can forever after maintain your body in every joy without any ad-
versity'whatsoever?
And afterwards, the Flesh, not Man, gives in to Temptation:
Dbnt l'omme quant i1 l‘entendi,
Au tiele vie doulce et mole

La char, q'estoit salvage et fole,
Tantost de sa part consenti. (513-516)

29

Therefore, when he had listened to him, the Flesh, which was savage
and foolish, consented for its part to such a sweet and easy life.

This behavior by Temptation and the Flesh is clearly derived from a
distinction among different kinds of temptation, such as this one by
Bromyard: "The flesh offers me comforts, the world vanities, and the
devil despair."9

Basing their studies ultimately upon The Categories of Aristotle,

lO
scholastic philosophers divided being into substance and accident.

 

Substance itself might be considered in a number of ways. For example,
it could be singular, universal, or multiple. Of the personages in the
E13215: three--God, the Ibvil, and the World--are singular or, as they
were also termed, first substances; only Man is a universal or second
substance, since the term "man" refers, not to an individual, but to
the Species; while no multiple or collective substances appear. Sub-
stance could also be either simple or compound, God and the [evil being
simple substances and Man a compound of some kind, although there was a
good deal of disagreement about the precise nature of his composition.
The controversy, fortunately, is not important to this study. Finally,
a substance could be living, like the Ibvil, or non-living, like the
Werld, and complete or incomplete. The Flesh, for example, can be un-
derstood as an incomplete substance.

There are nine kinds of accidents: quality, relation, quantity,
action, passion, place, time, posture, and habitus or natural adjuncts.
Most of the remaining personages in the poem fall under one or another
of these categories. In particular, the last named accident, habitus,

11
is the defining term for the virtues in both Thomas and Aristotle.

The implications of all this metaphysical analysis for the study

30

of personation should not be overlooked. Personation has been used as a
generic term for a number of more or less related devices for project-
ing personages. Common to all the devices is their purpose of develop-
ing personages having concrete and specific attributes. Personifica-
tion, for example, is usually defined as the attribution of human char-
acteristics to an abstract concept. The question arises, however, What
exactly is an abstract concept?

The question points up a serious problem in analyzing personation
in medieval literature--namely, the difference between modern and me-
dieval attitudes toward the abstract and the real. In Gower, persona-
tions are not all of the same order. Not only do they differ from one
another according to their actions, as the characters in a novel might
differ; they also differ according to their categories. Herein lies the
Special value of the scholastic treatment of the ontological catego-
ries-~aamely, that it provides a means of classifying the varieties of
personation.

An objection might be raised against the method prOposed here of
referring to the ontological categories in order to determine the defi-
nitions of the personages, inasmuch as the use of the categories can
hardly be described as an approach by means of the more familiar. There
seem to be no alternatives. The fact is that the distinctions of modern
science, which are nearest to hand, will obviously be useless in expli-
cating God and Satan. A knowledge of modern psychology may be valuable
in a discussion of the virtues and vices, insofar as they appear in
man, but the problem is that in the first part of the Miroir they are
not so localized. Instead, they are seen as originating in the mind of

God or in the union of Sin and Lhath.

 

_.

31

After the birth of Sin, Gower describes the birth of Ibath:

Tant perservoit le deble a gre

Sa jofne file en son degre

Et tant luy fist plesant desport,

Ibnt il fuist tant enamoure

Que sur sa file ad engendre

Un fils, que l'en appella Mort. (217-222)

The Ibvil, on his side, so trained his young daughter to pleasure

and had such pleasant ddsport with her, of whom he had become

greatly enamoured, that upon his daughter he engendered a son, whom

he named Death.
In the Middle Ages, death, like sin, was classified as non-substantial.
Most often, it was viewed as a type of substantial change, of which a
second.type was generation. In one sense, then, the birth of Ibath--
that is, the generation of perishing--can be understood as a verbal
contradiction and is thus consistent with the earlier contradictions
involved in the personation of Sin or nothing and in the representation
of a being of the angelic order as capable of generation.

From another point of view, death was frequently defined as the

privation of life, just as sin was often understood as the privation of

that which properly belongs to the soul. Thus, in the Enchiridion

 

Augustine defines all evil as privation: "What, after all, is anything
we call evil except the privation of good?" and answering his own ques-
tion, he adds, "Whatever defects there are in a soul are privations of
a natural good."l2

Privation is also the common term found in the definition of the
vices. In other words, each vice was considered a privation of a par-
ticular virtue. Speaking of the effect of the vices upon originally
good.natures, Augustine asks: "For how do they hurt them but by depriv-
ing them of integrity, beauty, welfare, virtue, and, in short, whatever

13

natural good vice is wont to diminish or destroy?" Appropriately,

 

32
then, the seven Vices are described as the offspring of Sin and Ibath,
the arch-privatiens:
Pour plus avoir de ses norris,
La miere espousa son enfant:

Si vont sept files engendrant. (233- 235)

In order to have more offspring, the mother married her son: thus,
Seven daughters were engendered.

Although the privative aspect of the Vices is implicit in the at-
tribution of a relationship between them and Sin and.Ibath, Gower's
treatment of the seven deadly Vices and their progeny does not empha-
size it. On the other hand, the negative, as distinguished from their
privative, aspects are frequently stressed. Pride, for example,

plest en nul office,
Ainz loigns des tous biens perira. (2519- 2520)

is happy in no office, but will die far from all that is good.
It is an infirmity and a form of madness (2521-25). Envy is unnatural

and

de l'alme la figure
Envie fait desfigure. (3771-3772)

Fhvy makes the shape of the soul disfigured.
Accidy or Sloth is called after its father "morte en humaine vie," and,
addressing it, the poet says,

Ton cuer deinz soy nul bien desire,

Ta main a nul bon oevre tire,

Ton oill 1e bien ne poet voir,

T'oraille auci n 'el poet oir,

Neis que ta bouche lais ovrir

Pour bien contier ne pour bien dire,

lbs pies aler ne revenir

Te fais pour bien, sique merir

N'as membre qui te poet souffire. (6160-5158)

Your heart desires nothing good in itself, your hand lifts to do no
good deed, your eye cannot see the good, nor can your ear hear it,
You do not Open your mouth to speak well, and you neither go one
way or another to do good, and so you have not a single member that
can suffice you for merit.

 

33

in

‘Wrath and Lechery are treated in like fashion.

Lest this analysis mislead, it should be pointed out that Gower
dbes not restrict his description of the Vices to a list of their nega-
tive aSpects only. Gluttony and Avarice, for example, are never re—
ferred to in negative terms, and it is difficult to imagine how he
could have completely avoided using metaphors and similes that imply
the substantiality of the Vices. Thus, just before the definition of
Accidy cited above, the Vice is called a hosteller,

Qui fais ta maisoun ramoner,
Que n'y remaint aucun vertu. (61h6-6lh7)

who sweeps clean your house so that not a virtue remains there.
Yet even here the poet seems to be re-enforcing the idea that the vice
is connected with privation. The image echoes a parable recorded in
both Matthew and Luke. According to the former,
when an unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh
through dry places seeking rest and findeth none.
Then he saith: I will return into my house from whence I came
out. And coming he findeth it empty, swept and garnished.
Then he goeth and taketh with him seven other spirits more 15
wicked than himself: and they enter in and dwell there. (12, hB-hS)
Because accidy involves the absence of any interest in virtue, the soul
afflicted with this vice becomes, as both evangelist and poet indicate,
an empty place, fit only for the indwelling of demons.

All in all, Gower makes sufficient reference to the negative as-
pects of the vices to keep before the reader‘s eyes the ontological re-
lationship between the Vices and Sin and Ieath. The cumulative effect
of his descriptions is to establish under the leadership of the Ievil

an immense force of privations and negations whose ontological and the-

ological antithesis will be the fulness of being which is God.

 

3h

God himself, then, is the origin of the Virtues:
11 ot sept files proprement,
Les quelles des tous biens doez
-Au Resoun donna franchement
En marriage. (1006h-10067)

He had seven daughters of his own, endowed with all good qualities,
and these God gave freely to Reason in marriage.

As has been pointed out, the virtues are accidents--acts, habits, or
qualities, depending on which system one follows--that belong to a sub-
stance. Here they are attributed to God as relations--namely, his
daughters. In contrast to the Vices, therefore, the Virtues must be
considered real. The Platonic origin of this view is less important
here than the fact that the reality of the Virtues follows logically
from the reality of God, just as the un-reality of the Vices follows
logically from that of Sin.

Gower's treatment of the Virtues is, of course, not that of a
philOSOpher or theologian. He makes no attempt, for example, to explain
how the Virtues derive their existence from God; he simply attributes a
relationship between them. Frequently, however, his descriptions of the
Virtues imply a theological background. His selection of Humility as
the first of the Virtues is a case in point. Thomas explicitly denies
that humility is the greatest of the virtues, but there is a sense, he
says later, in which humility "holds the first place":

Just as the orderly assembly of virtues is, by reason of a
certain likeness, compared to a building, so again that which is
the first step in the acquisition of virtue is likened to the foun-
dation, which is laid before the rest of the building. Now the vir-
tues are in truth infused by God. Wherefore the first step in the
acquisition of virtue may be understood in two ways. First by way
of removing obstacles: and.thus humility holds the first place, in-

asmuch as it expels pride, which God resisteth, and makes man sub-

missive and.ever open to receive the influx of Iivine grace. (S.
T., II, II, 161, 5, 3g 2)

35
On Paul's authority, charity was held to be the greatest of the

virtues. Gower refers to both the apostle and his teaching in his dis-
cussion of this Virtue:

’sur tout bien doit porter pris
La Charite par droit devis. (132Sh-132SS)

Over every good, Charity should bear the first place according to
right Opinion.

But to the above the poet adds the non-scriptural comment that

C'est celle q'ad deinz soy compris
Toutes vertus en general. (13256-13257)

It is this daughter who within herself comprises all the virtues in
general.

Here the poet's statement falls in line with an important theological
tradition, more fully developed in Thomas, who writes:

Charity is the mother and the root of all the virtues, inasmuch as
it is the form of them all. (s. T., II, I, 62, h)

No special claims can be made for the function of imagery in sug-
gesting the reality of the Virtues. As was pointed out earlier, imagery
almost invariably implies reality and substance. Still, Gower's de-
scriptions of the Virtues often seem designed to show that they are
living things in contrast to the Vices whose origin is Ibath. Most of
these descriptions involve comparisons between the Virtues and different
kinds of substance, especially living substances like trees and animals.
Humility, for example,

A l'arbre belle et fructuouse
Est resemblable en sa covine. (l2hSB-12h59)

is similar in disposition to a beautiful and fruitful tree.
The palm tree, especially, is a figure of this Virtue (12h69-80), while
the humble man is like a good sheep (thBl). Charity is

oil bon hospiteller,

 

36

Far qui se volt dieus herberger
El ventre d'une vierge humeine. (13231-13233)

that good host because of whom God wished to lodge himself in the
womb of a human maiden.

And Courage is

du leon plus est hardy,
Et d'oliphant plus fort assetz. (lSlOb-lSIOS)

more daring than the lion and stronger by far than the elephant.
There seems to be little need for multiplying examples of this point,
howrver. More significant in any case is Gower's attribution of a mari-
tal relationship between the Virtues and Reason and his account of the
offspring of their union.

Thomas argues that ”virtue which directs man to good as defined by
the Invine Law, and not by human reason, cannot be caused in us by hu-
man acts, the principle of which is reason, but is produced in us by
the Ifivine operation alone" (§°.3°: II, I, 63, 2). The precise location
of this divine Operation is elsewhere identified as the reason or mind
(§, 2., II, I, 55, h, 3g 3). Together these two points provide the eth-
ical basis for Gower's description of God's bestowal of his daughters,
the Virtues, upon Reason in marriage. In fact, one scholar's interpre-
tation of Thomas' treatment sup;lies a gloss for Gower's treatment as
well: "God infuses the virtues into man . . . through the medium of
reason, which then acts as an efficient cause to move man toward God as
to a final cause."16

Behind Gower's distinction between those Virtues derived from God
and those produced by the union of the seven Virtues with Reason
stretches the field of special ethics. Moralists distinguished among

the theological, the intellectual, and the moral virtues. The theolog-

ical virtues of faith, hOpe, and charity are, as Thomas puts it,

 

-x- a”

 

37

"entirely from without" (§.'I., II, I, 63, 1). They must be given by
God and are in no way natural to man. It is perhaps relevant here to
note that elsewhere Thomas says that charity is impossible without
faith and hope (§, 23’ II, I, 65, S). A similar idea may be behind
Gower's omission of faith and hOpe from his list of Virtues, since the
mention of Charity can be taken to stand for all three theological vir-
tues.

As the poem makes clear, some virtues can be produced in man. Ac-
cording to Thomas, "Human virtue directed to the good which is defined
according to the rule of human reason can be caused by human acts: in-
asmuch as such acts proceed from reason, by whose power and rule the
aforesaid good is established" (§.‘2., II, I, 63, 2). Herein lies the
basis for Gower's distinction between the infused and the natural vir-
tues.

Ehen at his first appearance, the World is described as "false"
(28b). The Ibvil has sent his children to the World, hOping to win the
latter over to his side:

Pecche la fole et la salvage
Ses propres files du putage
Parmy'le Siecle convoia. (280-282)

Sin, the foolish and savage, sent her own daughters, born in
shame, to the World.

The World is easily seduced, first by Sin and her daughters and later
by the Ibvil himself, who

Tant luy promist, tant luy dona,

Que l'un a l'autre s'acorda,

Em le firont entrejurer. (328-330)

promised him so much and gave him so much that they became allied
and swore oaths to each other.

The World then attends the Ibvil's parliament to plan Man's downfall

38

(3hh-h5), and there he promises to aid the Ibvil. He even makes a
Speech before the assembled forces:

Je fray . . . ma tricherie

Le la richesce et manantie

Que je retiens en mon pooir;

Du quoy trestout a ton voloir

Cel homme porray decevoir.

Eu bien promettre faldray mie

Qu‘il doit trestoute joye avoir,

Mais en la fin, sachiez du voir,

Je le lerray sanz compaignie. (376-38h)

I shall perform my treachery through the wealth and possessions
that I keep in my power; with them I shall be able to deceive this
Man and turn him wholly to your will. I shall not fail to promise
that he should have his every desire, but you can be sure that in
the end I shall leave him without a thing.

The World keeps his promise and.plays a key part in tempting Man:

Et puis le Siecle du noblesce
Promist a l'omme sa largesce,

Bk si luy dist pour plus cherir:
'He, homme, asculte ma promesse,
Ie moun avoir, de ma richesse

Te fray molt largement richir.
Car 81 mon consail voes tenir,
Tu dois no capitain servir;

Et s'ensi fais, je t'en confesse
Que prest serray pour sustenir
Solonc que te vient au plesir

Ta vie plaine de leesce.' (h69-h80)

And then the World, out of his magnificence, promised Man his boun-
ty and.thus spoke to him in order to encourage him the more: "Man,
listen to my promise. With my possessions and my riches, I shall
make you very wealthy. For if you are willing to follow mt counsel,
you should serve our captain; and if you do this, I confess to you
that for it I shall be ready to maintain you in a life full of de-
light according as it shall please you.

The World‘s most important role, however, is as husband to the seven
deadly Vices and as father to their thirtyhfive children. The World
himself first suggests the arrangement to the Ievil:
falsement
Le Siecle par compassement

Au deable faisoit assavoir.
Il dist que c'il a son voloir

 

39

Les files Pecche poet avoir

Eh mariage proprement,

N‘estoet doubter q'a son espoir

Il entrera tiel estovoir,

Ibnt l'omme ert tout a son talent. (796—80h)

Falsely, the WOrld by contrivaice made a suggestion to the Ibvil

and said that if he could have the daughters of Sin under his com-

mand in a prOper marriage, there was no doubt that he would under-

take to bring Man wholly under his control.
Finally, after the birth of the thirtybfive'worldly Vices, the World
renews his promise to bring about the downfall of Ken and leads a sec-
ond attack, which this time is successful and which leads Reason to
make his suit to God.

The delineation of the World as actively evil--Sin even calls him
"soubtil' (823)--is, to be sure, a commonplace in medieval literature.

A Werld allied with the [evil also appears, to cite but one example, in

the Ehglish morality, The Castle 2; Perseverance; but such treatment,

 

 

while conventional, is not quite orthodox. The scholastic tradition, in
fact, which consistently stresses the value of existence, defines the
world as a good.

Ehrlier we noted that French siecle, like the older meaning of
English worold, points to "world" in the sense of all the deceptive as-
pects of material mutability, and clearly the term is used in such a
sense in the EEEQEEP A more complete treatment of this sense of "world"
is to be found in the preaching tradition. Bromyard, for example, be-
gins his discussion of flundu§_by stressing its ugliness and later he
points out: "Just as the world is wretched, and is wretched in form and

in shape, so it is wretched, changeable, and very dangerous in for-

tune." Elsewhere, Bromyard contrasts the servants of the World, the
18
Flesh, and the Ibvil with the servants of God.

ho

Still, one can detect some disparity between the active malevo-
lence of the Werld as delineated by Gower and the descriptions of the
world even in Bromyard, for the latter, after all, never explicitly
aligns the world itself with the enemies of God. The disparity is par-
ticularly evident in those scenes in the poem in wiich the World is
tempted by Sin and a little later by the [evil and.in which the World
suggests the marriage between himself and the seven deadly Vices.

The delineation of the personage World is, in fact, incompatible
with the meaning of the term "world." It is not that this term fails to
suggest to the modern reader the force for evil attributed to it in the
poem; it would no more have suggested precisely such a force to a me-
dieval reader, who would have been no better prepared than we are to
eXplain how or with what the Ihvil won the World over to his side.

The wretchedness of the world, as Bromyard calls it, the sense in
which it is a force for evil, is clearly set forth by Thomas, who
writes: "The flesh and the world are said to tempt as the instruments
or matter of temptations; inasmuch as one can know what sort of man
someone is, according as he follows or resists the desires of the
flesh, and according as he despises worldly advantages and adversity"
(§-.2°: I, I, 11h, 2). In other words, the world is evil insofar as man
chooses the world instead of God.

This is not to say that the WOrld cannot legitimately perform any
actions whatsoever. Whatever else personation may accomplish, its pri-
mary function is to allow for action. But it does not allow for every
action, as the earlier example of Long-suffering makes clear. The World

can tempt Man, just as it does in The Castle 2f Perseverance, but it

 

cannot be tempted nor can it propose marriages. Such actions are not

 

.._ _ _ V“

bl

contrary to the meaning of "world" in the same way that an offensive
action would be contrary to the meaning of "long-suffering"; rather,
they are incompatible with that meaning.

It is not difficult to understand what has taken place here. The
temptation of the World by Sin and the Ibvil and the subsequent prOpos-
al of marriage by the World represent attempts to supply motivation for
two developments necessary to the narrative. First, all the evil forces
that lead.man away from God must be aligned.with and subordinated to
the Ibvil in order to keep before the reader the central cosmic strug-
gle between God and Satan. But the choice is made to answer the ques-
tion: How is the World related to the Ibvil's work? The answer is the
temptation scene.

The delineation of the World in The Castle of Perschrance is in-

 

 

structive at this point. The play implicitly reflects that the World
and the Ibvil are aligned, not in intention, but in effect; for in the
play the World is kept apart from the Ibvil, or Belyal, as he is
called, and has his own scaffold. The World actively tempts Mankind
during the course of the play, but the question that Gower chooses to
deal with is wholly ignored by the dramatist.

The second development for which Gower provides motivation is the
marriage of the World and the seven deadly Vices along with the subse-
quent birth of the thirty-five worldly Vices. This develOpment comp
prises half a pattern, the other half of which is comprised by the mar-
riage of the Virtues to Reason and the birth of the rational Virtues.
The selection of the World, instead of the IEvil, as the one who pro-
poses the marriage is obviously balanced by Reason's suit to God. From

the point of view of mimetic action, the selection is, perhaps,

h2

Justifiable, since the prospective groom might normally be expected to
suggest marriage rather than the grandfather-in-law. But an interesting
paradox arises here, for mimesis, when introduced into the delineation
of a personation, produces less, not more, verisimilitude. A persona-
tion may not be developed in the same ways as a character in a typical
nineteenth-century novel. In the novel plausible character motivation
is expected, but such motivation is quite irrelevant to the depiction
of personations. What is necessary to the latter is simply behavioral
conformity to linguistic usage. In the present case, the behavior of
the World is the result of a misunderstanding of that personage's rela—
tionship with the Ibvil. This relationship of grandson-in-law to grand—
father-inplaw reflects, not a figure of speech, but a figure of
thought. It is as if Prudentius, after identifying Long-suffering as a
warrior of God, had developed the warrior image independently, without
taking into consideration the semantic basis of the term "long-suffer—
ing."

The aesthetic of mimesis, in fact, is not the best guide in ana-
lyzing personation. Though the World may seem more developed and, in a
romantic sense, more interesting than many other personages in the
poem, the departure of the World from its semantic base involves a flaw
in its delineation. To put the matter crudely but literally, Gower has
forgotten what he is writing about.

It should not be inferred from the preceding discussion that a
poet who works with personation is prevented from displaying any origi-
nality by departing from the linguistic currency of the day. A Jean de
Meun, for example, can forge any number of semantic changes upon the

anvil of personation. But to do so requires special techniques. The

h3

immense erudition displayed by Reason and Nature in the BEE§2.§E la
Eggs is required in order to demonstrate the complexity of their signi-
ficance. Such erudition, in fact, is preferable to action because it is
more economical, though this may seem a surprising word to use about
Jean de Meun.

The difference between the World and the Ibvil‘s brood is ontolog-
ical; for the World, though insubstantial, is not a privation nor a ne-
gation, as Sin, Ibath, and the Vices are. Rather, it is the spirit of
the age in which Man lives. Gower sets up a Special Opposition between
the Werld and Reason. The former becomes the husband of the seven dead-
ly Vices and the father of the worldly Vices.l9

The ontological mixture of the Werld and the seven deadly Sins re-
sults in the creation of monsters--the hermafiuxritic worldly Vices.
This sexual image or hermaphroditism corresponds, therefore, with the
contrary natures of their parents. Just as the union of the insubstan-
tial World with the privations-~the Vices--is a logical monstrosity,
the combination of contrary terms, so the thirtyafive worldly Vices are
biological monsters, the combination of contrary sexes:

Naiscont du merveillous semblant;

Car de nature a leur naiscant

Trestous sont mostre hermafodrite. (lOZb-lO26)

They were born in an amazing way; for by nature at their birth, all
are hermaphrodite monsters.

Aside from this sexual characteristic, however, there are no other
suggestions of any categorical difference between the children of the
seven deadly Vices and those Vices themselves. Of the thirtyafive, only

Fall Semblant is grammatically distinguishable, a participle in con-

trast to the substantival designation of the others; and even here no

14b

distinction is probably intended, since the word "semblant' frequently
appears in the poem as a substantive meaning "appearance." This excep-
tion, then, merely proves the rule that the thirty-five Vices are of
the same order of being as their mothers.

The worldly Vices are associated in various ways with still other
Vices. For example, Tengoun, the second daughter of Wrath, is said to

have such friends and associates as Rampone, Esclandre, Ibsfamer, In-

 

quietacioun, and Contumelie. Some of the daughters have an even wider

 

acquaintance; in the section devoted to Covoitise, over twentyafive
personages appear.

In many instances personification of the worldly Vices and their
companions consists in little more than the act of naming. Impatience,
for example, is mentioned as one of the servants of Melancholy (3593),
the first daughter of Wrath, but she is not developed further. Instead,
a description is given of the impatient person, "l'Impacient." This
habit of shifting from the personified concept to the person who pos—
sesses the vice--a projection-~effectively destroys the basic narrative
structure in this section of the poem. By introducing projections,
which are almost "characters" in the TheOphrastian sense, the poet
moves from a less to a more concrete level. In its lf, such a movement
need not create any problem for a writer. Spenser manages in The Faerie
23333 to move between various levels of abstraction. His personifica-
tions, however, are almost always isolated in space. Gower, on the
other hand, makes no attempt to isolate his personifications, and so
there is no way for the projections to come into contact with them.
Their relationship remains, accordingly, strictly rhetorical and seman-

tic rather than metaphorical and part of the narrative action.

hS

Such shifting from the personification to the person who typifies
the vice in question is quite general throughout this sectirn of the
poem. The most extreme case appears in the treatm nt of Avantance, the
fourth daughter of Pride, where development is limited to three lines:

La quarte file enorguillant
Par tous ses ditz s'est avantant;

Pour ce son noun est Avantance. (1729-1731)

The fourth daughter, filled with pride, vaunts herself in all her
Speech, whereby her name is Avantanee.

The remainder of the section, over two hundred and fifty lines, is
given over to a description of the perSon who becomes this daughter's
lover.

Surprisingly, Gower‘s performance in this section of the poem has
been praised recently by Professor Wenzel in his study of Sloth in me-
dieval literature. Gower's Miroir, he writes, "furnishes a good examile
of characterization by description."20 Professor Wenzel, however, has
Confused characterization with definition. Gower, perhaps, does descrire
Accidy more effectively than most other writers, but he does not charac-
terize Accidy effectively at all. What Gower does is to shift back and
forth between the description of the personage Accidy and the descrip-
tion of the projection, the slothful man.

Although God and the Ibvil are engaged in a struggle for Man's al-
legiance, the generic personage Man appears but briefly in the narra-
tive. Instead, a number of personages-—Flesh, Soul, Reason, Conscience,
and Fear--divide most of the human action. GOWer's approach in this in-
stance can be contrasted both with Prudentius' and with that of the au-

thor of The Castle 2f Perseverance. Man makes no appearance in the

 

Psychomachia, where the combat between the Vices and Virtues receives

full attention. In the morality, on the other hand, the center of

to

attention from the beginning is Nhnkind, while the role of the Vices is
subordinated.

Gower, it seems, has attempted to develop both narrative lines;
and the results, while unfortunate, are instructive. What Gower's at-
tempt amounts to is a shift in point of view from the story of Man to
the alignment of forces preparatory to a psychomachia. One conclusion
that may be drawn here is that the appearance of Man requires that he
be the central personage and precludes the development of the psycho-
machia or of any other narrative line in which Man is not central as
the main action.

The initial division of Man into Body or Flesh and Soul can lead
to two different actions. One of these is the debate, such as one finds

in the Middle English Ihbate between the Body and Soul and in the clos-

 

ing scene in The Castle of Perseverance when Soul appears from under

 

 

the bed and engages in a debate with Mankind, who apparently becomes
something like Body for the occasion.

In the £23213, however, only the Soul speaks, while the Flesh re-
mains silent. This action points to a different tradition, that of the
Soul's address to the Body. Early examples of this tradition are the
Old Bhglish poems from the Eketer and Vercelli Books.

After the Flesh has given in to Temptation, the Soul appears and
at once launches into a lengthy attack against the Flesh, claiming that
she has usurped the Soul's rule and warning her against trusting the
Ibvil and his allies (S29-6b8). The Soul's speech is, of course, a
means of delineating her, and.both the device and the delineation are
perfectly orthodox.

What is distinctive about the episode is the silence of the Flesh.

h?
The Flesh does perform several actions that imply intelligence of some
sort. Thus, as noted above, she consents to Temptation. Later, after
listening to the Soul's first speech,

La Char s'estuit et se pensa,
Et en partie s'esmaia

re ce que l'Alme a luy disoit.
Mais dlautrepart quant regarda
Les autres, tant s'en delita,
Que pour voirdire ne savoit

Au queu part trere se pourroit.
Mais au Pecche quant remiroit,
Ie son amour tant suspira

Et d'autrepart tant covoitoit
Le Siecle, qu'il tresoublia
Tout qanque l'Alme a luy precha. (613-2h)

The Flesh was silent and thought, and in part she was dismayed.by
What the Soul had said to her. Yet, at the same time, when she con-
sidered the others, she took such delight in them that, to tell the
truth, she did not know to which side she should lean. But when she
looked back again upon Sin, she sighed so for her love and at the
same time was so desirous of the World, that she completely forgot
What the Soul had told her.
But she never says anything directly, nor is there any report of her
being able to communicate with the other personages. Of COUPSE, the
fact that she does not speak does not necessarily mean that she cannot
speak; yet, since amongthe personages involved in the action here, only
the Flesh fails to speak, we have reason to suspect that she does
indeed lack this faculty.

In order to have some idea of the significance of the Flesh's si-
lence, we must understand something of the significance of speech in
the.Middle Ages. Thomas writes that "speech manifests to another what
lies hidden to another" (§. 2,, I, I, 107, l, 359 1). Now it is clear
that since certain things, such as the intentions of the Ibvil, are

hidden from the Flesh, it is apprOpriate for the Soul and later Reason

to speak to her. At the same time, however, the Flesh has no way of

h8
knowing anything that could be hidden from any other personage, so that
there can be no justification for allowing her to speak. The Flesh's
silence, therefore, has significance in the same way as its other ac-
tions have significance.

The complexity of Gower's view of man is most clearly reflected in
the fragmentation of the Soul into additional personages. When the Soul
recognizes that she is getting nowhere with the Flesh, she calls on
Reason and Fear to help her (661-63). Later, after Fear has revealed
Ibath to the Flesh,

Paour ensi la Char rebroie,
Q'au Conscience la renvoie,
Et Conscience plus avant

Au bonne Resoun 1a convoie. (733-736)

Fear then Opposed the Flesh and sent her back to Conscience, and
Conscience afterwards brought her to good Reason.

All three-~reason, fear, and conscience--were ordinarily located by the
scholastics within the soul in different senses. According to Thomas,
reason, which is identified with the intellect, is a power of the soul
(E) I}, I, I, 79, l and 8), while fear is defined as a passion of the
soul (§,‘T., I, II, hl, 1). Thomas also defines conscience as an act of
the intellect (g. 3., I, I, 79, 13), while Bromyard says simply that
conscience is in the soul.21

The poet indicates the relationships between these personages and
the Soul less formally. Reason and Fear are first called "sergant" of
the Soul's company (66h). A little later Reason is said to be necessary
to the Soul (673), and Fear, "q‘estoit espirital" (709), is contrasted
with the Flesh "SUperflual” (710). while the poet's basic description

of these three personages does not correspond exactly with the sub-

merged metaphors in the definitions of the phiIOSOpher and the

h?

preacher, it is at least compatible with those definitions.

One reason for Gower's success here is simply that he has not at-
tempted too much. In both the scholastic and the preaching traditions,
fear, for example, could be treated elaborately. Thus, even Bromyard
distinguishes amonzservile, worldly, natural, and filial fear.22 But
fear could also be treated quite simply, as Thomas does in his article
on the fear of death, "the most terrible of all things" (§'.2'3 I, II,
h2, 2). Gower obviously has narrowed his attention to this particular
kind of fear and has created a personage to meet the specific require-
ment of showing man's fear of death.

Even in the more elaborate delineation of Reason, Gower concen-
trates his efforts on working out the relationship between reason and
virtue, not by showing Reason performing a series of virtuous acts, but
merely by creating new personages, the thirty-five rational Virtues,
with all their friends and companions.

At the beginning of our discussion, we pointed out that all the
personages in the poem are the result of a single process--namely, the
attribution of human characteristics to some non-human thing. Although
a distinction was made between personation and figuration, it may have
seemed an empty gesture in the light of the similar process of delinea-
tion involved in the personages studied thus far. Though similar, how-
ever, the attribution of human characteristics to God and the Ibvil is
not quite the same thing as their attribution to Sin and Reason, be~
cause God and the Ibvil are already persons. Thus, whereas in persona-
tion human.personality is bestowed gratis, as it were, in these two
figurations human personality is substituted for the divine and angelic

personalities which properly belong to God and Satan.

So

In depicting God, the poet is understandably on extremely treach-
erous ground. One reason for caution is the extensive ideational value
that had been developed for this personage, not only in earlier liter-
ary forms, but especially in theology. In this respect, however,
Gower‘s position is not unlike that of a writer who takes up any older
established story. He must see to it that his treatment of the person-
ages conforms to his readers' eXpectations and, in this case, to the
orthodox religious pressures upon what can be said about God. Not sur-
prisingly, therefore, Gower limits the delineation of God to the state-
ment that he is the father of the Virtues.

Although the delineation of the Ibvil is subject to the same kinds
of pressures as the delineation of God, these pressures are much less
intense. Paradoxically, the impotent devil is a more fertile subject
for literary treatment than the omnipotent God. Gower devotes a good
deal of attention to the delineation of the Ievil. As we noted earlier,
he pays tribute to contemporary ideas concerning the angelic nature
when he describes the Ibvil as the father of Sin and Itath. Gower also
draws upon literary conventions as well in his portrayal of the Ibvil
as a powerful ruler. Like a noble lord in a chanson fie ggste, the Ibvil
asks for counsel from his followers and encourages them after their
first defeat.

The survey of the personages in the Miroir provides us with a val-
uable start towards an understanding of personation and figuration. In-
deed, in the narrative we find extreme forms of both modes of delinea-
tion. Thus, the personification of many of the Virtues and Vices repre-
sents the initial stage in personation, since delineation is generally

restricted to little more that the attribution of personality to the

51

given term. 0n the other hand, as the source of the Virtues, the per-
sonage God is near the final stage of figuration, near the point at

which the individual personage becomes a purely ideational value.

III

We are not yet in a position to make many particular judgments
about Gower's handling of the personages in the 512213. We can say that
he is generally competent. At least, we have found that what he attri-
butes to his personages was, in most cases, attributed to them by phi-
losophers and moralists. Nowhere, at any rate, do we see him attribut-
ing to any personage a quality for which there was neither a logical
nor theological basis.

We do find, however, that in the long classification of the Vir-
tues and Vices his point of view shifts constantly from the personifi-
cation to the idea which has been personified. The real problem is not
that the narrative portion of the first part of the poem is incompe-
tent, but that it is interrupted by long non-narrative structures--def-
initions of the avaricious man, for example--or by conflicting narra-
tive statements-~g.‘g., Pride is a lion-—when we have already been told
that Pride is the daughter of Sin and Ibath. The intention of this sec-
tion of the poem obviously does not include keeping the audience aware
of the personage's function within the narrative. Instead, the emphasis
here is on the speaker's attitude towards the Virtues and Vices, as he
displays his facility in listing numerous metaphors and similes to re-
define his concepts.

This predominantly rhetorical treatment of the Virtues and Vices

can be contrasted.with that accorded to the personages in the Opening

52

incident. There, development is limited to the requiremants of the nar-
rative. First, we are told of the existence of the unholy trinity-the
Ievil, Sin, and Ibath. The attribution of sex to each is based, of
course, on the gender of the three French nouns--l§'§gg§lg, lg 233322,
and 13.!922’ Grammatical gender also determines the familial relation-
ships among the three personages.

The initial predication of a family plotting together can hardly
be traced to a particular source. The subsequent formality of the war
councils, however, recalls most clearly the military councils from the
chansons §g_g§§tg.23 It may be worth noting, moreover, that feudal met-
aphors were first combined with personifications in Grosseteste's
Chasteau d'émggg.2h Thus, if Gower's initial designation of these per-
sonages as related by generation reflects the subtlety of the philoso-
phers who had preceded him, the poet relies upon literary traditions to
show his personages in action.

In view of the immediate conceptual meaning of the personages--
that is, that they destroy man--their plot can be understood as the
personation of the Ibvil's motives. The poet is faced.with a problem.
Now that he has personified Sin and.Ibath and has indicated their spir-
itual relationship with the Ibvil by means of the metaphors of sex and
generation, he must show in some way how the relationship between them
and Man came about. The image of an agreement for services--Man as
knight pledging fealty to an overlorde-requires motivation. The social
situation implied in the basic image of service is therefore extended
to a time prior to the moment of decision.

The idea of a core image from which all personifications follow is

worth pursuing here. we can envision the poet's initial theme as the

53

following: the three beings--God, Man, and the Ibvil-—are involved in a
repeated pattern of action; Man owes service to God but is drawn away
by the Ibvil. The term "service" implies a social context, divine serv-
ice paralleling the service a person owes to his social or political
superior. By focusing on the political and military context suggested
by the term, the poet obtains a picture of Man as knight pledging his
fealty to one of two contending overlords. The obvious story line that
presents itself thus centers on tTis conflict between God and the [evil
for Man's service.

Actually, there are several ways of portraying such a conflict.
The poet can stress, for example, the psychological conflict in man, as
Prudentius had in the [syghgmgghig, Such a treatment, however, will
tend to de-emphasize the roles of God and the Ibvil in the moral uni-
verse and, as we suggested earlier, will virtually require that Man
himself disappear from the narrative. Both limitations pertain to the
dialectic approach represented by the Body-Soul debate.

Gower's approach involves extending the central or core image of a
feudal rivalry to account for a complex system of relationships between
the three participants. The means used to extend the image is personi-
fication. Personages are multiplied according to the poet's understand-
ing of the system of relationships.

The core image, therefore, governs the initial alignment of most
of the personages in the poem. It does not, however, account for every
detail in the delineation of these personages. For example, at the end
of the first council of the Ibvil's forces, Tenth points out that the
Ibvil himself must account for the destruction of the Soul. The action,

of course, reflects the traditional teaching that man cannot be

Sb

overcome by physical death alone, but there is really no reason for
Ibath to make the statement. That is, the statement does not make the
personage Ibath more understandable. Once the core image has been lit-
eralized, a personage need not reflect in its every action the meaning
of the term from which it is derived, as long as that action is not in-
compatible with that meaning.

While it is neither necessary nor worthwhile to analyze every ac-
tion performed in the narrative, certain actions are obviously of more
importance than others. The three mast striking incidents in the narra-
tive are the varied actions of Reason and Temptation, the procession of
the seven deadly Vices, and the behavior of Reason, Fear, and Conscience
during the scene of the first council.

Temptation and Reason represent the crucial relationships between
Man and the Ibvil on the one hand and Man and God on the other. The
principal result of Gower's development of these personifications is to
make the relationships more complex and formal than would be possible
otherwise. Instead of a direct confrontation between the fallen angel
and Man, for example, such as appears in the Genesis narrative, the
poet portrays a political process: a rival lord sends an emissary to
God‘s Man in order to feel him out before making him an offer.

The procession of the seven deadly Vices is a familiar motif in
medieval and Renaissance literature. The most famous treatment appears

in Book I of the Faerie Queen (iv, 17-36). While hardly the equal of

 

Spenser's, Gower's handling of the motif, particularly his combination
of the procession with the wedding ceremony, is of considerable inter-
est for the light it sheds on the nature of personation.

At the wedding banquet the seven deadly Vices are attended by the

old gods of classical mythology. Gower's method of distinguishing be-
tween the personified Vices and the old gods can be contrasted with
Ibguileville's characterization of Venus in the Pelerinage dg_lg_zig
humaine.25 There Venus appears riding on a boar and is covered.with
filth. She hides her face from view because she is not beautiful. That
she is to be identified with the vice of lechery is clear from her as-
sociation with the other deadly sins, in particular with Gluttony.
Ibguileville, then, in effect, telescopes Lechery and Venus into a sin-
gle personage, which he calls Venus. Gower's Venus, on the other hand,
is merely an attendant to Lechery and the other Vices. (She is appar-

ently the head chambermaid.) As we shall see, he treats her far differ-

ently in the Confessio Amantis.

 

One of the most puzzling incidents in the narrative occurs after
the Flesh has heard.the promises of the Ibvil, Sin, and the World and
has shown signs of accepting their offers. At this point the Soul comes
forward to remonstrate with the Flesh and later complains to Reason and
Fear about the Flesh's behavior. The Soul's action and the subsequent
actions of Reason, Fear, and Conscience in this incident are best ex-
plicated in terms of scholastic psychology.

Thomas defines conscience as the application of knowledge to some-
thing.26 The term, therefore, designates an act--that is, the applica-
tion of any habit or knowledge to some particular act. In the poem the

particular act in question is the Flesh's decision to enter the Ibvil's

service. In Gower's French, conscience has two Senses, conscience psy-

chologique and conscience morale. The distinction is fully elaborated

 

in Thomas. By the first is meant what in English would be called "con-

sciousness." This sense of the term is apparently intended when Gower

56

describes the Soul's initial complaint to Conscience. The meaning of
the incident, then, is something like the following: the Soul refers to
Man's Conscience-Consciousness or draws Man's attentionto a problem.27

The second sense of the term is similar to its modern English
sense but more complex. "According to the second mode of application,"
writes Thomas, "by which knowledge is applied to an act, so that one
knows whether an act is right or not, there is a double course." Ac-
cording to one, "we are directed through the habit of scientific knows
ledge to do or not do something." According to the second, "the act,
after it has taken place, is examined.with reference to the habit of
knowledge to see whether it was right or not."

Thomas clarifies these two courses as follows: insofar as know-
ledge is applied.to an act, as directive of that act, conscience is
said to prod or urge or bind. But, insofar as knowledge is applied to
an act, by way of examining things which have already taken place, con-
science is said to accuse or cause remorse. In the giggig the situation
calls for the first of these courses, for Man has not yet acted. Con-
science does not prod, urge, or bind the Flesh, but it does accord the
Flesh with Reason.

Thomas elaborates on the difference between the two kinds of ap-
plication. In the first, he notes, "in which scientific knowledge is
applied to an act to know whether it has taken place, it is application
to a particular act of sensitive knowledge, as . . . of sense, through
which we perceive the particular act in which we are now engaged."
Herein, it would appear, lies an explanation for one aspect of the

poetic action, for the Flesh goes to Conscience out of fear. In other

words, the Flesh is not fully aware of what his action entails until he

 

7 Iii-(Tim? .1 m“ 1‘ .-

 

57

sees Ieath.

In the second application by which we deliberate about what should
be done, the operative habits of reason are applied to an act. Thomas
designates these habits of reason as synderesis and wisdom, which per-
fect higher reason, and.ecientific knowledge, which perfects lower rea-
son. Of these, either all are applied at the same time, or only one of
them is applied. The experience of the Flesh corresponds to the acqui-
sition of scientific knowledge. Having seen Ibath, the Flesh's lower
reason is corrected. The Flesh is then led to Conscience—Synderesis,
which reunites her with Reason-Higher Reason.

Obviously, the explanation in the preceding paragraph cannot be
said to correspond exactly with the action in the poem; but Thomas‘
analysis of the terms as a process is instructive, since the procession
is the image uniting Gower's personification of these same terms. We
can, in fact, understand the relationship between the philOSOphical and
poetic treatments of this subject in the form of a proportion: just as
the concepts are related to one another as elements of a process in
Thomas' psychology, so the personifications are related to one another
as personages in a procession in Gower's narrative.

we find here another example of the pOpularity of the processional
image. Its chief appeal, perhaps, lay in its ability to localize con-
ceptual significance. Ideas can be recognized by their location.
Gower's handling of the image here is less impressive, however, than is

that of the dramatist who wrote The Castle of Perseverance. In part,

 

 

the fuller treatment in the play is the result of the formal potential-
ities of drama. In contrast, Gower‘s description of the procession is

extremely spare. All the conceptual significance is carried by

 

58

relatively subdued metaphors of local motion--"rebroie," "renvoie,"
"convoie," and "fait acordant" (733-38).

Both the poet and the dramatist resist, nevertheless, the tempta-
tion to adorn the personifications with ornamental trappings. The re-
sult of succumbing to this temptation appears most clearly in [eguile-
ville or, in a parodic form, in Ihvies' god of love, dressed in

his hatt of hope, his bande of beautye fine,

his cloake of crafte, his doblett of desyre,

griefe for a girdell, shall about him twyne,

his pointes of pride, his Ilet holes of yre,

his stockings of sterne strife, his shirt of shame,
his garters of vaine glorie gaye and flyte;

his pantofels of passions I will frame,

pumpes of presumption shall adorne his feete
and Socks of sullennes excedinge sweete.

28

Perhaps the greatest source of confusion in this incident is the
equivocal nature of Conscience. As we have seen, the term in Thomas
designates two distinct powers-—consciousness and conscience. The
Soul's complaint to Conscience points to the first of these meanings.
When Conscience accords the Flesh and Reason, however, the second mean-
ing is apparently called for. We can recognize in this equivocation the
chief source of danger in personification--namely, that the poet will
mingle the significations of a given term in a single personage to the
confusion of the audience. Equivocation in personation corresponds to
ambiguity in figuration--in particular, to the ambiguous symbol. That
ambiguity is by modern standards viewed as a desirable trait in litera-

ture and that equivocation is generally viewed as a sign of incompe-

tence should not blind us to the formal similarities between the two.
In the ambiguous symbol, the meanings of the symbol are multiple and,
at least, to some extent contraryh-Melville's whale, for example, or

Joyce's use of the color red in Portrait prthe Artist E§.i Young Man.

 

 

59

Similarly, the equivocal personification has multiple and conflicting
significations, as in Langland‘s Lady Need and Gower's Conscience-
Consciousness. Actually, the reader's delight as he discovers the way
the symbolic meanings of a term unfold is comparable to the pleasure
one may derive from observing a personification reflect semantic varia-
tions. The tests, of course, for ascertaining the writer's proficiency
in handling either symbol or personification are extremely complex, re-
quiring consideration of context and point of view for the symbol and
semantics and dramatic function for the personification. The color red
in Joyce's novel has different symbolic values when it appears as the
clouds in Stephen's geOgraphy book and as the color of the prostitute's
gown. The whale, Mbby Ifick, means different things to the various per-
sonages in Melville's novel. By the same token, Lady Meed's two mean-
ings--"graft" and "earned reward"--reflect fourteenth-century linguis-

tic usage and are functional in the action of Piers Plowman, since the

 

personage relies on one of her meanings to throw dust in the eyes of
her adversaries, who have attempted to treat her univocally according
to the other meaning. In the Miroir, however, there seems to be insuf-
ficient justification for Gower's reliance upon the double meaning of
Conscience. Although the confusion can be resolved, it serves no dra-
matic purpose.

The various weaknesses in the delineation of personages that we
have observed in Gower's narrative cannot be given equal weight, of
course. Without doubt, the mast serious weakness remains the intrusive
descriptions of the Vices and Virtues in which the poet makes only a
minimal effort to retain the narrative structure. In this poem, at
least, he is still far from the level of competence in architectonics

29
attributed to him by C. S. Lewis.

 

 

l.

3.

9.

10.

ll.

60

Notes to Chapter I

Although raison in mod rn French is frminine, Gower frequently re-
fers to it as masculine. ror example, in the passage referred to,
we find:

Hesoun, q'estoit et simple ct sage,
Molt s’esjoyt deinz son corage
Qu'il tieles femmes duist avoir,
Q'estoiont de si halt parage,
Comme de son prOpre dieu lignage,
Ibnt i1 fuist mis en hon espoir
Les vices mettre a nounchaloir. (10081-87)

Reason, who was both plain and wise, rtjoiCed g F2atly in his
heart that he slould have such women, who were of such high
rank, of the linea ag:2 of God himself, and so he we 3 put in gr eat
hopes of holding the vices in contempt.

All citations from the Miroir de l'Omme are taken from The Works of
John Gower, Vol. I: The Frrnch works, ed. G. C. Macaulay Oxford,
1599).

 

 

 

"L'acception moderne du mot danger est venue de dangier pris dans
le sens de pouvoir, parce que, Jtre sous le pouvoir do quclqu'un,
c‘est souvent courir un peril."

Marie Borroff, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: g Stylistic and
Metrical Study (Wew York, 1963), p. 70.

 

 

 

bhcaulay, p. 39h (Notes).

The edition of Thomas used in this diss rtation is Th(_ "Summa
Theologica" of St. Thomas Aouinas, trans. by Fathers of the Lnglish
Ibminican Province, 2nd rev. ed., 22 vols. (London, 1916-20).

 

 

 

The edition of Bromyard consulted was published in Venice in 1586.

”Qui sathanas in tentando multis utitur cautelis quandoque . . .
nuncios suos mittendo." II-II, 387v.

"Caro suggerit mihi mellia, mundus vana, diabolus amara. . . ."
II-II, 388r.

The discussion of scholastic tr=rms is based on definitions in
Bernard Wuellner, Iictionary of Scholastic Philosophy (Milwaukez,

1956)

 

 

For Thomas, see S. T., I, II, 55,1. For Aristotle, s<e The Nico—
macheani thics in The Loeb Classical Library (London, 1967 5,” pp.
70-/l.

 

 

 

12.

13.
1h.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

2h.

25.

26.

27.

61

Albert C. Cutler, trans. The Library of Christian Classics, Vol.
VII: Confessions and Enchiridion (Philadelphia, 1933), pp. 3h2-3h3.

 

 

 

The CitX 2; God, trans. Marcus Ibds (New York, 1950), pp. 382-383.

For Wrath see 11. 5066-67 and 5077-80; for Lechery see 11. 96h3-hh,
9652-57, and 9703‘60

Unless otherwise noted, all translations of biblical texts are
taken from the Ibuay version, as being closer to the Vulgate.

Millard Pierce Binyon, The Virtues: g Methodological Studv in
Thomistic Ethics (Chicago, 19585, . S6.

 

"Et sicut mundus iste miserabilis, & miserabilis est in forma, &
figura, ita est miserabilis, uariabilis, & periculosus in fortune."
II-I, 90v.

"Plures habent seruos mundus, Caro, & Iiabolus, & eos promtiores,
magis obedientes, promptos, ferventes, largos, & hilares, quam ipse
Ibus habeat." II—II, 357v.

In one of the exempla in Jacques de Vitry's Sermones vulgeres
(CCXLIV), the nine danghters of the devil are named for sins and
eight are married off to various social classes: ”symoniam prelatis
et clericis; ypocrisim monachis et falsis religiosis; rapinam mili-
tibus"; etc. lechery, however, the ninth daughter, gives herself to
all the Elasses indiscriminately. See The Exempla . . . gf Jacou(s
g3 Vitrx, ed. Thomas F. Crane, Publications 2f the Folk-lore

Societ , XXVI (1890), 101-2 and 235-6.

 

 

 

Siegfried Wenzel, The Sin of Sloth: Acedia in Medieval Thought and
Literature (Chapel Hill, 15571, p. 120.

 

 

"Conscientia est in anima. . . ." I-I, 128r.

"Timor alius seruilis, alius mundanus, alius naturalis, alius
filialis, sanctus, & castus." II-II, 396v.

Professor Fisher connects the image with the Aeneid, the satiric
debat, beast fables, and the Roman d3 13 Rose. See John Gower:
Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (New York, 1965), p. 10h.

 

Samuel C. Chew, The Virtues Reconciled: fin IconOgraphic Study
(Toronto, l9h7), Pa 38.

 

The Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, . . . ed. F. J. Furnivall, Part
II, EETS, E.S. 83 (London, 19oi7‘iines 13091 ff.

 

Thomas Aquinas, The Iisputed Questions on Truth, trans. J. V.
McGlynn (Chicago, 1953), 17,.2, pp. 31h-322.

 

Aquinas, Truth, 16, 2, pp. 308-311.

62

28. Cited by Hallett Smith in his Elizabithan Poetry(Cambridge, Mass.,
196D), p. 1&2.

 

29. C. S. Lewis, The Allegogy of Love (Oxford, 1959), p. 198.

 

II: The Vox Clamantis

 

I

The narrative portion of the Vox Clamantis, which recounts the

 

poet's dreamsvision of the Peasants' Revolt, extends through only the
first book of the poem. In the remaining books, the poet goes on to an-
alyze the three estates of society and stresses the evil ways that all
men seem to have embraced. Formally, therefore, the first book func-
tions as the occasion for what follows. The vision of the revolt, the
particular experience, is the basis for the view of society presented
in Books II through VII.

The aim of the work as a whole is didactic. The situation here is
accordingly similar to what we have already seen in the Miroir, where
the initial narrative structure introduces an elaborate non-narrative
structure--a sermon. As in the preceding chapter, we shall consider on-
ly those personages that take part in the narrative action.

The following then is a summary of Book I. The Arabic numerals in-

dicate chapter divisions.

l. Ihring the evening following a beautiful June day, the poet is
troubled.by feelings of dread and unexplained terror. He spends a
sleepless night trying to understand why these feelings have come upon
him. At length, he surmises that some terrible misfortune is approach-

ing. Exhausted with worrying, he falls asleep and experiences a

63

 

6h

dreampvision.

2. In sleep, his spirit is driven away, and he dreams that he has
gone to gather flowers and sees bands of peasants wandering through the
fields. Suddenly, the curse of God flashes upon them, and they are
changed into wild beasts. Each mob becomes a different Species of ani-
mal. The asses then become monsters and.wear long horns in the middle
of their foreheads.

3. Another band appears as oxen. They too are transformed into
monsters with bear's feet and dragon's tails and they breathe fire.
They are compared to the bulls of classical mythology. As a result of
the madness of the oxen, the farmers also become ungovernable.

h. The poet also sees enraged swine that seem filled with some
devilish spirit. The boars, sows, and piglets band together in order to
ruin the soil. They work together like a pack of wolves.

One boar from Kent appears especially vicious and is soon joined
by another boar from the North. The great boars of antiquity were not
so wrathful as these.

5. Next appears a fourth band made up of raging dogs. At the sound
of their howling, Cerberus rejoices and comes out of hell to join them.
Like the other monsters, these dogs are more horrible than their mytho-
logical counterparts.

6. The poet also sees a band of foxes and cats that behave like
dogs. They search out whatever is hidden, and their bite is venomous.
The foxes rob openly and are reconciled with their natural enemies, the
dogs. The cats leave off protecting the citizens from mice, which soon
infest the houses.

7. Next, a flock of domestic birds is transformed. They are led by

65
a cock and a gander, but these two become a raven and a kite in their
behavior. These monstrous birds are soon joined by owls and they carry
off their plunder even by day.

8. A swarm of flies appears and is joined by a pb.gue of frogs.
The latter are those that had troubled Egypt. Beelzebub is the leader
of the army of flies.

On this day everything is overturned, and the poet therefore prays
that such a day never return.

9. When the multitude of monsters has assembled, a hideous jackdaw
or jay appears and exhorts them to abandon the law. His speech is de-
ceptive, however; for the rabble does not realize that once they have
usurped the power from others, the jackdaw will seize everything for
himself. Nevertheless, all follow his commands. The poet can scarcely
move from fear, as he hears the mob vow to destroy all the nobles in
the world. All the monsters march off under the command of the ruler of
hell. Their hearts are filled with wickedness, and the earth itself is
drenched with the dew of hell. The devil launches his attack at noon.
When the poet sees that the leaders of hell rule the day, he grows
fearful of what may come.

10. The different bands of monsters are now joined by the seven
races of Cain and.by the companions of Ulysses, whom Circe had trans-
formed into brutes long ago.

11. The poet hears them call to each other by such common names as
Nat, Tom, and Sim and he also hears Ball teach them. They cry out with
the voices of monsters, creating the most horrible noise ever heard.
The jackdaw terrorizes great nations. Rumor flies about, but no wise

man comes forward with a plan. The malady is incurable.

66

12. The mob sets up heralds and commanders and begins to issue
laws. Those who Oppose them are destroyed. The peasants decree that
young and old alike shall bear arms, and the motley crowd forces its
way forward.wherever the whim takes it.

13. Now the poet sees New Troy powerless before the mob. Everything
lies eXposed to the monsters, who enter the city on the feast of Corpus
Christi. The Savoy, the palace of the Ihke of Lancaster, is burned to
the ground, as is the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem, here referred to
as "the Baptist." The remainder of the day is spent by the mob in loot-
ing and drinking.

The next day is even worse, as the peasants range unchecked
through the city. Taking up again the analogy of the sack of Troy, the
poet points out that the wise Calchas could give no counsel, Antenor
was unable to arrange peace treaties, and Ulysses lacked the power to
speak effectively.

lh. Simon, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is here called Helenus,
the high priest, is killed by the mob. The similarities and differences
between his death and the slaying of Thomas Beckett are noted. This
murder is proof that the present is worse than the past. The poet calls
upon all to lament this deed.

15. The slaughter of the best citizens goes on, and their corpses
lie unburied or are hung from the city walls. The blood-lust of the mob
cannot be turned aside.

The noble is unable to deal with the peasants and flees without
finding safety. ESpecially pathetic is the wife of the innocent man
butchered by the peasant.

No attempt to check the violence of the mob can be made, and the

67

natural order is overthrown entirely.

16. As he watches these things, the poet is seized with fear. The
image of death strikes at his Vitals and he flees from his own home,
which has been destroyed. He runs across strange fields and hides in
the forests. The enemy is everywhere, and he cannot believe that he
will escape death. He sleeps on the bare ground and feeds upon acorns
and grass. Alone without friends, he finally desires only to die.

17. He spies a ship from afar and runs to climb aboard, heping it
may offer him some protection. Aboard.the ship he finds nobles trem-
bling with fear. The ship heads out to sea but is soon in the midst of
a storm. In the fury of the sea, the captain's orders cannot be heard,
but each man tries to save the ship as best he can. All their labor is
useless, however, and finally the captain himself loses heart.

18. While they battle the elements, a huge monster, a brother to
the Scylla, rises from the deep and attacks the ship. At the sight of
this monster, the helmsman abandons the wheel and can do nothing but
pray for deliverance.

The ship is like the Tower of London attacked by the raging peas-
ant.

No one suffers like the poet, since the Scylla seeks his destruc-
tion. He decides that his own guilt has brought about his present suf-
fering. Once again he prays for help, but while he prays a violent
blast drives the ship under. Only the power of prayer saves it from de-
struction.

19. Gifts and prayers placate the god of the sea. William, the
Mayor, slays the jackdaw, and the tempest subsides. The ship is saved,

and the sailors immediately raise the small part of the sail that

68
remains and head for port. All give thanks to Christ.

20. The ship sails with the wind until it is driven into a harbor
beset with dangers. The poet, upon disembarking, asks an old man the
name of the island upon which he has landed and learns that it was once
Called the island of Brut. The old man also tells him that the inhabi-
tants are wild and hate all law.

Once again the poet is plunged in sorrow and falls upon the earth.
When next he Opens his eyes, the ship and the crowd that greeted him
when he landed have vanished. He hears a celestial voice that instructs
him to set down in writing what he has seen. Then the voice is heard no
more, the cock crows announcing the dawn, and the poet awakens with re-
newed trust in the Lord.

21. The poet, upon awaking from his dream, discovers that the mad-
men have been subdued. He realizes, however, that he will never be the
same man he once was, for he will never be able to forget the danger he
was in. Though Satan's power now lies low, it waits for the Opportunity
to appear again. Still, the poet is thankful that he has been Spared.

Now he is ready to write down his thoughts as the voice commanded.

II

The vision which makes up Book I of the Vox Clamantis is a descend-

 

ant of the Vergilian topos identified by Professor Curtius as "the

1
world upside down." Specifically, the theme of this book is that the
natural hierarchy among men had been overturned during the Peasants'

Revolt of 1381. In the first part of the vision, the lower classes,

represented by the lower animals, rebel against the rulers. The asses

69

Amplius ad.villam saccos portare recusant,
Nec curuare sua pondere dorsa volunt;

Set neque rurales curant in montibus herbas,
Ammodo set querunt deliciosa magis;

A domibus alios expellunt, ius et equorum
Iniuste cupiunt appropriare sibi. (1,193-98)2

refused to carry sacks to the city any more and.were unwilling to
bend their backs under a heavy load. They did not care for the
field grasses on the hillsides, but instead they now wanted greater
delicacies. They drove others from their homes and wrongfully
wanted to get the horses' rightful place for themselves.

And

Contra iura bouis bos spernit habere bubulcum,
Ammodo nec duci de nouitate sinit. (I, 2h3-hh)

contrary to its rightful duties, the ox refused to have a plowman
and unexpectedly did not now allow itself to be led.

Moreover, not only do the animals fail to act according to kind; they
are physically transformed into monsters:

Hos intemperies sic aeris inficiebat,

Quod transformati sunt quasi monstra michi:
Auribus in longis potui quos noscere dudum

In frontis medio cornua longa gerunt. (I, 223-26)

The madness in the air so ruined them that they seemed to be trans-
formed into monsters. Those which once I could recognize by their
long ears were long horns in the middle of their foreheads.

Particularly spectacular is the wild boar of Kent:

Ehdcat ex oculis, spirat quoque pectore flammas. . . o
Fulmen ab ore volat, vrbis afflatibus ardet,

Ac elephantinis dentibus arma parat. . . .

Inque furore suo tigridis instar habet. . . .

Creuit aper quod eo maiores herbida monstro

Educat agrestes pascua nulla feras. (1,323-h2)

It flashed from its eyes and it breathed flames from its chest.
Lightning flew out of its mouth, and it set cities on fire with its
breathings, and made war with its elephant-sized teeth. In its
raging it had the look of a tiger. The boar grew so much that no
grassy pasture could produce any savage beasts larger than that
monster.

0

We can distinguish here between two distinct activities. First, a peas-

ant rabble appears in the forms of asses and oxen and other animals of

70

the sort. Next, these different kinds of animals are transformed into
monsters.

The representation of men as animals can be developed in a number
of ways, and it will be to our advantage to sort them out before com-
menting upon Gower's handling of this device. To take an apparently
simple example, if I call a man an ox, I make, at least to some degree,
a derogatory statement about him. The most basic source of my criticism
is the assumption that brute animals belong to a lower order of nature
than man. By identifying the man with an ox, therefore, I imply that he
fails to come up to the rational order.

ObViously, this assumption is not Operative in every metaphor in
which a man is identified with an animal. For example, if I refer to a
man as a lion in a context limiting the significance to such qualities
as nobility and strength, I would surely be upset if it were inferred
that I was calling him an irrational brute. Generally, as in this
statement, the specific meaning--pertaining to the species, lion--takes
precedence over the generic--pertaining to the genus, animal. In the
metaphor identifying the man with an ox, in fact, the dominant source
of criticism is the specific meaning--the conventional association of
the ox with stupidity, and even here the criticism may on occasion be
superseded by praise of a sort, since the ox can also suggest the qua-
lities of strength and even simplicity.

A distinction should be drawn, however, between this figurative
device, the metaphor, which is the basis for Gower's delineation of the
peasants, and the process whereby a species of animal is associated
with certain qualities. The latter is a form of personation in which a

particular vice or other quality is represented by an animal. Professor

71

Bloomfield provides exhaustive documentation for the association of the
h

seven deadly sins with different kinds of animals, and, as we found in
the Miroir, Gower himself portrays the Vices riding in their wedding
procession on various beasts and bearing various birds on their arms.5
Elsewhere, in the descriptions of the individual Vices, the poet fre-
quently compares the person who possesses the vice to an animal. The
man who is devoted to Excess-in-eating has the appetite of a dog,6 the
flatterer is like a fox's tail,7 and so on. In the beast-fable, animals
endowed with human attributes are especially characterized by a domi-
nant trait, in some cases a vice. The fox is cunning, the wolf cruel,

and the sheep docile. All these forms of personation are quite differ-

ent from the device of figuration that Gower uses in the Vox Clamantis,

 

however; for even though the net result--an animal possessing idea-
tional value--is similar, the movement in the two devices begins at op-
posite poles.

Representation of men as animals may also reflect a system of
classification in which neither praise nor blame for the persons clas-
sified is intended. Totemism is one such system, and like totemism in
its lack of moral implications is the identification of men with dif-
ferent kinds of animals in order to indicate their occupations or the
estates to which they belong. A good example of the latter appears in
the Parlemvnt 2£.§EELE§' There a political and social hierarchy is re-
flected in the different species of birds: the eagles standing for the
nobility and the other birds for the lower classes. Chaucer, of course,
reflects the prejudices of the aristocracy in his delineation of the

different kinds of birds, but this delineation is not necessitated by

72

the system of classification.

This device, of course, is not simply metaphorical but analoyical,
since each identification of a group of people with a species of bird
requires other such identifications in order to complete the conven-
tional view of society as composed of different estates or occupational
orders. In Chaucer‘s poem, where metamorphosis does not occur, the de-
lineation of the birds as personages is a form of personation, the nor-
mal mode for schematic representation. The birds initially represent
groups or classes rather than individuals, though among the eagles, it
might be argued, an attempt is made to develop individuals. Herein, in
fact, lies the clue to the mode of development used; for the movement
is from the generic--the species of bird--to individual eagles, who may
or may not be identified with particular persons.

Gower's initial portrayal of the different groups of peasants is a
mixture of several of these techniques. As in the simple metaphor, the
peasants are identified.with different kinds of animals in order to
show the irrationality of their rebellion:

Ecce dei subito malediccio fulsit in illos,

Et mutans formas fecerat esse feras.

Qui fuerant homines prius innate racionis,

Brutorum species irracionis habent. (I, 175-78)

Behold, the curse of God suddenly flashed upon them, and changing

their shapes, it had made them into wild beasts. They who had been

men of reason before had the look of unreasoning brutes.
In addition, the species of animal at times suggests the dominant vice

that has led a particular group of peasants to rebel. The asses, for

example, are likened to "old Burnel,” the hero of the Speculum Stultorum,

 

and stupidity is eSpecially attributed to them:

Voluere plura solet animi meditacio stulta,
Que magis impediunt quam sua vota ferunt:

73

Omnes stulticia stultis innata dolores

Parturit, et finem prestat habere malum.

Magnos magna decent et paruos parua, set illi,

Qui sunt de minimis, grandia ferre volunt. (1, 213-18)

The stupid meditation of the mind is wont to ponder many things

which are more of a hindrance than its desires wish. Innate stupid-

ity brings all gricfs to the foolish and serves to reach a bad end.

Great things are fitting for great people, and lowly things for

lowly peOple, but those who were the nest lowly wanted to enjoy

lofty things.
Other animals seem to work at times like personations of vices and are
thus related to some of the animals in the beast-fable. From still an-
other point of view, their division into different kinds of animals
seems to reflect simply a system of classification. This suggestion is
particularly strong in the descriptions of the common farm animals like
the oxen, asses, and swine. The ass, for example, like the teamster, is
responsible for transporting supplies to the cities (I, 193), and the
ox is naturally associated with plowing (I, 2h3 and 277). Similarly,
the description of the swine is introduced by comments upon the inabil-
ity of the swineherd to control his charges, while the dogs are associ-
ated with the occupations of the shepherd, the butcher, and the miller.
On the other hand, "Gentiles canes hiis associati/ Non sunt" (I, 38h-
385)--Well-bred dogs were not in company with them.

But one must be careful not to attribute too many of these conven-

tional meanings to the animals in the Vox Clamantis. The warnings

 

against doing so are clear, for, after all, even if it is easy to see
in the oxen, asses, dogs, and cats references to some common occupa-
tions, what kinds of occupations are the flies and toads supposed to
suggest? The point is that the figurative animal, which is what Gower
is working with, need not have the same meanings as the animal that is

the product of personation, whether of a vice or of a class within the

7h

social hierarchy.

Whatever its meaning, the initial portrayal of the peasants as
animals can hardly be said to suggest movement along a concrete-ab-
stract line. One is at least not more or less concrete than the other.
Since man belongs to the rational order, howevcr, a higher order of be-
ing than the one to which the brute animals belong, the portrayal of
the peasants as animals involves 233 g: a more or less unfavorable
judgment of them. In this sense, then, the effect of their first meta-
morphosis is to provide the peasants with ideational value. The physi-
cal process points to a spiritual process.

The poet's handling of metamorphosis is complicated by the fact
that not only do men appear under different forms, but there is a cor-
responding change in the way the narrator reacts to them under these
forms. The modal shifts accompanying the successive views of the re-
bellion are most clearly indicated in the narrative of the Opening vi-
sion. The narrator's first reaction is merely one of amazement at the
rowdiness of the peasants. After they have undergone the first metamor-
phosis into asses, however, he admits, "Vnde . . . sum timefactus
adhuc" (I, 182)--by now I was thoroughly frightened. Finally, when the
asses have been changed into horned, gallOping monsters, the narrator
is paralyzed.with fear:

Et quia sic fatuos vidi timui magis ipsos,
Nec dabat vlterius pes michi fidus iter. (I, 239-ho)

I was much afraid, and my trusty foot took me no farther.
Elsewhere, less attention is given to tracing the stages in the narra-
tor's response to what he sees. The "lowering" of the peasants, in any

case, is to be understood in two senses--subjectively, as an indication

75

of the narrator's mood; and objectively. While the former properly be-
longs to the delineation of the narrator, it will be convenient to deal
with both senses together.

If we consider other works in which animals appear, we find that

the unfavorable judgment involved varies considerably. In many of the

 

Foules, the use of animals permits comparatively mild satire of human
frailties and foibles. An even more frivolous mood controls the modern
animated cartoon. On the other hand, even the more serious satire of a
fable like Henryson's "The Sheep and the Wolf" aims at classes of men
rather than at individuals. All the animals in the examples referred to
are the result of personation. The figurative animal, on the other hand,
may function quite differently; for if Bottom's ass' head provokes fa-
miliar comic responses to his foolishness, the ass that Apuleius be-
comes raises rather more serious questions. In the latter work espe-
cially, we find the same kind of serious moral concern that appears in

the Vox Clamantis. In none of these works, however, whether the animals

 

are the result of figuration or personation, do we find the mood of un-
relievedly moral condemnation that Gower expresses.

The fact is that no one is likely to bvcome very upset when beasts
act beastly. We can begin to understand now the reason for the second
transformation of the animals into monstrrs. The effect of this trans-
formation is to redefine the physical order and to suggest thereby some
new spiritual or metaphysical condition in the rebellious peasants.
This redefinition, in turn, makes reasonable the mood of horror and

moral outrage that can now be heard in the narrator's voice.

76

The point here is not to establish an order of prec<dnnce for the
various poetic acts. Whether a writer utilizes metamorphosis in ordwr
to indicate a different attitude toward a thing that experiences some
Change or whether, after utilizing metamorphosis to suggest a spiritual
change, he modifies his attitude toward the subject is not really a
critical issue. Here, it is sufficient to note that in Gower's handling
of the action both a spiritual change in the subject and an emotional
response by the narrator are indicated.

We can obtain a clearer idea of what is happening in Gower's poem
if we try to imagine what the effect upon the mood of Th: EEE'E‘
Eriegt's 2313 would be, if the fox and the cock were suddenly metamor-
phosed into legendary beasts-~say, a phoenix and a basilisk. Ilsrcgard—
ing the specific figurative meanings associated with these animals, we
can see that such a metamorphosis would involve a shift in the Speaker's
attitude toward his material. Clearly, there would be little Opportuni-
ty for developing the subtle ironies that grow out of the conflict be-
tween the different kinds of living beings represented by a devilish
fox and an only too human chicken.

One reason why a shift in mood would be required is that legendary
beasts, like monsters, are not real beings but logical beings. The fun-
damental correSpondence of real existence is lacking; for the movement
from brute animal to monster is not a "lowering." Instead, it repre-
sents movement along an abstract-concrete scale and, in particular,
from the real order to the possible order of sentient being.

We noted earlier that the portrayal of men as animals requires a
modal stance because, though men are like asses and oxen in that all

are composed of matter and form, they are unlike in that man has a

77

rational soul. Gower, in effect, claims that the peasants go mad-~that
is, lose their reason. He represents their loss through the behavior of
animals that no longer act according to kind. When men become irration-
al through moral turpitude, however, the situation is far more serious
than when animals go mad. The latter image cannot adequately stand for
the situation of the sinful man, because while madness in animals may
come about through natural causes, sinfulness can com: about only
through man's attempt to usurp God's law. To usurp God's law means to
attempt to replace. the will of God with one's own will. In effect,
therefore, sin is an attempt by man to assume for himself a new order
of being--namely, the divine; man would be God, which, of course, is
not possible. Clearly, then, the only way animals can be used to por-
tray men who try to place themselves in a different order of being is
through metamorphosis into an unreal order.

The various transformations in the early chapters lead to the cli-
mactic appearance of the jackdaw or jay mid-way through the first book.

9

Identified by one scholar with Wat Tyler, the jackdaw addTeSS‘S the
mob and incites it to war against the upper classes:

0 seruile genus miserorum, quos sibi mundus

Subdidit a longo tempore lege sua,

Iam venit ecce dies, qua rusticitas superabit,

Ingenuosque suis coget abire locis.

Ibsinat omnis honor, periat ius, nullaque virtus,

Que prius extiterat, duret in orbe magis.

Subdere que dudum lex nos de iure solebat,

Cesset, it vlterius curia nostra regat. (I, 693—700)

0 you low sort of wrttches, which the world has subjugated for a

long time by its law, look, now the day has come when the peasantry

will triumph and will force thr fretman to get off their lands. Let

all honor come to an end, let justice perish, and let not virtue

that once existed endure further in the world. Let the law give

over which used to hold us in check with its justice, and from here
on let our court rule.

78

Three things may he noted here about the effect of the appearance
and speech of the jackdaw. First, with respect to the structure of book
I, the function of the jackdaw is to unify the disparate visions that
make up the earlier chapters in order to produce the ultimate vision of
the rebels as a united force:

Copia dum tanta monstrorum more ferarum

Extitit vnita, sicut arena maris,

Graculus vnus erat. . . .

hurmura compressit, tenuere silencia cuncti,

Eius vt auditus sit magis ore sonus. (I, 679-90)

When this great multitude of monsters like wild beasts stood united,
a multitude like the sands of the sea, there appeared a Jackdaw.

He checked the murmuring and all kept silent so that the sound from

his mouth might be better heard.

Second, the unity of purpose instilled in the mob by the jackdaw is not
simply a reflection of historical truth. It operates, in addition, as
an element within Gower's larger vision of the rebellion as a moral
force--that is, as a figure for man's rebellion against God. This moral
sense of the rebellion is brought out most forcefully in Gorer's idcn-
tification of the jackdaw with the devil:

pariter omnes gradiuntur in vnum,

Ihctor et inferni ducit iniqus iter.

Nubes nigra venit furiis commixta gehenne.
Septem progenies, quas ipse Chaym generauit,
Cum furiis socii connumerantur ibi. (I, 729-58)

They all marched together in the same fashion, and the wicked ruler
of hell led the way. A black cloud mingled with the furies of hell
approached. The seven races which Cain himself fostered were reck-
oned as Comrades there among the madmen.
Finally, the particular historical rebellion, seen as one phase of
man's moral rebellion against God, is compined with classical allusion

and imagery to produce a symbol of rebellion in what one might call the

absolute sense--rebellion per se:

79

Conueniunt eciam socii quos nUper Vluxis

Mutauit Circes, et sociantur eis:

Nunc facies hominum, nunc transformata ferarum

Gestabant Capita, que racione carent. (I, 779-82)

Also, Ulysses' companions, whom Circe had transformed long before,
met and allied themselves with them. Now they wore the faces of men
and now their transformed heads of wild beasts, and they had no
power of reason.

The significance of the rebellion of 1381 is develOped, then, in a
variety of ways. By the initial use of figuration, the peasants are
identified.with asses and oxen and the other animals in order to estab-
lish the doctrine that just as the beasts, according to the medieval
scheme, are naturally subject to the higher intelligence of man, so the
peasants should act within the medieval political hierarchy in subser-
vience to the higher orders. By the use of a second figurative device--
metamorphosis from animal to monster--the fallen spiritual state of the
peasantry is indicated. Finally, after the dramatic scene in which the
jackdaw resolves the different rebellious impulses of the peasantry,
references to the revolt of the angels and to the transformation of the
companions of Ulysses develop the moral and conceptual implications of
the political rebellion.

We can now take up the question of the apprOpriateness of the
poet's use of a jackdaw to represent the organizer of the rebellion. As
we found in the portrayal of the peasants, the species do not primarily
suggest particular sins or occupations, as would be the case in person-
ation; instead, the initial metamorphosis of men into animals is de-
signed, first of all, to show their unreasonableness. Similarly, the
jackdaw in the present episode is primarily a parodic figure of the

rabble rouser.

It is important to remember, however, that a specific bird is

80

referred to, not a flock as in Mother Goose. What this specific refer-
ence indicates is that a different method is being employed here from
that employed in the portrayal of the classes of peasants--a method de-
signed to identify a Specific person, Wat Tyler. Strictly Speaking, the
use of a particular bird to adequate a particular person is typology.

It may be worth recalling that in the Middle Ages men held rather
different attitudes toward talking birds than are held today. Thus, the
fact that the jackdaw could be taught to speak a few words might well
have seemed more important-~0f the bird's essence--and less accidental
to the poet and his audience than it does to the modern reader. In this
case, the jackdaw falls in with those animals whose natures suggest
particular vices, the jackdaw being associated with irrational speech.
Finally, combined with the conventional name Wat, as the bird was often
called,10 the jackdaw's special abiltiy to speak made it a particualrly
appropriate typolOgical figure of the rebel leader.

A new problem now arises as a result of the jackdaw's monstrosity;
for though the bird is described from the very first as a monster--

Vox fera, trux vultus, verissima mortis ymago,
Eius in effigiem tanta dedere notam. (I, 687-88)

A harsh voice, a fierce expression, a very faithful likeness to a
death's head--these things gave token of his appearance.

;:unless his ability to frame an exhortation to the assembled rebels is
to be so understood, he does not perform monstrous actions. Even if his
speech is considered monstrous, it is clearly not so in the same sense
as the actions of the other monsters.

The tradition of talking birds in medieval literature sheds some

light upon this problem. The whole tradition can hardly be explored

here, but it may be instructive to recall that the talking bird

81

frequently pointed to another order of bring, one neither animal nor
human. For example, in the Brendan legend talking birds are the forms
taken by those angels who were unwilling to choose between God and
Satan at the time of the revolt in heaven. Looking at Gower's jackdaw
from the vantage point of this tradition, one can detect in the bird's
behavior indications of a somewhat different order of being than is
found in the other monsters. The jackdaw, because of his ability to
speak, can be understood, not simply as a monster, but as a preternatu-
ral being. That his head is described as skull-like and that he is
identified with Satan both support such an interpretation. The rebel
leader is, in fact, possessed by the devil.

One last point should be mentioned concerning the delineation of
this personage. As we noted earlier, the jackdaw has been identified
With Wat Tyler, who led the Kentish peasantry in their assault on
London. Tyler himself, how(ver, was not a peasant but a knight,11 and
so the remarks above about the relationship between the talking bird
and an order of being distinct from both the human and animal orders
need be altered only slightly to account for the use of a talking bird
to suggest a different social class from that suggested by an ordinary
animal.

If the number of possible meanings for any of the personages in
this part of the first book is at times so large as to be rather con-
fusing, the source of confusion should be clear by now. An animal, when
used as a personage in a narrative, may be the product of either per-
sonation or figuration. In this poem Gower develops his personag(s ini-
tially through a device of figuration, but he also tries to allow for

meanings that result when animals are produced by the personation of

82

vices or occupations. The combinati n in itself is not always confusing.
Bottom with his ass' head certainly is not hard to understand. Where
Shakespeare is satisfied with a pet, hOWever, Gower requires a zoo.
There are simplv too many animals in the Egg Clamantis. thn if the en-

tire company of actors from A Midsummer Night's Trcam were to undergo

 

metamorphosis, the result would still not be comparable to tne literary
EXperience here, since in Gower the animals are in most cases classes
and groups, not individuals. Though the number of persona es involved
may be more detrimental to the effectiveness of the poem than the mere
combination of figuration and personation, it is worth noting that
Shakespeare does not rely on the ass to suggest a special occupation,
as Gower does; instead, Bottom's particular kind of foolishness is re-
stricted to that traditionally associated with the ass.

In all fairness to Gower, however, he does make an effort to limit
the meanings for some of his personages, or, more accurately, he does
not insist upon forcing the idea of a particular occupation or vice
upon every one of his animals. For example, he makes no attempt to spe-
cify the particular vice which the dogs represent, and since, as Pro-
fessor Bllomfield points out, the dog could be associated with envy,
sloth, gluttony, or lechery, the effect of Gower's treatment is at
least less rigid than it might have been.12

In the eleventh chapter a different method of developing person-
ages is employed. In his account of the activities of the rebels before
they move towards London, Gower discards the device of metamorphosis
and uses nicknames to identify the peasants:

Watte vocat, cui Thomme venit, neque Symme retardat,

Bette que Gibbe simul Hykke venire iubent:
Colle furit, ouem Geffe iuuat, nocumenta parantes, -

83

Cum quibus ad dampnum Willa ooire vouet.

Grigge rapit, dum [awe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe,

Lorkyn et in medio non miner esse putat:

Hudd: forit, quos Iudde terit, dum Tebbe minatur,

Iakke domes que viros vellit et ense necat:

Hogge suam pompam vibrat, dum se putat omni

Maiorem Rege nobilitate fore. (I, 783-92)

Wat calls, Tom comes to him, and Sim does not loiter behind, Bet

and Gib order Hick to come at once. Col rages, whom Geff helps to

do damage. Will swears to join them for mischief. Grigg grabs,

while Ihw roars and Hobb is their partner, and Lorkin intends no

less to be in the thick of things. Hudd strikes while Tebb threat-

ens those whom Judd tramples on. Jack tears down houses and kills

men with his sword. Hogg [or, more likely, Hodge] brandishes his

pomp, for with his noble bearing he thinks he is greater than any

king.
Stockton suggests that in using these names Gower may have had some of
the actual leaders of the revolt in mind. He further states that 'Natte

13

surely stands for Nat Tyler, just as Balle does for John Ball." While
the identification of Ball, based as it is upon the preper name and the
description of him as a teacher, is probably correct, there is actually
no compelling reason to see in the nicknames references to real persons.
Only Hodge with his "noble bearing" is characterized as anything more
than a roughneck.

A safer approach to Gower's use of nicknames is to view the device,
not as a synecdoche whereby the rebel band is represented by a limited
number of individuals who are themselves members of that band, but

rather in the same way that an Elizabethan audience might understand a

whole army from the appearance of a few soldiers on a stage. Here peas-
ant nicknames function in the same way as the wooden swords and costumes
function in the playe-that is, as the means for identifying the class to

which the personages belong.

It may even be helpful to consider the problem in mathematical

terms. Gower's device can be represented by the formula, X2 N1+N2+N3+xz

8h

where X stands for the incalculable number of peasants taking part in‘
l
tevolt; N1, N2, N3, and so on stand for a relatively limited number of

names designating the rebels; and.x stands for an allowance made by

both reader and writer for the difference between the calculable and
the incalculable. The formula makes somewhat clearer the fact that the
differentiation in names is not so much intended to individualize par-
ticular peasants, as it is simply to indicate multiplicity. In the
play, of course, the soldiers can remain anonymous because the audience
can see that there are more than one. Indeed, the soldiers in the play
must not be individualized to any great extent lest they no longer
effectively suggest an army. Logically, the same restriction should ap-
ply to the personages in the episode here, but the restriction has not
been perfectly observed. The ever so slight development of Hodge and
especially the introduction of John Ball confuse the Operation of the
device.

While both the personages here and those who were developed by the
device of metamorphosis can be classed as figurations, there are impor-
tant differences between them. The former, with the exception of the
historical John Ball, are primarily, and almost purely, function per-
sonages, to whom the different violent acts of the peasant army can be
attributed. Mereover, all of them, including Ball, are without signifi-
cant literary development and are thus wholly lacking in ideational
value. As we have seen, the metamorphosed peasants have, if anything,
an excess of ideational value.

In the thirteenth chapter of Book I, the dreamer witnesses the
peasants' attack upon the city of London. Several elements in the de-

scription indicate that this part of the vision should be distinguished

85

from what precedes it. Not surprisingly, the dreamer's attention fre-
QUcntly shifts from the peasants to their victims. fibre important, how-
ever, is the identification of London as New Troy, which functions as
the controlling image in this part of the vision, just as metamorphosis
had in the first part.

The basis for this identification is the pepular belief that
England had been founded by Brutus, a descrndent of Aeneas. The rise
and_development of this belief was exceedingly complicated, involving
apparently not only simple Celtic pride, but also Norman political am-
bitions in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.1h For our purposes,
it is necessary to recognize merely that by Gower's time the theory of
the Trojan origin of England was familiar to readers of the chronicles
and histories.

The identification of London with Troy provides the principle for
the delineation of the Londoners. Chapter fourteen, for example, is de-
voted entirely to the description of the murder of Simon Sudbury, the
archbishOp of Canterbury, who is referred to as Helenus, the high-
priest. This identification is a species of figuration similar to ty-
pology. As was pointed out in the introductory chapter, typology in
Biblical exegesis involves the identification of a particular person
or event from the Old Testament with a corresponding person or event
from the New Testament. Thus, Melohisidech, according to the Epistle to
the Hebrews, becomes a type of Christ in his office of priest.lS

The effect of typology is to infuse the historical personage with

conceptual significance. In the Vox Clamantis, of course, the murdered

 

archbishOp is not identified with the Trojan high-priest in order to

invest him with religious significance, but he is given a special

86

conceptual value through the temporal dimension inherent in the identi-
fication. By calling him Helenus, the narrator points to the fact that
Simon's office is traditional and therefore valuable. Like the high-
priest, the archbishOp is the Spiritual guardian of the laws of society.

In addition, the idrntification places the archbishop's death
within a mythological as well as historical framework. Implicit in it
is a comment upon the English character--namely, that the destruction
of their primates is the recurrent sin of the lower elements among the
English peOple.

This myth of the viciousness of the English is reinforced through
the comparison of Simon with the national saint, Thomas a Becket. The
comparison also has the obvious function of implying that the later
archbishop is a saint too. More important, however, the description of
the two men's deaths stresses the moral bankruptcy of both the noble
and the peasant classes, though Gower carefully excludes the king from
his general condemnation:

Quatuor in mortem spirarunt fedcra Thome,
Simonis et centum mille dedere necem:
Te vita Thome rex motus corde dolebat,
Simonis extremum rex dolet atque diem:
Ira fuit regis mors Thome, mors set ab omni
Vulgari furia Simonis acta fuit. . . .
Miles precipue reus est in sanguine Thome,
Simonis inque neocm rusticus arma dedit:
Ecclesiam Cristi proceres qui non timuerunt,
Martirii Thome causa fuere necis;
Iusticie rcgni seruile genusque repugnans
Simonis extremum causat in vrbe diem. (1, 1055-60, 1067-72)

Four men plotted an agreement for Thomas' death, and a hundred
thousand brought about Simon's murder. The King, moved in his
heart, grieved for Thomas' life, and mourned Simon's last day.
Thomas' death was caused by the wrath of a king, but Simon's death
was caused by the utter madness of the masses. . . . A knight was
the chief culprit in shedding Thomas' blood; a peasant furnished
the weapons for Simon's murder. Nobles who did not fear Christ's
Church were the cause of the martyr Thomas' murder; and the peasant

87

class, Opposed to the justice in the realm, brought about Sim n's
last day in the city.

Gower's identification of Simon with Halenus has been criticized on the
grounds that Helenus was actually the son of Priam 2nd Hecuba, who in
the poem adequate Richard II and the queen mother.l Obviously, there
are problems enough for everyone concrrned. The criticism, however,
seems rather misplaced in terms of the kind of dev010pment being used
here. One of the characteristics of typological interpretation is the
way it avoids diagrammatic consistency. Thus, if Isaac in ”The Sacri—
fice of Isaac" from the Chester plays is a type of Christ, who goes
meckly to his death and even bears the wood to be used for his Ckath as
Christ had carried the cross, no one need see Abraham as a figure for
Joseph or Sarah for Mary.17

Indeed, the analogy between London and Troy is clearly not meant
to be reflected in every detail in this part of the vision. The pea-
sants who sack London, for example, are not to be identified with the
Greeks. In fact, both Greeks and Trojans apparently are victims of the

assault. At least, in the same passage in which the narrator complains,

Ecce senem Calcas, cuius sapiencia maior
Omnibus est, nullum tunc sapuisse modum. (I, 961-62)

Even the old man Calchas, whose wisdom was greater than everyone's,
then knew no course of action.

and

Anthenor ex pactis componere federa pacis
Tune nequit. (I, 963-6h)

Antenor did not know then by what means to arrange peace treaties.
he also notes:

Lingue composite verbis nil rethor Vluxes
Tunc valuit, nec ei sermo bratus erat. (I, 967-68)

88

The orator Ulysses was then of no help with his words of well-
chosen speech, and blessed discourse was not his.

Another objection might be raised against the poet for shifting
the method of delineating Simon from identification of the archbishop
with an obscure Trojan high-priest to comparison of him to his prede-
cessor, the famous martyr. This shift can be partially justified on the
grounds that it fits with the larger thyme concerning the ruthlessness
of the English character. Here, as is most often the case in medieval
literature, the treatment of a personage is not an end in itself, but
serves a larger purpose. The description of Simon, in fact, can best be
understood as providing justification for the narrator's view that the
archbishop's death, the culminating horror in this part of the vision,
is proof of the viciousness of the English. Nonetheless, that the com-
bination of ana10gies introduces some confusion into the narrative can-
not be eXplained away completely. The passage shows the trouble Gower's
thoroughness causes him; for, having develOped a general similarity be-
tween the martyr and the archbishOp, he insists on stressing the dif-
ferences between them as well. The excessive particularity brought out
through Gower's elaborate rhetoric actually gets in the way of the por-
trayal of Simon as a national martyr.

Gower's handling of the Troy-London analogy can be contrasted with
Iryden's similar method of lining up London and Jerusalem in Absalom

and.Achitophel. The problem.that Gower runs into and Iryden avoids is

 

the explicit identification of his personages according to multiple
narrative lines. Iryden employs the Israel-England analogy so that
Iavid can be identified as a type of Charles II and God, but he relies

on a single narrative line. Iavid remains Ihvid and his relationship to

89

Charles and God is never develOped explicitly. Gower, on the other
hand, explicitly identifies his personage both as Simon and as Helenus
and further develops the comparison of Simon with Thomas in an unwieldy
analogy.

If the vision of the jackdaw suggests that the peasants are guilty
of a terrible sin in rebelling, then the vision of Simon's death sug-
gests that one of the marks of the English character is its cruelty
towards its religious leaders. The movement is from a statement about a
particular event to one about the character of a people throughout
their history. The difference is one between history and.myth.

The use of the other Trojan and Greek names in this part of the
vision is structurally parallel to the earlier use of nicknames to por-
tray the peasants. Macaulay suggests that these names stand for "gener-
al types" or stereotypes, rather than for particular persons.18 Calchas
is the wise old counsellor, Antenor the diplomat, and Ulysses the ora-
tor. The similarity between the use of these classical names and the
use of the name Helenus for Simon, however, should not blind us to the
important differences between them. The latter, as we have seen, is a
variety of figuration in which a particular person is provided with
ideational value associated with the name of some other person. In the
former personages, on the other hand, the various human qualities im.
plieda-the wisdom that cemes with age, diplomatic skill, and oratorical
abilityh-are not attributed to particular persons. Here, therefore, as
in the first part of the vision, we find_a mixture of figurative modes.

In each part a dominant form of figuration produces a relatively
large amount of ideational value in the personages portrayed. Then a

second figurative mode is used to provide a r<latively small amount of

9O
ideational value. The raason why the second part is clearer than the
first and.why Macaulay is rirht while Stockton is not is that in the
first part the identity of the personages developed by metamorphosis
and nicknames overlaps, whereas in the second.part this ambiguity is
avoided.

In the third p'rt of the vision, figuration is replaced by person-
ation as the dominant mode for develOping personages. Here, however, we
witness a serious brrakdown in the poet's control of the modes, and at
times personation and figuration appear side by side.

The central image is the ship of state under the command of a cap-
tain. This personage is given only the barest develOpment. The first
reference to him appears during the storm, when his order to lower the
yard is drowned out by the fury of the sea. Soon after this incident we
learn that he has lost his courage:

Ipse pauet nec se quis sit status ipse fatetur,
[hm timor ex mentis frigore corda gelat. (I, 1689-90)

The captain himself trembled with fear, and confessed that he did
not know what the situation was, since the chilling fear in his
mind froze his heart.
The final reference to the captain comes when the ship is attacked by
the sea monster, and he can only pray to God for help.

Coincidentally, the captain represents the young king, Richard II,
but this significance is the result of contextual factors rather than
textual ones. Basically, the captain is a personation of the governing
power within the state.

The personage of the captain is derived by analogy from the Cen-
tral image of the ship of state. Initially, this image develops along

lines comparable to personification-—that is, the non-physical state is

91

provided with the material preperties of the ship. Eventually, hOWevvr,
the image is modified by an eXplicit comparison of the ship with the
Tower of London. Although the combination of personation and figuration
in a single image is technically avoided by the use of a simile inst<ad
of a metaphor, an important result of the comparison is the suggestion
that the ship is not merely the reification of the state, but is also a
figure for the tower.

An artistically less troublesome personage is the sta monster,
which along with the storm obviously rcpresents the rebellion. Like the
ship and its captain, the sea monster is a clear example of personation,
the physical embodiment of the destructive forces among the peasantry.

By far the most important personage in this part of the vision is
the narrator himself. The narrator, of course, is developed throughout
the first book, but in the first two parts of the vision his response to
what he sees is almost exclusively emotional or verbal rather than phys-
ical. Only after the peasants have entered London and slain the arch—
bishop does the narrator take part in the action. The third.part of the
vision, extending from his flight to the country until his arrival on
the Island of Brut, might be described, in fact, as his response to the
first and second.parts.

If not the only personage in Book I whose delinuation is handled
consistently, the narrator is certainly the most important personage de-
veloped according to a single mode. As a figuration, his dominant char-
acteristics are clearly indicated in the early chapters.

The first of these characteristics is derived from the image of the
wanderer. In the opening chapter, he describes himself as a wanderer in

the pleasant season that has already been described. At night, however,

I‘ll-I'll]

 

92
his sleep is troubled:

Sic lecto vigilans meditabar plura, eue mentem
Effudi, variis corde vagante modis. (I, lh9-SO)

Wakeful on my bed I pondered many things and poured out my thoughts,
my heart wandrring in different directions.

Next, in the first dream-vision, physical and emotional wandering lead
to Spiritual wandering:

Iam fuerat raptus spiritus ipse meus. (I, 166)

My Spirit itself was indeed stolen away.

A second characteristic, actually a development of the (motional
wandering just described, is the narrator's constant fear and amazement
at what he sees. Typical of his response throughout is his comment af-
ter the sack of New Troy:

Hec ita cum vidi, me luridus occupat horror,
Et quasi mortifera stat michi vita mea;
Semper in interius precordia mortis ymago
Pungit, et vt gladius viscera tota mouet. (I, 1359-62)
As I saw things like these a ghastly fright seized mt, and my life

Seemed almost deadly to me. The image of death constantly troubled

my heart within, and it struck at my Vitals like a sword.

In the third part of the vision, the images of the wanderer and
the terrified observer are fused into the single image of the outcast,
who flees first to the isolation of the forest and later to the ship of
state.

Another characteristic of the narrator is his desire to appear as
God’s spokesman. Stockton has noted that the title of the work, in
English Thg_zgige‘gf One Crying, is taken from Isaiah and is the phrase

19
used by Christ to describe John the Baptist. In the Prologue to Book

 

I, the narrator associates himself with another figure from Scripture

when he prays for guidance:

93

Insula ouem Pathmos suscepit in Apocalipsi,
buius ego nomen gesto, gubernet Opus. (Prol., 57-58)

May the one whom the Isle of Patmos received in the on a ypse, and
Whose name I bear, guide this work.

 

Finally, in the concluding section of the narrative after he has awak-
ened from his dream, the narrator hears a celestial voice that in-
structs him to record what he has seen.

But if the Biblical prophets and visionaries provide the basic im-
age of a voice crying in the British wilderness, much of the personal
quality in that voice echoes a different culture. The Ovidian element
in the first book has been measured statistically by both Macaulay and
Stockton, who record hundreds of borrowings from the different works of
the Roman poet.2O What has not been stressed is the high percentage of
borrowings in those sections which trace the personal responses of the
narrator. It is surely significant, for example, that chapter sixteen,
which the narrator devotes to an analysis of his thoughts and actions
after the fall of London, contains more Ovidian borrowings and adapta-
tions than any other chapter in the first book. Most of these borrow-
ings develop the narrator as a frightened outcast, pursued by the reb-
els and unable to face the terror around him. Thus, in sixty-six of the
23h lines in the chapter, the narrator's grief and fear sound in a
Roman key.

It may well be that the most effectively controlled element in the
narrative is not what the dreamer sees, but the dreamer himself. The
control is by no means perfect. The righteous indignation of the pro-
phet does not always harmonize with the sclf-pitying misery of the
exile. But the complex figure of the narrator is the product of a

single mode of develOpment and does not conflict with personages

9h

produced by other modes. As we have sern, in the first and Second parts
of the vision, the combination of different figurative modes results in
ambiguity, while the ship in the third.part very nearly capsizes be-
neath the weight of a simultaneous idvntification as the roification of
the state and as the figure of the besieged TOWLP of London. Compar4d

With these, at least, the narrator as a personage must be considered a

success.

7.

9.

lo.

11.

12.

13.

1b.

15.

16.

95

Notes to Chapter II

Ernst Robert Curtius, European Litrrature and the Latin Middle
Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York, 1963), pp. 9L-95.

 

All citations from the Vox Clamantis are taken from The Works of
John Gower, Vol. IV: The Latin Works, ed. G. C. Macaulay (Oxford,
1902).

 

 

 

All translations of the Vox Clamantis are taken from The bhjar
Latin Works of John Gower, trans. hric W. Stockton (Seattle, 1962).

 

 

 

Morton W. Bloomfield, The Seven {badLy Sins (East Lansing, 1967),
pp. 2h5-2h90

 

See 11. 8h? ff.
The lines are:

Cil q'est a ceste file encline,
11 ad son appetit canin. (7717-18)

Pour resembler Flatour, est cil
Semblable au coue de goupil
Que le vilte covere au derere. (1hOS-7)

Professor F. N. Robinson summarizes the various interpretations in
his edition, The Works g£_Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1961),
p. 791.

 

Macaulay, p. 37h (Note).

Ibid. See also Stockton, p. 352 and Chaucer in the Canterbury
Tales:

 

And eek ye knowen wrl how that a jay
Kan clepen "Watte" as wel as kan the pope. (Gen. Prol. 6&2-3)

The writer of the article on Tyler in the Encyclopedia Brittanica,
however, describes the rebel leader, follcfing’Froissart, merely as
an ex-soldier.

 

Bloomfield, log. git.
StOthon, p. 35h.

See the introductory essay by Lucy Allen Paton in The Histo:y_g£
the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, trans. Charles W.

iii-fin (New York, l9)8), p0 XX.

Heb. 7.

 

Stockton, p. 358.

96
17. Arnold Williams, "Typology and the Cycle Plays: Some Criteria,"
Speculum, XLIII (1968), 681.
18. p. 376.
19. Stockton, p. 11.

20. Stockton, pp. 26 ff.

III: The Confessio Amantis

 

I

The narrative portion of the Confessio Amantis takes up almost the

 

whole work. Following the Prologue and a short introductory statement
at the beginning of Book I, the story begins when the narrator recalls
a walk he took one day in Key.

His own sorrow on that occasion is in sharp contrast to the happi-
ness of the birds that he sees enjoying their mates. Alone, in the
heart of a forest, he laments his separation from the woman he desires
and often falls senseless to the ground. Finally, aftvr waking from his
pain, he prays to the king and queen of Love, Cupid and Venus. From the
latter, especially, he asks:

Behold my cause and my ouerele,

And yif me som part of thi grace,

So that I may finde in this place 1
If thou be gracious or non. (I, 13h-137)

Suddenly the two deities appear. Cupid, in unexplained anger,
hurls a fiery dart at the Lover, which passes through his heart. The
god of Love then departs. Venus, however, remains with the Lover and
asks, "What art thou, Sone?" (I, 15h).

At the goddess' words, the Lover starts up, "Riht as a man doth
out of slep” (I, 155), but Venus coun3tls him not to be afraid and re-

peats her question. In response, the Lover identifies himself as "A

Caitif that lith hiere" (I, 161) but fails to tell her his name.

97

98

Venus now asks him what his malady is and indicates that his cure
lies in her power:

Ne hyd it noght, for if thou feignest,
I can do the no medecine. (I, 166~l67)

The Lover answers that he has been a servant in Venus' court for a
long time and seeks only for what he frels he has earned--"Som wele
after my longe wo" (I, 171).

Venus, however, seems to have doubts about the Lover and suggests
that he may be a practiced deceiver, though, as the narrator points
out,

sche wiste wel,
Mi world stod on an other whiel
Withouten eny faiterie. (I, 177-179)
She then orders the Lover to confess his sins to Genius, her priest.

The central dialogue between Genius and the Lover extends for over
thirty thousand lines and consists chiefly in a series of example, nar-
rated by Genius and commented upon by him. The purpose of these exempla
is to reveal the variety of offenses against love so that the Lover can
evaluate his own behavior. According to the priest, he himself will

Noght only make my spekynges
Of love, bot of othre thinges

That touchen to the cause of vice.

I wol nothing forbere,

That I the vices on and on

Ne schal thee schewen everychon;

Wherof thou myht take evidence

To reule with thi conscience. (I, 239-2h8)

The organization of the exempla is twofold. First, Genius goes over the
ways a person may sin against love through the five senses; for, as he
eXplains,

tho be properly the gates,
Thurgh whiche as to the herte algates

99

Uomth alle thing unto the feire,
Which may the mannes Soule empeire. (I, 299-302)

Eventually Genius questions the Lover concerning sight and hearing, but
V cbcides not to deal with smell, taste, and touch. The exvmplification
and analysis of each of the Seven deadly sins--pride, envy, wrath,
sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lechery—-are made the subjects of the re-
mainder of Book I, all of Books II-VI, and the first part of Book VIII.
Book VII is an intermezzo, an account of the training given to Alex-
ander by Aristotle in order to prepare him for his duties as king.
Though provided by Genius for the Lover's edification, this section, by
the priest's own admission, "is noght to the matiere of love" (VII,
7‘8).

IhSpite Genius' promise that the Lover will shrive himself "of the
felicite/ Of love and ek of all the we" (I, 206-207) and the Lover's
promise that he will obey the priest, all the tales together accomplish
little in making the Lover see his condition realistically. At the con-
clusion of the last exemplum of Apollonius of Tyre, Genius gives the
Lover the final lesson of love:

my Sone, I wolde rede

To lete a1 other love aweie,

Bot if it be thurgh such a weie

As love and reson wolde acorde.

For elles, if that thou descorde,

And take lust as doth a beste,

Thi love mai noght ben honeste;

For be no skile that I finde

Such lust is noght of loves kinde. (VIII, 2020-2028)
Implicit in this statement is a condemnation of the Lover, whose adora-
tion of his mistress is not in accord with reason. At the beginning of

their dialogue, in fact, when he besought Genius' help in making his

confession, the Lover had admitted:

100

I am destourbcd
In all myn herte, and so contourbed
That I ne may my wittes gete. . . .

now my wittes ben so blinde,
That I ne can miselven teche. (I, 221-229)

And even now he recognizes that his wit is ”assoted" (VIII, 2036), al-
beit
in that worthi place

Wher alle lust and alle grace

Is set. (VIII, 2037-2039)
Apparently, the Lover misunderstands Genius' counsel against dishonest
love, taking it not as a general statement relevant to his own condi-
tion, but merely as a comment on the sin of incest, which was one of
the subjects treated in the tale of Apollonius. He argues that his only
enemy is Tanger,

that is al my moste fere:
I not what ye fortune acompte,
Bot what thing danger mai amonte
I wot wel, for I have assaied;
For whan myn herte is beste arraied
And I have a1 my wit thurghSOght
Of love to beseche hire oght
For al that evere I skile may,
I am concluded with a nay. (VIII, 20hO-20h8)

He then concludes by asking Genius to teach him some way to achieve his
end.
Genius now openly accuses the Lover of sinning in trying to win
his mistress' love (VIII, 2087-2088) and urges him to give up his suit:
My Bone, and if thou have be so,
Yit is it time to withdraws,
And set thin herte under that lawe,
The which of reson is governed
And noght of will. (VIII, 2132-2136)
The Lover, however, becomes extremely defensive and dismisses his

priest's advice, protesting that the latter does not understand his

pain (VIII, 2152-2170). Yet, as he admits to himself a few lines later,

101

Mi resoun understod him wel,

And knew it was soth everydel

That he hath seid, bot noght forth

Mi will hath nothing set therby. (VIII, 2191-219h)
Eventually, the Lover decides to write a supplication to Cupid and
Venus and prevails upon Genius to deliver it for him.

The supplication which the Lover composes provides little informa-
tion that has not appeared earlier. What it does provide is a com-
pressed statement of the Lover's inner conflict. The supplication is,
in this respect, a lyric version of the emotional situation already ex-
plored through dramatic and narrative means.

In the opening stanza the Lover complains that his reason is un-
able to defend itself against the urgings of his heart, which has it-
self become involved in folly as a result of love-sickness. For this
reason he seeks help. In the second stanza he looks to nature and finds

that every creature has a mate for at least part of the year. Even

the litel wrenne in his mesure
Hath yit of kinde a love under his cure. (VIII, 2227-2228)

One recalls here the earlier scene, when he first entered the forest
and found that
every brid hath chose his make

And thenkth his merthes forto make

Of love that he hath achieved. (I, 101-103)
As then, so now he has "bot on desire” (VIII, 2229), which is left un-
satisfied. In the Opening line of the third stanza, he admits, "The
resoun of my wit it overpasseth" (VIII, 2231). He cannot understand why
nature teaches him the way to love without providing him with the means
to succeed. His reason and will strUgyle within him, but he is unable

to flee from love. In the fourth stanza the Lover compares his state to

that of the god Pan, who wrestled with love and was OVIrcome, and once

lO2

again he admits,
I no strengthe in al min herte finde,

Wherof that I mai stonden eny throwe;

So fer mi wit with love is overthrowe. (VIII, 22h2-22hh)
By his repeated admissions that his mind is unable to help him in his
struggle, the Lover verifies what both he and Genius have already dis-
covered about the unreasonableness of his passion. In the fifth stanza
the Lover prepares for the prayers which make up the remainder of the

supplication by explaining that he cannot help himself and that

als so wel I mihte sitte stille,
As preie unto mi lady eny helpe. (VIII, 22h9-2250)

In the next two stanzas, he complains first that his prayers to Jove
have gone unanswered and second that although everything else seems to
change from bad to good at least part of the time,

evere is Ihnger in 0 place,
Which wol noght change his will to do me grace. (VIII, 226h-2265)

His earlier encounter with Cupid is recalled.when the Lover suggests
that part of his anguish is the result of the god's cruelty, but he
also suspects that he himself must have begun to love at an inauspi-
cious time, when Venus was taking "hir conseil with Satorne" (VIII,
2275). Finally he prays to Venus and Cupid to put aside thcir wrath so
that Ihnger will go away. In particular, he asks Cupid to withdraw the
dart that burns in his heart or give him the salve he desires--the love
of his mistress--and he begs Venus either to reward his love as he Cb-
serves--which will prove an unfortunately phrased request--or to kill
him at once.

While the Lover waits for Genius to deliver his supplicatinn to
Venus, she appears suddenly and, smiling, asks him his name. "John

Gower," he answers.

103

In her address to the Lover, Venus first explains that from her

court are excluded all those who delight in unnatural vices:

For al onliche of gentil love

Mi court stant alle courtz above

And takth noght into retenue

Bot thing which is to kinds due,

For elles it schal be refused. (VIII, 23hS-23h9)
In a somewhat ambiguous passage, she then excuses him:

For it is manye daies gon,

That thou amonges hem were on

Which of my court hast ben withholde. (VIII, 2351-2353)
The sense of this statement, apparently, is that the Lover has actually
been guilty of unnatural love, though the playfulness of Venus' mood at
this point is hardly compatible with any serious perversion on his
part. She promises, however, that his pain will be eased, though it is
never stated that the letter of his supplication will be followed. Her
cure will be in accordance with reason, and the Lover will receive jus-
tice. At last, "Halvynge of scorn" (VIII, 2397), Venus points out how
old the Lover is and stresses the futility of his ever gaining his mis-
tress' love:

And Wel I wot, thogh thou beseche

Mi love, lustes ben ther none,

whiche I mai take in thi persone. . . .

For thogh thou myhtest love atteigne,

Yit were it bot an ydel peine,

When that thou art noght sufficant

To holde love his covenant. (VIII, 2hoo-2h20)

As he reflects upon the words of the goddess,

A colde me cawhte sodeinly,

For sorwe that myn herte made

Mi dedly face pale and fade

Becam, and swoune I fell to grounde. (VIII, 2hh6-2hh9)

As he lies between life and death, he sees Cupid and a parliament of

lovers, made up of two companies. At the head of the first stands

10h

Youth. Those who stand with him sing all the songs of love, and the
and the sound of their singing is so loud
that on every side
It thoghte as al the hevene cride
In such acord and such a soun . . .
That it was half a mannes hole
So glad a noise forto hiere. (VIII, 2615-2620)
In this company the Lover sees Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guene-
vere, and many others, not only those who had been successful in love,
but also some, like Lido and Cleopatra, who suffered for love, and like
Circe, who used sorcery to make men love her. Four women are especially
honored:
the foure wyves,
Whos feith was proeved in her lyves:
For in essample of alle goode
With Mariage so thei stode,
That fame, which no gret thing hydeth,
Yit in Cronique of hem abydeth. (VIII, 2615-2620)
These are Penelope, Lucrece, Alceste, and.Alcione.

Youth takes no notice of the old man lying before him, and the
Lover next turns his eyes upon the second company of lovers, a much
smaller one than the first, led by Elde. The music produced by them is
restrained, and their dance is slow and measured. They smile but do not

laugh boisterously. The Lover notices, nevertheless,

That thei the more queinte it made
For love, in whom thei weren glade. (VIII, 2687-2688)

This company includes, among others, Ihvid and Sampson, Aristotle,
Virgil, and "Ovide the Poete" (VIII, 2719). Their appearance marks a
turning point in the Lover's attitude, for

I thoghte thanne how love is swete,

Which hath so wise men reclamed,

And was miself the lasse aschamed,

0r forto lese or forto winne

In the meschief that I was inne:

And thus I lay in hope of grace. (VIII, 2720-2725)

105

"With 0 vois alle” (VIII, 2728), the old men pray to Venus for the
Lover, and she hears their prayer.

At the request of the goddess, Cupid withdraws the fiery dart from
the Lover's heart and then vanishes along with all the lovers who had
appeared in the vision. Genius and Venus remain, hOWBVLr, and the god-
dess anoints the Lover's wound and his temples and reins with a cold
ointment. Then she holds up a mirror before his face, and he sees him-
self at last as an old man. Shocked at the sight, the Lover recalls the
analogy between the passage of the seasons of the year and the lapse of
years in his own life. He begins to come to his senses and once again
is restored to reason:

And thus thenkende thoghtes fele,
I was out of mi swoune affraied,
Wherof I sih my wittes straied,
And gan to clepe hem hom ayein.
And whan Resoun it herde sein
That loves rage was aweie

He cam to me the rihte weie,

And hath remued the sotie

CE thilke unwise fantasie,

Wherof that I was wont to pleignu,
So that of thilke fyri peine

I was mad sobre and hol ynowh. (VIII, 2858—2869)

Seeing that he has recovered, Venus asks the lover, "as it wore in
game” (VIII, 2871), what love is, and now he answers angrily that he
does not know. Smiling, she counsels him to depart, but he first asks
for absolution from Genius for the sins he has confessed. BTfOTB he

goes, Venus takes a "Peire of Bedes blak as Sable" (VIII, 290h), upon

which is inscribed "For reposer," and hangs them around the Lover's

 

neck. As C. S. Lewis has noted, the phrase suggests not only the rest

which the Lover has earned by his confession, but also the death of
2

love. In her final Speech to him, she counsels him to

106

tarie thou mi Court nomore,
Bot go ther vertu moral duelleth,
Wher ben thi bokes, as men telleth,
whiche of long time thou hast write. (VIII, 292h-2927)
At the close of her speech, both the goddess and her priest vanish,

leaving the Lover to return home alone.

II

In the Uonfessio Amantis both figuration and personation are used.

 

For example, the personages in the two companies of lovers, who appear
in the closing section of the poem, are deveIOped through figuration,
as are many of the personages in the exempla narrated by Genius. Also
developed basically as figurations are the two divine personages--Cupid
and Venus. Besides the personifications-—Youth and Elde—-Genius, who
serves as Venus' priest and the Lover's confessor, is a personation.
Unlike the simple personifications, however, the priest-confessor is
well on the way to complete individuation. The Lover, who is initially
referred to as Amans but who eventually identifies himself as John
Gower, is also developed through personation. Indeed, as the following
analysis will attempt to point out, this central personage is trans-
formed by means of the poetic action from the generic Lover of the
Opening scene into the particular personage, John Gower, who finally
denies all knowledge of love.

Both setting and action at the beginning of the narrative indicate
that the world of the poem is non-representational, rather than parti-
cular. The narrator's walk in the forest need hardly be traced to a
biographical incident. It is the same walk once taken by the narrators

in The Parlement gproules, in Ibnte's Commedia, and in the Roman d3

107

la Ease. The same walk had also been taken by Aeneas after his ship—
wreck on the Carthaginian shore. The walk in the forest is only part of
a traditional motif, however, the prelude to a more important event. In
each of the works referred to, the personage who walks alone is met by
another personage who in some way suggests an immaterial world. In the
Parlement and the £2222; the narrators meet Nature and Idleness respec-
tively, personifications of abstractions. In the Inferno the narrator
meets Virgil, a figure of the classical world and its traditions. In

the Aeneid the goddess of love hersnlf appears, and together with her'son
sle re-appears to the prostrate Lover in the Confessio.

The meeting between man and god.is significant in many ways, of
course, but in terms of the delineation of the Lover, this merting
brings out two important qualities. First, we learn of his subservience
to the complex power of love. Cupid, a tyrannical force, casts him
down, an emotional experience develOped iconographically when the god
hurls a dart into the Lover's breast. Fortunately for the Lover, the
tyranny of love is balanced by a gentler force represented by Venus,
and his respectful, if none too intelligent, response to the goddess'
question is, in effect, a further act of subservience to this force.

Unfortunately, some confusion arises from this incident, since the
picture of the Lover prior to the appearance of Venus and Cupid is of
one who is already a servant of love. Rather than indicating a change
in the Lover, therefore, Cupid's act is a work of supererogation. The
Lover here can be contrasted with Chaucer's Troilus. At the beginning

of Troilus and Criseyde, Troilus is not in love. On the contrary, he is

 

rather scornful of the romantic sufferings of his friends. Once he sees

Criseyde, of course, he is lost, but Chaucer avoids placing his hero in

108

the awkward position of the Lover in Gower's poem, who, having already
fallen in love--that is, been pierced by love's arrow--is pierced a
second time. In other words, whereas Chaucer is content with mimetic
representation, Gower loads a redundant iconographic sign upon his per-
sonage, who has already been revealed as a lover.

The matter, as distinguished from the manner, of the Lover's re-
sponse points up the second important quality in him-~his lack of un-
derstanding. Venus' seemingly simple question, "What art thou, Sone?"
(I, 15h) causes him every whit as much trouble as Cupid's dart. At
least he is a long time--over 30,000 lines--answering it. Venus must
even repeat her question to a surprisingly surly Lover, who reacts to
the graciousness of the goddess by commenting:

for al that I was noght glad
For I ne sawh no cause why. (I, 158-159)

The answer he finally makes is framed in the conventional language of
courtly love. First, he identifies himself as "a Caitif that lith
hiere" and immediately thereafter suggests that he needs the goddess'
help:

What wolde ye, my Ladi diere?
Schal I ben hol or elles dye? (I, 161-163)

To Venus' next question about the nature of his malady, the Lover again
fails to give a direct answer. Instead, he identifies himself in dif-
ferent terms:

Ma dame, I am a man of thyme,

That in thi Court have longe served,

And.aske that I have dCSered,

Som wele after my longe wo. (I, 168-171)

Perhaps the most striking thing about this exchange is the Lover's

failure to appreciate the events taking place around--that is, within--

109

him. Surely it is somewhat stupid of him to see no cause for gladness,
when he has just been encouraged by love's deity not to be afraid. His
foolishness is brought out in a less obvious way by his conqued at-
tempts to identify himself, for his initial statement that he is a
caitif--a base, unworthy person, who has been forced to obey a stronger
power——is not perfectly compatible with his later claim to have been a
long-time servant in Venus' court. Unlike the first, this claim sug-
gests perfect willingness on his part to serve the goddess. Even when
allowances have been made for the requirements of courtesy, the Lover's
choice of terms leads to the suspicion that he does not really under-
stand what his true relationship to love is.

Our knowledge of the way the poem ends may lead us astray here,
but we should not be too quick to identify the inarticulate Lover in
this Opening scene with the poet, John Gower. It will be a long time
before he makes such an identification himself. We have seen that the
setting and action of this opening scene are neither particular nor mi-
metic, but the embodiement of a psychological or spiritual experience--
the Lover‘s awareness of the power of love. The same is true of the un-
named Lover himself or Amans, as he is designated in the marginal com-
mentary. The term amans is a generic designator, which identifies ac-
cording to the activity the personage performs. He is "the one loving."

Like the scholastic philosopher's ens, amans is grammatically a parti-

 

ciple, singular and masculine, but indefinite, referring to an activity
proper to rational beings generally. As his answers to Venus reveal,
the Lover views himself in general terms; he is one of a class-~a serv-
ant in the goddess' court-—rather than a particular person.

But Venus is not impressed by his claims and expresses her doubts

110

about him when she comments on ”faitours." The mimetic significance of
this incident—-its visible meaning or ppiar—presents little difficulty
and is consistent with the delineation of both Venus and the Lover. The
goddess, who "presents” a number of ideas associated with love, symbol-
izes in particular what may be described.as love's civilizing power.
Like a good doctor, Venus has tried to find out the identity as well as
the malady of her patient. Instead of straight answers, however, she
has heard him make rather outrageous claims for himself. In his eager-
ness to ingratiate himself with her, he has described himself solely in
relation to her and to the power presents as caitif and servant. He has
told something less than the truth, though we do not yet know what the
truth is. ApprOpriately, then, Venus reminds him of the need for sin-
cerity in matters of love.

While the mimetic significance of Venus' statement is clear, how-
ever, its metaphoric or symbolic significance—-that is, the hyponoia or
meaning underlying the mimetic--is less easily uncovered. The nature of
the problem here will be clearer if we examine the meeting between
Aeneas and_Venus in Book I of the Aeneid. The metaphoric significance
of the goddess' command that her son seek out the queen can be stated
quite simply: The power of love guides Aeneas to Iido. In other words,
the metaphoric meaning of the incident pertains to the delineation of
Aeneas. We have already noted a similar device for developing a person-
age in the Confessio in the meeting between Cupid and the Lover. But
what can be meant by having the power of love question the sincerity of
a generic Lover? Ibesn't the fact that he is called ”Amans" mean that
he must be a true lover?

Every lover, of course, would insist that he was true, but matters

111

are not as simple as the appearance of a single personation would im-
ply. As we shall discover, one of the purposes of the poem is to exam-
ine all the different ways a person can be a lover. Venus is no re-
Specter of names, apparently. Perhaps, she has already heard all the
stories Genius will tell of lovers good, bad, and indifferent. It seems
Clear, in any case, that she has no intention of allowing the Lover to
look upon himself as a pure general type. The conceptual significance
of the incident, therefore, can perhaps be best eXplained as the
Lover's first recognition that merely calling oneself a lover is not
enough.

In the final incident in this Opening scene, Venus orders the
Lover to confess his sins to her priest Genius. To repeated questions
about the nature of his illness, she has heard him premise that he will
eXplain, "Be so my lif therto wol laste" (I, 187). At this the goddess
loses all patience. Can it be that bound by neither the Lover's (nor
the critic's) limited knowledge, Venus has been able to see through
both his rhetoric and self-delusion to the truth about this Lover's
identity? Perhaps she realizes that giVen his poetic powers of endur-
ance, a full account of his malady may.take considerably more time than
she has to spend. If such an explanation of the mimetic significance of
the action implies an ungoddesslike lack of charity in the queen of
love, the conceptual significance is considerably more apprOpriate to
her divinity. The delegation of the job of hearing the Lover‘s confes-
sion to Genius effectively distinguishes between a special office of
love-~namely, instruction and correction--and the curative power behind
the office.

At this point it may be convenient to pause for a while and

112

examine more closely the four personages in this first section of the
narrative. As has been noted, the Lover is a generic, and I have sug-
gested that in his initial appearance he is in the first stage in the
progress towards particularity. The delineation of Genius is also ac-
complished through personation, though obviously Genius is neither a
generic nor a simple personification. In classical mythOIOgy the term
"genius" designated an attendant spirit whose particular quality was
indicated by the place or person with which he was associated--for ex-
ample, a genius of a pond or river. In a second sense, Genius desig-
nated the universal god of generation, described by Augustine in Th3
EEEXHE£.EEQ as "the god who is set over, and has the power of begetting,

3
all things." In the EE Planctu Naturae of Alanus de Insulis, the neg-

 

ative side of this meaning is stressed, and Genius is characterized
primarily as the enemy of unnatural vice. Genius also appears in the
Egmgg in the section composed by Jean de Meun. There he is identified
as the priest of Nature and delivers a lengthy sermon against sexual
abuses against the goddess' rule. In the Confessio his priestly office
is expanded to include story-telling.h

As we suggested earlier, Venus and Cupid are deveIOped through
figuration, though, like Genius and to a lesser extent the Lover, their
behavior is also determined by literary tradition. Basically, the god

and goddess can be identified as the deities of love and desire, what-

ever particular values those terms may suggest. In the Aeneid Venus had

 

also shown a maternal interest in Aeneas, and here she looks upon the
Lover as a son, albeit a far less heroic one than the founder of Home.
CUpid is most nearly related to "11 dex d'Amour" in the Roman d3 lg

Rose. As in the French poem, he is a haughty god whose superiority to

113

the Lover is stressed through his violent action. he lacks here, how-
ever, the urbanity of Guillelme de Lorris' creation.

The literary traditions behind these personages are, to be sure,
much richer than I have indicated, stretching back through recorded
history to prehistory. As long as the deities were associated with tra-
ditional myths, they seem to have been treated as concrete and individ-
ual personages. In the late classical period, however, the gods are
separated from their gesta and are viewed as abstract. Chrysippus,6for
example, reduces the Greek gods to physical and ethical principles.
From the late classical and early medieval phase, on the other hand,
the movement seems to be back towards the concrete and individual, at
least in literature, although the abstract element in their makeup
might re-appear at any time, depending upon the particular poet's in-
tention. In Spenser, for example, Venus is much less concrete than she
is in the Confessio.

The important thing to be noted is that the development of Ckities
or deifications, however one views them, is along a concrete-abstract
axis. Iivine personages, such as we find here, are of a different ordtr
from the generic Lover. Unlike him, they are particular personages, be-
cause the terms which give them their names are particular. Their de-
VGIOpment, therefore, instead of being from the general to the particu-
lar, is from the comparatively abstract to the comparatively concrete,
or vice versa.

Like his meeting with the gods, the Lover's confession is a device
for deveIOping the meaning of the personage. The examination carried
out by Genius-~particularly, the numerous stories he narrates--fune-

tions as an extended metaphor for the education of the Lover. By the

11b

end of his confession, the Lover is a new man in more than the ordinary
sense. The knowledge he has acquired has made him a more particularized
personage, and this development in him is indicated.when he frames his
verse complaint to Venus and Cupid. This is not to say that he is psy-
chOIOgically different from what he was when he first entered the for-
est. As we found in the analysis of his supplication, he still lacks
understanding of who he is in the emotional senSt. The fOFm into WhiCh
he puts his supplication, however, is obviously indicative of a new
quality in him. Since the work is a poetic form, the Lover must also be
a poet.

Mimetically, however, the long confession is frequently unsatis-
factory. There are several reasons for this failure, which can be
grouped according as they pertain to the delineation of the Lover or of
Genius. The most glaring problem with the former is that his education
is not gradual. We see little alteration in him as story succeeds story
and vice follwws vice. Although he responds in various ways to Genius'
stories and comments, these responses do not suggest any growing aware-
ness on his part of his being called to the work of the poet.

The absence of any development in the Lover during the confession
may' partly reSult from the structural principle used by the poet
in organizing the confession; for, as Professor Bloomfield has noted,
the order of the seven deadly sins in the Confessio is perfectly tradi—
tional.7 It is hardly likely, therefore, that some hidden significance
is to be mined from the Lover's hearing about wrath before gluttony.
Indeed, the only important element in his delineation is that he hears
everything Genius knows and that he is acouainted with the relationship

between the stories and the sins.

115

Even less satisfactory than the delineation of the LOVE? is that
of Genius, whose behavior at times is very nearly mimetically implausi—
ble. Genius' chief offense against plausibility is his penchant for en-
gaging in irrelevant discourse. The purpose of the confession ordered
by Venus is to purify the Lover and prepare him for the cure to be ef-
fected later. But preparation hardly requires that the Lover be rrgaled
with exempla illustrating evils he has never thought of. Sometimes, it
is true, the Lover himself asks to hear these exempla, just as at the
end of Book V he asks Genius to describe Alexander's education, to
which the priest then devotes all the following book. On such occa-
sions, at least, the mimetic requirements of the scene are not vio-
lated. More than once, however, Genius narrates, without being asked,
exempla illustrating sins of which the Lover is wholly innocent. Thus,
in Book V after approving of the Lover for being interested not in his
mistress' money but simply in her, Genius blithely proceeds to the tale
of the king and his steward's wife. Sometimes the priest does not even
bother to find out whether or not the Lover is guilty of a particular
vice before launching into his exempla. After describing robbery in
love, Genius narrates two tales and becomes involved in a discussion of
virginity, without ever determining where the Lover stands with respect
to robbery in love itself.(V, 6075-6b92).

Gower's problem here is that he is caught between two aims. He
wants to write both an anatomy of love and a psychological study of a
lover. Ihring the confession he is frequently forced to sacrifice the
second aim to the first.

Aside from his verbosity, little else in the treatment of Genius

can be faulted. He possesses three other distinguishable traits: first,

116

he is acquainted with a vast fund of stories, which he relates to par—
ticular moral conditions; second, he consistently takes a serious moral
attitude both towards the Lover and towards the subject matter of his
discourses; and last, he is invariably patient in his dealings with the
Lover. This third trait requires no comment, but the other two are of
considerable importance in keeping the delineation of the priest comp
paratively abstract.

The second trait—~Genius' encyclopedic knowledge of stories and
such miscellaneous matters as the varieties of religions and the educa-
tion of Alexander--instead of deepening the delineation of Genius,
makes it more abstract. The paradox here is a perfectly familiar one.
‘We know something about the author of a single unified work, even when
we do not know his name--the author of Beowulf, for example. On the
other hand, we ordinarily know a good deal less about the editor who
merely gathers together the stories and learning of others. The latter
inevitably conceals his own personality to some extent. Genius' vast
knowledge has the similar effect of concealing his "personality."

Yet Genius is not quite a teaching machine and nothing more, for
he does have a voice and so is able to reveal a mood and tone when he
Speaks. Genius never responds to the Lover completely. Instead, his re-
sponses are always restricted to the problem of guilt or innocence--to
the moral element in the Lover or in the subject being discussed. Thus,
even when the Lover is unintentionally funnye-hardly a matter for
ethics--Genius remains unmoved. After listening to the description of
Avantance or boasting, the lover explains his hapless case to his con-
fessor:

I wolde, fader, that ye wiste,
Mi conscience lith nOght hiere:

ll?

Yit hadde I nevere such matiere,

Wherof min herte myhte amende,

Noght of so mochel that sche sende

Be mowthe and seide, "Griet him wel":

And thus for that ther is no diel

Wherof to make myn avant,

It is to reson acordant

That I mai nevere, bot I lye,

Of love make avanterie. (I, 2h28-2h38)

In his response, Genius keeps a perfectly straight face:

Mi Sone, I am wel paid.withal;

For wite it wel in Special

That love of his verrai justice

Above alle othre ayein this vice

At alle times most debateth,

With a1 his herte and moste it hateth. (I, 2hh9-2h5h)

The point is that Genius must remain blind to eVLrything except
morality. If the author of the poem had wanted Genius to reveal his
"character" dramatically through direct statements, the means for ac-
complishing this were certainly available to him. At least, it is hard
to believe that the author who so carefully deveIOps the ridiculous in-
adequacy of the Lover through dialogue was incapable of doing more than
we see here for the confessor.

In fact, the dramatic potential of the confessional device is
drawn on only incidentally for the purpose of delineating personages
and even then only to delineate the Lover. Probably no literary person-
age says so much and reveals so little of himself as Gower's Genius.
Indeed, this is how he must be if he is to remain abstract. What was
noted earlier, therefore, about the limitations placed on the behavior
Of personations generally is found verified here in the treatment of
Genius.

The truly remarkable thing about u'ower's achievement is that he

has managed to keep a personage before the reader for thousands of

118

lines without allowing it to become more concrete than it does. Again
and again, the same limited traits are stressed.

We do see one significant change in the delineation of Genius,
however, when he takes a stand in Opposition to Vrnus and Cupid in book
V. Genius has just explained to the Lover the religious beliefs of the
Greeks, but he has omitted any mention of the god and goddess he
serves. Appropriately, the Lover asks about them:

0 thing I you beseche,
Which stant in alle mennes speche,
The godd and the goddesse of love,
Of whom ye nothing hier above
Have told, ne spoken of her fare,
That ye me wolden now declare
Hou thei ferst comen to that name. (V, 1375-1381)

Genius answers:

Mi Sone, I have it left for schame,
Be cause I am here oghne Prest. (V, 1382-1383)

He then goes on to provide a detailed account of the sexual irregular-
ities of Venus and Cupid.

Macaulay long ago pointed out the absurdity of allowing Genius to
attack the morality of the goddess and her son, and it is absurd in
terms of one side of his development. It is perfectly consistent, how-
ever, with the trait of Christian moral seriousness that has been built
Up over the preceding four books. The problem is that Genius is nomi-
nally the personation of a particular aSpect of Venus. This aspect is
Compatible in many ways with the moral code based upon the traditional
Christian view of love. Thus, Genius can condemn such things as pride,
wrath, avarice, and many other vices in his capacity as a servant of
Venus, without coming into conflict with that Christian moral code. In

the passage cited, however, Genius acts, not as a function of Venus,

 

119

but as if he were a spokesman for Christian moralit/--that is, as if he
were an actual priest. What has happened, therefore, is comparable to
what would have happened to the personage Long-suffering in Prudentius
had the warrior metaphor become the dominant element in her develOpment
and she been made to fight actively against Wrath.

It has also been claimed that the delineation of Genius is incon-
sistent, because he is sometimes found glorifying unlawful love.9 A re-
view of the poem, however, does not bear out this criticism. Genius
does tell several stories-~for example, one about the love between
Venus and Mars and the tale of Canace and Machaire--in which the love
element is indeed unlawful, being adulterous and incestuous respective-
ly; but he does not glorify these love affairs in the least. The first
exemplum is told in order to illustrate the folly of Vulcan's jealousy
and the second to condemn the futile wrath and lack of understanding on
the part of the father of the incestuous children.

Kindly, righteous, at one point even ashamed of the godd+ss he
serves--Genius remains, nonetheless, a function personage throughout
the poem. He is always the story-telling moralist, a deification of the
means whereby the Lover acquires the information enabling him to become
a poet.

When the Lover has composed his supplication and awaits an answer,
Venus appears and now asks him who, rather than what, he is. The action,
which from this point moves steadily towards the poet-lover's cure,
hinges upon his response to this question. A personage who loves, who
has acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of love and morality, and who
has, in addition, composed a poem, is no longer indefinite, no longer a

"what" at all. He can be no one else, in fact, but John Gower, and

120

appropriately this is the answer he now gives to Venus. The appearance
of Venus, therefore, together with the Lover's identification of him-
self as John Gower confirms the metaphoric significance of his confes-
sion and poetic composition. The admission of particularity, however,
involves accepting other representational qualities--in particular,
age-—of which the Lover is not yet fully aware.

Venus' comment on those who are guilty of unnatural vices prepares
for‘he revelation that the Lover is an old man. because he is old, more—
over, his desire is unnatural, not ”to kinde due." In her judgment, we
see the ironic alternative to Genius' elaborate ethical code. Hers is a
simple biological convention which prohibits January from enjoying May.

The shock of recognition is followed by the Lover's swoon, during
which he experiences a vision of the two comapanies of lovers led by
Youth and Elde. Like the earlier incidents, the action here has both
mimetic and metaphoric significance. The personages appearing to the
Lover in his vision reflect the simple biological convention described
by Venus. Genius had classified lovers according to their relevance to
the seven deadly sins, but the vision instantaneously presents a more
accurate picture of the way lovers are to be understoode-namely, as
Simply young or old.

At the same time, since it is an imaginative eXperience appropri-
ate to his occupation as a poet, the vision also contributes to the de-
VelOpment of the Lover. Seeing now with the help of the goddess, he
looks beyond the particular lessons taught him by Genius, or, perhaps
more precisely, he synthesizes those lessons to form a clearer vision
of the two orders of love. Thus, the vision represents an act of poetic

understanding of others, just as his supplication had represented an

lZl

attempt to understand himself.

Through understanding others--the old poets, kings, and philoso-
phers in the second company of lovers--the Lover comes to a better un-
derstanding of himself. Indeed, his willingness to accept whatever
might come takes him a long way towards being cured.

It is not difficult to understand the metaphoric significance of
the surgery performed by Cupid and Venus in terms of the delineation of
the patient. First, the cause of the unreasonable passion is removed
from the Lover's breast. Afterwards, the effects of that passion--the
shame and frustration.which would remain even after the passion itself
had been spent--are also assuaged. Yet when we look at this incident as
a means of delineating the two gods, we are confronted with a problem.
What can be meant by having these two deifications of love take differ-
ent parts in curing one of their victims?

We recall that in our earlier analysis of Cupid and Venus, we
found that the former presents the tyrannical power of love, while
Venus stands for the civilizing power of love. On another level, Cupid
can be taken as a figure of the selfish desire governing a Lover who
seeks only his own ends, while Venus presents the cosmic order govern-
ing his impulse to participate in the process of life through sexual
love. The twofold cure, accordingly, reflects the relaxation of selfish
and sexual desire in the Lover.

It is worth noting that Cupid's power over the Lover earlier and
his skill here as he withdraws the arrow from the Lover's heart partake
of the miraculous in a much more obvious sense than do the actions of
Venus. Indeed, her queenliness and courtesy in the earlier scene and

her nursing skill now seem not so much divine or beyond human

122

understanding as simply heightened human characteristics. Moreover, in
this later scene, the primacy of Cupid is explicitly developed. At the
urging of the lovers in the vision, Venus prays to her son to comfort
the Lover.

Operationally, the explanation for the difference between Venus
and Cupid is that the latter's actions are purely presentational, while
Venus' are not. Cupid's behavior presents in concrete forms the Lover's
emotional experiences of falling into and out of love. Venus' actions
are also basically presentational: they present the Lover's psychologi-
cal eXperiences of locating his attitude within the universal eXperience
of all lovers and of accepting his incapacity for sexual love. But some
of her actions, unlike those of her son, suggest mimesis, in that either
they imply some kind of motivation on her part or they are contingent
Upon the actions of others.

Other factors further contribute to the different delineations of
Venus and_Cupid. The relationship between king and queen in feudal so-
ciety is one, of course. But the description of Venus, as she performs
her part in the cure, suggests another:

sche which mai the hertes bynde

Tn loves cause and ek unbinde,

hr I out of mi trance arcs,

Venus, which hield a boiste 0103,

And wolde noght I scholde deid,

Tok out mor cold than any keie

Oignement, and in such point

Sche hath my wounded herte enoignt,

My temples and my Reins also. (VIII, 2611-2819)
The first two lines of the passage recall the wording of Christ's com-
mission to Peter: "Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be

bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it

shall be loosed also in heaven” (Matt. 16, 19). The incident as a

123

whole also suggests that the delineation of Venus is in part derived
from conventional Christian attitudes toward the Mother of God.

Sacred parody of Christian Observances and conventions has been
developing, of course, throughout the poem. The confessional motif and
the portrayal of Genius as a moralizing priest are merely the most ob-
vious examples, however. A few lines earlier the Virgin's conventional
role as mediatrix between Christ and man was paralleled by Venus' in-
tercession with her son on the Lover's behalf. An extra touch to the
parallel was provided_when the old men from the second company of lov-
ers took the part of the saints and urged Venus to cure their fellow
moralist.

The description of Venus as one who "mai the hzrtes bynde/ In
loves cause and ek unbinde," though ambiguous, is easily explained.
Venus is not meant to be another Peter-~page POpe Joan. The equivalent
of Petrine authority is certainly attributed to Venus here, but com-
parable authority was also conventionally attributed to the Virgin in
her role as mediatrix in the church in heaven.10 The attribution of
such a power to Venus, therefore, is perfectly consistent with the par-
allel already developed between her and the Mother of God.

Gower's recognition that he is an old man and his comparison of
his life to the passage of a year from spring through winter hardly re-
quire comment. The source of his confusion having been removed, he can
at last gather his wits together and return to reason. He comes to his
senses, then, on both the mimetic and the metaphoric levels.

After he has recovered from his swoon, Venus asks him what love
is. The Lover‘s denial of love marks the climax of the sacred parody we

have just been discussing. The incident parallels Peter's denial of

12h

Christ, which is recorded in all four gospels. The phrasing of the
Lover's denial is especially close to the version recorded in Luke, 22,
55-57:
And when they had kindled a fire in the midst of the hall and
were sitting about it, Peter was in the midst of them.
Whom when a certain servant maid had seen sitting at the light
and had earnestly beheld him, she said: This man also was with him.
But he denied him, saying: Woman, I know him not.
Following the example of the renegade priest, who had attacked the mo-
rality of Cupid and Venus, the Lover, a wouldebe disciple of love, goes
a step farther and denies his master completely, using the same words
the chief apostle had used when he denied Christ.

This denial of love, however, is not merely one more example of
Sacred parody. From it are derived strands of irony and ambiguity, the
resolution of which leads to an understanding of the dominant mood of
the narrative as a whole. The most obvious irony involved is that the
denial of love is made by a personage who has spent some thirty thou-
sand lines in the company of love's deities and their priest. This per-
sonage, moreover, has the same name as and is therefore in some s<nse
identical with the author of the work. A second and more complex irony
results from the use of the very technique which had helped create the
religion of love in the poemp-that is, sacred parody--to disown that
religion and its chief deity. The delineation of Venus, Cupid, and the
other personages who take part in the action has been accomplished
largely by attributing to them qualities originally attributed to the
Virgin, to Christ, or to the Christian religion generally. But the way
up is also the way down. Now, relying on the same technique to deline-

ate the Lover, the author lets that personage deny thc very religion

he, the author, has created. Of course, the denial of love can scarcely'

125

destroy love, as Venus well knows. Set off against the preceding iro-
nies is a thirde-namely, that in repeating the technique used to create
the religion of love in the first place, both personage and author re-
enforce the fabric of that religion. Thus, the Lover's very atheism
gives testimony to the gods.

The balancing of all these ironies creates a momentary tension,
but all tension is quickly dissolved when Venus comments softly,

Mi goode Sone, . . .
Now at this time I lieve it wel. (VIII, 2878-2879)

Her amused response to the indignant old man and especially the easy
forgiveness handed.out by a now surprisingly cavalier Genius determine
the closing mood of the narrative. Even the ambiguous personage Gower
will smile as he looks upon his black beads with their engraved
"gaudes"--a term that appropriately signifies not only the larger bead

separating the decades of a rosary, but also a jest or a joke.

III

In the numerous stories that Genius tells the Lover, personages
are developed almost exclusively through figuration. Genius' technique
involves naming and describing the seven deadly sins and their subdivi-
sions and then narrating tales designed to illustrate those sins. We
have here, accordingly, a clear case of the use of the figurative mode,
whereby particular personages are, to varying degrees (and.with varying
success), conceptualized through narrative.

Not only does Genius avoid the use of personifications and gener-
ics to illustrate concepts; he also makes no attempt to localize the

concepts, except in one enlightening instance. The one exception to the

126

prevailing technique appears in a brief illustration in book V. The
"peine of Tantaly" is described as a punishment reserved for those who
are guilty of avarice. Tantalus himself does not appear as a personage
in this illustration, and so the flood, rather than being reserved for
the particular mythological figure, is said to serve all those who have
been guilty of the sin. In this one case, therefore, we find the crea-
tion of a setting which has conceptual value, much as the different
settings in Ihnte's Commedia have conceptual values.

The differences between [ente's and Gower's techniques are partic-
ularly instructive. In Ihnte's poem, both classes of sinners and par-
ticular sinners are located in the conceptual settings. In Gower's
poem, on the other hand, no particular personages are so located; in-
stead, the class alone is relegated to the flood. The effect of Ihnte's
technique is to provide the particular personages with conceptual value
clearly and consistently. Through the handling of setting, Ihnte's per-
sonages move easily from the concrete to the abstract. Gower, who is
obviously aiming for the same kind of movement, uses, in place of a
conceptual setting, a conceptual frame in the form of Genius' commen-
tary on the various sins. The difficulty that Gower runs into, however,
is that the conceptual frame cannot be mimetically related to the nar-
rative action in the exempla; and for a variety of reasons, the frame
often appears to be arbitrarily imposed upon material designed to make
another point entirely. We shall see a clear example of the difficul-
ties Gower becomes involved in, when we consider the tale of the false
bachelor a little later. For the present, however, it may prove helpful
to examine in some detail the way one of Gower's more successful exem-

pla actually works.

l2?

Genius introduces the tale of Narcissus by pointing the moral that
the vice of surquidery turns wisdom into "wenynge"

And Sothfastnesse into lesynge
Thurgh fol ymaginacion. (I, 2268-2269)

Narcissus is introduced in the tale as a young man, who "a nyce wone/
Hath cawht" (I, 2276-2277). His unusual and foolish notion is that no
woman in the world is good enough for him. One day while he is out
hunting, he is separated from his companions and comes upon a spring.
Tired and thirsty from the heat of the chase, he alights to drink, but
as he leans over the bank, he spies his own reflection in the water,
which he mistakes for a beautiful nymph. Narcissus falls in love with
his own reflection and becomes so frustrated that he finally kills him-
self by beating his head against a stone. Out of pity the nymphs of the
region bury his body, and upon his grave beautiful flowers grow eVen in
winter. This, as Genius points out,
is contraire

To kynde, and so was the folie

Which fell of his Surcuiderie. (I, 2356-2358)
The primary significance of the tale, however, appears in Genius' final
remarks, in which he analyzes Narcissus' character. According to
Genius, Narcissus was a person who held love in disdain, and because he
set such a high price on himself, his value was lessened in love's eye
and he was "bejaped."

The main point to be noted about this tale, a point clearly
brought out in Genius' closing moral, is that Narcissus is to be viewed
as a particular person. The action, Genius claims, "fell whilom be
daies olde”--that is, the events took place in time. Accordingly, a

large number of the physical details in the tale have little baaring on

128

the development of the concept of pride; instead, they reinforce the
picture of Narcissus as a particular person in a particular set of cir-
cumstances. The description of the hunt, for example, is, in most re-
spects, develOped mimetically. Narcissus goes hunting with others. When
they arrive at the appointed place, the dogs are set loose. He rides
ahead of the others in pursuit of the hart and is separated from them.
Finally, he rides under a linden tree beside a rock and ties his horse
to a tree before drinking from the spring.

New, many of these actions can be read as if they had conceptual
value. Thus, the fact that Narcissus becomes separated from his compan-
ions can be interpreted as a sign of his lack of control over his pas-
sions. Or, as in the Ovide moralisé, the fountain can be read as a sym-

ll
bol of the deceptive power of the world. But we must distinguish be—

 

tween a method of reading and a method of composition. In the Confessio
no commentary appears within the tale itself, and the chief impulse in
much of the develOpmrnt of Narcissus and, especially, in the handling
of the setting is not towards the conceptual, but towards the concrete
through emphasis upon particularizing details. The linden tree and
Narcissus' act of tying up his horse are wholly denotative.

The effect of these particularizing details is to set off the one
action which does have conceptual value--Narcissus' falling in love
with his own image. Whether or not one is impressed with Genius' sim-
plistic eXplanation of the relationship between this action and the
concept of self-love, it is clear that the explanation does see the ac-
tion in isolation from the other narrative details. Through his partic—
ular act of loving himself exclusively and_hOpelessly, Narcissus be-

comes a figure of self-love.

129

In the longer but far simoler tale of the false bachelor, Gower
again relies on particularizing details to limit the conceptual possi-
bilities of the narrative. The result in this story is less fortunate
than in the tale of Narcissus, however, because the focus of the narra-
tive does not allow the particular moral intended to be dgveloped (f-
fectively.

The tale begins with a description of the Roman emperor's son, who
is dissatisfied with his peaceful life. Having decided to seek adven-
tures in distant lands, the young man asks his father for permission to
leave Rome, but his request is dcnied. Undrterred, he plans to go away
incognito, and he so informs a young friend of his, the false bachelor
after whom the story gets its title. His friend agrees to accompany
him, and together they leave Home, arriving eventually at the court of
the Sultan of Persia in Cairo a}. The Sultan is engaged in a war with
the Caliph of Egypt and is d lighted when the emperor's son, who iden-
tifies himself, however, merely as a Roman knight, offers to serve him
in the war.

After informing the Lover that the Sultan had a very beautiful
daughter, Genius explains how the emperor's son distinguished hims:lf
in battle. 0n the night before the decisive battle, the Sultan calls
for his daughter and receives her promise that she will marry the man
to whom he gives a certain gold_ring, which he then shows her. The naxt
day, on the point of winning a great victory largely through the valor
of the emperor's son, the Sultan is struck by an arrow. before he dies
he calls the emperor's son to him and in S!CTOt gives him the gold ring
and explains its significance.

Once again the emperor's son confides in his friend and shows him

130

the ring. Feigning joy, the false bachelor congratulates him on his
good fortune, but that night he steals the ring. After the army has re-
turned to Cairo, the Sultan's daughter reveals to her father's minis-
ters the promise she had made to her father the night before he was
slain. The emperor's son, who had been waiting until she had.spoken,
rejoices when he hears that she intends to keep her promise, but when
he looks for the ring, it is missing. His false friend then produces
the ring and claims the princess for himself. Though the emperor's son
accuses his friend of having stolen the ring, he has no proof.

Ibspondent over his loss, the emperor's son soon falls ill. On his
ckathbed he reveals his true identity and again accuses his friend of
having stolen the ring. He begs those who have gathered around him to
report all that has happened to his father in Rome.

After the death of the emperor's son, thr false bachelor is impri-
soned until the arrival of the emperor. Eventually, he admits his
guilt, and both he and the body of the emperor's son are brought back
to Home.

The summary of the tale clearly r veals the problem; for while it
is interesting and has a complex theme, the particular point that
Genius sees in it is relatively unimportant in terms of the actual
focus within the narrative. In order to emphasize the moral that sup-
plantation is evil, all Gower needed to do was shift the focus from the
emperor's son and the Sultan to the false bachelor. As the narrative
now stands, hOWever, the theme has to do with the vanity of pursuing
foreign wars, the pathos of a young man succeeding in everything only
to be denied his due reward, the folly of trusting another—-anything,

in short, except the point that Genius actually does make.

131

One must distinguish here, however, betwean the theme of the tale
as it stands and the delineation of the false bachelor, whereby he be-
comes a figure of supplantation. The conceptual element that Genius
concentrates on is related to the delineation of the false bachelor,
even if the relationship seems peripheral to the story.

In most of the exempla Genius narrates, the relationship between a
personage and some conceptual value is developed, as in the two tales
we have examined. In the tale of the king and the steward's wife, the
steward who procures his own wife for his master comes about as close
as possible to exemplifying the vice of covetousness in action. Vulcan,
the mythological cuckold, clearly demonstrates the folly of jealousy.
Finally, to mention one last example, Adrian in the tale of Adrian and
Bardus is easily recognized as a figure of ingratitude. The usual ef-
fect, however, is not particularly satisfying, and, as we suggested
earlier, the fault lies chiefly in the disparity between the conceptual
frame and.the narrative materials, which remain mimetically unrelated.

There is one remarkable exc«ption, however, which is in no way
covered by the preceding remarks. This exception is the tale of
Rosiphelee, perhaps the most effective exemplum in the entire work.
This tale appears in Book IV and is narrated in order to illustrate the
vice of idleness in love.

The nature of the vice is described first. According to Genius,

ther be
Ful manye of suche hertes slowe,
That wol noght besien hem to knowe
What thing love is. (IV, 1228-1231)
Next, Rosiphelee, the daughter of the King of Armenia, is introduced.
She is described as "bothe wys and fair" (1251), but she is guilty of

the one fault "of Slowthe/ Towardes love" (1253-12Sh), for she refuses

132

to fall in love and desires "nother Mariage/ Ne yit the love of para-
mours" (1268-1269).

One May morning before sunrise, Rosiphelee walks to a nearby park
With her attendants. StOpping beside a river, she sends her attendants
away. Then, as she gazes about her, she takes notice of the activity in
Nature:

Sche sih the swote floures springe,
Sche herde glade foules singe,
Sche sih the bestes in her kinde,
The buck, the do, the hert, the hinde,
The madle go with the femele. (IV, 1297-1301)
But this vision of the force of Nature at work disturbs her,
And so began ther a querele
Betwen love and hir oghne herte,
Fro which sche couthe nOght asterte. (IV, 1302-130b)

As she considers the meaning of what she has seen, a procession of
fine ladies on horseback draws near. The trappings of the horses are
rich and beautiful, and each of the women is clothed in a gown of white
and blue and each wears a crown upon her head.

Amazed by their beauty, Rosiphelee hides herself from view,

For as hire thOghte in hire avis,

To hem that were of such a pris

Sche was noght worthi axen there,

Fro when they come or what thei were. (IV, 1333-1336)
But she is curious too and so she raises her head a little from her
hiding place. She soon sees another woman also mounted on horseback
following after the others. Unlike the others, however, this woman
rides upon a scrawny, lame horse, all black save for a single white
star on its forehead. The woman herself is dressed in a tattered cloak,

and a great number of halters hang about hvr waist, but Rosiphelee no-

tices that she is extremely fair and young.

133

Rosiphelee asks this woman about the others who had passed by and
learns that they are women who have served love truly. The woman then
explains her own condition as the result of her slothfulness in love.
Rosiphelee, reccgnizing that she is in "the same cas" as the woman,
vows to change her ways.

The first thing to be noticed about this exemplum is that the wom-
an on horseback more fully reveals the nature of slothfulness in love
than does Rosiphelee herself. Indeed, by the end of the exemplum, we
know much more about this unnamed personage than we do about the hero-
ine. It will be necessary, therefore, to consider both personages in
order to understand how figuration works in this story.

Alike in vice, the two women are developed through the same mode--
namely, figuration. In both personages, particularizing details set off
the Vice. Both are young, beautiful, and of royal birth; but in Rosi-
phelee these details are of the same order of importance as her vice,
while in the unnamed.woman they are clearly subordinate to her dominant
quality, which is slothfulness in love. Moreover, in the delineation of
the woman on horseback, many of the particularizing details-~such as
the star on her horse's forehead, the rich bridle, and the halters she
is forced to carry-~re-enforce the dominant quality. The unnamed woman,
in other words, is more fully conceptualized than is Rosiphelee.

In fact, when we meet her, she is frozen in the signs of her
guilt, in much the same way as the personages in Ibnte's hell are fro-
zen in their guilt. Like Iante's personages, she is a figuration which
has reached a conceptual level, though not, as in [ante, by being lo-
cated in a conceptual landchpe, but rather through iconographic de—

scription in an ambiguous landscape.

’1

13h
Yet we should not make the mistake of taking the woman for a per-
sonation of slothfulness in love, even though the use of iconOgraphic
Cbscription frequently points to personation rather than figuration.
Perhaps, instead of describing her as frozen in the signs of her guilt,
it would be more accurate to say that the signs of guilt are indelibly
marked on her. In any case, rather than being a personification of any-

thing, she is a projection towards the absolute of Rosiphelee's case.

In the three exempla that we have looked at, the rtlationships be-
tween personage and concept vary considerably in their complexity. In
general, we can divide these relationships into three categories, which
can be designated exemplification, symbol, and projection. These three
categories are deveIOped.in the tale of the false bachelor, the tale of
Narcissus, and the tale of Rosiphelee reSpectively.

The simplest of the three is exemplification. In the tale of the
false bachelor, the act of supplanting the emperor's son is signifi-
cant, a particular example of the general concept of supplantation.

More complex is the symbolic relationship between Narcissus and
the concept of self-love. Narcissus is delineated as a person who
thinks he is better than anyone else. He is guilty of a form of pride.
The act he performs-~falling in love with his own reflection—~is, at
the same time, a particular example of self-love and a concrete expres—
sion of a psychological condition—~Narcissus' habit of vice. Indeed,
the act mirrors the habit.

In the tale of Rosiphelee, finally, the heroine encounters a pro-
jection of her own case in a praternatural setting. Her own case itsclf

is merely a particular example of the general vice, but in the

13S

delineation of the unnamed woman, we approach the conceptual limits of

figuration.

136

Notes to Chapter III

All citations from the Confessio Amentis a;e taken from The Norks
of John Gower, Vols. II and III: The anglish works, ed. G. C.
FEcaulay (Oxford, 1901).

 

 

 

The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1959): P. 221.

Augustine, The City 2£_ng, trans. Marcus Ibds (New York, 1950), p.
220.

The difference between the two Geniuses is discussed by C. S. Lewis
in The Allegory 2£ Love, pp. 361-3. He states that Gower's Genius
is a d(:scendcnt of Genius A, the god of reproduction. Actually, the
situation is not so simple. Though derived through the Roman de la
Rose from.Alanus, Gower' s Genius is obviously also the poet” 5 par-
ticular genius, who inspires or educates him through the confes—
sion. In a sense, Genius is equivocal—~at times the spokesman for
Venus against unnatural love and at other times represLnting the
inspiration for the poet's attitudes towards the pagan deities and
their values.

 

 

Nfircea Eliade, myth and Reality, trans Willard R. Trask (New Yerk,
1963), p. 111.

 

Eliade, p. 155.

Morton W’. Bloomfield., The Seven Ibadly Sins (East Lansing, 196?),
p. 19h.

 

Macaulay, II, p. xx.
Macaulay, II, p. xix.

The culminating statement of this idea appears, perhaps, in Saint
Bernard's prayer in Canto XKXIII of the Paradiso.

C. Ie Boer, Ovide moralise, Tome I (Wiesbaden, 1966), Book III, 11.
1903 ff.

 

Conclusion

In the introduction several aims of this study were put forward.
The primary aim, the analysis of Gower's develOpment of parsonages, has
led to a number of conclusions both about the way personation and
figuration work generally and about Gower's particular achievem'nt in
handling these two modes.

A personation does not behave like "the man in the street" or "the
guy next door.” The starting point, therefore, in the analysis of per-
sonation is to determine the semantic element in a given personage's
name. It would hardly make much sense, after all, to comment on the be-
havior of Conscience and Fear, if one did not have clear ideas about
what "conscience" and "fear" meant in the fourteenth century.

If a large part of the analysis of the Miroir, however, was de-
voted to explicating the semantic element in the names of the various
Personages in the poem, it was only to provide a sound basis for under-
standing their actions. Those actions, as we have discovered, are con-
sistently aligned with the significances of their names. In other
words, the actions are primarily presentational rather than represrnta—
tional. In fact, the actions of a person tion are always primarily pre-
sentational or illustrative, for action invariably illustrates to some
extent the concept associated with the peFSLnatiOH'S name.

In Prudentius, personifications perform presentational or illus-
trative actions exclusively. Their behavior is designed.to illustrate

some aspect of the idea they personify. On the other hand, a

137

138

personation, particularly if not a personification, may perform crrtain
representational acts. Many of Spenser's personations-~Una, Lucifera,
Pyrocles, and many others--are particularly good examples, for they
perform actions which can easily be understood representationally. The
fact that these actions invariably are presentational as well is the
distinguishing feature, however. The conclusion to be drawn is that a
personation must perform presentational acts, though these acts may ap-
pear representational as well.

Indeed, our evaluation, as distinct from our comprehension of a
personation, frequently depends on the degree of representationalism in
a personage's actions. Scholes and.Kellogg point out in sorrow that
many teachers tell their students to read Spenser simply "for the

l
story"--that is, to read The Faerie Queene as a representation. Quite

 

rightly, I think, they view this kind of reading as a disservice to
Spenser's art, but the disservice reveals a common assumption shared by
most readers--namely, that even presentational action ought to be rep-
resentationally coherent as well. In the same way, Scholes and Kelloyg's
own criticism of Prudentius centers on his utter disregard for the rep-
resentational factor in develOping his personages.2 The actions of
Wrath, Long-suffering, and the rest are purely presentational.

Looking back over the personations in Gower's narratives, we find
only one instance of a personage develOped through this mode acting
contrary to his meaning. This instance is Genius' denial of Venus. we
have noted, however, that what seems to be taking place at this point
in the narrative is that the equivocal potential of the term "genius"

is being drawn on. In the course of the confession, Genius shifts from

being Venus' "genius" to become the Lover's "genius." The reader finds

139
himself in the same position as Lady Merd's adversaries, when she makes
use of one sense of the term "need” in order to defend herself from at-

tacks based on the other sense.

Sometimes a figuration doesn't behave like the man in the street
either, but he frequently begins in the street, or, in the case of the

peasants in the Vox Clamantis, in the fields. What happens to him sub-

 

sequently is something else again. In his vision of the Peasants' Re-
volt, the dreamer watches the peasants become metamorphosed into mon-
strous forms, until their final shape-~a combination of the bestial,
the mythological, and the diabolical-~suggests the full hideousness of
the idea of rebellion.

Unlike a personation, a figuration may perform purely representa-
tional action. Such action, of course, has no illustrative function.
Some of Sartre's writing, identified by Wayne Booth as "temporal real-
ism," the detailed account without selection of everything in a setting
or incident, approaches pure represrntation.3 So also do some of the
chronicle entries and the "brgat" sections of the Bible. In the
Confessio we have noted how Narcissus performs a number of actions that
are purely representational, though these actions have the function of
isolating Narcissus' climactic presentational act of falling in love
with his own reflection.

Like a personation, a figuration may also perform pF£S ntational
acts. When, after listening to the prayers of Priam, Achilles allows
burial to the corpse of Hector, we recognize the quality of compassion

in him. If, moreover, a sufficient number of such actions are performed

by a figuration, we view the personage as a symbol. Guyon, for example,

lbo

illustrates prudence repeatedly.

Venus and Cupid perform many such acts. In the case of the latter,
in fact, the representational element in his delineation is generally
suppressed and is clearly of secondary importance. Indeed, Cupid is
handled almost as if he were a personation. Such treatment is perfcctly
legitimate, however, because of the traditional nature of Cupid, for
this tradition functions in the same way as the semantic element of a
term.

Venus' actions, on the other hand, are both presentational and
representational. In all her actions the representational factor is
more drveIOped than it is in the actions of her son. The difference be-
tween them is brought out most clearly in their interaction with the
Lover. The highly presentational acts of the son have the secondary
representational effect of making him seem inhumanly divine, while the
no less presentational acts of the mother make her seem merely divinely

human.

Gower's handling of personation is perfectly competent. So, in
many instances, is his handling of figuration, but his major breakdowns
occur in this mode. Most confused is his handling of figurations in the
Vox Clamantis, where the variety of metamorphoses is pointless. What
seems to have taken place in the poem is that the pattern of action,
which was initially meant to be presrntational on two or three levels,
has degenerated into a pattern that is presrntational on but a single
level. Thus, some peasants in undergoing metamorphosis are developed as
bestial, as possessing a particular vice, and as belonging to a partic-

ular occupational class, while other peasants eXperiencing the same

lbl

transforming action merely become beasts.

Gower‘s techniques in developing the London-Troy analogy and the
Thomas-Simon comparison are also unwieldy. In the former, the point of
view shifts from the delineation of the rebels as metamorphosed brutes
to the delineation of London as New Troy. This shift is analogous to a
mixed metaphor. The poet sees a similarity between the rebels' entry
into London and the sack of Troy, but he apparently forgets that he has
already developed the rebels in such a way that this new image is inap-
prOpriate. Moreover, instead of being satisfied with a simple simile or
metaphor, which one might be willing to let pass, Gower insists on
elaborating on the similarity until the narrative sinks beneath the
construction. Antenor and Ulysses are indiscriminately involved in the
crash. In the Thomas-Simon comparison, Gower simply involves himself in
an absurdity by carefully noting the differences as well as the simi-
larities between the two. As a result, the comparison becomes over-
extended, splitting between the impulse to develop Simon more fully and
the impulse to show the characteristic brutality of the English people.

In the exempla in the Confessio, the d<velopment of the personages
is usually competent, if not brilliant. A complication is frequently
introduced, however, when Genius attributes inadequate presentational

d
senses to the representational actions of the various figurations.

The preceding analysis of Gower's handling of personages impresses
one, in the first place, with the wide range of techniques that he em-
ploys in his narrative works. In addition to the different kinds of
personation found in the Niroir, Gower develops a reification in the

Ship of state image in the Vox Clamantis and a deification in Genius

 

1&2
and the generic Lover in the Confessio. Among the varieties of figura-
tion in his poetry are the metamorphosed.peasantry, the mythologized

figure of Simon Sudbury, and the dreamer in the Vox Clamantis; the dei-

 

ties, exemplary figures, projection, and symbolic and exemplifying fig-
ures in the Confessio; and, of course, God and the devil in the §EEEEE°

The second impression, unfortunately, is of his unevenness in
handling these techniques. Gower's use of personation and figuration is
a puzzling mixture of success and failure. We need not go back over all
the failings, but it would seem proper to point out in closing the
poet's most notable accomplishment.

IGower's achievement in sacred parody is of a very high order, and
not merely for him. It measures up to the standard set by even the more
accomplished writers in this mode. For example, his technique can be
compared.with Ibnne's technique in the Holy Sonnet "Batter my heart,
three personed God." Ibnne describes his relationship to God in terms
and images drawn from sexual love:

I

Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,

Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

Gower, on the other hand, describes his relationship to the force of
love through terms and images drawn from Christian tradition.

Gower's technique contributes especially to the delicately balanced
mood of the poem, as he plays off the Lover's romantic devotion to his

'lady against the old moralist's denial of romantic love before an audi-

ence of strangely Christianized pagan deities.

The kind of study that has been undertaken in the preceding chap-

ters does not seem to have led to any revolutionary conclusions about

1h3
the major themes in Gower's poetry. Professor Fisher's statements about

the Nfiroir and the Vox Clamantis, at least, are supported by the analy-

 

sis of the personages in those works. One of his remarks on the Confes—
sig, however, is misleading. He claims that Gower perverts Chartrian
naturalism "by having Genius and Venus . . . preach reason and self-

u
discipline. h Though perhaps correct, our study has shown that Gower's
point is not to say anything about Chartrian naturalism, but rather to
trace the making of a poet of reason and self-discipline, softened,

however, into the figure of an old man counting his beads, as he walks

"Homwgrd a softe pas."

2.

3.

lhh

Notes to Conclusion

Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature g£_Narrative (New
York, 1966), p. 205.

 

Scholes and Kellogg, p. 110.

Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric gpriction (Chicago, 1962), p. 52.

 

John Hurt Fisher, John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend pf
Chaucer (New Yerk, l96h§, p. 219.

 

 

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