SELIM 18.indb


Robert J. Meindl, SELIM 18 (2011): 207–223ISSN: 1132–631X

Filardo-Llamas, Laura, Brian Gastle & Marta Gutié rrez 
Rodrí guez eds.; Ana Sá ez-Hidalgo ass. ed. 2012: Gower in 
Context(s). Scribal, Linguistic, Literary and Socio-historical Readings.
(Special issue ES. Revista de Filologí a Inglesa 33.1). Valladolid, 
Publicaciones de la Universidad de Valladolid. pp. 189. ISBN: 84-
844-8725-⒊ 

The essays in this special issue of ES. REVISTA DE Filologí a Inglesa were presented at the Second International 
Congress of the International John Gower Society held 

18–21 July 2011 in Valladolid and entitled “John Gower in Iberia: Six 
Hundred Years.” The guest editors, Laura Filardo-Llamas, Brian 
Gastle, and Marta Gutié rrez Rodrí guez, briefl y describe in their 
introduction, “Gower in Context⒮  : Scribal, Linguistic, Literary 
and Socio-Historical Readings,” the idea of context around which 
they organize the issue and then divide it into three sections: 
“Manuscript Context,” “Socio-Historical Context,” and “Literary 
and Historical Context.” This collection, by an international 
assembly of prominent scholars, is required reading for anyone 
interested in Gower studies.

Ruen-chuan Ma, in the fi rst essay in the “Manuscript Context” 
section, “Vernacular Accessus: Text and Gloss in Gower’s Confessio 
Amantis and Christine de Pizan’s É pî tre Othé a,”(17–28), argues that 
Gower and Christine de Pizan base their literary practice in the 
Confessio Amantis and the É pî tre Othé a on the acceptance of Latin 
as the established literary language } om which their native tongues 
must acquire, through investigation of the classical language’s 
authority, the necessary credentials to become themselves established 
as vehicles for serious thought and literature. Both authors employ 
elements of medieval academic prologues, accessus ad auctores, to 
achieve related but diff erent goals. Gower’s “representation of 
Latinity as a labored course of learning serves as an accessus for the 
language itself, a derivation of cultural authority that Gower aspires 
to replicate in the vernacular” (17), theorizing “the vernacular’s 



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potential as a literary language to identi%  the interpretive skills that 
it still needs to acquire” and clari% ing “the skills and knowledge 
that can be transferred & om Latin” (18). Christine, however, “uses 
the vernacular to create an alternative, but no less eff ective, accessus 
form” (17–18), illustrating by her practice the fulfi llment of such an 
acquisition and exempli% ing “the types of vernacular literature that 
such transference makes possible” (18).

Ma selects CA IV.2633–74 to illustrate his point about Gower’s 
use of Latin authority. The passage occurs as part of Genius’ 
instruction of Amans in labor as the antidote to sloth, the main 
subject of Book IV, and consists in an account of Latin’s growth 
& om its fi rst letters, fashioned by a certain Carmente, to the 
structuring of its “ferste reule of scole” by Aristarchus, Donat, 
and Dindimus, the emergence of “Rethorike” through Tullius 
and Cithero, Jerome’s translation of the bible, and Ovid’s poetic 
advice to lovers. Ma proposes this passage as Gower’s valorization 
of “Latin’s ability to articulate eloquence, sacred truth, and wise 
counsel,” which “exemplifi es Latin as a literary language worthy 
of respect and emulation.” Gower “represents the vast tradition of 
Latin learning through its versatility and interpretive skills in order 
to target his exemplum at Amans and at the English vernacular 
reading public” (20), thereby creating a “poetics of learning” that 
“theorizes the vernacular treatment of the narratives, morals, 
and concepts that has its origin in Latin learning” (21). Gower’s 
mention of Carmentis in the Latin head verse at the beginning 
of the prologue “reveals that the course of Latin literary history 
occupies a fundamental place not only in reenactment of Latinity 
as an exemplary cultural authority, but also in the essential design 
of his multilingual work” (21) and so “symbolizes the transfer of 
learning & om Latin into English, which Gower sees his Confessio 
as facilitating” (22).

In Ma’s view, Christine’s É pî tre Othé a responds to Gower’s 
theorizing by illustrating “the forms of vernacular writing that 
learning Latin makes possible […] Christine’s work dispenses with 



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the Latinate trappings of the Confessio’s apparatus and instead 
incorporates Latin citations into the French text so that the two 
languages and the types of writing that they embody are in direct 
contact” (23). Because each of the classical narratives Christine 
includes is followed by prose gloss and allegorical interpretation, 
indicating the respective values of scholastic and biblical analysis, 
she can be said to speci&  the “distinct literary capacities—
philosophical commentary and allegorical exegesis among them—
that the vernacular acquires through its engagement with Latin 
learning” (23). As Gower used the Latin head verses to suggest his 
approach, so Christine uses her prefaces to announce her intention 
to spur others to similar enterprises. As Gower uses Genius for 
his spokesperson, so Christine creates the fi ctional goddess Othé a, 
although with the crucial diff erence that Gower’s choice suggests 
both the expansion and limitation of vernacular literary capacities 
and Christine’s re-mythicizes classical narrative and adapts it to the 
needs of the vernacular.

Tamara Pé rez-Ferná ndez, in her essay “The Margins in the 
Iberian Manuscripts of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Language, 
Authority and Readership” (29–44), discusses the diff ering 
presentations of the English and Iberian manuscripts of the Confessio 
Amantis, in particular the translation of Gower’s Latin head verses 
into the vernaculars and the elimination of his marginal glosses. 
The result is a change in what she terms the “textual dynamics” 
of the poem. For her, the appearance of Gower’s text is important 
evidence of his expectations because, she believes, he may have 
participated in its preparation. Whether or not he supervised scribes, 
he played a role in the development of his manuscripts and likely 
provided the layout in its commonly-encountered two columns of 
text, forty-six lines per column, Latin apparatus in the margins or 
the text column, and two miniatures. Latin text is off ered apart 
1 om the poem’s body, some placed in the margins in red ink or a 
diff erent script in the tradition of literary glossing, some inserted 
in the text column with marginal remarks and glosses. Individual 



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manuscripts testi%  to the wide range of scribal divergences & om 
the common arrangement and to the inclusion of a wide range of 
glosses. Apparently the Portuguese and Spanish translators moved 
the authorial Latin glosses into the text itself; thus in the Iberian 
manuscripts, only occasional scribal glosses survive.

Pé rez-Ferná ndez acknowledges that assessing Gower’s role in 
the presentation of the Confessio is a complex task. He is the author 
and compiler of the text, its commentator via the Latin verses and 
glosses, and scriptor by his role in its arrangement. The movement 
of the apparatus of annotation into the vernacular in the Iberian 
translations erases the boundary Gower erected between Latin and 
English, “thus threatening the carefully designed layers of textual 
interaction” (35) and altering the nature of Gower’s presence. The 
Spanish and Portuguese translators, having completely blurred the 
existing line of demarcation, are forced to fi nd other ways “to remind 
the reader that the commentary in question is in another narrative 
& ame” (35) and resort for the most part to imitating the littera 
glossularis as reduced summary, with the result that the authority 
of the Latin original is lost, the authorial presence is diminished, 
and exemplifi cation as an aspect of the Confessio is de-emphasized. 
Some of Gower’s Latin apparatus is moved into the index/table 
of contents of the Iberian manuscripts, further obscuring the 
author’s multiple roles and even his name by taking it & om a much 
more prominent position in the Prologue’s marginalia. Pé rez-
Ferná ndez points out that Gower’s role as author and commentator 
is diminished by the disappearance of bilingualism, whereas his 
role as compiler of exemplary tales suitable for the upper classes is 
reinforced. The structure and internal order proposed by Gower 
become more diffi  cult to appreciate and the tradition of Boethian 
commentary, apparently so important to him, simply disappears 
in “the de facto naturalization of Gower’s Confessio into its new 
Iberian context” (42).

In “Gower’s Confessio and the Nova Statuta Angliae: Royal 
Lessons in English Law” (45–65), Rosemarie McGerr contends 



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that Gower’s royal instruction of Richard II and Henry IV in the 
Confessio Amantis bears comparison to the Nova Statuta Angliae, an 
ongoing compilation of statute law % om the reign of Edward II that 
opens with an account of Edward II’s deposition and the pardon of 
all who participated. Such comparison, she remarks, “illuminates 
each text’s hybrid quality, revealing how each interweaves discourses 
% om legal, religious, and literary genres, as well as ‘mirror for 
princes,’ that create new % ames of reference for its readers and 
present strong arguments for the king’s responsibility to uphold 
England’s laws” (46). McGerr believes that both texts, probably 
commissioned for Richard, share common concerns with a group 
of works % om the early 1390s “that off ered Richard II advice on 
good kingship” (47). These circulated in reading circles—nobility, 
land-holding gentry, educated professionals and administrators—
interested in good governance. McGerr’s edition of the Nova 
Statuta is the core text in Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS 
A.7, a collection of Latin and French statutes % om the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries compiled around 1390. The manuscript 
prefaces the Nova Statuta with three of the Vetera Statuta, or Old 
Statutes—Magna Carta, the Articuli super Cartas of 1300/1, and the 
Ordinances of 1311—that focus on limitations on royal power and 
suggest that the collection provided Richard “the opportunity to 
contemplate the legal ramifi cations of earlier episodes of crown-
magnate confl ict as he con% onted his own” (48).

The narrative that opens the New Statutes “constructs the 
removal of Edward II % om the throne as both legal and divinely 
sanctioned in order to save England % om tyranny and restore justice 
to the realm” and shows “affi  nities with the genres of chronicle, 
religious exemplum, mirror for princes, and chivalric romance” (49). 
By following evil counselors in allowing the Despensers to return 
% om exile to which they had been justly and legally sentenced, 
Edward II falls % om divine grace and estranges himself % om his 
son, who, by following good counsel, restores just government 
and ascends the throne as Edward III. McGerr proposes that, “the 



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opening narrative becomes a miniature mirror for princes that also 
serves as a lens through which the record of statutes that follows 
can be read” (49). It off ers “Richard II an explicit lesson on the 
English king’s responsibility to uphold the Statutes of the Realm, 
a lesson that countered Richard’s sympathetic view of Edward II” 
(49–50). The narrative “weaves together literary, religious, and legal 
discourses” (52) to present evidence and arguments that Edward 
betrayed his coronation oath, the same sworn twice by Richard II 
(1377 and again 1388 in the settlement with the Lords Appellant), 
and so lost God’s favor.

Gower, McGerr asserts, by his legal training and status as 
wealthy landowner, was certainly familiar with the New Statutes 
text and shares its opening narrative’s interest in the themes of 
good government, which he likewise explores in Genius’ account 
of Aristotle’s advice to Alexander in Book VII of the Confessio. 
Just as the coronation oath includes promises to keep and employ 
the law, Book VII argues that “a king who does not take care to 
uphold England’s just laws has violated his oath and lost his right 
to rule” (55). McGerr’s reading of Genius’ counsel shows that the 
king’s responsibility to ensure the well-being of the land and the 
stability of his own reign by the maintenance of royal justice is 
central to Gower’s concern and mirrors the similar content of the 
opening narrative of the New Statutes. The version of Book VIII 
that Gower adapted a0 er the Lancastrian accession underscores 
this link by repeating Book VII’s argument that “the good king 
fi rst justifi es himself according to God’s law and then is able to 
govern his kingdom according to the oath or ‘charge’ he swore 
at his coronation” (58). In both the Ricardian and Lancastrian 
versions, however, the Confessio borrows 4 om several genres of 
medieval literature and “weaves these discourses together in such a 
way as to suggest a unity of courtly, legal, and religious ideals that 
the poem off ers as a new kind of advice to princes” (59). Reading 
Gower and the New Statutes narrative together shows “the capacity 
of fourteenth-century English writers to interweave discourses so 



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as to create multiple % ames of reference for their readers, off er new 
perspectives, and transform older genres” (59).

The fi rst essay in the volume’s second major section, “Socio-
Historical Context,” is Jerome Mandel’s “Confl ict Resolution in 
The Wife of Bath’s Tale and in Gower’s ‘Tale of Florent’”(69–79). 
In their related tales of the young knight sent in search of the 
answer to an age-old question, Chaucer and Gower resort to 
diff erent methods of what we today call confl ict resolution. Chaucer 
emphasizes interaction and negotiation between contending 
parties as they strive to be reasonable when authority does not 
work, and Gower indicates resolution within his main character 
by recourse to authority and principle in a manner designed to be 
instructive of proper conduct. Put another way, Gower “defi nes 
character in terms of an individual’s thinking and commitment 
to the principles which ultimately defi ne ‘the good’ and direct 
his behavior accordingly” (69) and Chaucer “reveals character in 
terms of discussion, negotiation, compromise—the contingencies 
of business rather than the demands of absolutes” (69–70). The 
object of both methods is to persuade, not to collapse contending 
positions to a mutually-acceptable middle ground. The diff erence, 
Mandel suggests, is that Gower’s approach refl ects the workings of 
medieval institutions and Chaucer’s the actual workings of human 
beings within their less formal social contexts. Gower’s method is 
designed to instruct, Chaucer’s to entertain.

The response of the respective communities to Florent’s 
violent act is to approach the royal court, bypassing or ignoring 
lay or ecclesiastical options. The appeal to the king is immediately 
undermined in Chaucer when the queen intervenes and negotiates 
with her husband for authority to resolve the case, which she 
receives. In Gower, however, the grandmother appears with the 
idea of a quest, which is accepted without negotiation. When 
Chaucer’s knight cannot answer the queen’s question, the two 
negotiate (he with his sighs and groans) a grant of additional time. 
In Gower the grandmother lays down the terms and the knight 



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rides forth. When Chaucer’s knight encounters the loathly lady, 
they strike a deal. Gower’s knight off ers whatever the hag wants 
and then withdraws into the recesses of his mind to scheme a 
solution. Chaucer highlights with wry amusement the contractual 
wedding night negotiations of the newlyweds; Gower shows us the 
grim fulfi llment of an arrangement that turns out well because of 
adherence to principle. Chaucer “foregrounds appeals to political, 
social, religious, and ethical authority, all of which are questioned, 
discussed, and negotiated […] Gower’s world is more solid, more 
fi xed, more dominated by principle than by negotiation” (77).

In “Controlling the Uncontrollable: Love and Fortune in Book 
I of the Confessio Amantis” (81–96), Misty Schieberle “explores the 
connections between the views of Love and Fortune in the Confessio 
Amantis and in works by Guillaume de Machaut” (81): the Jugement 
dou Roi de Behaingne, the Remède de Fortune, and the Confort 
d’Ami. Machaut’s challenge to Boethian ideas about Fortune and 
his alternative interpretation that Fortune is not “an uncontrollable 
capricious force but rather the consequence of a lover’s immoral 
choices” (83) is extended by Gower to political and ethical concerns. 
For Schieberle, the “political discourse of the Confessio and the 
courtly / amework of Book I” is bridged by the Latin head verse 
to the Prologue “to signal that the notion of Fortune ties the 
political and amorous content of the work together” (82). Gower’s 
“representation of the ties between love and Fortune demonstrates 
his close engagement with and careful response to Machaut’s ideas, 
in opposition to prevalent Boethian concepts of Fortune” (82).

The jilted lover of the Jugement represents a beginning point 
for recognizing how to deal with Fortune’s instability in matters 
of the heart, Schieberle contends. Accepting responsibility for his 
wretched lot, he lacks a larger vision and simply resolves to suff er. 
The lover of the Remède has the advantage of Esperance’s guidance 
and learns that having placed himself willingly on Fortune’s 
wheel his strategy must be to remove himself and practice virtues, 
which will bring him amorous fulfi llment. The Confort d’Ami, a 



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commentary on Charles of Navarre’s imprisonment, “constructs 
Charles not as the victim of political intrigue (or political mistakes) 
but rather of erotic desire” that puts him in Fortune’s power, % om 
which the poet “seeks to enable the king to regain control upon 
his escape” (85). By implying that the practice of virtues in love 
is applicable to political concerns, “Machaut begins to suggest 
the perspective that Gower adopts in the Confessio Amantis, in 
which the notions of controlling political fortunes and controlling 
fortunes in love become intertwined” (85).

Gower emphasizes personal responsibility in love and politics 
and shows how men’s decisions create the world. “By addressing 
the virtues Amans needs to control his fortunes in love, Gower 
simultaneously provides lessons in virtuous behavior that will allow 
man to control his Fortune more broadly and respond to the needs 
articulated in the Prologue for men to live virtuously and improve 
the state of the realm” (86). Schieberle references tales % om Book I 
of the Confessio to illustrate her point: “Acteon” for its protagonist’s 
“misloking,” “Medusa” for Perseus’ self-control, and “Albinus 
and Rosemund” for Helmege’s lack of control. In “Florent,” 
“Nebuchadnezzar,” and “The Three Questions,” characters who 
submit to virtuous behavior resolve troubles and restore stability to 
their respective worlds. Florent does this by accepting an obedient 
role and Nebuchadnezzar by his transformation into a submissive 
beast. Both Pedro and Alphonse choose humility in “The Three 
Questions” and so share in mutually benefi cial conclusions. 
Returning to the Prologue and the concluding % amework of Book 
VIII, Schieberle connects her discussion of the tales % om Book 
I to the issue of Fortune and love, concluding that “the Confessio 
extends Machaut’s ideas about rejecting Fortune in favor of 
practicing virtues in order to address simultaneously both amorous 
and political ventures.” Gower “provides a worldly motivation that 
should drive his reader to embrace the counsel in the Confessio: the 
fantasy of controlling the uncontrollable” (95).



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In the following essay, Katie Peebles, “Arguing % om Foreign 
Grounds: John Gower’s Leveraging of Spain in English Politics” 
(97–113), questions why Gower employs a Spanish setting for the 
Confessio’s “Tale of the Three Questions.” She concludes that he 
intends to contribute to a debate about the nature of England’s 
participation in Spanish aff airs: “In particular, the choice of setting 
could have been inspired by Lancastrian interventions on the 
Iberian Peninsula and recurrent parliamentary discontent about 
funding these expeditions” (97) in the period 1385–1387, when 
Gower may have begun the Confessio. The content of the tale is 
consistent with the poet’s intent “to support the potential for good 
government, fi rst by off ering advice to the young king Richard II, 
and subsequently by supporting the promise he saw in John of 
Gaunt’s family. In this political context, even the act of keeping the 
setting of the ‘Tale of the Three Questions’ in Spain could be read 
as an argument for the relevance of Spain to England and for the 
relevance of poetic counsel in domestic politics” (98).

Peebles points out Gower presents Spain to his reader as 
recognizable, a participant in a familiar court culture, not the wild 
locale of elsewhere in the Confessio. The names and the idea of 
Spanish dynastic marriage echo for English history. Henry II and 
Eleanor of Aquitaine married their daughter Leonor to Alfonso 
VIII of Castile in 1170. Their great-granddaughter Eleanor, sister 
of Alfonso X of Castile, married Edward I in 1254, stabilizing the 
English position in Gascony and allying England and Castile, and 
was great-great-grandmother to both Richard II and Henry IV. 
John of Gaunt married Constanza, daughter of Pedro I of Leon 
and Castile, and wed their daughter Catalina to the future Enrique 
III in 1388 at the conclusion of his eff orts to enforce a claim to the 
Spanish throne. That ended English military activities in Spain 
and made possible restoration of profi table relations based upon 
the exchange of goods and pilgrimage travel to Compostela. Gaunt’s 
costly military expeditions to Spain were the subject of contentious 
parliamentary discussions complaining about wasted resources, lost 



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revenues, and energy diverted % om France and the Low Countries. 
Parliament’s resistance is recorded in various sources, among them 
the Westminster and St Albans Chronicles, which testi&  to domestic 
% ustration with Gaunt’s Spanish adventures and the improvement 
of his public image upon their cessation.

Gower’s “Tale of the Three Questions” is thus relevant to 
the national discussion about Spain in the middle 1380s. Its 
“performance of good counsel is ultimately directed to everyone 
participating in the world of Parliament and the court” and it off ers 
“pointed advice […] that members of a court should avoid direct 
challenge or paci& ing acquiescence in favor of calming voices 
expressing an insistent logic that the king can accept” (110). When 
Peronelle solves the king’s riddles and poses her own, she employs 
a strategy relevant “to the endemically tense relationship among 
Richard, the magnates, especially his former regents and Gaunt, 
and Parliament” (110). Peebles argues that Gower’s story “off ers 
a way to re% ame the Spanish political situation and domestic 
politics in a way that suggests a more acceptable set of choices: 
intermarriage, alliance, and realignment instead of the absolutism 
of either conquest or avoidance,” and the Spanish setting “re% ames 
the political argument over Lancastrian Castilian engagements and 
models a role for counsel in domestic concerns” (110).

The essay beginning the third large section, “Literary and 
Linguistic Context,” is Linda Barney Burke’s “‘The Voice of One 
Crying:’ John Gower, Christine de Pizan, and the Tradition of 
Elij ah the Prophet” (117–135). Burke claims that Christine de Pizan 
in her Lamentacion sur les maux de la France and John Gower 
in his Vox Clamantis/Cronica Tripertita shared self-defi nition 
as voces clamantium in the tradition of John the Baptist and his 
Old Testament prototypes Elij ah and Elisha. “It was in their self-
appointed role as moral teacher, especially to the powerful, that 
each poet assumed the mantel of a biblical prophet, specifi cally 
the ‘voice of one crying’” (120). That mantel descends upon them 
through a fi ery biblical tradition presenting the prophet as the 



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angry voice of social and religious conscience, eager to con% ont the 
powerful with the truth about their actions and quick to threaten 
impending regime change as the consequence, even to encourage it 
as well as warfare in general if conducted by their choice for king.

Both poets modi&  the tradition, however. In the Lamentacion, 
Christine presents herself as “a poor voice crying in this kingdom,” 
“a little woman all by myself,” which Burke identifi es as “her 
elegantly feminized version of […] a male prophet standing apart 
as ‘vox clamantis in deserto’” (125), a function she is permitted as 
a woman otherwise denied the role of preacher. Christine sides 
with the simple farmers and city dwellers against the nobility who 
condemn them to the horrors of civil strife to serve their own ends, 
but “the endorsement of violence by Elij ah and Elisha has no echo 
whatsoever in her Lamentacion” (127). She expunges all traces of 
the Jezebel fi gure and features virtuous queens who function as 
peacemakers. Despite her appeals on behalf of the downtrodden, she 
“remained on good terms with patrons on both sides of the French 
civil wars” and her pleas to the queen “were most likely aimed at 
rati& ing the queen’s already long-term eff orts at diplomacy, rather 
than speaking unpopular truth to power” (129). On the other hand, 
“Gower identifi ed strongly with ‘the voice of one crying,’ albeit in 
his own strategic and selective fashion” (123). He draws on visionary 
prophets % equently, but only in his French and Latin works does 
he give “notable place” to Elij ah and Elisha. His “self-construction 
as a prophet may be coded” (124) in the famous archer illustration 
found in several manuscripts of the Vox Clamantis, showing the 
poet standing in a stylized wilderness to launch his missives. He 
fl ees to the forest in the Vox’s Visio Anglie to lament the times. 
As does Christine, he pleads for widows and the poor and against 
the iƬ ustice of kings and judges at various places in the Vox and 
the Mirour. He evidences the same sort of “religious certitude 
leading to persecution of dissenters” so prominent in the Elij ah 
tradition, rejecting Wycliff e as a rank heretic and praising Bishop 
Arundel, proponent of burning heretics. The Cronica Tripertita 



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is comfortable with “the deposition and fatal mistreatment” of 
Richard II and also with “the indiscriminate slaughter of the king’s 
supporters” (127). Gower uses sparingly the misogyny central to 
the Elij ah tradition, referencing only Alice Perrers at one point in 
the Mirour, for the reputation of gentle Queen Anne did not allow 
her to be turned into Jezebel. Gower’s use of the Elij ah tradition 
“was quite strategic and selective” and working within it he “was a 
speaker of only limited truth to power, being careful to phrase his 
political satire in the safe generalities allowed by the conventions of 
the de regimine principum tradition” (129). His diff erent strategy in 
the Confessio yielded diff erent results.

According to Annika Farber in the essay following, “Genius 
and the Practice of Ethical Reading” (137–153), Genius’ narrative 
strategy is determined by Gower’s decision to use “ethical reading” 
in the Confessio Amantis—that is, he re/ ames secular texts rather 
than appropriating them and makes them morally available to 
new readers. Ethical reading (the term is Farber’s) was developed 
in medieval schools “as a way of justi0 ing the use of imaginative 
literature in the classroom” by challenging readers “to view this 
literature as a source of practical wisdom, even if that wisdom 
is not always apparent on the surface of the text” (139). Farber 
fi nds evidence of her category in the teachings of Basil and in a 
type of medieval accessus ad auctores that poses the question cui 
parti philosophiae supponitur? (to which part of philosophy does 
it belong?), the most common response to which was ethicae 
supponitur (it belongs to ethics) (141). Ethical reading of such 
diverse texts as Ovid’s Heroides and Lucan’s Bellum Civile/Pharsalia 
makes them “serve an exemplary function, teaching their readers 
about the intricacies of practical ethics” (144). Pseudo-Bernardus’ 
commentary on the Aeneid provides both ethical and allegorical 
interpretations when it discusses, under the heading cur agat (what 
should it do? what is the utilitas or causa fi nalis?), the “knowledge of 
how to act properly, acquired / om the exhortation imparted to us 
by the examples” (145). The Aeneid in Pseudo-Bernardus’ view is “a 



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collection of exemplary tales, according to which particular sections 
of the text can be pulled out and assigned relevant Christian virtues” 
(146), a' er which the deeper level of allegorical signifi cance can be 
probed. Ethical reading and allegorical interpretation are equally 
valid.

To illustrate the advantage of reading ethically, Farber off ers 
the tale of “Phebus and Daphne” in Book III as an example of rash 
behavior, and “Ceyx and Alcyone” in Book IV as an instance of 
both sloth and the utility of dreams. Genius’ strategy in “Phebus 
and Daphne” simplifi es the source “to make it more useful as 
an exemplum on the vice of ‘folhaste’ and related topics” (148). 
He aligns “Ceyx and Alcyone” to teach “that sloth and love are 
incompatible” and at the same time to speak “to the larger issues 
of the text” (149), refl ecting backward to the Confessio’s initial 
establishment as a dream vision and forward to Book VIII. In both 
cases he responds to Gower’s concern, expressed in the poem’s 
beginning, that the purpose of old books was to teach moral content, 
which truth imparts to present writers an imperative to attempt the 
same. “What the Confessio portrays is that same process of reading 
and learning that readers are expected to experience” (151).

In “Cracks and Fissures: Gower’s Poetics on the Edge” (155–
170), Malte Urban addresses the wide range of reader responses 
to the presence of extreme violence in many of Gower’s tales. 
Gower “uses all levels of his texts, 5 om content to multi-linguality 
and manuscript layout, for his location of his poetry on the edge 
between acceptable and unacceptable behavior” (158). The result is 
that “there is not just one moral message in Gower’s poetry, but 
rather several, o' en competing, messages,” o' en located “on the 
very edge of what is permissible,” allowing Gower “by 5 equently 
striving to at least indirectly rationalize and explain otherwise 
morally dubious behavior [to] outline his own moral stance⒮  ” 
(158).

Urban reads a selection of texts to illustrate Gower’s variety of 
“edginess,” beginning with the Vox Clamantis, which, modeling its 



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speaker on John of Patmos and his apocalyptic stance, “situates his 
speaker on the edge between past and present, good and wrong, 
righteous and sinful” (159). Gower’s use of English and Latin in the 
Confessio, a poem that proclaims it will go a middle way, likewise 
situates it “on the edge between Latin and English, as well as 
between competing moral messages,” themselves the product of 
a dialogue that locates “ethics and morals on the edge between 
Amans and Genius” in “a space that is constantly teetering […] 
between past, present and future” (161). Gower’s life in Southwark, 
where he views the Rising and famously meets king Richard, is 
also “edgy” given its nature as a borderland beyond the city where 
circumscribed activities became possible. Urban reads “The Tale 
of the Trojan Horse” and “The Tale of Florent” in illustration 
of edginess in the Confessio. The fi rst is located at the wall of a 
city which has become the edge between competing societies and 
illustrates the catastrophic consequences of the removal of that 
wall in order to accommodate an outside element. The second is 
perched “on the edge of what is acceptable human behavior” and 
highlights “the cracks and fi ssures on the edges of the chivalric 
code” (168), whose contradictory pressures require reconciliation in 
Florent and his conduct.

In the volume’s fi nal essay, “Rewriting Diff erence: ‘Saracens’ in 
John Gower and Juan de Cuenca” (171–189), Emily Houlik-Ritchey 
asks, “Why does Gower’s Confessio contain Saracens and Juan de 
Cuenca’s Castilian translation does not? Gower mentions S aracens 
in some half-dozen tales, but the wicked “Soudaness” of Book II’s 
“Tale of Constance” is his main representative of a category that 
indicates ambivalence about the world of Islam and its relationship 
with Christianity. The semantic range of the word “Saracen,” 
Houlik-Ritchey notes, “is so varied that no particular reference is 
stable, even when texts describe (or over-describe) the ‘Saracen’ 
as nefarious, evil, or misguided” (175). The Sultan’s mother is 
the incarnation of evil, but Houlik-Ritchey points out that her 
violence and deception are directed against her own son and people 



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because she fears to lose her high estate and not her faith. She 
murders Muslims and Christians alike at the wedding feast, except 
for Constance, who is sent to sea with a fi ve-year supply of food. 
The Sultana does not care where her son’s intended bride ends up 
but simply desires to get her out of Barbarie. “These details speak 
to a genuine desire on the Souldaness’ part not to harm Constance 
directly, and they complicate Gower’s portrait” (177). When the 
heroine is rescued by the Romans, however, the emperor launches 
a violent Roman expansion against Barbarie, supposedly justifi ed 
by the Sultana’s wickedness.

The Spaniard Cuenca’s narrative, however, although it follows 
Gower’s in most details, does not employ the term “Saracen” at any 
point and characterizes the Sultana simply as “la mala vieja” (“the 
evil old woman”), declining to “describe the soldá n’s mother in 
terminology that plays upon the military, cultural, and religious 
tensions between Christians and non-Christians” (178) or “mark 
her as an enemy against which a fantasized Christian wholeness 
(embodied in Constance and Rome) can be consolidated” (179). 
She is merely a villainess, unlinked to religion and culture. When 
religious diff erence must be noted, Cuenca employs “infi eles” 
(“infi dels”) to mark the distinction, a word that doesn’t imply the 
same sort of narrative. For Gower’s audience, “’Saracen’ evokes the 
realm of fantasy, of an aggressor against which violence is always 
permissible because it is always necessary” (183). Cuenca’s text, “in 
contrast, does not routinely characterize his Christian protagonists’ 
neighbors in terms that invoke religious confl ict” (183).

What diff erent value accrues, then, to Cuenca’s text? Houlik-
Ritchey suggests that the two versions of the tale refl ect the 
diff erent experience of paganism and otherness in England and 
Spain. The peaceful conversion of Northumberland and the bloody 
conquest of Berverí a fi nd an alternative vision in Spain, the other 
place in the tale where Gower locates and employs the Saracens 
suppressed in Cuenca. Houlik-Ritchey suggests this would be 
Spain before the Islamic conquest and a place of convivencia, living 



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together, that the Spanish translator wishes to promote. Read in 
such a way, the two versions of the tale reveal “that placing English 
and Iberian texts side by side makes legible medieval texts’ deep 
and % aught engagement with ethical questions of diff erence and 
representation—urgent questions with which we wrestle just as 
desperately today” (188).

Robert J. Meindl

California State University, Sacramento

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