De Vulgari Auctoritate: Chaucer, Gower and the Men of Great Authority
- Author / Editor
- Minnis, A. J.
De Vulgari Auctoritate: Chaucer, Gower and the Men of Great Authority
- Published
- R. F. Yeager, ed. Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutability, Exchange (Victoria B.C.: University of Victoria, 1991), pp. 36-74.
- Description
- Chaucer is a poet with a highly developed sense of the relative--someone who instinctively shies away from those absolutes necessary for the creation of "auctoritas," who denies experience in love, and who claims to be a mere reporter. This stance receives its finest and fullest expression in CT, but is also found in HF and TC. Gower, on the other hand, implies that if one of his own poems were shown to be morally useful, it would have some claim on authority.
- Alternative Title
- Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutability, Exchange.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.