Lay Readers and Hard Latin: How Gower May Have Intended the Confessio Amantis to Be Read
- Author / Editor
- Coleman, Joyce.
Lay Readers and Hard Latin: How Gower May Have Intended the Confessio Amantis to Be Read
- Published
- SAC 24: 209-35, 2002.
- Description
- Constructs a model for the reception of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" that accommodates its combination of English, marginal Latin glosses, and very difficult Latin prefatory verses. Clerk-prelectors probably studied the work before performing interpretations of portions of it for a court audience that included members (such as Chaucer) who knew little Latin. Gower wrote his text "for a variety of potential performances."
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.