Reading Faces in Gower and Chaucer.
- Author / Editor
- Taylor, Karla.
Reading Faces in Gower and Chaucer.
- Published
- Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 73-90.
- Description
- Argues that ClT, using "distinctively Gowerian terms" such as "corage" and "visage," is Chaucer's response to Gower's perceived challenge at the conclusion of the "Confessio Amantis" for Chaucer "to drop his well-known political reticence and take a personal stand on the sorry state of English political affairs in the last decade of the fourteenth century." Perceives ClT as turning the table on Gower by pointing to Genius's advice in Book 7 of the "Confessio" for a king to "shape his face so as to control what it expresses to others" as "inconsistent with Gower's commitment to plainness and transparency, both ethical and referential" in the education of a king.
- Alternative Title
- John Gower: Others and the Self
- Chaucer Subjects
- Clerk and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Language and Word Studies