Chaucer, Gower, and Barbarian History: "The Man of Law's Tale" and the Prologue to Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Author / Editor
Birns, Nicholas.

Title
Chaucer, Gower, and Barbarian History: "The Man of Law's Tale" and the Prologue to Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Published
Nicholas Birns. Barbarian Memory: The Legacy of Early Medieval History in Early Modern Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 44–59.

Description
Assesses the uses of late Antique historiography in MLT and in Gower's Prologue to his "Confessio Amantis," comparing Gower's depiction of the late Roman empire and that of Otto of Freising's "Chronica," and arguing that the ultimate source of MLT is Paul the Dean's "Historia Langobardorum," particularly evident in Chaucer's feminizing of the name "Hermengilde" and in the "twin-pronged conversion motif" of Custance's failure to convert the sultan and success in converting Alla.

Alternative Title
Barbarian Memory: The Legacy of Early Medieval History in Early Modern Literature

Chaucer Subjects
Man of Law and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations