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eginning with its head before ever indicating what the statue’s “fictilis et ferri pedes” ‘clay and
iron feet’ are. The poem’s very diction, hence, would contradict the prose frame, using images
that have “heady” senses (such as seeing, thinking, speaking, or decapitation) to describe its
themes and not images proper to the feet like the “wondering” present in the prose frame’s pun
on the word “error.”
As Kim Zarins has noted in respect to Book 1’s depiction of the Peasant Revolt, this play
between what Gower says and how he says it is essential to how the Vox guides its reader. 189 In
Book 7, the situation is the same. Reading the Vox’s use of Nebuchadnezzar without this
slippage makes the summary fail in its most basic task of literally indicating what the poem will
discuss. However, reading Gower’s poem with attention to its physical textual cues reveals
something else entirely. The summary not only tells us that the poem will speak about “clay and
iron” feet but that will also indicate, or in-say, “fictilis et ferri pedes” ‘clay and iron feet,’ with
“fictilis” meaning not only clay but also alluding to the Latin word “fingo, fingere” ‘to fashion
and to imagine.’
Writing is therefore a focus of the poem in itself and not as a representation of another
meaning. And this is precisely what we get in the poetic play surrounding Nebuchadnezzar’s
image. Before the metaphor of the Vox’s verses could be read as presenting Gower’s message,
precisely at the physical beginning of poetic time, Book VII of the Vox “in-says”
Nebuchadnezzar’s vision, turning to the fashioned, iron feet in the page: the iron-gall inked,
metric feet that slowly line the parchment and are only visible to a reader who encounters the
poem by looking at it and not simply by hearing it.
189 Kim Zarins, “From Head to Foot: Syllabic Play and Metamorphosis in Book I of Gower’s Vox
Clamantis,” On John Gower: Essays at the Millenium, ed. R.F. Yeager, Studies in Medieval Culture. 46.
(Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2007) 155-156.
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