WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

which, as Patrick Gallacher notes, seems to present the “perennial human desire for perfect
verbal communication and the equally persistent realization of its impossibility.” 196
Therefore, we cannot assign with any certainty the role of “perfect verbal
communication” or of its “impossibility” to the interplay between the languages. The Latin
apparatus to the Confessio does not do away with the idea of effective communication—even if
it does complicate matters by not always privileging the seemingly terse narration of the English.
Likewise, we cannot surmise that the terse qualities of the English verse—even when they
represent simple ideas—reflect a direct presentation of a “moral” theme; for if they did, we
would expect them to mimic at least what the Latin summaries directly say about the text, which
they do not. This radical disjunction between English and Latin parts of the Confessio makes it
impossible for us to say alongside Derek Pearsall that, in the dialogue between Latin frame and
English verses, Gower’s “moral imagination…operates in an artistically integrated manner” or
that Gower’s “meaning is the sense” of his writing. 197
For example, in concluding Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, the English narrative not only
makes a different argument from its Latin frame but almost argues against even needing such a
poetic, allusive way by which to frame a biblical story:
For Crist Himself maketh knowleching
That no man may togedre serve
God and the world, bot if he swerve
Froward that on and stonde unstable;
And Cristes word may noght be fable.
The thing so open is at ÿe.
It nedeth noght to specefie
Or speke oght more in this matiere. 198
196
Patrick Gallacher, Love, the Word, and Mercury: A reading of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, (Abuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1975) 25.
197
Derek Pearsall, “Gower’s Narrative Art,” PMLA, 81.7 (December, 1966): 477, 475.
198
Gower Confessio Prologue.860-867.
118