WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

Jerome’s position seems like a converse way of saying “Cristes word may noght be
fable”—that meaning, because of its mystical power and immediate presentation of truth, may
not be represented directly by common understanding. Because it ressembles what the Prologue
describes as an explicit character of truth, we would expect Gower’s presentation of
Nebuchadnezzar’s madness to mimic Jerome’s position and so repeat a biblical story that
emphasizes the inability of truth to be fabled. And to some extent, we get just that: Gower almost
transliterates the biblical story, except for one detail. Gower has the king not just to act like a
wild beast in punishment, but to turn into one, particularly into an ox:
And thus was he from his kingdom
Into the wilde forest drawe,
Wher that the myhti Goddes lawe
Thurgh His pouer dede him transforme
From man into bestes forme.
And lich an oxe under the fot
He graseth, as he nedes mot,
To geten him his lives fode. 206
Gower uses very subtle diction to portray the change from king to ox. Instead of using the
Middle English “transmuwe,” a cognate to the Jerome’s use of “mutare” to describe the change
in Nebuchadnezzar’s image, he uses the word “transforme,” a favorite of his when rendering
Ovid’s Metamorphoses into English. 207 True, “transforme” has only a slightly stronger meaning
of change than “transmuwe” in Middle English and the choice may seem but an accommodation
of poetic meter, but Nebuchadnezzar’s transformation goes beyond word choice—it replies
directly to Jerome’s gloss by making the Bible sound like an Ovidean moral fables or story, in
which a character is transformed physically into an unnatural beast to portray a moral.
To see the difference the term “transforme” makes, we should compare the Confessio’s
presentation of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness to that of Gower’s French Mirour de L’Omme:
206 Gower Confessio 1.2968-2976.
207 Yeager John Gower’s Poetic 115-118.
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