WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

progression. 129 Therefore, as many other scholars have argued since Derek Pearsall’s analysis of
Gower’s narrative art, the problem with finding an “author function” in the Confessio is not
because the work removes Gower from its development but because it gives him too many roles
to inhabit. 130
Further, as John Hurt Fisher’s study of thematic concordance of the works and life of
John Gower has made clear, the purely textual qualities of the Confessio’s “author function”
have not kept the poem’s many themes from cohering as if guided by an ideal image of Gower’s
persona or of a reason for arranging these tales in a dialogue. 131 The tension between the implied
fictional and narrative personas within the stated physical commissioning of the work even
seems, in Peter Nicholson’s words, to help readers distinguish “between the subject of the poem
and broader moral and ethical concerns” that seem to perplex the narrative voice in the work. 132
This is because the failure of an idealized persona to conform to a “real” image of the poet helps
a reader idealize this dialogue with larger thematic concerns. Consequently, although the name
“Gower” is not explicitly guiding our readerly perspective throughout the gathering of stories,
according to Kurt Olsson, it is the ability of the Confessio’s “discordant ‘sentences’ not to
distance readers from wisdom, but better to ensure their achieving it” that give the work a unity
that can be attributed to an idealized “auctoritas.” 133
129
See Winthrop Wetherbee, “Latin Structure and Vernacular Space: Gower, Chaucer and the Boethian Tradition,”
Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange, ed. R.F. Yeager (Victoria: ELS, 1991) 30 and A.J. Minnis
“De Vulgari Auctoritate: Chaucer, Gower and Men of Great Authority.” Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality,
Exchange, ed. R.F. Yeager, ELS Monograph Series. 51. (Victoria: English Literary Studies, 1991) 54.
130
Ardis Butterfield, “Articulating the Author: Gower and the French Vernacular Codex,” The Yearbook of English
Studies, 33 Medieval and Early Modern Miscellanies and Anthologies (2003): 81-82.
131
John H. Fisher, John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (New York: New York University Press,
1964) 135.
132
Peter Nicholson, Love and Ethics in Gower's Confessio Amantis (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2005) 124.
133 Olsson 14.
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