Min Herte is Growen into Ston: Ethics and Activity in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis

The role of ethics in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis has been the subject of much scholarly attention. This essay seeks to elucidate Gower’s reception not only of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (which had been translated into Latin by Robert Grosseteste and adapted by John Trevisa) but of the moralizations on Ovidian texts, and to analyze how these traditions influence the goals of the Confessio. Specifically, it discusses how Genius employs the tale of Medusa to mirror the paralysis, impaired will, and confused desire of Amans, and uses it to argue for an ethical agenda that is practical, rather than theoretical in nature. The tale itself is sourced in the moralizing commentaries on the Metamorphoses and the exempla of thirteenth-century sermons, but it turns these sources to an Aristotelian practical ethic to emphasize the importance of productive, directed action and the role of individual agency in that action.