John Gower: Recent Readings ed. by R. F. Yeager (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER inaccuracy is not high enough to prevent a general understanding of the play, it is sufficient to mislead the reader in certain details. Wright provides generally reliable translations of the passages quoted from his plays. In one instance, however, the misreading and faulty punc­ tuation ofthe editor have led him to misconstrue the text. In the quotation on p. 108 there should be a period after esforce, and, two lines ti. ·• .r nn should be ou. The corresponding translation should read: "They ,u:e ,1ot afraid ofmarried women; ifthey capture them, they rape them. They never cease cursing and renouncing [God] or blaspheming [him]." In another instance the wordpersonnages (p. 162) does not mean "worthy men" but is short for/eux de personnages ("plays"), which strengthens Wright's argu­ ment at this point. The following editorial errors distort the meaning of several quoted passages: p. 152, Romme should be comme; p. 167, the scribe deleted orguei/after grant; p. 175, veent should be beent ("desire"). We are greatly indebted to Stephen Wright for this penetrating study of a hitherto obscure domain of medieval theater. He sheds new light on a legendary theme that pervaded people's thinking in the late Middle Ages, and he teaches us that to ignore its dramatic expressions is to risk a serious misunderstanding of late-medieval culture. ALAN E. KNIGHT Pennsylvania State University R. F. YEAGER, ed. John Gower: Recent Readings. Papers Presented at the Meetings of theJohn Gower Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 1983-1988. Ka­ lamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1989. Pp. xv, 366. $15.95 paper. These thirteen essays continue the energetic enterprise of the John Gower Society to bring criticism of Gower and his poetry to the attention of the medieval sect. They evince such careful reading and such learning as to abash summary criticism, but that is the difficulty with reviews of collec­ tions. The two essays that I find most interesting are Yeager's own piece, "Did Gower Write Cento?" and Patricia Eberle's "Miniatures as Evidence of Reading in a Manuscript of the Confessio Amantis." Yeager raises the question whether Gower consciously endeavored to compose "cento" verse, 262 REVIEWS that is poems created by weaving together lines and line parts borrowed from the works ofrenowned poets ofearlier times. He cites examples ofthis sort ofcomposition as a formal art form inprefifth-century Latin and Greek and i:i the Renaissance and offers a good analysis of Gower's use of the technique in /iox Clamantis. But apropos the question in his title, he does not remark that composing in cento must have been a universal practice in learning to write LatinundertheEmpire and throughout the Middle Ages, as it continued to be until this century. (There is a lovely paragraph in Robert Graves's Good-Bye to All That about his entertaining himself in churchduring a sermon by manipulating the quantities ofwords in linesof Latin verse.) Writing this sort ofverses must have been standard practice in Gower's and Chaucer's education. These were not simply "schoolboy pla­ giarism" but a recognized technique employed by teachers to fix the values ofsyllables and rhythms in the minds ofstudents who were going to have to use them in the "cursus" rhythms that indicated phrasing in the ars dictaminis. Yeager's analysis ofthe process by which Gower wove borrowed lines ofLatin into personal statements is excellent. But his assertion ofthe uniqueness of Gower's method and the possible influence of A. Faltonia Proba's Cento "Vergzlianus remain to me open to question until we know more about the use of the cento method in teaching Latin composition. Yeager and Alastair Minnis are ideal people to tell us more about this. Patricia Eberle has produced a very interesting analysis of the way in which the 110 illustrations in MS Morgan M.126 display an understanding of the ordinatio and forma tractandi of the Confessio Amantis. She con­ cludes that, although they are by several artists, the miniatures evidence such faithfulness to the tales and awareness of the plan of the poem that they must have been commissioned by someone familiar not only...