SOURCE: Minnis, Alastair. “‘Moral Gower’ and Medieval Literary Theory.” In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments, edited by A. J. Minnis, pp. 50-78. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983.

[In the following essay, Minnis applies the medieval concept of “ethical poetry” to the Confessio Amantis.]

Chaucer was paying Gower a considerable compliment when he dubbed him ‘moral Gower’. It is one of the ironies of modern criticism that this accolade has given recent readers of Confessio Amantis a stick with which to beat its author. In the minds of many, Gower is simply a ‘moral philosopher and friend of Chaucer’, the latter property being of some interest, but largely in respect of Chaucer's supposedly superior abilities, and the former being of little interest since as a philosopher Gower seems unoriginal. There is, however, another way of interpreting the facts. Current research into medieval literary theory—which had a strong moral bias—is revealing principles which, it may be hoped, will lead to a fuller understanding of the art of ‘moral Gower’. Of special significance for our appreciation of Confessio Amantis are then-current conceptions of ethical poetry which accommodated both profit and delight, and of efficient literary form or ‘organisation of parts’ which enabled a writer's materials to be disposed and displayed to best advantage. The present article outlines a few of the many ways in which such attitudes can illuminate the poem's aims and achievement.

At the outset something should be said concerning the ubiquitous nature of the medieval vocabulary of literary criticism used throughout the following discussion and featured in its section-headings. Such terms as ethicae subponitur (‘it pertains to ethics’), forma tractatus (‘form of the treatise’) and intentio auctoris (‘intention of the author’) figured prominently in the introductions, sometimes called accessūs, to lecture-courses on the ‘set texts’ studied in late-medieval schools and universities.¹ Naturally enough, some items of scholastic literary terminology passed into Old French and thence into Middle English,² but to regard this as the most important channel through which Gower obtained his literary theory and critical idioms would be to undervalue the Latin literary culture of the later Middle Ages, and in particular the way in which the classics were then taught. Anyone with any education at all—by which I mean someone who had studied Latin at grammar-school level—would have been familiar with the standard method of analysing the intentions, objectives, styles and literary structures of authoritative writers, the auctores. For this reason I have taken my point of departure from Robert Henryson, a fifteenth-century grammar master of Dunfermline. Henryson is, in many respects, a schoolteacher-poet par excellence: for example, his Morall Fabillis of Esope is a vernacular version of a prescribed text which, one can imagine, he had construed with generations of pupils; his Orpheus and Eurydice is based on Nicholas Trevet's commentary on Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophiae, an exposition which enjoyed some popularity among late-medieval grammar masters.³ Although Gower was generally more ambitious, and sought to be broader in scope, than Henryson, the Scots poet will help us to identify some of the crucial issues.

I. ETHICAE SUBPONITUR: GOWER'S ETHICAL POETIC⁴

The prologue to the Morall Fabillis of Esope describes a poetic mixture of profit and delight which on the face of it seems to resemble Gower's avowed intention of mingling ‘lust’ and ‘lore’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘pley’, in Confessio Amantis.⁵ At one point Henryson refers to unnamed ‘clerkis’ who say that

                                        it is richt profitabill
Amangis ernist to ming ane merie sport,
To blyth the spreit and gar the tyme be schort.

(19-21)

This is a clear echo of a passage in Pseudo-Cato's Distichs:

Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis,
Ut possis animo quemvis sufferre laborem.
[With pleasure lighten now and then thy care,
That so life's burdens thou mayst better bear.](6)

To substantiate this opinion, Henryson employs the metaphor of the bow which, having been bent too often, becomes feeble and grows sluggish on the string:

For as we se, ane bow that ay is bent
Worthis vnsmart and dullis on the string;
Sa dois the mynd that is ay diligent
In ernistfull thochtis and in studying.

(22-5)

The ultimate source of this exemplum seems to be Cassian's Collationes, wherein is found an account of how John the Evangelist answered a philosopher who took him to task for occupying himself with ‘poor amusements’:

‘What is it’, said he [St John], ‘that you are carrying in your hand?’ The other replied: ‘a bow’. ‘And why’, said he, ‘do you not always carry it everywhere bent?’ To whom the other replied: ‘It would not do, for the force of its stiffness would be relaxed by its being continually bent, and it would be lessened and destroyed, and when the time came for it to send stouter arrows after some beast, its stiffness would be lost by the excessive and continuous strain, and it would be impossible for the more powerful bolts to be shot’. ‘And, my lad’, said the blessed John, ‘do not let this slight and short relaxation of my mind disturb you, as unless it sometimes relieved and relaxed the rigour of its purpose by some recreation, the spirit would lose its spring owing to the unbroken strain, and would be unable when need required, implicitly to follow what was right’.⁷

Henryson sums up his argument with the declaration that

With sad materis sum merines to ming
Accordis weill; thus Esope said, I wis,
Dulcius arrident seria picta iocis

(26-8)

It would seem, then, that the testimony of both Cato and Cassian, a pagan authority and a Christian one, confirm the sentence of Henryson's auctor Aesop. In fact, the Latin phrase which ends this verse does not come from ‘Esope’ directly, but from Walter the Englishman's prologue to his verse Romulus (c.1175), a compilation of fables from Aesop and Avianus which was used in the grammar schools:

Ut juvet et prosit, conatur pagina praesens:
Dulcius arrident seria mixta [variant: picta] jocis.
Hortulus iste parit fructum cum flore, favorem
Flos et fructus emunt; hic nitet, iste sapit.
Si fructus plus flore placet, fructum lege; si flos
Plus fructu, florem; si duo, carpe duo.

[In order to give delight and profit the present book is undertaken: serious matters present a more sweetly smiling face when mixed [variant: adorned] with pleasantries. This little garden provides the fruit with the flower; the flower and the fruit both win approbation: the one is beautiful, the other has a good taste. If the fruit is more pleasing than the flower, gather the fruit; if the flower is more pleasing than the fruit, pluck the flower; if both are pleasing, gather both.]⁸

Walter's prologue, unlike Henryson's, offers a definite choice; the reader is free to pick and choose from the literary potpourri set before him. The three possibilities in question would seem to be: profit alone, delight alone, or profit and delight together.

The English text of Confessio Amantis seems to accord well with most of the literary theory paraphrased so far.⁹ Gower declares (in the first recension ‘Prologus’) that he set out to write in such a manner

Which may be wisdom to the wise
And pley to hem that lust to pleye.

(84-5*. Cf. VIII 3056-62*)

Earlier he had remarked (in all recensions), in terms reminiscent of the extracts from Pseudo-Cato and Cassian quoted above, that the writer

                    who that al of wisdom writ
It dulleth ofte a mannes wit
To him that schal it aldai rede …

(13-15)

For this reason Gower has thought fit to mingle pleasantries with serious matters, leaving it up to the reader to take what he wants:

For thilke cause, if that ye rede,
I wolde go the middle weie
And wryte a bok betwen the tweie,
Somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore,
That of the lasse or of the more
Som man mai lyke of that I wryte …

(16-21. Cf. VIII 3108-11)

It might seem that (to adopt Walter the Englishman's idiom) Gower's literary garden offers fruit and flower at one and the same time; we can either pick the fruit or gather the rosebuds or enjoy what each has to offer, according to our different tastes and capacities.

But the full significance of Gower's statements at the beginning and ending of Confessio Amantis can be grasped only in the context of the work as a whole, by which I mean the complete Middle English text of the poem together with its Latin verse summaries and prose glosses (the latter comprising a sporadic commentary which is probably the work of Gower himself). Gower did not believe that his poem's profit and delight were discrete and independent things, autonomous in so far as a reader can accept the one and ignore the other. ‘Lust’ and ‘lore’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘pley’, are supposed to be inextricably interrelated in Confessio Amantis, as in Henryson's prologue and in the most representative literary theory of the later Middle Ages. A passage in Piers Plowman in which Langland couples the pagan Cato and unspecified Christian saints makes the point very clearly:

I seiȝ wel he [Ymaginatif] seide me sooþ, and somwhat me to excuse
Seide, ‘Caton conforted his son þat, clerk þouȝ he were,
To solacen hym som tyme; so I do whan I make:
Interpone tuis interdum gaudia curis.
And of holy men I here’, quod I, ‘how þei ouþerwhile
In manye places pleyden þe parfiter to ben’.

(XII 20-24)¹⁰

This is to say, Cato comforted his son with the doctrine that on occasion he should relax; a place should be given sometimes to psychological pleasures, in order that one can keep on working mentally. Langland's Dreamer then identifies his poetic ‘making’ as a kind of play, with the implication that, as such, it is responsible and useful in so far as it enables him to bear better the burdens of life. Had the Dreamer not been so cowed by Ymaginatif he could have gone much further. His Latin sentence is, after all, a line of verse, a quotation from Cato's Distichs, this being a work which—as its accessūs emphasise—the poet had written to teach his son and other young people the precepts of good and chaste living.¹¹ Poetry may be a leisure-activity, but its moral teaching can be of great value. Returning to what the Dreamer actually does say, ‘holy men’ engaged in recreation in order that they could sustain their quest for perfection. Perhaps this is a reminiscence of the Cassian passage quoted above, wherein John the Evangelist is quoted as saying that mental relaxation is necessary in order that the spirit may not ‘lose its spring’. In each case it would seem that pleasure is a means to a profitable end.

The notion that poetry employs pleasure as a means to a profitable end is a commonplace of medieval literary criticism. For example, a commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses states that ‘Ovid's intention [intentio], and that of all writers of fables, such as Terence, is to delight as much as possible, and by delighting to instruct in behaviour, because virtually all authors direct themselves towards ethics’.¹² A more elaborate statement is found in Richard de Bury's Philobiblon (1345).¹³ Although all men naturally desire knowledge, he declares, they do not all take the same pleasure in learning. Because man naturally enjoys his freedom and seeks to derive pleasure from what he does, ‘no one without reason submits himself to the control of others, or willingly engages in any tedious task’. Therefore, the wise ancients ‘devised a remedy by which to entice the wanton minds of men by a kind of pious fraud, the delicate Minerva [i.e. Wisdom] secretly lurking behind the mask of pleasure. We are wont to allure children by rewards, that they may cheerfully learn what we force them to study even though they are unwilling. For our fallen nature does not tend to virtue with the same enthusiasm which it rushes into vice’. Richard proceeds to quote two popular tags from Horace's Ars Poetica: ‘All poets sing to profit or delight’, and ‘He hits the mark, who mingles joy with usefulness [utilitas]’.¹⁴ Here the ‘delight’ and ‘joy’ are very much the sugar on the didactic pill, this coating being required by the psychologically childish but unnecessary for readers who are mentally mature. When Gower said that his book might be

          wisdom to the wise
And pley to hem that lust to pleye

—he was almost certainly thinking that those pleasure-seekers would read Confessio Amantis on a relatively superficial level, whereas the ‘wise’ would go deeper and get much more out of it. In a sense, the ‘wyse man’ alluded to in the ‘Prologus’ (61-76) is Gower's ideal reader for his poem. Certainly the moralistic Latin commentary takes that line. More important in this context, however, is Gower's debt to the ‘Moral Ovid’ who, in effect, had been created by generations of medieval academics. Here we must consider the pedagogic precedents for Gower's handling of one of the major sources of the ‘lust’ in Confessio Amantis.

Medieval teachers of the works of Ovid—long established as ‘set texts’ in grammar schools—sought to reveal the face of Minerva lurking behind the mask of pleasure, the extent to which this authoritative writer had mingled moral usefulness with joy and taught by means of delight. On being first introduced to Ovid, the pupil would have been assured that Ars Amatoria had been a great mistake, and Remedia Amoris was essentially a retraction, written to provide medicine against illicit love, i.e. love which was extra-marital or unchaste or incestuous.

This author, Ovid, wrote a manual of love [i.e. Ars Amatoria] in which he taught young men where to find mistresses, and how to treat them courteously when they had found them, and he had given girls the same instructions. But some young men indulged their passion to excess and were not in the least backward in having affairs with virgins, and even married women and female relatives, while the young women submitted themselves to married men just as much as to unmarried men. The result was that Ovid became very unpopular with his friends and with others. Afterwards he regretted what he had done, and, being anxious to be reconciled with those he had offended, he saw that the best way of achieving this was to discover the antidote for the love he had proffered to them. So he set out to write this book [i.e. Remedia Amoris] in which he advises both young men and girls alike who have been trapped in the snares of love, as to how they may arm themselves against unlawful love [illicitus amor]. He prescribes just like a doctor. For a good doctor gives medicine to the sick to heal them, and to the healthy so that they may escape illness.¹⁵

The Heroides, on the other hand, was written to commend love which was legal, marital, and chaste.¹⁶ Ovid was supposed to have done this by showing both the moral benefits which result from legal love and the misfortunes which arise from foolish and illicit types of love. The Heroides pertains to ethics because it treats of behaviour.

Ethicae subponitur: it pertains to ethics. That classification is a constant feature of medieval literary criticism of Ovid's works, and indeed of many other pagan writings on the arts curriculum. Ovid was frequently referred to as an ethicus or moral philosopher, as, for instance, in John of Salisbury's Policraticus (1159).¹⁷ But this respect for Ovid was by no means universally declared.¹⁸ Commentators on the satirists, for example, sometimes aggrandised those authors at Ovid's expense: ‘It should be known that certain poets direct themselves towards usefulness alone, like Horace and this Juvenal; others to delight alone, like Ovid’.¹⁹ More dramatically, in the early fourteenth century the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford, ‘desiring … that each and all the scholars of the University and their servants should be adorned with morals’, forbade ‘the reading and interpretation of the book of Ovid, De Arte Amandi, and “Pamphilus”, and of any other book which might lure or provoke his scholars to what is forbidden’.²⁰ Similarly, in his De Causa Dei (1344), Thomas Bradwardine—the ‘Bisshop Bradwardyn’ mentioned in Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale—attacked certain ‘unlearned arts of love’ which fail to recognise that God is to be loved above all else.²¹ ‘God must be loved in respect of Himself, and everything else loved in respect of God.’ His quotation of the first two lines of Ars Amatoria leaves us in no doubt as to the main target. Bradwardine might also have had in mind a more recent art of love, the De Amore of Andreas Capellanus (1184-6), one of the books singled out by Bishop Stephen Tempier in the Paris condemnations of 1277.²² Ovid, it would seem, was generally respectable but by no means tamed; he and his imitators continued to provoke controversy.

This rather ambivalent attitude is of the first importance for our understanding of Confessio Amantis, since Ovid is Gower's single most important source of stories relating to love. He is referred to both as ‘poete’ and ‘clerk’, the latter epithet indicating Gower's awareness of Ovid's claim to the title ethicus. Certainly, the ethical and didactic aspects of Ovid's poetry are very much to the fore in two branches of the ‘Medieval Ovid’ which are recognised sources of parts of Confessio Amantis, the anonymous Ovide Moralisé (1316-28) and the Ovidius Moralizatus which forms the fifteenth book of Pierre Bersuire's Reductorium Morale (second recension c.1350).²³ Gower seems also to have consulted a commentary on the Heroides.²⁴ The Franciscan compiler of the Old French poem claims that the ancient fables transmitted by the Metamorphoses are written for our doctrine (an echo of Romans xv.4), and therefore his vernacular version will provide us with exempla of doing good and spurning evil.²⁵ Bersuire cites the precedent of biblical uses of moral fables in justifying his own moralisations of the fables of Ovid.²⁶ Medieval commentaries on the Heroides consistently affirm that the author's intention is to commend chaste and married love and to reprehend love which is illicit, foolish or unchaste.²⁷ From sources such as these Gower could have derived his sense of Ovidian material as being excitingly pagan and sometimes sexually risqué (even anti-establishment, perhaps) but, in the final analysis, ethically edifying and conducive to virtue (the establishment had the last word). The unease which so many modern critics have felt about Gower's supposed imposition of a moral frame on the apparently alien material of ‘courtly love’ is, therefore, quite unfounded.²⁸ Gower was not original in placing love-stories in a moral perspective—that had already been done in the scholastic study and adaptation of Ovid's works.²⁹ His personal achievement consists rather in the extent to which he exploited and extended the terms of reference of the ‘Medieval Ovid’. Of special importance are his assimilation of Ovidian ethics to the Christian scheme of the Seven Deadly Sins (with the concomitant emphasis on the universal nature of moral standards), and his development of what Ovid was believed to have meant by ‘legal love’.

In Confessio Amantis the exempla amantum [examples of lovers] are patterned in a way which seems to owe something to medieval descriptions of the exemplifying method of the Heroides. The following accessus is representative:

His material [materia] is legal and illicit and foolish love. His intention [intentio] is to commend certain women because of legal love, such as Penelope, and to reprehend others because of illicit love, such as Phaedra who loved her own stepson Hippolytus; moreover to reprehend others because of foolish love, such as Phyllis and Dido. For it is foolish to love strangers as Phyllis loved Demephon. … The usefulness [utilitas] is that by reading the book we should have knowledge of this type of love. It pertains to ethics [ethice subponitur] because it treats of behaviour.³⁰

The basic notion here is that certain stories within the collection work positively by describing legal and chaste love in such a way that the reader is made aware of its attractiveness, whereas illegal and foolish kinds of love are described in such a way that they appear obnoxious. The whole book pertains to ethics, because ethics teaches the pursuit of good mores and the avoidance of evil. In Confessio Amantis also, exempla of legal lovers are juxtaposed with exempla of foolish lovers and unchaste lovers; for instance, the types Penelope and Phyllis function in Gower's poem very much as they do in the medievalised Heroides.³¹ Some tales show us what we ought to do; others, what we ought to avoid. In this way, the reader is encouraged to do after the good and leave the evil.

But of course, Gower's moral categories are not restricted to those found in the accessūs Ovidiani. As is well known, the forma tractatus or literary organisation of books I-VI and VIII of Confessio Amantis follows the Gregorian arrangement of the Seven Deadly Sins, as employed for example in the Somme le Roy written by the Dominican Lorens d'Orléans in 1279. According to John B. Dwyer, this work is ‘the most proximate document to Gower's ascetical tradition’; Gower used ‘at least parts of a version of the Somme’ in composing the Mirour de l'Omme, and the materials thus derived were reshaped in the later Confessio.³² Moreover, he also shared certain traits with another influential reference-book on penance, the Summa de Vitiis et Virtutibus of Guillaume Perrault (c.1200-c.1270).³³ Yet no single manual may be identified as the source for ‘the totality of Gower's vices and virtues’.³⁴ His method of composition was eclectic, and his organisation of material is altogether more elaborate and symmetrical than that found in the manuals. Credit is due to Gower, therefore, for the skill with which he elaborated on the traditional Gregorian scheme; in an age which placed a high premium on rational and succinct organisation of authoritative doctrine this type of literary talent was highly esteemed.

The point I wish to emphasise, however, is that for Gower it was but a short step from the vices and virtues described in the ‘Medieval Ovid’ to the specifically Christian framework of the Seven Deadly Sins. All that Ovid (and many other pagan authors) had written was supposed to have been written for the doctrine of Christians. Many of his literal statements were often quoted as authoritative in many disciplines (such as ethics and natural science) which he was believed to share with Scriptural authors,³⁵ and medieval mythographers showed how allegorical interpretations of Ovid's myths could yield profound Christian truths.³⁶ The great compilers of the later Middle Ages played a major role in this convergence of pagan and Christian auctoritates on common subjects.³⁷ Vincent of Beauvais, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Brunetto Latini, John of Wales, and Ralph Higden (to name but a few) had fitted classical antiquity into such organising frameworks as universal history, the hierarchy of the sciences, the social and moral hierarchies of the Christian state, and so forth. To take the case of universal history, ‘dictes ethnicalle’ were ‘admixte’ with ‘thynges religious’ so that the order of historical sequence was preserved (as the fifteenth-century translator of Higden's Polychronicon puts it).³⁸ Thus, when Vincent of Beauvais is recounting the history of Rome in his Speculum Historiale, he provides us with a moralistic life of Ovid (derived from some accessus), then proceeds with simple lists of sententious statements culled from each of the poet's works.³⁹ The same basic procedure is followed in the case of every classical author. The compiler would justify the inclusion of such pagan material in various ways: for instance, by explaining the importance of being comprehensive, like Vincent, or by referring to the moral usefulness of this information, like John of Wales (regent master at Oxford c.1260). John's Breviloquium de Virtutibus Antiquorum Principum et Philosophorum is of special interest to us, since it probably was the source of some of the classical exempla in Confessio Amantis.⁴⁰ Therein it is claimed that many gentiles lived a life so good that they put certain Christians, who know better and therefore ought to do better, to shame.⁴¹ If the ancient potentates and wise men and secular philosophers, who were neither enlightened by faith nor directed by charity nor strengthened by hope, were so morally virtuous (and often merely on account of the desire for glory and temporal utility or honesty of life), how much more virtuous should the faithful be, who are endowed with the theological virtues, and how much more should we endure on account of eternal felicity! It is little wonder, then, that such treatises on the virtues and vices as the Breviloquium and Guillaume Perrault's Summa de Vitiis et Virtutibus contain extracts from classical authors. This practice of taking up the writings of philosophers is not reprehensible, Guillaume claims, for, as St Augustine says in De Doctrina Christiana, ‘If those who are called philosophers … have said things which are indeed true and are well accommodated to our faith, they should not be feared; rather, what they have said should be taken from them as unjust possessors and converted to our use’.⁴² The Summa de Vitiis opens with a discussion of vice in general; the Summa de Virtutibus, with a discussion of virtue in general.⁴³ Pagan sages are cited in these general sections, Guillaume's favourite being Seneca: thus, the ancient treasures of non-Christian wisdom have been despoiled and converted to the use of Christians.⁴⁴ The effect is to make the reader aware of the many correspondences and parallels between pagan and Christian systems of morality.

This notion of good or bad behaviour ‘in general’ permeates Confessio Amantis. Pagans and Christians share certain basic moral standards, and so it is perfectly appropriate that exempla from both pagan and Christian sources should illustrate the divisions and subdivisions of every sin. For instance, the tale of the false bachelor, set in the noble city of Rome ‘Er it was set to Cristes feith’, is followed by a tale of Christian Rome concerning the unworthy Pope Boniface; the vice of supplantation, an aspect of Envy, is castigated in each case (II 2501-3110). Ovid and other heathen authorities (as usually understood in the late Middle Ages) reached out towards the Christian scheme of vices and virtues; medieval Christians who described the schemes of vices and virtues characteristic of their religion looked back into the pagan past for confirmations and anticipations of their present-day beliefs and practices. Hence, Gower can write afresh some ‘matiere / Essampled of these olde wyse’ because of its contemporary—and future—relevance (‘Prologus’ 1-11).

What, then, is to be said to the critic who, working from the preconception that the elements of Confessio Amantis are incompatible, claims that it is ridiculous for a character engaged in a profane pursuit (love) to take part in a Christian ritual (confession) which is controlled by a pagan sage (Genius)? Simply this: both pagans and Christians fall in love and they have codes of conduct in common; furthermore, there were priests (or, at least, acceptable equivalents) in the period ‘afore Cristes feith’. Genius at first modestly protests

          it is noght my comun us
To speke of vices and vertus,
Bot al of love and of his lore,
For Venus bokes of nomore
Me techen nowther text ne glose.

(I 267-71)

—but once he gets into his stride he teaches both pleasant text and profitable gloss rather well. To those medieval readers who believed that Ovid had taught de iusto amore and had reprehended love which was illicit, foolish and unchaste, there would have been nothing incongruous about a priest of Venus extolling the benefits of chaste married love (see especially VII 4215-538) and attacking the sin of incest (the main topic of book VIII). Neither would the priesthood of a pagan figure have surprised anyone who had learned from some ‘classicising’ compilation that priests of the ancient religions had often paralleled their present-day counterparts in customs and behaviour.⁴⁵

By the standards of any religion, the ‘clerk’ Genius is a good minister. The meticulous way in which he tests and teaches his client indicates that he is as thorough a priest as the Fourth Lateran Council, or Lorens d'Orléans and Guillaume Perrault, could have wished.⁴⁶ Moreover, Genius has a wholly admirable conception of the high office of ‘Presthode’. For example, he is adamant that a priest should practice what he preaches; it is scandalous that two high priests of Isis should have betrayed the devout and chaste Paulina to the lustful Duke Mundus, since

          whan men wolden vertu seke,
Men scholde it in the Prestes finde;
Here ordre is of so hyh a kinde,
That thei be Duistres of the weie:
Forthi, if eny man forsueie
Thurgh hem, thei be noght excusable.
And thus be lawe resonable
Among the wise jugges there
The Prestes bothe dampned were,
So that the prive tricherie
Hid under fals Ipocrisie
Was thanne al openliche schewed …

(I 1024-35)

Genius believes also that a priest should be a man of learning (I 272-4), even to the extent that he should know something about things which are not strictly speaking within his brief—such as the type of wisdom taught by Alexander to Aristotle (VI 2408ff.). After all,

          wisdom is at every throwe
Above alle other thing to knowe
In loves cause and elleswhere.

(VII 15-17)

Genius, then, is a sort of universal priest—and he shrives universal sins. While Gower's initial concern appears to be with a lover's faults and failings, we are constantly reminded that these reflect vices common to all mankind. Throughout Confessio Amantis there is no distinction between lovers' virtues and Christian virtues; between lovers' sins and real sins: virtue is virtue and vice is vice, in love's cause as elsewhere. In the first six books Genius's usual method is first to define compendiously the characteristics of each vice (secundum proprietatem vicii sub compendio),⁴⁷ then to apply this doctrine ‘in loves cause’, in amoris causa as the Latin commentary puts it.⁴⁸ This constant movement from the general to the specific and back again is handled skilfully, and Genius is the usual instrument, as in this representative exchange between the lover and his confessor:

AMANS
Mi fader, I am amorous,
Wherof I wolde you beseche
That ye me som ensample teche,
Which mihte in loves cause stonde.
CONFESSOR
Mi Sone, thou schalt understonde,
In love and othre thinges alle
If that Surquiderie falle,
It may to him noght wel betide
Which useth thilke vice of Pride …

(I 2258-66)

Genius proceeds to recount the tale of Narcissus from ‘the clerk Ovide’. On occasion, however, it is Amans who either narrows or widens the focus. An example of the former occurs when Genius asks Amans if he is guilty of Contek or homicide. ‘Christ forbid!’ exclaims the lover, then points out that

          this is noght to mi matiere
Of schrifte, why we sitten hiere,
For we ben sett to schryve of love …

(III 1125-7)

A good example of the latter is the whole of book VII, where Genius undertakes an excursus on politics on the request of Amans.

And here, of course, we encounter that old chestnut of Gower criticism, is it not awkward for so much lore to be attributed to a priest of Venus? As far as book VII goes, there is no real incongruity: if one accepts that Confessio Amantis ‘pertains to ethics’ in the technical sense, then Gower's widening of moral perspective to include political theory may be seen as a perfectly logical development. It should be remembered that ‘etique’ and ‘policie’ are closely related in the classification of the sciences which Gower took from Brunetto Latini's Tresor (1260-6).⁴⁹ Besides, Gower carefully emphasised the correspondences between these two branches of practical philosophy by employing a common moral and psychological vocabulary in describing ethical self-rule and the rule of princes, personal peace of mind and public peace between nations […]. Much more problematic, on the face of it, is Genius's knowledge of Christian beliefs and dilemmas: he can allude to Scriptural texts from both Old and New Testaments, paraphrase the Christian account of creation and the fall (VIII 1-74), recount how the pagan religions were swept away by Christianity (V 747-1736), attack present-day abuses in Holy Church (I 607-72; V 1803-1959), and so forth. Yet there is a kind of decorum at work in respect of the relative status of different kinds of doctrine. The crucial point to grasp is that there is no clash between philosophical and theological knowledge in the poem—until the very end (VIII 2971-3172), when the revealed truths of Christianity come to the fore, their exclusive and superior qualities being obvious. Up to that point the Christian allusions and exempla have been brought in not to destroy but to fulfil and confirm what is best in pagan culture (the New Testament being generally avoided). In the body of Confessio Amantis Gower writes not as a theologian but as a philosopher, and the main branch of philosophy to which the poem pertains is ethics.

Perhaps the most attractive feature of Gower's ethical poetic is the way in which he developed the Ovidian notion of licitus amor as described by medieval interpreters. In Confessio Amantis the corresponding term is ‘honeste love’, and this, the highest possible achievement in human love, is presented as a province of moral ‘honeste’ in general.⁵⁰ For example, Paulina's chastity is part and parcel of her ‘gret holinesse’ and total ‘honeste’ (I 831, 868). Therefore, when she has been ‘defouled’ through the treachery of the two wicked priests, she can exclaim:

                                        ‘Helas, wifhode is lore
In me, which whilom was honeste,
I am non other than a beste …’

(I 974-6)

Similarly, moral ‘honeste’ is recommended to Amans as a kind of manliness; it is what makes one a man and not a beast.⁵¹

          my Sone, tak good hiede
So forto lede thi manhiede,
That thou ne be noght lich a beste.
Bot if thi lif schal ben honeste,
Thou most humblesce take on honde …

(I 3043-7)

Proud men do not prosper, in love or anything else. Conversely, good living is conducive to good loving.

Throughout Confessio Amantis the rule of reason and the importance of moderation are advocated; in amoris causa one should be rational and moderate also. According to Genius, ‘reson’ militates not against human love per se but against the type thereof that seems hopeless:

Reson seith that I scholde leve
To love, wher ther is no leve
To spede …

(III 1179-81)

Neither is the virtue of ‘mesure’ contrary to love, only to excessive and/or inappropriate emotion.⁵² Hence, at the very beginning of the lover's confession Genius warns him that

                                        now thi love excedeth
Mesure, and many a peine bredeth.

(I 541-2)

—but if he could ‘sette in reule’ his eye and ear, the rest of his senses would be easily controlled. The implication is that such control would make him better both as a man and as a lover. Likewise, at the end of his instruction Genius declares that the story of Apollonius should teach Amans

To lete al other love aweie,
Bot if it be thurgh such a weie
As love and reson wolde acorde.
For elles, if that thou descorde,
And take lust as doth a beste,
Thi love mai noght ben honeste;
For be no skile that I finde
Such lust is noght of loves kinde.

(VIII 2021-8)

Love seems to be under the dominion of blind chance, like the gifts of fortune (I 39-60); the other side of the coin is that fortune sometimes smiles on ‘hem that ben of love trewe’ (VIII 2013-15). ‘Loves lawe is out of reule’ and there is no man wise enough to temper its ‘mesure’ (I 18-24), yet if a man loves ‘honestly’ he is living and loving in a way which is in accord with ‘reule’, ‘reson’ and ‘mesure’.

What kind of human love, then, is most consonant with rule, reason and moderation? Genius is in no doubt that it is married love. The male is made for the female, but nature does not require that one should desire many,

For whan a man mai redy finde
His oghne wif, what scholde he seche
In strange places to beseche
To borwe an other mannes plouh,
Whan he hath geere good ynouh
Affaited at his oghne heste,
And is to him wel more honeste
Than other thing which is unknowe?

(VII 4218-25)

In marriage a man has pledged his ‘truth’; to break this would be falsehood, quite discordant with one's manhood. The great should be especially aware of this, hence Aristotle taught Alexander

The lore hou that he schal mesure
His bodi, so that no mesure
Of fleisshly lust he scholde excede.

(VII 4235-7)

For Gower the virtues of a good lover are indistinguishable from those of a good man, and the king who governs men can, by governing himself well, be the best of men and the best of lovers.

Not for Gower were the extremes of the De Amore of Andreas Capellanus, which in its first two books often appears to condone adultery, or the Libro de Buen Amor of Jean Ruiz (second recension 1343), which includes detailed descriptions of sexual escapades supposed to be the poet's own, hardly justified by the excuse that he was showing the reader what should be avoided.⁵³ Indeed, it is just possible that Gower was seeking to advance a theory of ‘honest love’ in opposition to the statements in De Amore concerning ‘wise’, ‘prudent’ and ‘pure’ love.⁵⁴ For example, according to Andreas the Countess of Champagne declared and held ‘as firmly established that love cannot exert its powers between two people who are married to each other’.⁵⁵ In stark contrast is Gower's view that true love has its true home in marriage.

This divergence of opinion emerges very clearly in Gower's handling of a story which has an analogue in De Amore, the tale of the slothful princess Rosiphelee who, having been granted a vision of her possible fate in the afterlife, changes ‘al hire firste entente’ and proceeds to make up for lost time in matters of love (IV 1245-450).⁵⁶ Venus and Cupid, Gower declares, were surprised by her initial reticence, the implication being that it is rather unnatural for someone of ‘lusti age’ to refuse to follow ‘the comun cours’ (1260-71). This is reminiscent of Andreas' allegation that all men and women are obliged to love, while not to love is a defect of nature.⁵⁷ But there the resemblance ends. The Rosiphelee analogue provided by Andreas demonstrates that it is unsafe to offend the God of Love, ‘and it is safest to serve in all things him who can reward his own with such gifts and afflict with such heavy torments those who scorn him’.⁵⁸ Elsewhere in De Amore it is argued that love and marriage are incompatible and that the lady who refuses her lover on the grounds of marriage is of evil character.⁵⁹ Gower does not endorse this opposition between love and marriage: for him, in ‘the comun cours’ love takes one of two possible channels, ‘mariage’ or ‘the love of paramours’ (1268-70). We are not told which of these alternatives Rosiphelee eventually chooses, but Genius leaves us in no doubt concerning his preference for married love.

The lady Venus whom Genius serves is perfectly happy to preside over the love of paramours, but he himself is all too aware of the misfortunes and inconveniences which accompany such love:

                                                            natheles
Men sen such love sielde in pes,
That it nys evere upon aspie
Of janglinge and of fals Envie,
Fulofte medlid with disese …

(IV 1471-5)

Generations of commentaries on the Heroides had claimed that one part of Ovid's intention was to reveal the misfortunes which arise from foolish and illicit love. Another part was to reveal the moral benefits and conveniences which result from licitus amor. Likewise, Gower proceeds to state that married love is ‘wel at ese’, to such an extent that he cannot understand why a maiden should waste any time in hastening to that feast, ‘Whereof the love is al honeste’. As reported by Andreas, the Countess of Flanders had judged that ‘a woman who wants to have the praise of the world must indulge in love’, i.e. love without reference to marriage.⁶⁰ For Gower's Genius, a woman wins the praise of the world by getting married and having children, ‘whiche the world forbere / Ne mai, bot if it scholde faile’ (IV 1495-7). One of the ancient roles of Genius, one should remember, was god of generation.⁶¹ Alain de Lille's De Planctu Naturae, wherein Genius is Nature's priest, celebrates ‘the holy faith of marriage’ and attacks all abnormal sexual practices which interfere with the ‘unwearied continuation’ of the human race, such as sodomy, buggery and incest.⁶² In the Roman de la Rose, where he first appears as the priest of Venus, Genius exhorts mankind to fecundity (‘Plow, barons, plow—your lineage repair!’); the poem ends with the impregnation of the virgin rose.⁶³ More important, perhaps, is the fact that behind the statement of Gower's Genius just quoted lurks one of the ‘causes for the ordination of matrimony’ identified by the Christian Church. The first reason for intercourse between husband and wife, as Chaucer explains in The Parson's Tale, is ‘in entente of engendrure of children to the service of God; for certes that is the cause final of matrimoyne’.⁶⁴ Another reason is ‘for to eschewe leccherye and vileynye’.⁶⁵ Genius might be providing a sort of secular equivalent to this when he says that

Love is an occupacion,
Which forto kepe hise lustes save
Scholde every gentil herte have …

(IV 1452-4)

For Gower, love outside marriage, or without reference to marriage, need not be devoid of ‘honeste’, yet married love is, as it were, ‘honeste love’ at full maturity, anything else being at maximum a kind of second best which has much in common with the best and highlights it. As interpreted by Genius for the benefit of Amans, the tale of Rosiphelee is one of many instances in Confessio Amantis where pagan authority and experience are shown to anticipate and support Christian doctrine, in this case the doctrine of marriage and childbearing. It is fitting that the four exemplary pagan wives, Penelope, Lucrece, Alceste and Alcione, are given pride of place in the vision of Cupid's company with which Gower's ‘beau retret’ from human love and movement towards divine love begins (VIII 2377-665).

Once Gower's ethical interest and intent are recognised as all-pervasive—essential aspects of his stories themselves as much as of their penitential framework—the principles in accordance with which he composed his poem emerge with striking clarity. In particular, the medial position of ‘honeste love’ within the amatory hierarchy becomes more obvious, this being a superior form of human and secular love yet subordinate to the divine love, caritas. Such a recognition, as I now hope to show, also enables us to understand better the function of the political and ‘encyclopaedic’ portions of Confessio Amantis within the poem as a whole. What is in question here is the fundamental unity of design of Gower's ‘bok for Engelondes sake’.

II. THE FORMA TRACTATUS: GOWER'S STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY

In late-medieval commentaries on auctores and prologues to compilations, the literary organisation of a work was variously referred to as the divisio textus, ordinatio partium, or forma tractatus. The divisio textus was the division of the text into parts in accordance with its logical progression, the ordinatio partium denoted the hierarchical arrangement of the different materials, while the forma tractatus (‘form of the treatise’) was one of the two aspects of its ‘formal cause’, the other being its forma tractandi.⁶⁶ Only two aspects of the forma tractatus of Confessio Amantis can be considered here: the relationship of the ‘Prologus’ with the treatise which follows it, and the structural consequences of Gower's wish to be compendious.

The first of these can be treated in summary fashion since elsewhere I have discussed the relevant issues at some length.⁶⁷ While the main source of the content of Gower's ‘Prologus’ was undoubtedly the ‘lore’ of the medieval satirical tradition […], the source of its form was probably the ‘extrinsic’ and ‘sapiential’ type of prologue which introduced many a late-medieval commentary or philosophical treatise. In many twelfth-century commentaries on auctores the heading extrinsecus introduced a discussion of the place in the scheme of human knowledge occupied by the art or science relevant to one's text, while the heading intrinsecus introduced analysis of the text itself in accordance with headings like intentio auctoris, materia, modus, and utilitas.⁶⁸ From the early thirteenth century onwards a kind of extrinsic prologue was in vogue wherein the relevant branch of knowledge was related to the Aristotelian hierarchy of the sciences: it was necessary to identify the pars sapientiae (‘part of wisdom’) to which the text pertained, and the definition of sapientia was an Aristotelian one.⁶⁹ For example, in commentaries on the Sapiential Books of the Bible this definition was applied, and Solomon (traditionally regarded as their author) was held to be a sapiens in such philosophical disciplines as ethics and politics.⁷⁰ Gower may well have known the popular commentary on Wisdom by the ‘classicising friar’ Robert Holcot (written c.1334-6), who approached his text as a biblical ‘Regiment of Princes’.⁷¹ In his extrinsic prologue Holcot explains how all the human arts and sciences contribute to God's glory.⁷² The four virtuous dispositions which God, the divine auctor, requires in his audience are listed. Holcot then moves to state the supremacy of theological wisdom over philosophical wisdom: having done this, he feels free to concentrate on philosophical wisdom. The intrinsic prologue, by contrast, focuses on the Book of Wisdom itself, in respect of its name, author and end.

Linked prologues of this kind provided models for the prefaces with which some medieval writers introduced their own treatises. An excellent example is afforded by the beginning of the Summa contra Gentiles of St Thomas Aquinas (1259-64).⁷³ In the extrinsic prologue Aristotle's statement that ‘it is the function of the wise man to order’ (sapientis est ordinare) leads into a discussion of the intention of the divine auctor and the general order of His universe, these being those ‘highest causes’ which the sapiens should investigate. ‘Truth must be the last end of the whole universe; and the consideration thereof must be the chief occupation of wisdom.’ All this is followed by an intrinsic prologue wherein Aquinas explains his intention in this work and the manner in which he has ordered it. The parallelism between the prologues is too obvious to miss.

Returning to Confessio Amantis, it may be observed that the beginning of this poem resembles a scholastic preface which first treats of the extrinsic aspects of the text in the context of a discussion of wisdom in general, and then proceeds to discuss the text itself. Gower's ‘Prologus’ is an extrinsic prologue about wisdom, while the treatise which follows it is about love:

For this prologe is so assised
That it to wisdom al belongeth …
Whan the prologe is so despended,
This bok schal afterward ben ended
Of love …

(‘Prologus’ 66-75)

Sapientia and amor are linked through the donnish joke that love has ‘put under’ many a wise man. Hence, it seems fitting that a ‘Prologus’ on wisdom should be followed by a treatise about love. Gower's declared intention is ‘in som part’ to advise ‘the wyse man’, and so the ‘Prologus’ warns of the ways in which the temporal rulers, the Church and the commons have ceased to follow wisdom. At two points it is emphasised that God alone has the wisdom necessary for full understanding of worldly fortune (‘Prologus’ 66-77, 1086-8). Then, in his intrinsic prologue (I 1-92) Gower proceeds to explain precisely what is within his compass. He cannot stretch his hand up to heaven and set the world to rights; instead he will change the style of his writings and speak of a matter with which all the world has to do, namely Love. The significance of this transition is made absolutely clear by a Latin accessus which employs standard ‘intrinsic’ headings:

Since in the ‘Prologus’ already has been treated the way in which the divisiveness of our current state has overcome the rule of charity, the author intends [intendit auctor] presently to compose his book, the name [nomen] of which is called The Lover's Confession, about that love by which not only human kind but also all living things naturally are made subject. And because not a few lovers frequently are enticed by the passions of desire beyond what is fitting, the matter of the book [materia libri] is spread out more specifically on these topics throughout its length.⁷⁴

Thus, in both English text and Latin gloss the poet admits that he cannot cope with all the problems which he canvassed in the ‘Prologus’. A human auctor cannot reorganise the present world in accordance with those principles of order which the divine auctor, God, followed in His creation, but he can impose an appropriate order on his own creation, in this case a treatise on love. The way in which Gower explains what is within his compass parallels the way in which a commentator like Holcot or a philosopher like Aquinas would move from sapientia in general to the particular branch of sapientia proper to the text; from the causa causarum, God, to the causes of the text. It is fitting that such prologues should introduce a work which pertains to ethics and includes political discussion. Gower has taken upon himself the function of an ethicus, the role of a sapiens with a special expertise in ethics and politics.

The second aspect of Gower's forma tractatus to be considered, the structural consequences of his wish to be compendious, may be approached by contrasting the literary strategies of two works which influenced Confessio Amantis, Alain de Lille's De Planctu Naturae and Jean de Meun's portion of the Roman de la Rose. In De Planctu Naturae Dame Nature explains, among other things, the principles of harmony in accordance with which the universe operates, the links between the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of man, the contrasts between the respective realms of nature and grace, the ways in which man alone, of all beings, fails to obey her, the qualities of love, and the various kinds of inordinate and unnatural love. Yet to describe these things as comprising the meaning of the work would be an act of crude reductionism. Alain's elaborate, allusive and sometimes obscure style, with its dazzling rhetoric, sporadic allegory, and heavy dependence on classical myth and grammatical metaphors, distances the reader from literal reality and factuality. A good example of this effect is afforded by the phantasmagoric description of Dame Nature's costume.⁷⁵ In her diadem are visible the beauties of the zodiac and heavenly bodies; on her robe of state, which perpetually changes in colour, is an animated picture of a parliament of birds; the many intricate folds of her mantle show the colour of water and on it a ‘graphic picture’ tells of ‘the nature of the watery creation, as divided into numerous species’, while on her multicoloured tunic ‘the magic of a picture gave life to the animals of the earth’. A poet of the thirteenth or fourteenth century would have produced a very different panorama of creation. One can imagine him prosaically enumerating the properties of the main fish, flesh and fowl: after all, he could draw on the 171 chapters on herbs, 134 chapters on seeds and grains, 161 chapters on birds and 46 chapters on fishes in Vincent's Speculum Naturale, or some shorter account like the section on natural history in Brunetto's Tresor. Something of the kind occurs in the Roman de la Rose. With scholastic precision, Jean de Meun's largely ‘demythologised’ Nature describes her own creation, planetary motions and powers, destiny and free will (following Boethius), the influence of the heavens, the properties of mirrors and glasses, dreams and frenzies, and true gentility, concluding with a commendation of all creation—man excepted—for its ordered obedience.⁷⁶ Jean, like Gower after him, was a plain-style poet whose main modes of procedure are narration and exemplification rather than enigmatic fable and allegory; the general bent of the Roman is literal and factual.⁷⁷

Between the time of Alain de Lille and Jean de Meun had occurred what might advisedly be called the ‘information explosion’ of the later Middle Ages.⁷⁸ Compilations, with their clear principles of ordinatio and their sophisticated indices, presented in a convenient way the sum of received knowledge on any given topic to readers eager for historical and scientific facts. They strove to be compendious, to provide in the smallest possible space diverse materials which would cater for a range of interest. These concerns and tastes are reflected by the Roman de la Rose. Jean did not attempt to follow Alain's arrangement of materials (although he certainly derived many ideas from De Planctu Naturae); with regard to forma tractatus, the main influence was the literary form of compilatio. Indeed, the Roman is one of the main thirteenth-century testaments to the flexible nature of that genre. Jean was one of the first writers to make a narratio fabulosa (‘fictitious narrative’),⁷⁹ in this case the pursuit of the Rose, the occasion for compilation of diverse materials on a grand scale.

Attempting to cope with the compendiousness of the Roman, C. W. Dunn writes that

the age of Jean de Meun was animated by the Aristotelian dictum, sapientis est ordinare. As a man of learning he instinctively ordered his theme and related love to the whole scheme of things. … Reason reveals love's folly, Genius argues its necessity, the Duenna describes the sordidness of its strategems, Forced Abstinence suggests the unhealthiness of its renunciation, and so on, until every aspect of love has been ordered within the totality.⁸⁰

What this account misses is that the lover's pursuit of the Rose provides the opportunity and the rationale for the inclusion of material relating to ‘the whole scheme of things’. Jean's basic ordinatio partium consists of the various stages of the lover's quest, stages which enable the characters to discuss different aspects of love, until every aspect has been ordered within the overall structure. Within this general arrangement, other materiae are disposed. For example, Reason contrasts youth and age, expounds the higher love of friendship, describes the Wheel of Fortune, defines true happiness, discourses on wealth and justice, and recounts sad stories of the deaths of princes (Nero, Croesus and Manfred).⁸¹ False Seeming, called in to help the lover gain access to the lady's castle, launches a bitter attack on the mendicant friars.⁸² This oscillation from within to beyond the boundaries of ‘love's cause’ is, of course, the same literary strategy as that employed in Confessio Amantis. Gower's ‘fictitious narrative’ is the lover's confession, and his basic ordinatio partium follows the divisions (or distincciones, as the Latin commentary terms them)⁸³ dictated by the Seven Deadly Sins. Within this general arrangement are disposed other materiae, most noteworthy being the political issues located mainly in the ‘Prologus’, Book VII, and the epilogue, and the so-called ‘encyclopaedic’ lore provided at certain stages of Genius's disquisition. Gower's deployment of such doctrine manifests his debt to medieval techniques of compilation; the literary terminology associated with compilations is echoed by a statement in the Latin commentary to the effect that he has compiled [compilavit] extracts from chronicles, histories, and the sayings of the (pagan) philosophers and poets.⁸⁴

The political aspect of Confessio Amantis was of the utmost importance to Gower. It is emphasised in the Latin passage, perhaps written by Gower himself, which summarises his three major works:

This third book, which out of regard for his most vigorous lord Henry of Lancaster … was written in English, following the prophecy of Daniel concerning the mutability of earthly kingships, discourses from the time of Nebuchadnezzar up to the present time. Moreover, following Aristotle it treats of those things by which King Alexander was instructed, as much in his governance as in other things. However, the principal matter [principalis materia] of this work has its basis in love and the foolish passions of lovers.⁸⁵

Gower's principalis materia falls within the subject-area of ethics (as has been argued above); his other material falls within the subject-area of politics which, according to Aristotle, includes the subject-area of ethics, or vice-versa. As Sir David Ross says, ‘Aristotle's ethics, no doubt, are social, and his politics are ethical; he does not forget in the Ethics that the individual man is essentially a member of society, nor in the Politics that the good life of the state exists only in the good lives of its citizens’.⁸⁶ This interrelationship between ethics and politics is emphasised in three of the major sources of Gower's political ideas, the Pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum, Brunetto's Tresor, and the De Regimine Principum of Giles of Rome (written c.1285). The Secretum Secretorum includes discussion of virtues and vices both public and personal, and of the health of the body politic together with the health of the king's own body.⁸⁷ Politics, says Brunetto, is the ‘noblest and highest science and the noblest office on earth’; it teaches us how to govern ‘a people and a community in time of peace and in time of war, in accordance with reason and justice’, and generally comprehends all the arts necessary for human society.⁸⁸ Ethics, too, is about governing, in this case the governance of oneself: ‘ethics … teaches us how to govern ourselves primarily, to lead an honest life, and perform virtuous works and beware of vices, for there is no one who can live in the world well or honestly, or benefit himself or others, if he does not govern his life and direct his manners according to the virtues’.⁸⁹ According to Giles of Rome, ‘the doctrine of the governance of princes deals with human actions, and is comprehended under morality’; here politics seem to be regarded as a branch of ethics.⁹⁰ Hence, Giles can claim that, despite its title, the appeal of De Regimine Principum is not limited to princes only: ‘theigh nouȝt eueriche man may be kyng oþer prince ȝit eueriche man schulde desire besiliche to make himself worthi to be a kyng oþer a prince’ (quoting John Trevisa's translation).⁹¹ Most of these ideas are either stated explicitly or implied in Confessio Amantis (see especially VII 40-9, 1649-1720), although it should be noted that Gower does not follow Brunetto's inclination to elevate politics over ethics; his emphasis on the relationship between the rule of one's self and the rule of one's kingdom places him rather with Pseudo-Aristotle and Giles of Rome.

          if a kyng wol justifie
His lond and hem that beth withynne,
First at hym self he mot begynne,
To kepe and reule his owne astat,
That in hym self be no debat
Toward his god …

(VIII 3080-5)

Giles of Rome taught that great benefits will accrue to rulers who know their aim and highest good in life, which consists in the performance of works of wisdom and virtue.⁹² This is the highest good for everyone, but especially for kings and princes. Gower certainly agreed with that:

To every man behoveth lore,
Bot to noman belongeth more
Than to a king, which hath to lede
The people; for of his kinghede
He mai hem bothe save and spille.
And for it stant upon his wille,
It sit him wel to ben avised,
And the vertus whiche are assissed
Unto a kinges Regiment,
To take in his entendement …

(VII 1711-20)

Herein lies the rationale of Gower's assimilation of the materia of politics to the principalis materia of love-stories which pertain to ethics.

Moving from philosophical principles to literary practice, further light is thrown on the ordinatio partium of Confessio Amantis by the ordinationes of two of the Latin treatises mentioned above, Brunetto's Tresor and Giles' De Regimine Principum. (The Secretum Secretorum is lacking in efficient structure of the kind valued in the later Middle Ages; such writers as Giles of Rome, Gower himself, and Thomas Hoccleve set about re-arranging its doctrine in a more presentable manner.)⁹³ The first book of the Tresor, on ‘the origin of all things’, begins with a ‘division of the sciences’ and a brief history of the world from the creation to the time of Charles d'Anjou, which is followed by descriptions of the nature of the heavens, the regions of the earth, and the animals and birds which live therein.⁹⁴ Book II, on ethics, comprises a partial translation of the Nicomachean Ethics with commentary, and an account of the virtues which follows Guillaume Perrault's Summa de Virtutibus.⁹⁵ The first part of the third book is about politics while the second part is about rhetoric, this juxtaposition being accounted for by Brunetto's statement (following Cicero) that rhetoric, the science of speaking, is the most important science required for governing a city.⁹⁶ The threefold division of De Regimine Principum, on the other hand, follows the Aristotelian division of practical philosophy into ethics, economics, and politics (which was reiterated by Brunetto and Gower). Childs' helpful review of how this plan works in detail may be quoted in full:

Book I is divided into four Parts, which take up the Highest Good that princes should strive for, the virtues princes should possess, how they should govern their emotional life, and what habits they should follow, especially among those habits possessed by old men and young men. Books II and III have each three Parts. Part I of Book II deals with how a king shall govern his wife; Part II his children, and Part III his servants, including the various branches of the subject of Economics. Book III, concerned with politics proper, rejects in Part I the political theories of Plato, Socrates, and others; describes in Part II the best government in time of peace, and in Part III the best government in time of war.⁹⁷

As John Trevisa puts it in his translation of De Regimine Principum, this order is both reasonable and natural since ‘the kynges maieste is to kunne ferste rule hymself and þanne to kunne rule his meyne and þe þridde to konne rule regnes or cites’.⁹⁸ The ‘scoler’ or reader ‘is imade abel to lerne by the order of thinges that schal be iseid’; a good ordinatio (or ordo dicendorum, as Giles' Latin text has it) greatly enhances the didactic value of the writing.⁹⁹

The ordinatio of Confessio Amantis may now be analysed in the same way, for purposes of comparison. The ‘Prologus’ which ‘belongs all to wisdom’, contrasts the former age with the present, which is a time of war and division. Gower proves this both synchronically, by revealing the decadence of the three estates (temporal rulers, the commons and the Church), and diachronically, through a brief historical survey of the empires of the world which has as its point of departure King Nebuchadnezzar's dream. At the beginning of Book I Gower moves away from these large political concerns and proceeds to concentrate on the moral problems and ramifications of human love. In the first six books and in Book VIII such materia is disposed in accordance with the Seven Deadly Sins. The fifth book elaborates on the normal pattern by incorporating an historical account of the religions of the world, the main component of which is an annotated catalogue (about 600 lines long) of the Greek divinities. This, as Boitani says, corresponds ‘to the internal requirements of the Confessio: it provides a sort of concise analytical index that once and for all characterises the poem's intricate mythological world’.¹⁰⁰ Here as elsewhere, Gower is elevating the literary form of compilatio into what we moderns might term an art form. Book VII is, on the face of it, the most complex in structure. It begins with a ‘division of the sciences’ which leads into a substantial account of the nature of the heavens and the influence of the planets, drawn from such sources as the Tresor, Vincent's Speculum Naturale, and the Speculum Astronomiae attributed to Albert the Great. Practical philosophy is then subdivided into ethics, economics and politics, and Gower proceeds to teach the five points of policy according to Aristotle by means of exempla. Book VIII, on the Deadly Sin of lechery, commends chaste married love and condemns incest in a way which would have been thoroughly familiar to anyone who had studied Ovid as a school text. The lover's confession over, it is revealed that Amans is in fact an old man, whereupon Venus and Cupid withdraw from him. The poem ends with a prayer for the welfare of England (which echoes the political concerns of the ‘Prologus’ and Book VII) and an affirmation of the superiority of charity, the divine love, over human love.

It is obvious that the importance of Brunetto and Giles to Gower was not simply a matter of specific and sporadic pieces of lore; the ways in which they had organised their doctrine was a crucial factor influencing his own selection and structuring of materials. There are, of course, major differences of depth and detail between the total structures of the works in question, but, as it were, the structural ‘blocks’ are often similar. Giles moved from ethics to economics to politics. Brunetto moved from general knowledge to ethics to rhetoric and finally to politics. Gower started with politics but soon moved to ethics, subsequently offering a ‘core’ of political ideas (i.e. in Book VII) before returning to ethics—a brief return, since the particular kinds of behaviour with which ethical love-poetry is concerned are now closed to Amans as an aged lover. As Giles demonstrates so well in the final part of his book on ethics, the normal behaviour-patterns of old men and young men are different;¹⁰¹ Amans must realise the painful implications of this for his love-affair. The encyclopaedic lore found at the beginning of Book VII of Confessio Amantis is reminiscent of the first book of the Tresor (which is, after all, one of its main sources): Gower follows Brunetto's lead, though not his sequence, in providing a division of the sciences and an explanation of the four elements and of the make-up of man, followed by descriptions of the regions of the earth and the nature of the heavens. Both writers were seeking to provide that general knowledge which, in their opinion, was necessary for the edification of the good king and the good man alike.

Gower sought to make his materials de regimine principum even more cohesive by exploiting what may be called the ‘frame’ and raison d'être of the encyclopaedic doctrine in Secretum Secretorum, the notion that it was written by Aristotle, the greatest of philosophers, on the request of Alexander, the greatest of temporal rulers. At the end of Book VI Amans says that his ‘herte sore longeth’ to know

Hou Alisandre was betawht
To Aristotle, and so wel tawht
Of al that to a king belongeth …

(2411-13)

—thus providing the occasion for Book VII in its entirety, wherein Gower fills the ‘frame’ of Secretum Secretorum with materials from other sources. We are reminded that we are being offered the kind of information which Aristotle gave to Alexander at the beginning of Genius' disquisition (VII 1-29), at several points in medias res (see especially VII 196-202, 2031-5, 4233-7), and at the end (VII 5384-97). Occasionally Genius declares or implies that he is amplifying this information with what Aristotle said on other occasions (see for example VII 82-90, 220-1), and of course he often draws on the teaching of other philosophers (see especially VII 1493-500, where the ‘yonge king’ is said to have had tutors other than Aristotle) and biblical sages. Many exempla are applied, from a variety of sources. Genius sums up well at least part of his mode of procedure in stating that generally he has followed ‘The forme of Aristotles lore’ yet has offered in addition ‘somdiel more / Of othre ensamples’ (VII 5403-5).

But what prompted Amans to request this long disquisition in the first place? A definite reason is given by Gower. At the end of Book VI (on Gluttony, wherein various kinds of excess are castigated) Genius warns Amans against sorcery and related evils by means of two exempla, the second of which is the tale of how Alexander was begotten on Queen Olimpias of Macedonia by the magician and astrologer Nectanabus (VI 1789-2270). ‘Calistre and Aristote’ taught the young king philosophy, Genius continues, while Nectanabus taught him ‘Astronomie’. One fair and starry night, when Alexander and Nectanabus were observing the heavens from a tower, the sorcerer claimed he could predict by the stars that his own son would cause his death. Alexander, wishing to prove his tutor wrong, pushed him over the wall—thereby proving him right. Amidst all this, it is the Confessor's allusion to Aristotle teaching Alexander which arouses the penitent-lover's curiosity, hence his desire to hear more. Moreover, the reference to astronomy which this exemplum requires at once anticipates and in some measure justifies the lengthy account of this science included in Book VII. Therein may be found a reminder that Alexander was taught such things by Nectanabus, ‘which was an Astronomien / And ek a gret Magicien’ (VII 1295-308).

The transition from Book VI to Book VII is considerably eased by these connections. The transition from Book VII to Book VIII is even more smooth and logical. The linchpin is Genius' account of the fifth point of policy according to Aristotle, which is chastity, a virtue belonging to all men but especially to kings (VII 4215-5397). This opens with the praise of ‘honeste’ married love which we have already quoted [on p.64] and proceeds with a group of exempla which reveal the misfortunes attendant on those who exceed ‘mesure / Of fleisshly lust’ (VII 4236-7). Sexual incontinence can cause a king to lose his kingdom, as happened in the case of Sardanapalus (VII 4313-43). Cyrus and Balaam exploited the fact that lust makes an enemy weak (VII 4361-445). Grim political consequences followed from the idolatry into which Solomon was led by his wives, from the rape of Lucrece, and from the death of Virginia (VII 4446-5306). Lucrece was a chaste wife and Virginia a gentle virgin; their histories are capped by the amazing Biblical exemplum of Sarra and her eight husbands (VII 5307-65). Seven men married Sarra out of lust and therefore were strangled by the fiend Asmod, yet Thobie was unharmed because, thanks to the angel Raphael who taught him the art of ‘honeste’ love, he was able to maintain that decorous desire which is appropriate to married lovers:

Whan sche was wedded to Thobie,
And Raphael in compainie
Hath tawht him hou to ben honeste,
Asmod wan noght at thilke feste,
And yit Thobie his wille hadde,
For he his lust so goodly ladde,
That bothe lawe and kinde is served …
O which an open evidence
Of this ensample a man mai se,
That whan likinge in the degre
Of Mariage mai forsueie,
Wel oghte him thanne in other weie
Of lust to be the betre avised.

(VII 5357-71)

This prepares the way perfectly for the commendation of the laws of marriage with which Book VIII begins; more generally, the attacks on fleshly lust made by the exempla paraphrased above lead naturally into a book on incest, a particularly invidious form of lechery. Furthermore, the long exemplum which occupies most of Book VIII, the story of Prince Apollonius of Tyre, blends amatory and political concerns in the same manner as do the exempla concerning chastity found in the final section of Book VII. From the amatory point of view, the commendable love of Apollonius for his wife and daughter contrasts with the execrable incest of Antiochus and his daughter: the ethical import is obvious.

Lo, what it is to be wel grounded:
For he hath ferst his love founded
Honesteliche as forto wedde,
Honesteliche his love he spedde
And hadde children with his wif,
And as him liste he ladde his lif;
And in ensample his lif was write,
That alle lovers myhten wite
How ate laste it schal be sene
Of love what thei wolden mene.
For se now on that other side,
Antiochus with al his Pride,
Which sette his love unkindely,
His ende he hadde al sodeinly,
Set ayein kinde upon vengance,
And for his lust hath his penance.

(VIII 1993-2008)

Like Thobie as portrayed in Book VII of Confessio Amantis, Apollonius is a type of the ‘honeste’ lover who eschews bestial lust. From the political point of view, the chaste prince who rules himself well is rewarded eventually with a whole kingdom to rule (VIII 1971-92); his virtuous wife becomes a queen (1991), as indeed does their virtuous daughter (1912-18). Apollonius is Gower's example par excellence of the good king, the good man, and the good lover, all rolled into one.

Typically, at the beginning and the end of his treatment of chastity Genius claims to be reporting what Aristotle taught Alexander (VII 4233-7 and 4257-65; 5384-97). In fact, most versions of Secretum Secretorum offer only one short and superficial chapter on the chastity necessary in a king. ‘Compassionate Emperor, do not incline towards sexual intercourse with women’, advises the ‘Vulgate’ Latin text, ‘because intercourse is a characteristic of swine’.¹⁰² Lechery destroys the body, shortens life, corrupts the virtues, breaks the law, and makes a man effeminate. It would seem that Gower was stretching a point by stating that the main source of VII 4215-5397 was what Aristotle had told Alexander about chastity. Doubtless our poet would have replied that Alexander had received at least the ‘sentence’ or essence of the lore retailed by Genius: he, as a modern writer, was ‘piously interpreting’ the true intention of his author in the standard academic manner.¹⁰³ A wealth of material germane to such a ‘pious interpretation’ was offered in Brunetto's Tresor and Giles' De Regimine Principum, not to mention the various sources of Gower's exempla. In the first part of his book on ethics, Brunetto has two chapters on chastity according to his version of the Nicomachean Ethics; in the second part, where chastity is treated as a branch of the cardinal virtue of temperance, he provides what Guillaume Perrault and others had to say on the subject. Therein one may find the basic ethical principles affirmed by Gower—that inordinate corporeal desire is brutish, and that in sexual matters a man should exercise moderation and attend to the dictates of reason. A fuller, and decidedly more liberal, account is provided in De Regimine Principum. In his book on ethics, Giles cites Aristotle's definition of continence as that virtue which is the mean between too great and insufficient bodily pleasure. The joy of sex is the greatest of all the bodily pleasures, hence one should be especially continent therein. Incontinence is more unworthy of man than fear, and it is very unseemly that kings and princes should fall into this vice. In his book on economics, Giles includes discussion of the king's government of his wife and children. Since it is natural for man to live in association, as Aristotle says, it is therefore natural for him to marry and have children.¹⁰⁴ Fornication should be avoided as something which is quite contrary to marriage.¹⁰⁵ Indeed, a man who forsakes marriage makes himself less than a man: ‘ȝif it is kyndeliche to man to be disposed to wedlok no man þat forsaketh wyuying lyueth as a man’. To choose to live in fornication is to choose ‘a lif þat is bynethe a man and is as þey were a beest’.¹⁰⁶ These facts are of special importance for a prince. The husband, especially a king, must have only one wife, from whom he should not depart;¹⁰⁷ conversely, one husband must suffice for the wife. Man's conduct in marriage should be continent, honourable, and agreeable. The wife of a king ought to have beauty and chastity. Any man, especially a king, should teach his wife the virtues of chastity, honesty, temperance, sobriety, silence, and peacefulness. Most of these ideas are, of course, essential components of Gower's theory of ‘honeste love’, a love-ideal available to king and commoner alike. On close inspection in the light provided by Brunetto and Giles of Rome, this theory proves to be largely derived from what passed for Aristotelian ‘practical philosophy’ in the later Middle Ages.

To judge by the standards of the compilations of ethical and political lore cited in this section, the forma tractatus of Confessio Amantis is both reasonable and natural. The poem's compendiousness would, in the fourteenth century, have been a definite mark in its favour, yet there is no reason to suppose that Gower was content to unload information unthinkingly—on the contrary, there is plenty of evidence to support the view that he sought to deploy it appropriately and functionally, making it serve his overall strategy. The reader of Confessio Amantis is, to adopt Trevisa's idiom, ‘imade abel to lerne by the order of thinges’; Gower's efficient ordinatio partium manifests and enhances the didactic utilitas of his materials.

In conclusion, a major implication of the preceding discussion may be spelled out: the epithet ‘moral’ as applied to Gower may most profitably be taken as indicating the considerable extent to which he subscribed to the ethical poetic of the later Middle Ages. Whether this is precisely what Chaucer had in mind or not, it will serve as a fruitful maxim for modern readers of Confessio Amantis. Of course, literature is not rigidly determined by the literary theory contemporaneous with it, yet, especially in the case of a writer whose conception of his own creativity was demonstrably influenced thereby, such theory can enable us to identify the criteria in accordance with which that creativity should be judged. In the light provided by medieval literary theory, it may be perceived that Gower was fully aware of the nature and potential of the literary traditions and conventions available to him, and chose well, in creating a work which was compendious, cohesive, and pleasurably didactic.

Notes

1. On this vocabulary see A. J. Minnis ‘Discussions of “Authorial Role” and “Literary Form” in Late-Medieval Scriptural Exegesis’ Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur XCIX (1977) pp. 37-65; ‘The Influence of Academic Prologues on the Prologues and Literary Attitudes of Late-Medieval English Writers’ MS XLIII (1981) pp. 342-83.

2. Good examples are provided by the terms sens and matiere, on which see W. A. Nitze ‘Sens et Matiere dans les oeuvres de Chrétien de Troyes’ Romania XLIV (1915-17) p. 14-36; D. W. Robertson ‘Some Medieval Literary Terminology, with special reference to Chrétien de Troyes’ SP XLVIII (1951) pp. 669-92.

3. On Henryson as grammarian and his knowledge of academic texts and techniques see The Poems of Robert Henryson ed. Denton Fox (Oxford 1981) pp. xiii-xvii, xxii, xlii-iii, xlv-vi, cv-x, 384-92; Douglas Gray Robert Henryson (Leiden 1979) pp. 2-3, 49-52, 210-11, 216-18, 230-1, 236-7; D. A. Wright ‘Henryson's Orpheus and Eurydice and the Tradition of the Muses’ MÆ XL (1971) pp. 41-7. William Wheteley produced a simplified version of Trevet's commentary on Boethius for the use of his pupils in the Lincoln grammar school: see H. F. Sebastian William Wheteley's (fl.1309-1316) Commentary on the Pseudo-Boethius' Tractate ‘De Disciplina Scolarium’ and Medieval Grammar School Education (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University 1970) p. 5.

4. On late-medieval notions concerning poetry as a species of ethical instruction see now Judson Allen's stimulating book The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages (Toronto 1982).

5. Ed. Fox op. cit. pp. 3-5. The following discussion is indebted to Professor Fox's excellent notes, on pp. 187-91.

6. Disticha Catonis III 6, ed. Marcus Boas (Amsterdam 1952) p.159; trans. W. J. Chase The Distichs of Cato: A Famous Medieval Textbook University of Madison Studies in the Social Sciences and History VII (Madison 1922) p. 31. In the translation by Benet Burgh which Caxton printed around 1477, the passage is translated and expanded as follows:

   Who that lakketh rest may no while endure.
   Therfore among take ese and disport.
   Delyte the neuer in gret besinesse and cure,
   But that whilom thou maist also resort
   To playes, recreacions and al other comfort.
   Than schalt thou better laboure atte longe,
   Whan thou hast mirth thy besinesse amonge.

   Ed. Fumio Kuriyagawa Paruus Cato, Magnus Cato, translated by Benet Burgh. Edited from William Caxton's First Edition (ca.1477) Seijo English Monographs XIII (Tokyo 1974) p. 35.

7. Collationes XXIV 21, in Migne PL XLIX 1312B-1315A, trans. E. C. S. Gibson The Works of John Cassian Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd srs XI (Oxford and New York 1894) pp. 540-1. For a thorough examination of these and related ideas see now Glending Olson Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca and London 1982).

8. Romulus lines 1-6, ed. Julia Bastin Recueil général des Isopets Société des Anciens Textes Français (Paris 1929-30) II 7. Cf. the Old French versions of this prologue (being the prologues to the Isopet de Lyon and Isopet I) on pp. 85-6, 203-4.

9. On Gower's use of the Disticha Catonis and school text-books connected with it see H. C. Mainzer A Study of the Sources of the Confessio Amantis by John Gower (D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford 1967) pp. 138-41.

10. Piers Plowman: The B Version ed. G. Kane and E. T. Donaldson (London 1975) p. 466.

11. See for example the accessus printed by R. B. C. Huygens in his edition of Accessus ad auctores; Bernard d'Utrecht; Conrad d'Hirsau (Leiden 1970) p. 21.

12. Munich Clm 4610 (s.XI), cit. F. Ghisalberti ‘Medieval Biographies of Ovid’ Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes IX (1946) p. 17 n. 5.

13. Philobiblon ch. 13, trans. E. C. Thomas The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury (London 1888; rpt. New York 1966) p. 83.

14. Ars Poetica lines 333, 343.

15. Accessus ad auctores ed. Huygens p. 34.

16. Ibid. pp. 29-33. See further the accessūs to the Heroides transcribed and discussed by M. C. Edwards A Study of Six Characters in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women with Reference to Medieval Scholia on Ovid's Heroides (B. Litt. thesis, University of Oxford 1970).

17. Ioannis Saresberiensis Policraticus ed. C. C. I. Webb (Oxford 1909) I 47, 212, etc.

18. See especially the condemnation of Ovid by William of St Thierry (writing c. 1119), described by J. Leclercq Monks and Love in Twelfth-Century France (Oxford 1979) pp.66-9.

19. Vatican, Regin. lat. 1828 (s. XV), cit. E. M. Sanford ‘Juvenalis, Decimus Junius’ in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum ed. P. O. Kristeller (1960-) I 192.

20. Quoted by Edith Rickert Chaucer's World ed. C. C. Olson and M. M. Crow (New York and London 1948) p.134.

21. De Causa Dei contra Pelagium I i coroll. pars 30, ed. H. Savile (London 1618) pp. 23-4.

22. See A. J. Denomy ‘The De Amore of Andreas Capellanus and the Condemnation of 1277’ MS VIII (1946) 107-49. For a more sceptical view concerning the importance of Andreas as a target see R. Hissette Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés a Paris le 7 Mars 1277 Philosophes médiévaux XXII (Louvain and Paris 1977) pp. 294-9, 304, 315. On Bradwardine's frequent citation of some of the 1277 condemnations see H. A. Oberman Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine: A Fourteenth-Century Augustinian (Utrecht 1959) pp. 29, 67, 81. De Amore has recently come to be regarded as a ‘piece of irony’, a ‘bantering work’ or ‘farce’: see Leclercq Monks and Love p. 71, cf. pp. 115-19. A rather different opinion is expressed in the new edition of Andreas, Andreas Capellanus on Love ed. with an English translation by P. G. Walsh (London 1982), which unfortunately appeared too late to be used in preparing this paper: ‘The most compelling explanation of the purpose of the De Amore is that its author is daringly and humorously discussing in stylised play ideas of love and marriage which have no status in the real world of twelfth-century society, but which challenge and criticise the prevailing mores of sex and marriage imposed by feudal law and Christian precept’ (p. 6, italics mine). That last notion strikes me as being anachronistic. Moreover, I am a little uneasy with Walsh's postulation of an utter volteface in the final book of De Amore, wherein ‘Walter’ is advised to refrain from the love of women: ‘The chasm between Andreas's first two books and the third is thus much more profound than is that between Ovid's Ars and his Remedia, in both of which the mock-didactic tone is uniform throughout’ (p. 13). Medieval readers were taught to consider the Remedia as a genuine retraction [cf. p. 55 above], an attempt to make amends for the Ars which, however well-intentioned it may have been, had in fact misled many men and women. Those same readers would have regarded Andreas' transition as more ‘Ovidian’, and hence more conventional and precedented, than Walsh would allow. I endorse the statement that Andreas is proclaiming himself ‘the medieval magister amoris, a twelfth-century Ovid’ (p. 15), but would wish to add that the Ovid whom Andreas was imitating was the twelfth-century Ovid, i.e. Ovid as interpreted in that century.

23. On these works as Gower sources see H. C. Mainzer ‘Gower's Use of the “Mediaeval Ovid”’ M Æ XLI (1972) pp. 215-22; also J. D. Shaw ‘Confessio Amantis’: Gower's Art in Transforming his Sources into Exempla of the Seven Deadly Sins (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania 1977) pp. 100-2, 152-64, 207-16, 218.

24. Mainzer ‘Gower's Use of the “Mediaeval Ovid”’ p. 223.

25. Ovide Moralisé, vol. I, ed. C. de Boer, Verhandelingen der Koninkijke Akademie van Wetenschappen te Amsterdam, Afdeeling Letterkunde XV (Amsterdam 1915) p. 61.

26. Reductorium Morale, lib. XV: Ovidius Moralizatus, cap. i, De Formis Figurisque Deorum ed. J. Engels, Werkmateriaal III (Utrecht 1966) pp. 2-3.

27. See for example Accessus ad auctores ed. Huygens, pp. 29-33.

28. For striking expressions of this unease see W. G. Dodd Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower (Gloucester, Mass. 1913) pp. 64, 66, 74, 81-5, 87-90; R. K. Root The Poetry of Chaucer (New York 1922) p. 151; John Fisher John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer (New York 1964) pp. 191, 194; Nevill Coghill The Poet Chaucer 2nd ed. (Oxford 1967) p. 86.

29. For what follows cf. my argument in ‘John Gower, Sapiens in Ethics and Politics’ MÆ XLIX (1980) pp. 207-15.

30. From Bern, Burgerbibliothek MS 411 (s. XII—from Orléans?), quoted by Edwards op. cit. p. 28, who argues that this commentary belongs to a class of text known in fourteenth-century England (p. 41).

31. See Minnis ‘John Gower, Sapiens in Ethics and Politics’ pp. 211-14.

32. John B. Dwyer The Tradition of Medieval Manuals of Religious Instruction in the Poems of John Gower, with Special Reference to the Development of the Book of Virtues (Ph.D. thesis, University of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill 1950) pp. iii, 410.

33. Ibid. pp. 410-11.

34. John B. Dwyer ‘Gower's Mirour and its French Sources: A Re-examination of Evidence’ SP XLVIII (1951) 482.

35. See for example the use of Ovid made by the ‘classicising’ English friars of the early fourteenth century: B. Smalley English Friars and Antiquity in the Early Fourteenth Century (Oxford 1960) pp. 102, 106, 152, 155-6, 189, 226. For a general account of the prestige of Ovid as a scientific auctor see S. Viarre La Survie d'Ovide dans la littérature scientifique des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Poitiers 1966).

36. See for example J. B. Friedman Orpheus in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass. 1970) pp. 86-145, and Paule Demats Fabula: Trois études de mythographie antique et médiévale Publications romanes et françaises CXXII (Geneva 1973) passim.

37. The auctoritates were not persons but extracts from the works of authoritative writers, the auctores. See M.-D. Chenu Toward Understanding Saint Thomas trans. A.-M. Landry and D. Hughes (Chicago 1964) pp. 130-6. On the late-medieval genre of compilatio see my article ‘Late-Medieval Discussions of Compilatio and the Role of the Compilator’ Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur CI (1979) pp. 385-421.

38. Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden; together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century ed. C. Babington and J. R. Lumby (London 1865-86) I 17.

39. Speculum Historiale VI chs 106-122, in Speculum Maius (Venice 1591) IV 71^v-74^r. Gower's knowledge of the Speculum Historiale is postulated in the doctoral theses of Mainzer and Shaw.

40. This possibility is discussed by Mainzer A Study of the Sources of Confessio Amantis pp. ii, 55-60 passim, 65-74 passim, 77-8, 81-4 passim, 336.

41. Breviloquium, in Summa Ioannis Valensis de Regimine Vite Humane (Lyon 1511) fol. 206^v.

42. Peraldus, Summa de Vitiis et Virtutibus (Lyon 1585), part 1 (= Summa de Virtutibus) p. 14. Cf. Augustine De Doctrina Christiana II xl.

43. Peraldus, Summa, part 1, pp. 15-37; part 2 (= Summa de Vitiis) pp. 22-5.

44. Perhaps it should be noted that the pagan citations are much greater in number in Summa de Virtutibus, which was written some time after Summa de Vitiis (1236). In the general section on virtue and the section on the four cardinal virtues, heathen authorities are drawn on freely, whereas, as one would expect, in the section on the three theological virtues the authorities are exclusively Scriptural and Christian. The superiority of Christianity over Jewish and pagan superstitions and errors is affirmed in Guillaume's treatment of faith (pp. 39-187). On the life and works of this writer see A. Dondaine ‘Guillaume Peyraut, vie et œuvres’ Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum XVIII (1948) pp. 162-236.

45. For example, Guillaume Perrault opens his chapter ‘On the Chastity of Ministers of the Church’ with the statement that it is very seemly for priests to be chaste, a principle which was accepted by the gentiles: in his Timaeus Plato speaks of Athenian priests who, wishing to preserve their chastity, cut themselves off from the rest of the population. Summa de Virtutibus III iii 13, ed. cit. p. 360. Perhaps Gower was, to some extent, thinking of the priestly status of Confessor when, in Book V 6338-417, he has him commend virginity and chastity.

46. Cf. the similar statement in Piero Boitani English Medieval Narrative in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries trans. J. K. Hall (Cambridge 1982) p. 117.

47. English Works ed. Macaulay I 214.

48. For the Latin phrase in amoris causa see ibid. I 101, 102-3, 143, etc.; for its English equivalent see Confessio Amantis II 2436, III 1328, III 1464, etc.

49. See Confessio Amantis VII 1649-98; cf. Li Livres dou Tresor de Brunetto Latini ed. F. J. Carmody (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1948) pp. 20-1, and my discussion in ‘John Gower, Sapiens in Ethics and Politics’ pp. 215-17.

50. On Gower's concept of ‘honeste love’ see especially J. A. W. Bennett ‘Gower's “Honeste Love”’ in Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis ed. John Lawlor (London 1966) pp. 107-21; revised reprint in J. A. W. Bennett: The Humane Medievalist and Other Essays ed. Piero Boitani, Letture di pensiero e d'arte (Rome 1982) pp. 49-66.

51. Cf. Alain de Lille De Planctu Naturae metre VI: ‘Without shame inhuman man repudiates the proper practices of humanity. Then, degenerate, he takes up the base actions of a brute, and thus, worthy to be unmanned, forsakes his manhood’. PL CCX 461B-C; trans. Douglas M. Moffat The Complaint of Nature by Alain de Lille (New Haven 1908, rpt. Hamden, Conn. 1972) p. 59.

52. Cf. De Planctu Naturae prose V, wherein Nature asserts that she does not question the essential honesty of love's nature provided it ‘restrains itself with the bridle of moderation, checks itself with the reins of temperance, avoids over-stepping the assigned bounds of its natural ambit or allowing its ardour to boil forth in excessive passion’. PL CCX 456C; trans. J. J. Sheridan, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Medieval Sources in Translation XXVI (Toronto 1980) p. 154.

53. Juan Ruiz, Libro de Buen Amor ed. R. S. Willis (Princeton 1972) pp. 10-13.

54. The term honestus amor does not appear in De Amore, but in the Paris manuscript this work is given the following incipit: Incipit liber de arte honeste amandi et de reprobatione inhonesti amoris. Quoted by Bennett ‘Gower's “Honeste Love”’ in The Humane Medievalist ed. Boitani p. 59 n. 5.

55. De Amore I vi, 7th dialogue, ed. E. Trojel (Copenhagen 1892) pp. 153-4; trans. J. J. Parry The Art of Courtly Love (New York, repub. 1959) p. 106.

56. De Amore I vi, 5th dialogue, ed. Trojel pp. 91-107; trans. Parry pp. 74-83. On the several versions of this story see W. A. Neilson ‘The Purgatory of Cruel Beauties’ Romania XXIX (1900) pp. 85-93. In his doctoral thesis Mainzer points out that the Lai du Trot and Gower's story ‘share similar details of narration which are lacking in the De Amore’ and concludes that the ‘Tale of Rosiphelee’ was derived from the Old French work (pp. 185, 187-8). Yet, in view of the fact that Gower's application of the story is the diametric opposite of that of Andreas, it is tempting to speculate (though impossible to prove) that Gower knew the version in De Amore also. While the ‘written tradition’ of Andreas's work is rightly described by Leclercq as ‘poor’, there are several fourteenth-century manuscripts extant, and in that century it was translated into Italian: Leclercq op. cit. p. 118.

57. De Amore I vi, 1st and 2nd dialogues, ed. Trojel pp. 21, 37-8; trans. Parry pp. 37, 45. Cf. Denomy ‘Andreas Capellanus and the Condemnation of 1277’ p. 111.

58. De Amore I vi, 5th dialogue, ed. Trojel p. 99; trans. Parry p. 78.

59. De Amore I vi, 7th dialogue; II vii; II viii. Ed. Trojel pp. 152-4, 280-1 and 290, 310; trans. Parry pp. 106-7, 171 and 175, 184.

60. De Amore I vi, 5th dialogue, ed. Trojel p. 49; trans. Parry p. 71.

61. See for example Augustine De Civitate Dei VII xiii.

62. See especially De Planctu Naturae metre I, prose IV and prose V, in Migne PL CCX 431-2, 448-55, 456-60; trans. Moffat pp. 3-5, 34-46, 49-58.

63. Le Roman de la Rose lines 19505-19906, 21695-21780, ed. E. Langlois (Paris 1914-24) V 4-21, 94-7; trans. H. W. Robbins, ed. and introduced by C. W. Dunn The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun (New York 1962) pp. 413-23, 462-4.

64. Chaucer: Works ed. Robinson p. 259.

65. Ibid.

66. One of the best-known uses of this distinction occurs in Dante's Epistle to Can Grande della Scala, wherein he describes the style and organisation of his Divine Comedy: see Dantis Alagherii Epistolae ed. Paget Toynbee, 2nd ed. by Colin Hardie (Oxford 1966) pp. 174-5. The forma tractandi of a literary work was its style or mode of procedure (modus agendi/modus procedendi). Gower's forma tranctandi in Confessio Amantis could be described as the modus narrativus et exemplorum suppositivus, i.e. the method which is narrative and applies examples. For this vocabulary see A. J. Minnis ‘Literary Theory in Discussions of Formae Tractandi by Medieval Theologians’ New Literary History XI (1979) pp. 133-45.

67. Minnis ‘John Gower, Sapiens in Ethics and Politics’ pp. 218-24; ‘The Influence of Academic Prologues’ pp. 368-73.

68. See R. W. Hunt ‘Introductions to the Artes in the Twelfth Century’ in Studia Mediaevalia in honorem … R. J. Martin (Bruges 1948) pp. 96-105.

69. See Minnis ‘The Influence of Academic Prologues’ p. 369.

70. See Minnis ‘John Gower, Sapiens in Ethics and Politics’ pp. 219-21.

71. Gower's possible knowledge of Holcot is discussed by Mainzer Sources of Confessio Amantis pp. 58, 71, 75-6, 82, 84, 190, 276, 336.

72. Sapientiae Regis Salomonis praelectiones (Basel 1586) pp. 1-6. Cf. my discussion in ‘John Gower, Sapiens in Ethics and Politics’ pp. 219-20.

73. Thomae Aquinatis, Summa contra Gentiles ed. P. Marietti (Turin 1927) pp. 1-2; trans. M. C. d'Arcy Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings (London and New York 1939) pp. 51-4.

74. English Works ed. Macaulay I 35-6.

75. De Planctu Naturae prose I, in Migne PL CCX 432-9; trans. Moffat pp. 5-17.

76. Roman de la Rose lines 16707-19334, ed. Langlois IV 159-265.

77. Cf. my comments in Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity Chaucer Studies VIII (Woodbridge 1982) pp. 16-17. Aspects of the ‘literalism’ of the Roman are also discussed by H. R. Jauss ‘La transformation de la forme allégorique entre 1180 et 1240: d'Alain de Lille à Guillaume de Lorris’, in L'Humanisme médiéval dans les littératures romanes Centre de Philologie et de Littératures Romanes de l'Université de Strasbourg, Actes et Colloques III (Paris 1964) p. 146; and P.-Y. Badel Le Roman de la Rose au XIVe siècle Publications romanes et françaises CLIII (Geneva 1980) p. 24.

78. On this see my article ‘Late-Medieval Discussions of Compilatio’, and M. B. Parkes ‘The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book’ in Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays presented to R. W. Hunt ed. J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson (Oxford 1975) pp. 115-41.

79. The locus classicus of this technical term is Rhetorica ad Herennium I viii 13.

80. The Romance of the Rose trans. Robbins, ed. and introduced by Dunn, p. xx.

81. Roman de la Rose lines 4429-6900, ed. Langlois II 218-III 22.

82. Ibid. lines 11223-11976, ed. Langlois III 192-223.

83. English Works ed. Macaulay I 37.

84. Ibid. I 3-4.

85. Ibid. II 480. The second sentence in this passage is rather enigmatic and therefore is difficult to translate with confidence. For another possible rendering see p. 144 below.

86. Sir David Ross Aristotle (London and New York, rpt 1964) p. 187.

87. The ‘Vulgate’ Latin text of this work has been edited by Robert Steele Secretum Secretorum cum glossis et notulis Opera hactenus inedita Rogeri Baconi V (Oxford 1920) pp. 25-172.

88. Tresor I 4, ed. Li Livres dou Tresor de Brunetto Latini ed. F. J. Carmody (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1948) p. 21.

89. Ibid. pp. 20-1.

90. De Regimine Principum I Pars lib. I, cap. i: Quis modus procedendi in regimine principum (Rome 1556) fol. 2^r. See further the Latin text, together with the Middle English translation attributed to John Trevisa, transcribed by H. E. Childs A Study of the Unique Middle English Translation of the De Regimine Principum of Aegidius Romanus (MS Digby 233) (Ph.D. thesis, University of Washington 1932) p. 191. Cf. the discussion of the relevant passage by Judson Allen op. cit. pp. 14-17.

91. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 233 fol. 2^r, transcr. Childs op. cit. p. 196. Cf. the Latin text, I Pars Lib. I, cap. i, Rome ed. fols 2^v-3^r.

92. De Regimine Principum I Pars I, capi iv-xiii, Rome ed. fols 7^r-26^r. Cf. Trevisa's translation, MS Digby 233 fols 4^r-12^r, and the Old French translation of Henri de Gauchy, ed. S. P. Molenaer Li Livres du Gouvernement des Rois: A Thirteenth-Century French Version of Egidio Colonna's Treatise (New York and London 1899) pp. 10-27.

93. See especially Hoccleve's description of his compiling activity, Hoccleve's Works: The Regement of Princes and Fourteen Minor Poems ed. F. J. Furnivall EETS ES 72 (London 1897) pp. 74-5, 77. The sources of Hoccleve's Regiment were the Secretum, Giles of Rome, and the Liber de Ludo Scacchorum of Jacobus de Cessoles.

94. Ed. Carmody pp. 18-171.

95. Ibid. pp. 176-313.

96. Tresor III i, ed. Carmody p. 317.

97. Childs op. cit. p. 47.

98. MS Digby 233 fol. 2^v, transcr. Childs pp. 200-2. Cf. the Latin text, I Pars lib. I, cap. ii, Rome ed. fol. 4^r.

99. MS Digby 233 fol. 3^r, transcr. Childs pp. 206-8. Cf. the Latin text, op. cit. fol. 3^r.

100. Boitani op. cit. p. 125. Basically the same point is made by Gower's Latin gloss: see English Works ed. Macaulay I 422.

101. In old age the body cools and hence one's sexual urges diminish: ‘Whan þe body is hoot likynge in lecherie is strong, þanne by þe contrarie whanne þe body is cold likynge in lecherie abateþ’. Because of this cold ‘olde men schrynken in hem self and hauen moderat delectacioun and likyng’. MS Digby 233 fol. 57^v; cf. the Latin text, IV Pars lib. I, cap. iv, Rome ed. fol. 119^r, and the Old French version of de Gauchy, ed. Molenaer p. 132. See further the similar statements concerning the qualities of old age in Vincent's Speculum Naturale, the De Proprietatibus Rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, the Communiloquium of John of Wales, Robert Holcot's commentary on Wisdom, and Pierre Bersuire's Reductorium Morale, all quoted by Emerson Brown ‘The Merchant's Tale: Januarie's “Unlikly Elde”’ Neuphilologische Mitteilungen LXXIV (1973) 96 n. 3.

102. Secretum Secretorum Pars I cap. xiii, ed. Steele p. 51.

103. On this practice see Chenu op. cit. pp. 145-9, who describes it as ‘an effective re-touching of a text, or a noticeable redressing of it, or again a discreet deflecting of its meaning’.

104. De Regimine Principum I Pars lib. II, cap. vii, Rome ed. fols 142^r-v. Cf. Trevisa's translation, MS Digby 233 fols 67^v-69^r, and de Gauchy's Old French version, ed. Molenaer pp. 150-1.

105. De Regimine Principum I Pars lib. ii, cap. vii, Rome ed. fols 143^r. Cf. Trevisa's translation, MS Digby 233 fols 69^v-70^r, and de Gauchy's Old French version, ed. Molenaer p. 152.

106. MS Digby 233 fol. 70^r. Conversely, anyone who lives in contemplation has chosen ‘a lyf þat is aboue a man & is as it were a god’. Cf. the Latin text fol. 143^v and de Gauchy p. 153. The same sentiment, attributed to St Gregory, is expressed in Confessio Amantis V 6395-9*.

107. De Regimine Principum I Pars lib. II, cap. viii, Rome ed. fols 143^v-145^r. Cf. Trevisa fol. 70^r and de Gauchy pp. 153-4. Two reasons are given for marital fidelity: natural friendship between husband and wife, and the requirements of their children.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Professor J. A. Burrow for valuable discussion of an earlier draft of this paper, and to Dr Brian Scott for the translation from the Latin which is printed … above.