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[The Great Clerk Grosseteste] For of the grete clerc Grossteste [The Foolish Virgins] Bot Slowthe mai no profit winne, [Examples of Prowess: Protesilaus] The worthi king Protheselai [Saul] Of king Saul also I finde, [Penthesilea, Philemenis, Aeneas] And overthis if thou wolt hiere [Gentilesse] Be these ensamples here above, [Letters and Language] Bot toward oure marches hiere, |
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The marginal Latin glosses, identified by a capital L in the left margin next to the text, are transcribed and translated in the notes and can be accessed by clicking on (see note) at the corresponding line.
1 They say that Sloth is the nurse of the vices, and, tardy and sluggish, she is torpid in all good matters. What might be done today she transfers, indolent, to tomorrow, and after the horse is stolen she closes the doors. Cupid denies his rewards to the one asking tardily, but Venus plays at merry love for the one who is prompt.
2 How I-Showed-Up-Too-Late came to the distribution of alms
3 He who tries nothing accomplishes nothing, and a man rarely collects the reward of Friendship with a silent mouth. There is moderation in words; but no love favors the man who is stingy in the words he utters to his love.
4 The forgetful one, whom Sloth reveals not to remember himself, slips from others' minds. Thus negligent love, which is not mindful of time passing, loses and offends what it cannot obtain.
5 When it is the proper time to plant, let the farmer who neglects the garden hold himself responsible if fruit is lacking. The right moment will have passed, nor is a later one efficacious; the man tardy in his love lacks this teaching.
6 I know not what good this present life will be to the useless man, drifting far from any labor and weaving his idlenesses. Love does not thrive in such a wretch; rather, Love claims as his own those who do deeds of valor.
7 Venus approves the man whom prowess in arms proves worthy; and the reprobate man whom torpor possesses she disapproves. Mad sluggishness does not recognize the banners of love, for, lazy, he arrives too slowly at the victory prize.
8 Labor with the hands is productive, so that in daily life and actions a man might be able to live. But he who bears labors in the mind for the sake of wisdom prevails, obtaining perpetual merit.
9 A man yielding to sleep his rights loses his case, and his side wins, as it were, but a half-death. Venus is a sentry guard in love, and, awakened, she carries to her bed that service which she keeps for the wakeful.
10 Lines 3259-65: Without the sleep of sluggardiness, / Whom Venus from her companionship / Has exiled on the grounds that he is the very one who has often miserably treated those / Who [are] pleasureless, far from any playfulness, / In bed in their chamber where it happens / That love should have been expected
11 No fortune is pleasing when despair has delivered its wound; where moisture has dried up, the ground will not green up. But greathearted love deposits hope and therefore achieves deliverance, since good fortunes then favor him.
Abbreviations
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*For MS abbreviations, see head of textual notes.
Latin Verses i (before line 1). Line 1: Dicunt accidiam fore nutricem viciorum ("They say that sloth is the nurse of the vices"). Proverbial. See Whiting S392. Gower's source could be Distichs of Cato. He plays variations on the adage in MO 5266-68 and CA 4.3380-82 and 7.4384-86. Line 4: Furatoque prius ostia claudit equo ("After the horse is stolen [Sloth] closes the doors"). Proverbial. See Whiting S697. Compare CA 4.901-03. Bennett suggests that gnomic phrases such as this lend credit to the idea that the Latin rubrics are Gower's (Gower's Middle English, p. 414).
4 Lachesce, and is the chief of all. Compare Langland, Piers Plowman A 9.25-47, the parable of the man in a boat amidst a storm who is "lost for laccheise of hymselve" (A 9.32).
8 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic in quarto libro loquitur Confessor de speciebus Accidie, quarum primam Tardacionem vocat, cuius condicionem pertractans Amanti super hoc consequenter opponit. [Here in the fourth book the Confessor speaks about the species of Sloth, the first of whom he calls Tarrying, and, elaborating its nature to the Lover, he then inquires regarding this.]
9 Tomorwe. Macaulay (2.501) notes the borrowing from MO, line 5606: "Lachesce dist, 'Demein, demein.'"
77-312 Gower bases his adaptation of Dido's story on Ovid's Heroides 7, or some version of Ovid's story with commentary. He also may make use Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Naturale. See Schmitz, "Gower, Chaucer, and the Classics," for discussion of Gower's use of source materials in composing this account of Dido's response to Aeneas' betrayal. Other medieval retellings of Dido's grief, like Gower's mostly based on Ovid's Heroides rather than the original account by Virgil, may be found in Chaucer's HF, lines 219-432; LGW, lines 924-1367; Jean de Meun's RR, lines 13173 ff., and Pynson's "Letter of Dydo to Eneas" (242 lines with a 63-line prologue and 14-line Envoy), in his Boke of Fame Made by Geffrey Chaucer with dyverse other of his works, 1526?, STC 5088, a poem independent of Gower, Chaucer, and Heroides, though pleasantly affiliated.
On the yoking of Dido and Aeneas, Penelope and Ulysses, Grosseteste, and the Foolish Virgins to exemplify Lachesce, Burrow (Ricardian Poetry, pp. 84-85) observes:
Gower creates a primary effect of wit and ingeniousness. What, the riddle might run, do Aeneas, Ulysses, Bishop Grosseteste, and the Foolish Virgins have in common? But there is also humour, in the relation of the two Ovidian examples to the lover's case. Aeneas and Ulysses each enjoyed the devotion of his lady, and any "lachesse" in such circumstances is unimaginable to Amans. He would not delay for a moment . . . if only his mistress would take the slightest notice of him . . . . Beyond this humour, again, lie possibilities of irony. Both Aeneas and Ulysses were "delayed." . . . [Perhaps] "lachesse in loves cas" is not a vice at all.
See also Peck ("Problematics of Irony," pp. 216-18) for a more detailed analysis of irony in Book 4.
80 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra istos qui in amoris causa tardantes delinquunt. Et narrat qualiter Dido Regina Cartaginis Eneam ab incendiis Troie fugitiuum in amorem suum gauisa suscepit: qui cum postea in partes Ytalie a Cartagine bellaturum se transtulit, nimiamque ibidem moram faciens tempus reditus sui ad Didonem vltra modum tardauit, ipsa intollerabili dolore concussa sui cordis intima mortali gladio transfodit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who are delinquent in the cause of love by tarrying. And he narrates how Dido the queen of Carthage, rejoicing, wrapped in her love Eneas fleeing from the fires of Troy. When he afterwards betook himself from Carthage to battles in the regions of Italy and, making there too great a delay, unreasonably extended the time of his return to Dido, she, stricken by an unbearable sorrow, stabbed the innermost regions of her heart with a lethal sword.]
99 ff. On Gower's dialogic craftsmanship in shaping the ethical ironies of sloth in Dido's busy letter writing with its swan example, see Peck (1993), pp. 216-18.
104 ff. "This picture seems to be constructed partly from a misreading or misunderstanding of Ovid, Her. Ep. vii.1.f., 'Sic ubi fata vocant, udis, abiectus in herbis / Ad vada Mæandri concinit albus olor.' ["Thus, at the summons of fate, casting himself down amid the watery grasses by the shallows of Maeander, sings the white swan" - trans. Showerman.] It is difficult to see how our author translated these lines, but the result, which must have been chiefly due to his imagination, is rather creditable to him. Chaucer gives the true sense in LGW, lines 1355 ff.: 'Ryght so,' quod she, 'as that the white swan / Ayenst his deth begynneth for to synge: / Ryght so to yow I make my compleynynge'" (Mac 2:502).
147-234 Gower's version of Ulysses' return vaguely follows Heroides 1, though the story is so common and here so brief that he probably wrote from memory.
152 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur super eodem qualiter Penolope Vlixem maritum suum, in obsidione Troie diucius morantem, ob ipsius ibidem tardacionem Epistola sua redarguit. [Here he speaks about the same thing, how Penelope complained in her letter against her husband Ulysses on account of his tardiness, since he was delaying too long at the siege of Troy.]
153 his trewe wif. Bakalian (Aspects of Love, pp. 35-44) sees the Tale of Penelope as part of Gower's celebration of true marriage and "deep and caring love," which the poet characterizes as "honeste" love. It is reciprocal love, as she reminds Ulysses (4.195), showing her "friskey side" as she "wolde his love aquite" as soon as he gets home. Bakalian draws parallels between Gower's views on marriage here and in the tales of Alceone, Alcestis, and Lucrece: all four good wives have strong affinities with the poet's attitude toward marriage in his Traitié.
204-06 On the kinship of imagination, ingenium, the gentil herte (line 206), and "resonable entencion" (4.2270) on the peripheries of sloth, see Olsson ("Aspects of Gentilesse," pp. 242-45). On the loose ties of gentilesse with ingenium, see pp. 253-54. Amans' busyness leads to many forms of invention but without full engagement of his "wittes alle" (4.2387); nor is Genius much help in his sorting out the distinctions. Olsson's essay is quite fine in its relating of matters of idleness and gentilesse of a self-indulgent kind in the tales of Ulysses, Pygmalion, and Araxarathen.
234 ff. Latin marginalia: Nota adhuc super eodem de quodam Astrologo, qui quoddam opus ingeniosum quasi ad complementum septennio perducens, vnius momenti tardacione omnem sui operis diligenciam penitus frustrauit. [Note moreover about the same matter, concerning a certain astrologer who, pursuing for seven years a certain most cunning labor almost to its completion, totally negated all the diligence of his work by the delay of a single moment.] Many apocryphal stories of magic grew up around the reputations of Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon and their experiments. See, e.g., Robert Greene's play, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which offers a more elaborate version of the story of the talking head of brass: as in Gower, the head talked, but the experimenter slept through his success.
250 ff. The source for the story of the Foolish Virgins is Matthew 25:1-13.
Latin marginalia: Nota adhuc contra tardacionem de v. virginibus fatuis, que nimiam moram facientes intrante sponso ad nupcias cum ipso non introierunt. [Note moreover the example against delay of the account of the five foolish virgins, who taking too much of a delay did not enter the wedding ceremony with the groom when he arrived.]
271 Me was nevere assigned place. Amans' "problem is not in keeping his appointments but getting them" (Pearsall, 1966, p. 476).
317 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur Confessor de quadam specie Accidie, que pusillanimitas dicta est, cuius ymaginatiua formido neque virtutes aggredi neque vicia fugere audet; sicque vtriusque vite, tam actiue quam contemplatiue, premium non attingit. [Here the Confessor speaks about a certain type of Sloth which is called Cowardice, whose imaginary fear does not dare to embrace virtues or flee vices. And thus it does not attain the reward of either kind of life, the active or the contemplative.]
365-69 Simpson (1995, pp. 160-61) compares Genius' advocacy of boldness in love to Ovid's Ars Amatoria 1.607-08, where the rustic lover is advised by the praeceptor amoris to go for it, that Chance and Venus help the brave. See also 4.723-25 and 4.1776-85, where Genius' advice is "stickingly close" to that of Ovid's teacher (p. 161).
371 ff. The Tale of Pygmalion and the Statue could be based on Ovid, Met. 10.243-97, or Jean de Meun, RR, lines 20817-21210. The tale was well known, though Genius embellishes it nicely. See Peck ("Problematics of Irony," pp. 222-23). Kuczynski ("Gower's Metaethics," pp. 201-05) offers an analysis of the dangerous role of fantasy in the tale. See also explanatory note to line 1155.
Latin marginalia: Hic in amoris causa loquitur contra pusillanimes, et dicit quod Amans pre timore verbis obmutescere non debet, set continuando preces sui amoris expedicionem tucius prosequatur. Et ponit Confessor exemplum, qualiter Pigmaleon, pro eo quod preces continuauit, quandam ymaginem ebvrneam, cuius pulcritudinis concupiscencia illaqueatus extitit, in carnem et sanguinem ad latus suum transformatam senciit. [Here he speaks against cowards in the cause of love, and he says that the Lover ought not to keep muted his words because of fear, but by continuing his prayers would more securely pursue the fulfillment of his love. And the Confessor presents an instructive example concerning how Pigmaleon, because of the fact that he continued his prayers, perceived that a certain ivory statue - by the lust of whose beauty he was ensnared - was transformed by his side into flesh and blood.]
448 solein. The gloss "lonely (strange)" is Macaulay's, based on Gower's recurrent use of the term solein/soulein in MO in the sense of "alone, lonely." Macaulay challenges Pauli's reading of "solempne," which "gives neither sense nor metre" (2.503).
451ff. The story of Iphis is from Ovid, Met. 9.666-797. The account of the ring of oblivion, which follows, is perhaps based on Peter Comestor's commentary on Exodus 6 (PL 198, col. 1144). The story also appears (from Comestor) in Ranulf Higden's popular Polychronicon 2:322-25.
451ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit exemplum super eodem, qualiter Rex Ligdus vxori sue Thelacuse pregnanti minabatur, quod si filiam pareret, infans occideretur: que tamen postea cum filiam ediderat, Isis dea partus tunc presens filiam nomine filii Yphim appellari ipsamque more masculi educari admonuit: quam pater filium credens, ipsam in maritagium filie cuiusdam principis etate solita copulauit. Set cum Yphis debitum sue coniugi vnde soluere non habuit, deos in sui adiutorium interpellabat; qui super hoc miserti femininum genus in masculinum ob affectum nature in Yphe per omnia transmutarunt. [Here he presents an instructive example about the same thing, how King Ligdus threatened his pregnant wife Thelacuse, that if she bore a daughter he would kill the baby. But nonetheless later, when she had issued forth a baby girl, Isis the goddess of birth, then being present, instructed her to call her daughter Yphis by name and to raise her in the manner of a son. The father, believing he had a son, joined her at the usual age in marriage to the daughter of a certain prince. But when Yphis did not possess the wherewithal to render her debt to her bride, she called upon the gods for help; and these, taking pity on this on account of what nature desires, entirely transformed Yphis' gender from feminine to masculine.]
461 of childinge is the goddesse. In Ovid Isis is identified as Io, in her transformed state. She is the one who reassures Thelacuse that her child will be safe and who, when the time comes, changes her into a male. Gower gives the power of transformation to Cupid (4.488), but here specifies that Isis is goddess of childbirth. In Ovid, she only says she is a goddess who will bring help to those who call upon her (Metam. 9.699-701). The Assembly of Gods (ed. Jane Chance [Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999]) comes closer to Genius' interpretation by observing that "[o]f all maner frute she had the governaunce" (line 335).
475 ten yer age. In Ovid the two are married at age thirteen. See Watt on Gower's having them marry before they are sexually active (pp. 542-46), but also the culture's different attitudes toward females with females and men with men. Female sodomy "seems to have been more or less invisible in Gower's own society; there is little or no surviving evidence in England or Wales of women being examined about sexual misconduct with women" (pp. 543-44).
478-505 The story of Iphis and Iante raises the question of potential homosexuality. White (Nature, Sex, and Goodness, p. 193) suggests that "Nature may be so intent on sexual activity that she is even prepared to operate against her own arrangements for its channelling. The presentation hints that at the bottom of the human psyche lies a naked, unconditioned, undifferentiating sexual impulse - and that suggests something morally anarchic at the bottom of the totality one calls Nature." That is, Nature is reassuringly moral and simultaneously troublingly unreliable. Compare MO, lines 8629-40 and 17185-91, and also the Tale of Canacee and Machaire (3.143-336).
488 Cupide. See note to line 461. By giving the agency of transformation to Cupid, rather than Isis, Genius shifts the emphasis to the power of love rather than women among women, where (in Ovid) Isis remembers her life as Io and argues that if she could be protected by transformation, so too can Thelacuse. Whenever she speaks to Thelacuse the signs of her intention are figured in her horns (recalling the cow, but also the moon, another figure for childing and change).
501 Transformeth Iphe into a man. Trevisa/Higden suggests that such a transformation might be possible within the jurisdiction of nature. After commenting on hermaphrodites and androgony he observes: "we haueþ i-seie and i-herde þat some haueþ i-chaunged hir schap; for we sighe in Affrica a mayde þe same day þat sche scholde haue be i-wedded, i-chaunged and i-torned into a man, and was i-berded anon, and anoon hadde alle lymes as a man schulde haue, and wedded a wyf with inne a schort tyme after. Also Seynte Austyn de civitate Dei, libro 3, capitulo 29, toucheþ þat A. Gellius [libro] Atticarum noctium seiþ þat wommen beeþ somtyme i-torned into men: hit is no made tale, but hit is sooþ as þe lettre is i-write" (Polychronicon 2:195). I have not been able to find the passage in Augustine to which Higden alludes. See also Watt, who observes that according to medieval medical theory "the transformation from female to male was not in itself contrary to nature" ("Sins of Omission," p. 544), citing Thomas Laquer, Making Sex, especially pp. 134-42; and also Joan Cadden, Meaning of Sex Difference, p. 3.
544 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor de vicio Obliuionis, quam mater eius Accidia ad omnes virtutum memorias necnon et in amoris causa immemorem constituit. [Here the Confessor treats about the vice of Forgetfulness, whose mother, Sloth, makes her forgetful of every memory of virtue even in the cause of love.]
626 betwen tuo stoles. Proverbial. See Whiting S794. Compare CA Prol.336.
629 Betwen forgetelnesse and drede. Juxtaposition of opposites, "Betwen the tuo extremites" (5.7641), is a common feature of gnomic observation. Compare TC 3.1315: "bitwixen drede and sikernesse." In Gower, e.g., "Betwen the vertu and the vice" (Prol.79, 7.2739); "betwen ernest and game" (Prol.462 - commonplace in Chaucer); "lif and deth" (1.289, 5.5466); "dai and nyht" (4.2994); "the corps and the spirit" (4.2499); "whyt and red" (5.3016); "to moche and lyte" (5.7689); "angel and man" (6.1531); "wel or wo" (4.639, 7.1441, 8.1028); "the trouthe and the falshode" (7.1533); "more and lesse" (7.2015); and "Betwen the reddour and pité" (7.3919, 7.4171), to cite a few.
647 ff. Macaulay notes (2:503):
For the Ring of Forgetfulness here spoken of see Petrus Comestor, Exodus vi., where it is related that Moses in command of the Egyptians captured the chief city of the Ethiopians by the help of Tarbis, daughter of their king, and married her in recompense of her services. Then, wishing to return to Egypt and being detained by his wife, "tanquam vir peritus astrorum duas imagines sculpsit in gemmis huius efficaciae, ut altera memoriam, altera oblivionem conferret. Cumque paribus anulis eas inseruisset, alterum, scilicet oblivionis anulum, uxori praebuit, alterum ipse tulit; ut sic pari amore sic paribus anulis insignirentur. Coepit ergo mulier amoris viri oblivisci, et tandem libere in Aegyptum regressus est" (Migne, Patrol. vol. 198, p. 1144). ["as a man most learned about the stars, he carved gemstones into two images with the following powers: namely that one would produce memory, the other forgetfulness. And when he had inserted these into two similar rings, he offered the ring of forgetfulness to his wife and took the other himself, so that thus they would be engraved with an equal love by equal rings. The woman therefore proceeded to forget her love of her husband, and he finally departed freely into Egypt," trans. Galloway.] Compare Godfr. Viterb., Pantheon, v. (p. 155).
731 ff. The Tale of Demephon and Phyllis was well known. See RR, lines 13211 ff., and Chaucer, LGW, lines 2394-2561. Gower's version seems to be derived from Ovid, Heroides 2, and Remedia Amoris, lines 591-604, though he might also have consulted works such as Hyg. 59; Vat. Myth. I 156 or II 258, or Boccaccio, Genealogie Deorum Gentilium Libri 10.52 and 11.25. Gower alters several details (for example, he reverses Demephon's itinerary so that he is on his way to Troy instead of returning). Gower may have been the first to translate "amygdalus" as "fillibert," thereby creating the pun. Lydgate follows Gower's suggestion in The Temple of Glas, line 88, and The Complaint of the Black Knight, lines 68-70.
733 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic in amoris causa contra obliuiosos ponit Confessor exemplum, qualiter Demephon versus bellum Troianum itinerando a Phillide Rodopeie Regina non tantum in hospicium, set eciam in amorem, gaudio magno susceptus est: qui postea ab ipsa Troie discendens rediturum infra certum tempus fidelissime se compromisit. Set quia huiusmodi promissionis diem statutum postmodum oblitus est, Phillis obliuionem Demephontis lacrimis primo deplangens, tandem cordula collo suo circumligata in quadam corulo pre dolore se mortuam suspendit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against Forgetfulness in the cause of love, telling how Demephon in traveling toward the Trojan War was received with great joy by Phillis, queen of Rodopeia, taken not only in hospitality but also in love, and who subsequently departing from her for Troy faithfully promised that he would return within a certain time. But because he later forgot the established day of this promise, Phillis, at first bewailing tearfully Demephon's forgetfulness, finally, wrapping a rope around her neck, for sorrow hanged herself to death on a hazel tree.]
823-26 Remarking on the constancy of Phillis' vigil, and in reference to Gower's tender regard for Canacee, Medea, and Lucrese, Pearsall observes: "It is . . . women who draw forth Gower's largest humanity and his most deeply effective expressions of that humanity" (1966, p. 481).
Latin verses iv (before line 887). Sowing and bearing fruit are common metaphors for sexual relations and bearing offspring; see, e.g., RR, lines 19701-35.
892 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor de vicio Necgligencie, cuius condicio Accidiam amplectens omnes artes sciencie, tam in amoris causa quam aliter, ignominiosa pretermittens, cum nullum poterit eminere remedium, sui ministerii diligenciam expostfacto in vacuum attemptare presumit. [Here the Confessor discourses about the vice of Negligence, whose nature it is to embrace Sloth and ignominiously neglect all the skills of knowledge, both in love's case and elsewhere. Then, when no remedy is found in his case, he attacks groundlessly and after the fact assails the courtroom officer's diligence.] Note: remedium, minister, and expostfacto are all legal terms, in keeping with the metaphor of a badly handled court case.
901-03 grete stiede . . . stable dore fast. Proverbial. See Whiting S697.
979-1034 The story of Phaeton was well known. See Ovid, Metam. 2.1-328; Hyginus, Fab. CLIV; Vat. Myth II (57); and Boccaccio, Genealogie Deorum Gentilium Libri 7.41. Macaulay notes (2.504): "The moral drawn by Gower from the story of Phaeton is against going too low, that is abandoning the higher concerns of love owing to slothful negligence. The next story is against aiming too high and neglecting the due claims of service."
982 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic contra vicium necgligencie ponit Confessor exemplum; et narrat quod cum Pheton filius Solis currum patris sui per aera regere debuerat, admonitus a patre vt equos ne deviarent equa manu diligencius refrenaret, ipse consilium patris sua negligencia preteriens, equos cum curru nimis basse errare permisit; vnde non solum incendio orbem inflammauit, set et seipsum de curru cadentem in quoddam fluuium demergi ad interitum causauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against the vice of Negligence; and he narrates that when Phaeton, the son of the Sun, was about to steer his father's chariot through the air, he was admonished by his father that, lest he misguide his horses, he should rein them in with an equal hand. But he ignored his father's counsel by his negligence, and allowed the horses and the chariot to wander too far down; whence not only did he burn the earth with fire, but he also caused his own demise by falling from the chariot into a certain river.]
1035-71 For the story of Icarus see Ovid, Metam. 8.183-259, though the story was common, e.g., Vat. Myth. II (61). See CA 4.5286.
1039 ff. Latin marginalia: Exemplum super eodem de Icharo Dedali filio in carcere Minotauri existente, cui Dedalus, vt inde euolaret, alas componens, firmiter iniunxit ne nimis alte propter Solis ardorem ascenderet: quod Icharus sua negligencia postponens, cum alcius sublimatus fuisset, subito ad terram corruens expirauit. [An instructive example on the same thing, concerning Icarus, the son of Daedalus: while they were in the Minotaur's prison, Daedalus, fashioning wings that he might escape, firmly enjoined Icarus not to rise too high on account of the sun's heat. But Icarus dismissed this because of his negligence, and when he had risen up too high, he plummeted suddenly to the earth and died.]
1087 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur Confessor super illa specie Accidie, que Ocium dicitur, cuius condicio in virtutum cultura nullius occupacionis diligenciam admittens, cuiuscumque expedicionem cause non attingit. [Here the Confessor speaks about that species of Sloth which is called Idleness, whose condition it is to take on no diligence of any labor in the cultivation of virtues, and not to attain to the fulfillment of any cause whatsoever.]
1155 besinesse. See Kuczynski, "Gower's Metaethics," on Gower's double-valenced use of the term besinesse here and elsewhere in Book 4 as part of his discussion of the Tale of Pygmalion and the Statue and its relationship to the ethics of choice.
1167 nede hath no lawe. Proverbial, and (apparently) a legal maxim. See Whiting N51. See also CA 8.75, and Piers Plowman B.20.10 ff.
1180 mi contienance I pike. Macaulay (2.505) glosses the sense to be: "thus I keep up a pretence (for staying)," comparing the line to 1.698, "And many a contenance he piketh." Certainly he is concerned with such a pretense, but his means seems to be preparing an agreeable countenance to meet the occasion with his best face on.
1196 mi busi whiel. An image of playing Fortune's game, but also of the busy circumnavigation of his gaze, as she is the hub that he watches from all angles.
1245 ff. No specific source is known for the Tale of Rosiphilee, though stories of punishment for aloof ladies are common in medieval literature. See Neilson, "Purgatory of Cruel Beauties." The plot is somewhat akin to that of Dame Sirith, where a woman is frightened by a terrifying alternative into becoming sexually active, though here the moral is more gentle. The tale has been regarded by many as among Gower's best-told stories. See Nicholson (Annotated Index, pp. 274-79).
1249 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra istos qui amoris occupacionem omittentes, grauioris infortunii casus expectant. Et narrat de quadam Armenie Regis filia, que huiusmodi condicionis in principio iuuentutis ociosa persistens, mirabili postea visione castigata in amoris obsequium pre ceteris diligencior efficitur. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who, omitting attention to love, have in store a fall of graver misfortune. And he narrates about a daughter of the king of Armenia, who, persisting lazily in this condition in early youth, and then chastised by a miraculous vision, is made more diligent than anyone in servility to love.]
1301 madle. From Anglo-Norman madl(e), a variant of "mâle." Gower uses the word again in CA 7.4215: "The madle is mad for the femele." See also "Femelle et madle en un enfant" (MO, line 1029); and "la mort depose / Son madle, soule se dispose" (MO, line 17884-85).
1321-22 J offers the following couplet instead of the lines in F: The beaute of hire face schon / Wel brihter þen þe cristel ston, an attractive alternative followed in some other manuscripts.
1396-402 Kendall, in his discussion of women as household exchange notes that the groom's princess laments the "loss of status" (Lordship and Literature, p. 144) due to her refusal to love/marry thus warning Rosiphilee of the cost of her "independent agency. . . . To serve household interests with her own will is to write herself out of household activity after marriage. Rosiphelee's vision instructs her to decide to become a sign of the bond by which patrimonies are transferred and men achieve lordship" (p. 145). She will join the adorned procession of exemplary ladies who "appear as personally empty signs of marriage" (p. 145).
1452-54 Love is an occupacion . . . . Love, gentilesse, and idleness all seem to be ambiguously linked here, pointing to a subversion of aristocratic notions of ease and the games surrounding demandes d'amour, as Genius argues both sides of the questions. See Olsson (1989), pp. 230-41. The model behind these subjective courtly equivocations is RR and the courtesies of Oiseuse (Idleness) and the Garden of Deduit (Pleasure). See Fleming (pp. 78-80) on idleness, otium, and luxuria.
1454 ff. Latin marginalia: Non quia sic se habet veritas, set opinio Amantum. [For the truth is not thus, but this is the opinion of Lovers.]
1467-84 In exploring Genius' cultural relationship with Venus, White amusingly suggests: "One might try to see Genius as priest-in-charge of a very difficult parish: he can legitimately lament Venus' moral shortcomings and still be determined to serve her, perhaps to bring her into a more satisfactory moral state"; nevertheless, "telling evidence that Genius finds his double loyalty unsustainable comes with [his] final recommendation that Amans should abandon love . . . his double status . . . seems to suggest that while his priesthood presses him toward nature, his association with love is an association with vice" ("Division and Failure," p. 609). See 8.2075-88.
1495-96 Whyl sche the charge myhte bere / Of children. Genius suggests that the woman who is "slow to marry" might have children in the meantime anyway, and he notes that marriage would impose onto her the full burden of supporting them. Although the passage strays increasingly far from the initial point of the tale of Rosiphelee, Genius addresses a pressing economic reason for marriage from an unmarried mother's point of view. Women were apparently marrying much later or not at all in the later fourteenth century, evidently in part because of attractive wages after the population decline from the Black Death. Many women in late fourteenth century England kept working (as servants or others) into their mid-twenties, and perhaps up to 17 percent never did marry: see Goldberg (Women, Work and Life Cycle, e.g., pp. 20, 329). Goldberg's evidence suggests that sexual involvement was assumed in many of the disputes about marriage contracts that reached law courts (p. 329), implying that illegitimate children might be common; but Goldberg also hypothesizes (in contrast to Genius) that one reason women did delay marriage in this period was precisely to put off the burden of many children that an early marriage would more likely impose (p. 352). Goldberg argues that, by the late fifteenth century, the drop in procreation was severe enough that English culture began emphasizing women as wives and mothers and disparaging them as workers, a pattern of social prejudice against working women that, with periods of exception, obtained for centuries (see e.g., p. 352). Yet this prejudice against women who married late or never is already apparent in Genius' comments here. (See Galloway, "Literature of 1388.")
1505 The Tale of Jephthah's Daughter is based on Judges 11. The story is also briefly retold in Chaucer's Physician's Tale, though with a reversal of the moral as Virginia offers prayers of gratitude for preserving her virginity. Genius' account adheres more closely to the Vulgate.
1508 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit exemplum super eodem: Et narrat de filia Iepte, que cum ex sui patris voto in holocaustum deo occidi et offerri deberet, ipsa pro eo quod virgo fuit et prolem ad augmentacionem populi dei nondum genuisset, xl dierum spacium vt cum suis sodalibus virginibus suam defleret virginitatem, priusquam moreretur, in exemplum aliarum a patre postulauit. [Here he presents an instructive example about the same thing, and he narrates about Jephthah's daughter, who, when by her father's vow she ought to have been offered in a sacrifice to God and killed, besought from her father a span of forty days to lament with her companions her virginity, as an example for other women - because she was a virgin and had not yet given birth for the augmentation of the people of God - before she would die.]
1524 Mai no man lette that schal falle. Proverbial and ancient, evidently predating Christian ethics (compare Beowulf, line 455, "Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel!" [fate always proceeds as it must]).
1562-89 In his discussion of "bourgeois didactisism" in Gower, Galloway ("Gower's Quarrel") writes: "By framing [Jephtha's daughter's] death in terms of lost productivity and situating it with other economic morals in the book of Sloth, Gower emphasizes an ethic in which material and population gain is the selfless goal of community, by which the people might be encressed." . . . Such an ethic is obviously alienated from the immediate self-interest of survival. She acquieses in her death . . . without complaint about that" (p. 249). Galloway then contrasts Chaucer's adaptation of the story in The Physician's Tale, which converts the sense from common profit to one of proper governance (pp. 249-562).
1619 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur quod in amoris causa milicie probitas ad armorum laboris excercicium nullatenus torpescat. [Here he declares that in the cause of love, probity of military service for the exertion of labor in arms should by no means become lax.]
1633 lo, wher he goth! The line has resonances of Troilus' fame as he passes Criseyde's window in Chaucer's poem, while the people exclaim over his valor (TC 2.610-58); certainly his fame serves him well in the busy-ness of love. As he passes the window a second time, Pandarus asserts, "Lo, yond he rit!" (TC 2.1284), to which Criseyde replies, "Ye, so he doth!"
1650-55 Amans' sheepish faintheartedness (see 5.6945) derives more from fourteenth-century French dits amoreux than from the heartier RR. See Burrow (1983), especially pp. 6-11.
1682 Bot nou ho ther, I seie no more. The Lover's ideas have drifted close to a topic of great controversy in the 1380s and 1390s: clerics on crusade. Most dangerously, his views echo the complaints of the heretical and pacifist Lollards concerning crusades. On the broader topic of Gower's pacifism see explanatory note to 3.2342-60. Many orthodox writers and intellectuals as well as Lollards were incensed by the "crusade" mounted by bishop Henry Despenser of Norwich in 1383 against the "schismatic" (French-supported) Pope Clement VII, on behalf of the English-supported Pope Urban VI. For good reason, the endeavor was controversial in the English parliament and court, before, during, and after its miserable failure. Bishop Despenser took five months to be utterly defeated in the battle on behalf of the pope, fighting Flemish supporters of Clement even though most of the Flemish supported Urban. For discussion and listing of the Lollard writings against this, see Hudson and Gradon, English Wycliffite Sermons, pp. 146-51. (See also Galloway, "Literature of 1388.")
1693 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic allegat Amans in sui excusacionem, qualiter Achilles apud Troiam propter amorem Polexenen arma sua per aliquod tempus dimisit. [Here the Lover alleges in his excuse, how Achilles at Troy on account of love for Polyxena put away his arms for a certain time.]
1710 To winne chaf and lese whete. An inversion of the proverb "Taketh the fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille" (CT VII[B2]3443). See Whiting W205. The metaphor is biblical; see Jeremiah 23:28, Matthew 3:12, and Luke 3:17, but also Paul, 2 Corinthians 3:6. Compare also CT II(B1)701-02, X(I)35-36, and LGW G.312, G.529. See Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer, pp. 58, 316-17, and Peck, "St. Paul and the Canterbury Tales" (Mediaevalia 7 [1981], 92-96).
1757-60 besinesse. See Kuczynski on besinesse as a metaphysical concept reaching back to Abelard. See also Gower's treatment of the idea in his Tale of Pygmalion.
1815-95 The story of Nauplus and Ulysses is referred to in Ovid, Metam. 8.39, and Hyginus, Fab. XCV, though both name Palamedes, son of Nauplius, as the exposer of Ulysses. Gower also adds the foxes to pull the plow instead of the horse and oxen, as in Hyginus.
1818 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic dicit quod amoris delectamento postposito miles arma sua preferre debet: Et ponit exemplum de Vlixe, cum ipse a bello Troiano propter amorem Penolope remanere domi voluisset, Nauplus pater Palamades eum tantis sermonibus allocutus est, quod Vlixes thoro sue coniugis relicto labores armorum vna cum aliis Troie magnanimus subibat. [Here he says that, postponing the pleasure of love, a knight ought to prefer taking up arms; and he presents an instructive example about when Ulysses wanted to remain at home from the Trojan war on account of his love for Penelope, that Nauplus the father of Palamades spoke to him with such speeches that Ulysses, leaving behind the bed of his wife, magnanimously took up the labors of arms, along with the others to Troy.]
1901-34 The worth of King Protesilaus is recorded in Ovid, Heroides 13.
1901 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic narrat super eodem qualiter Laodomia Regis Protheselai vxor, volens ipsum a bello Troiano secum retinere, fatatam sibi mortem in portu Troie prenunciauit: set ipse miliciam pocius quam ocia affectans, Troiam adiit, vbi sue mortis precio perpetue laudis Cronicam ademit. [Here he narrates about the same thing, how Laodomia, the wife of King Protesilaus, wishing to keep him away from the Trojan War and with her, prognosticated his destined death in the port of Troy. But he, desiring militarism over idleness, went to Troy, where he purchased a historical record of perpetual fame for himself, at the price of his life.]
1935 ff. The account of Saul is based on 1 Kings 27-31 (1 Samuel 27-31, KJV).
Latin marginalia: Adhuc super eodem, qualiter Rex Saul, non obstante quod per Samuelem a Phitonissa suscitatum et coniuratum responsum, quod ipse in bello moreretur, accepisset, hostes tamen suos aggrediens milicie famam cunctis huius vite blandimentis preposuit. [Moreover on the same thing: how King Saul, even though he had received the response from Samuel (raised from the dead by Phitonissa and conjured to answer) that he would die in war, nonetheless, he attacked his enemies, putting the fame of military achievement before all pleasures of this life.]
1963-2013. The education of Achilles by Chiron is based upon Statius is based upon Statius, Achilleid 2.110-28. See note to 3.1923-81 on the violence of chivalric education. N.b., Wtherbee, "Rome, Troy, and Culture" (pp. 29-31), on Gower's subsequent modifications of Statius in the Tale of Achilles and Deidamia (5.2961-2301), as Achilles, withdrawn from the context of the male chivalry he learned from Chiron, "adapts to life as a girl with remarkable and wholly uncanonical ease" that is quite apart from chivalry. He is "both graceful and . . . innocent" in his new role and so convincingly assimilated into the feminine virtues of "honour, servise and reverence" that even Ulysses is unable to recognize him.
Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur quod miles in suis primordiis ad audaciam prouocari debet. Et narrat qualiter Chiro Centaurus Achillem, quem secum ab infancia in monte Pileon educauit, vt audax efficeretur, primitus edocuit, quod cum ipse venacionibus ibidem insisteret, leones et tigrides huiusmodique animalia sibi resistencia et nulla alia fugitiua agitaret. Et sic Achilles in iuuentute animatus famosissime milicie probitatem postmodum adoptauit. [Here he states that a knight in his beginning years ought to be stirred to valor. And he tells how Chiron the centaur, who had taken Achilles unto himself from infancy to educate him to be bold, from the beginning taught him, when he was in pursuit of game, to attack lions and tigers and other animals of that sort which offered resistance to him, and not any others that fled him. And Achilles thus disposed from youth later most famously acquired his excellence in arms.]
2014-2134 The story of Hercules and Achelous may be found in Ovid, Met. 9.1-97, though Gower relies on other sources for making Mercury his father (elsewhere in classical sources it is Jupiter) and for mention of the pillars of Hercules. The latter were well known in the fourteenth century; see, e.g., Higden, Polychronicon 1, cap. 11, pp. 302-05; and Chaucer, The Monk's Tale, CT VII(B2)2117-18. Gower is apparently unique in naming Achelous "Achelons" (a form repeated in the Traitié 7 where the same story is found [Mac 1:383-84]). Gower's misreading of u as n in the Latin sources he used for the name was a common sort of error in some medieval scripts; "textura" script, for example (often used for elegant Latin), makes u and n nearly indistinguishable (Galloway, "Literature of 1388").
2045-2131 The author of Chaucer's Ghoast (1672) adopts these lines as his own in Arg. 6 on Hercules, Achilous and Deianire.
2048 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic dicit, quod Miles priusquam amoris amplexu dignus efficiatur, euentus bellicos victoriosus amplectere debet. Et narrat qualiter Hercules et Achelons propter Deianiram Calidoinie Regis filiam singulare duellum adinuicem inierunt, cuius victor Hercules existens armorum meritis amorem virginis laudabiliter conquestauit. [Here he says that before a knight may be made worthy for the embrace of love, he ought to grasp military actions most victoriously. And he tells how Hercules and Achelon entered into single combat with one another on account of Deianira, daughter of the king of Calidonia, and as the victor in this by merit of arms Hercules most praiseworthily conquered the virgin's love.]
2135 ff. The accounts of Penthesilea and Philemenis derive from Benoît, Roman de Troie, lines 24309 ff. and 25767 ff.
Latin marginalia: Nota de Pantasilea, Amazonie Regina, que Hectoris amore colligata contra Pirrum Achillis filium apud Troiam arma ferre eciam personaliter non recusauit. [Note concerning Penthesilea, queen of Amazonia, who, bound to love of Hector, did not excuse herself from personally bearing arms at Troy against Pirrus the son of Achilles.]
2148 ff. Latin marginalia: Nota qualiter Philemenis propter milicie famam a finibus terre in defensionem Troie veniens tres puellas a Regno Amazonie quolibet anno percipiendas sibi et heredibus suis imperpetuum ea de causa habere promeruit. [Note how Philemenis, for the fame of military glory, came from the boundaries of his own land in defense of Troy; and for that reason he merited having three young women provided each year in perpetuity from the kingdom of Amazonia, to be possessed by himself and his heirs.]
2183 ff. Latin marginalia: Nota pro eo quod Eneas Regem Turnum in bello deuicit, non solum amorem Lavine, set et regnum Ytalie sibi subiugatum obtinuit. [Note that since Aeneas conquered King Turnus in battle, he obtained not only Lavinia's love but also the kingdom of Italy, now subjugated to himself.]
2199 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic dicit, quod generosi in amoris causa sepius preferuntur. Super quo querit Amans, Quid sit generositas: cuius veritatem questionis Confessor per singula dissoluit. [Here he states that nobles are more often preferable in the cause of love. Regarding this, the Lover asks what nobility is; the truth of the matter the Confessor elaborates point by point.]
2204-2319 Genius' discussion of gentilesse is Boethian in origin (see especially Consolation of Philosophy 3.pr.6 and m.6) and bears many details in common with Chaucer's views. See Chaucer's "Gentilesse," as well as the discussion of the subject in The Wife of Bath's Tale (CT III[D]1109-64) and The Franklin's Tale. Gower first expressed the ideas in MO, lines 23389 ff. See also Dante, Convivio 4.10 ff., and Jean de Meun's RR, lines 18607-946, both of whom draw upon Boethius. For discussion of Gower's debate on gentilesse as an ambiguous courtly virtue see Olsson (Structures of Conversion, pp. 119-46). Also see note to 4.2270, below.
2209-11 long time is falle in age . . . hih lignage / After the forme. Compare Chaucer's "Gentilesse," where the lineage of the virtue is traced back to the "firste stok" (line 1), that is to Christ ("the firste fader in magestee" - line 19), in whose "forme" (to borrow Gower's term), rather than in public offices such as pope, king, or cardinal ("Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe" - lines 7, 14, 21), the "traces" of the virtue may be found (line 3).
2226 Al was aliche gentil tho. Compare the popular adage: "Whan Adam delve and Eve span, / Who was then the gentleman?" The couplet was used in the Rising of 1381 but had a long lineage before that time. See Albert Friedman, "'Whan Adam Delved . . .': Contexts of a Historical Proverb," in Larry Benson, ed., Learned and the Lewed, pp. 213-30.
2245 ff. Latin marginalia: Omnes quidem ad vnum finem tendimus, set diuerso tramite. [We all are indeed headed to one end, though by diverse pathways.]
2269-70 after the condicion / Of resonable entencion. Olsson (Structures of Conversion, p. 131), cites Dante's Purgatorio to exemplify the inner workings of gentilesse, apprehension, and intentionality in these lines. As Dante puts it: "Each one apprehends vaguely a good wherein the mind may find rest, and this it desires" (Purgatorio 17.127-28), and "Your faculty of apprehension draws an image from a real existence and displays it within you, so that it makes the mind turn to it; and if, thus turned, the mind inclines toward it, that inclination is love" (18.22-26; Singleton trans. as cited by Olsson). J. D. Burnley's discussion of medieval cognitive psychology is useful in understanding what Gower means by the condicion (Chaucer's Language, pp. 103-06).
2312-15 no beste, / . . . with love scholde aqueinte, / . . . make it queinte / . . . while that it laste. Genius engages in wordplay of a courtly/sexual kind that is well suited to the refined sensibility of gentilesse he wishes to convey. Compare Chaucer's HF, lines 239-52, where, in describing the initial lovemaking of Dido and Aeneas, the narrator gets caught up to the point of embarrassment in his "queynte" words describing "[h]ow they aqueynteden in fere" (lines 245, 250; with a pun on "that faculte" [line 248] as well) to conclude, somewhat self-righteously: "Hyt were a long proces to telle, / And over-long for yow to dwelle" (lines 251-52). Gower's remarks on the effects of love as beasts with love scholde aqueinte ("become intimate with" each other - MED aqueinten v. 1 [a]) and make it queinte (i.e., behave charmingly, or, perhaps, friskily) share in this playful idea of sex. For Genius, as a force of nature, the sexual connotations of courtesy are positive; but as he presents them, they are also noble, appropriate to gentilesse and fin amour. [W]hile that it laste acknowledges the transience of such physical love and emotional highs.
2321 ff. Latin marginalia: Nota de amore caritatis, vbi dicit, Qui non diligit, manet in morte. [Note concerning the love of charity, where it says, "Who does not love remains in death."] See explanatory note to line 2325.
2325 1 John 3:14: "He that loveth not, abideth in death."
2342-44 Job 5:7.
2348 ff. Latin marginalia: Apostolus: Quecumque scripta sunt, ad nostram doctrinam scripta sunt. [Apostle: "Whatever things are written, they are written for our wisdom." See Romans 15:4. Compare Chaucer's Nun's Priest: "For Seint Paul seith that al that writen is, / To oure doctrine it is ywrite, ywis; / Taketh the fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille" (CT VII[B2] 3441-43).
2363 ff. That man must labor is one of the primary conditions of postlapsarian existence (Gen. 3:17-19). In Gower's scheme, each man must reclaim Paradise for himself, and that effort involves mental as well as physical cultivation. (Compare Chaucer's PF, lines 15-18, and his Canon's Yeoman's philosophy of labor.) Many of the founders of the various arts, industries, and sciences which Genius enumerates are found in Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon, though not all occur there. See Macaulay (2:508-11). Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon, ch. 3, also has such a passage.
2377 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur contra ociosos quoscumque, et maxime contra istos, qui excellentis prudencie ingenium habentes absque fructu operum torpescunt. Et ponit exemplum de diligencia predecessorum, qui ad tocius humani generis doctrinam et auxilium suis continuis laboribus et studiis, gracia mediante diuina, artes et sciencias primitus inuenerunt. [Here he speaks against idle men of whatever sort, and particularly against those who, possessing an intellect of excellent power, grow languid without gaining the fruit of any labor. And he presents an instructive example concerning the diligence of those who have come before, who originally discovered the arts and sciences for the wisdom and assistance of the entire human race, by their continual labors and inquiries, and with the assistance of divine grace.]
2396-98 Cham . . . wrot in Hebreu. Cham was the first and oldest son of Noah. St. Augustine, Civ. Dei 16.11, identifies Heber, a descendent of the fifth generation of Cham (Sem, Ham) as the one through whom Hebrew survives (thus the name Hebrew, called after him). Augustine argues that after the flood, when the languages were divided, Hebrew survived only with Cham and his descendents. Augustine does not provide Gower's specific source for the idea, however, and different sources give different inventors for the Hebrew alphabet. According to Hugh of St. Victor (Hugh, Didascalicon 2.3), "The letters of the Hebrews are believed to have taken start with Moses through the written Law" (trans. Taylor, p. 85). Higden/Trevisa's Polychronicon gives the credit to Enoch (2:223).
2399-2400 Of naturel philosophie / He (Cham) fond ferst also the clergie. Remigius' commentary on Donatus' Ars Minor gives Cham credit for erecting two columns that preserve the arts (see Didascalicon 3.2, trans. Taylor, p. 210, note to line 34). The idea is given more full treatment in Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon:
Temporibus Nini legitur Cham, sistere uita.
Abstulit et regnum sibi Ninus rex Niniuita,
Primus in astrologis Cham sua scripta tulit,
Ninus eum pepulit, ne rex foret ipse rebellis,
Omnibur exustis quos scripserat ipse libellis,
Nam timet arte sua, ne sua regna ruant.
Septem quas legimus, Cham, primus scripserat artes
Philosophos docuit per sydera noscere partes,
Quas iterum reliqui, post didicere uiri.
Has artes, longis Cham scripserat ipse columnis,
Ne uel ab igne simul pereant, uel hiantibus undis
Aerea uel lateris, quaeque columha fuit.
[Cham is said to have passed his life in Ninus' time: Ninus, king of the Ninevites, took his kingdom from him. Cham first undertook to write about astrology, and Ninus expelled him, lest Cham become a king to rebels, and caused all the writings Cham had produced to be burned; for Ninus feared his art, lest his kingdom be destroyed. Cham first wrote down the seven arts that we learn, and through them he had taught philosophers to know the parts of the heavens and to leave them again to others, and after for men to teach them. These arts Cham had written onto long columns, lest they perish either by fire or the engulfing waves; each column was of bronze or brick.] Pantheon 3, col. 105 (trans. Galloway).
2401 Cadmus. On Cadmus as inventor of the Greek alphabet, see Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon 6, col. 157: "Tunc Cadmus Graecas literas sedecim fecit. Apollo etiam cytharam condidit, et artem medicinalem inuenit. Eo tempore orti sunt Theologi, qui de dijs falsis carmina composuerunt, ut Orpheus, Museus, Linus . . ." ["Then Cadmus made the 16 Greek letters; Apollo invented the harp, and the art of medicine; at that time theologians arose who composed songs about false gods, such as Orpheus, Museus, Linus . . . "], trans. AG. See also Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae 1.3.5-6, as adapted by Hugh of St. Victor, which tells how "Cadmus brought the alphabet from Phoenicia into Greece" (Hugh, Didascalicon 3.2, trans. Taylor, p. 86).
2403 Theges. For Tages on augury see Hugh of St. Victor: "Mercury is reported the first discoverer of illusions; the Phrygians discovered auguries; Tages first gave soothsaying to the Etruscans; hydromancy first came from the Persians" (Hugh, Didascalicon, ed. Charles Henry Buttimer, vi.xv, as cited in trans. Taylor, p. 155).
2405 Philemon be the visage. On Philemon, inventor of physiognomy, see Secretum Secretorum, under the heading "Certeyne rewles of phisnomy, to knowe by onely thoght when men lokes on any man, of what condicions he es," where we learn that "Aristotal sais howe þat in tyme of Ypocras þer was a philosopher hight Philomon, þat was chefe mayster and hyest doctur of þis science." The passage goes on to discuss Philomon's disquisition on "þe complexion" pertaining to people who are "lucherus, deceitus, auarus, and lyfyng liccherie" and such "thynges filthy and reprouable" (British Library MS Sloane 213, fol. 118, Secretum Secretorum, ed. Manzalaoui, pp. 10-11).
2407 Cladyns. Claudian, an Alexandrian writer who came to Italy c. 395 A.D. and was admired as the last representative of the classical tradition in Latin poetry by such writers as Orosius and Augustine. In the later Middle Ages he is known mainly through the De raptu Proserpinae (The Rape of Proserpine), which was a common school-text for learning Latin.
Esdras. "After the Law had been burned by the Chaldeans and when the Jews had returned to Jerusalem, Esdras the scribe, inspired by the Divine Spirit, restored the books of the Old Testament, corrected all the volumes of the Law and the Prophets which had been corrupted by the gentiles, and arranged the whole of the Old Testament into twenty-two books, so that there might be just as many books of the Law as there were letters in the alphabet" (Isidore, Etymologiae 6.3.1-2, as quoted by Hugh, Didascalicon 4.4, trans. Taylor, p. 105).
Sulpices. Possibly Sulpicius Servius, author of love poems, mentioned by Horace and Ovid, or Sulpicius Camerinus, an epic poet mentioned by Ovid; though more likely Sulpicius Apollinaris, scholar, teacher of Aulus Gellius, author of learned letters, and verse summaries of the Aeneid and the plays of Terence. (See Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 1023.) Recueil de Textes sur Saint Martin (Épinal, MS 73, fol.1) has an early twelfth-century illumination of Sulpitius dictating to Abbot Richer. Jean Porcher (French Miniatures, pl. 13) identifies the figure as Sulpicius Severus.
2407-12 Lists of authors, whether chroniclers or inditers, often appear in medieval works for edification. E.g., see Machaut's Le Livre dou Voir Dit, lines 5709-42, on inventors and lawgivers; 5743-60 on the seven wise men of Rome; and 5779-94, where the king instructs the lover through a list of writers on the difficulty that even the wisest men have in dealing with women who drive them mad with love and flirtation. Or TC 5.1792, where Chaucer sends his "litel bok" (5.1786) to kiss the steps of writers he would emulate. Here, in lines 2407 ff., Gower instructs his audience in the names of diverse early writers, without specifying their kinds of writing or intentions.
2408 Termegis. Macaulay (2.508) suggests that Termegis refers to Termegistus (i.e., Hermes Trismegistus) and is disyllabic with the stress on the final syllable. In his translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De Proprietatibus Rerum Trevisa cites Trismegistus variously as an authority on the soul, alchemy, and the geometry of God.
Pandulf. Curial historian, author of Liber Pontificalis, a collection of biographies of popes, beginning with St. Peter and continuing to the early twelfth century. Pandulf was nephew to Hugo of Alatari.
Frigidilles. I have not been able to establish who he might be. Dares of Phrygia, author of De Excidio Troiae Historia, on the fall of Troy, might be a possibility.
2409 Menander. The most famous Greek poet of the New Comedy, which prevailed after the death of Alexander the Great. Though he wrote over one hundred plays, only one survives. He was quoted by writers as diverse as Propertius and St. Paul. Most of the plays of Terence are avowedly derived from him. In the Middle Ages his name became synonymous with the writing of comedy, though no one in England would have seen a copy or read a translation. It is just a name with which to conjure.
Ephiloquorus. Hamilton suggests that "the name of Eutropius may be hidden under 'Ephiloquerius,'" a chronicler of "the stories of Romanes" mentioned in Jofroi's version of the Secreta Secretorum (pp. 340-41), a "chronique" Gower appears to have drawn upon repeatedly in Books 4 and 7. For Eutropius in lists of various medieval authorities see Hamilton, p. 341n3.
2410 Solins. Probably refers to Solinus rather than Solon, the sixth-century (B.C.) Athenian lawmaker, though Machaut cites "Solons dathennes" (Solon of Athens) in his list of the seven wise men of Rome (Machaut's Le Livre dou Voir Dit, lines 5751-52). But in CA 3.2600 ff., he is cited as a wise man of natural science, which suggests Solinus, the author of Collectanea Rerum Memorabilium, with all its curiosities of the natural world.
Pandas. I have been unable to identify this writer.
Josephus. First-century author of history of the Jews, often cited by early Christian commentators. He is frequently referred to by Higden and Trevisa (Polychronicon). He is mentioned by Chaucer, HF: "The Ebrayk Josephus the olde, / That of Jewes gestes tolde; / And he bar on hys shuldres hye / The fame up of the Jewerye" (lines 1433-36).
2413 Heredot. Herodotus, ancient Greek historian, called by some the "father of history," who recorded cultural events through observations of place and the construction of heroes, like Solon, Croesus, or Cleomenes. He was admired by Cicero, Lucius, and Quintillian for his sweet and beauteous style as well as his grandeur and emotional power.
2418 Jubal. According to Genesis 4:21, Jubal, brother to Tubalcain, is the inventor of the art of harp and organ playing. His name was commonly confused with that of his brother in the Middle Ages, the distinction being between Tubal and Tubalcain. E.g., Chaucer, "Tubal, / That found out first the art of songe; / For as hys brothres hamers ronge / Upon hys anvelt up and doun, / Therof he took the firste soun" (BD 1162-66). Or as Lydgate puts it: "Tubal was fadyr & fynder of song, / Of consonantes, and of armony. . . . For Tubal came furst þe melody / Of sugryd musyk, and of mynstralsy" ("A Pageant of Knowledge," in Minor Poems of John Lydgate, pp. 724-38, lines 66-70). Cursor Mundi refers to them as Cubal and Cubaltain. (I, T, and C are not always easily distinguishable in medieval hands.) As far as Jubal is concerned, however, Gower has it right.
2420 Poulins. Macaulay is surely right in identifying Poulins as Apollo, citing Pantheon 6, col. 157: "Apollo etiam citharam condidit et artem medicinalem invenit" (2:508) [Apollo invented the harp and the art of medicine]. See also Pantheon 6, col. 133: "Illis temporibus, Moses erat orbe superstes, / Tunc et Apollo fuit remouens medicamine pestes. / In cunctis medicus primus Apollow fuit" ["In those days Moses was living on earth, and then Apollo was taking away disease with medicine: Apollo was first of all as a doctor"], trans. Galloway. Lydgate, in "A Pageant of Knowledge," a work directly influenced by Gower's discussion of discovers and inventors, writes: "Phebus fond furst craft of medicine, / By touche of pounce, veyne, & inspeccions" (in Minor Poems of John Lydgate, pp. 724-38, lines 108-09). The initial vowel in Gower's naming of him has simply been dropped by aphaeresis.
2421 Zenzis. Zeuxis is commonly cited as the founder of portrait painting. See RR, lines 16155-79, a passage often fittingly illuminated with pictures of him painting from diverse models.
2422 Promotheus the sculpture. Trevisa explains the matter this way: "Me[n] saiþ þat Prometheus, Raptus his sone, and Atlas þe astronomere, his broþer, made men; so seiþ Ouidius in Magno; naþeles þat is i-seide, for of men þat were vnkonnynge and boistrous as bestes he made konnynge [men] and wise. Isidorus 13o. Also for me[n] redeþ þat he made ymages of men goo and walke in þe grounde by a certeyn craft" (Polychronicon 2:311). Macaulay (2:508) cites Godfrey of Viterbo. The passage is Pantheon 5, col. 143: "Tunc et Prometheus, qui filius est Atlantis / Dat statuas hominis humano more meantis" ["And then Prometheus, who is Atlas' son, provides statues of a man moving in a human manner"], trans. Galloway.
2425 Tubal in iren and in stel. See explanatory note to 4.2418 on the confusion of Tubal with his brother Jubal. Tubalcain, according to Genesis 4:22, is the first artificer in brass and iron. Cursor Mundi calls him "þe formast smyth" (line 1518).
2427 Jadahel. Jabal, son of Ada (Genesis 4:20). Macaulay (2:508-09) notes that Godfrey of Viterbo (Pantheon 2 col. 91) "calls him by the same name and makes the same statement about his hunting and fishing: In mundo Iadahel posuit tentoria primus, / Venator prior ipse fuit, feritate ferinus, / Primus et invalidid retia mersit aquis" ["Jadahel first established tents on earth; savage in his brutality, he was the first hunter; and he first submerged nets into yielding waters"], trans. Galloway.
2433 Verconius. I have not been able to identify this reference.
2435 Minerve. Compare 5.1202-03. The tradition of Minerva as inventor of cloth-making is strong: "They tell that the practice of fabric making was first shown the Greeks by Minerva, and they believe too that she designed the first loom, dyed fleece, and was the inventress of olive-growing and of handicraft" - Isidore, Etymologiae 19.20.1-2, as adapted by Hugh, Didascalicon 3.2 (trans. Taylor, p. 85). Or, Trevisa, Polychronicon: "þis mayde Pallas, þat heet Mynerua also, fonde vp meny craftes, and specialliche wolcraft, and was the li3tloker i-trowed a goddes. For me (men) wiste litel whennes sche come" (2:297). Compare Lydgate, "A Pageant of Knowledge" (in Minor Poems of John Lydgate, pp. 724-38), lines 87-88.
2437 Delbora made it of lyn. In CA 8.62 ff., she is identified as Adam and Eve's second daughter, who marries Abel. A prominent source for the idea is Methodius' Apocalypse, which is a principal source for Higden, in Polychronicon (2:221). Trevisa picks up on the idea in "Methodius: 'þe Bygynnyng of þe World and þe Ende of Worldes'" ("Methodius: 'þe Bygynnyng," p. 95). According to Polychronicon (2:221), Delbora and Abel were born in the thirtieth year (Brunetto, Tresor 1.20.2 says thirty-second year) of Adam's life and Seth in the hundred and thirtieth year. In Cursor Mundi, "Seth spoused his sister delbora" (line 1449), an idea that is repeated in line 1502, the idea being that after her first husband's death, she marries the brother, according to Hebrew law. I have found no precedent for her discovering how to make linen, though Lydgate follows Gower in declaring that "Delbora of lynen cloþe makyng / The practyke sought, bokes bere wytnesse" ("A Pageant of Knowledge," in Minor Poems of John Lydgate, pp. 724-38, lines 89-90). Given the purity of Seth's line in the ancestry of Christ, it makes sense to give the invention of linen to Delbora, since it is regarded as the purest of cloths, one not made from animals. See Gilroy (History of Silk), who cites Apuleius, Jerome, and Plutarch on the purity of the fabric and its use in religious vestments. Machaut's Le Livre dou Voir Dit says that Noema (a child of Lamech, see Genesis 4:22) invented linen-making and in her name fabric and cloth are fashioned (lines 5727-30). On the history of linen-making and its uses see Pliny, Naturalis historiae, 19.i-vi.
2439-56 Saturn is usually portrayed as cold, cruel, and malicious. See CA 7.935-41. Compare Chaucer's Knight's Tale CA 1(A)2443-78; or The Assembly of Gods, lines 279-87. But, under the governance of Jupiter he also has a gentle, benevolent side which Genius alludes to here. Bartholomaeus Anglicus' De Proprietatibus Rerum (trans. Trevisa, 8, cap. 12) begins: "Saturnus haþ þat name of saturando 'makynge fulness and plente: His wif hatte Opis of opulencia 'fulnes and plente' þat sche 3eueþ to man and beest, as Isidir seiþ and Marcianus also" (1.478). Given his affinity for opulence, mining and thus coin-making (lines 2448-55) are under his jurisdiction. See also Godfrey's Pantheon 6, cols. 117-18, cited in part by Macaulay (2:509):
Saturnus statuit super aequora vela moueri,
Denarios posuit commercia rite mereri.
Ipse prior clypeos mulitiis ante gerit.
Navibus Italiam prior hic ornasse putatur.
Aedificans Sutrium, dum vivit ibi dominatur,
Triticeum semen primus in urbe serens.
Saturnus natum latuisse Iovem recitatur.
In Sutrio latuit, Latium locus ille vocatur.
[Saturn established that sails would be moved across the waters; he established that commerce would properly merit using money. He first carried forward the shields of a soldier. He is thought to have first ornamented Italy with ships. Building Sutrium, he was lord there as long as he lived, first sowing wheat seed in the city. Saturn is said to have hidden his son Jupiter: in Sutrium he lay hidden; he calls the place "Latium"] (trans. Galloway).
2457 Latin marginalia: Nota de Alconomia. [Note concerning Alchemy.]
2468-78 In alchemy each of the seven planets is affiliated with a metal whose properties it shares. Compare Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman:
Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe,
Mars iren, Mercurie quyksilver we clepe,
Saturnus leed, and Juppiter is tyn,
And Venus coper, by my fader kyn! (CT VIII[G]826-29) assert
And, as in Gower, the planets and their metals are affiliated with four spirits - quicksilver, orpyment, sal ammoniac, and brimstone. See CT VIII[G]820-24, and John Reidy's note to VIII[G]820 (The Riverside Chaucer, p. 950) along with his introduction to the tale (pp. 946-48), delineating possible sources (mainly translations from Arabic) for passages such as these in Chaucer and Gower, especially sources such as Vincent of Beauvais' Speculum Naturale and Arnaldus de Villanova.
2472 Jupiter the bras bestoweth. Usually Jupiter is linked with tin. (See note to 4.2468-78, where Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman says tin and also the Lydgatian Assemblie of Gods, lines 269-71, where Jupiter has a crown of tin upon his head.) Bronze is an alloy of tin and copper. Perhaps the idea is that Jupiter is in one of his amorous or delicate moods, copper being "set . . . to Venus" (4.2473). This characterization of Jupiter is unusual. The only other instance linking Jupiter with bronze that I have been able to locate is in Christian de Pisan's Epistle of Othea (fable 6), which was written about a decade after Gower composed the line in CA. Chaucer uses double metals - "tynned yron" or "led and yron" in HF (lines 1482 and 1431) - to comment on Virgil (guided by Jupiter and Mars) and Josephus (under the influence of Saturn and Mars), though use of alloys in which the primary affiliation is hidden is less common.
2501 sevene formes. The seven are enumerated in lines 2513-18.
2533 Thre stones. Compare Lydgate, Secrees of Old Philisoffres, lines 530-34: "And of stoonys / Specially of three - / Oon myneral / Another vegatatyff . . . [and] Oon / was Callyd anymal." Steele suggests that "stoonys" here does not mean "stone," but rather "compound" and that these were three compounds used in medicine. He cites the Rosarium Philosophorum as a parallel text: "Tres sunt lapides, et tres sales sunt, exquibus totum magisterium consistis: Scilicet mineralis, plantalis, & animalis" (p. 93). [There are three stones, and three salts, from which all teaching is set firm: namely mineral, plant, and animal.] Some argued that there is only one potent stone, the philosopher's stone, called the Elixir, a three-in-one stone, with powers to cure the sick.
2534 ff. Latin marginalia: Nota de tribus lapidibus, quos philosophi composuerunt, quorum primus dicitur lapis vegetabilis, qui sanitatem conseruat, secundus dicitur lapis animalis, qui membra et virtutes sencibiles fortificat, tercius dicitur lapis mineralis, qui omnia metalla purificat et in suum perfectum naturali potencia deducit. [Note concerning the three stones that philosophers created, the first of which is called the vegetative stone, which preserves health; the second the animal stone, which fortifies the limbs and the senses; the third the mineral stone, which purifies all metals and leads them into its own perfection by its natural power.]
2571 to the rede and to the whyte. The final stages in alchemical transformation, to red gold or to white silver. In the most elaborate alchemical schemes, a "marriage" must occur between the Red Man and the White Woman-two forms of the philosopher's stone-to transform a base metal into gold or silver. It is not clear that Gower understands the more arcane symbolism of this science; for a late fifteenth-century effort to make it all clear to "lay-men" (line 2, p. 5), see Thomas Norton's Ordinal of Alchemy: e.g., "Then is the faire white woman / Mariede to the rodie mane" (5.2663-64). Gower's syntax shows that here rede is (as often in nonalchemical contexts) simply gold itself, and whyte is (as also in nonalchemical contexts) simply silver, in respect to both of which the philosopher's stone has "pouer to profite" (line 2572) (Galloway "Literature of 1388").
2606 Hermes. Presumably Hermes Trismegistus, the "inventer of alchemy," to whom many thirteenth and fourteenth century alchemal treatises such as the Emerald Tablet are attributed.
2608 Geber. Of the early Islamic alchemists, Geber is the most often cited, with over five hundred works attributed to him. One tenth-century Arab alchemist claimed he never existed; others have attempted to link him with Jabir (Abu Musa Dschabir Ben Hayan Ben Abdullah el-Sufi el-Tarsusi el-Kufi, an alchemist from the ancient city of Kufa, now in present-day Iraq), though some have attempted to place him in eighth-century Spain. Others say he traveled a lot, fearing to be in one place too long because of his skills in the arts. The work most often linked with his name in the fourteenth century is the Summa Perfectionis, a work M. P. E. Berthelot says is thoroughly Latin in origin and derives from the thirteenth century ("Géber et ses œvres alchimiques," 1:336-50). Macaulay (2:510) cites Super Artem Alkemie, a work on the refining of gold and silver, attributed to Geber in Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1384 (SC 7578-87).
2609 Ortolan and Morien. Ortolan (also cited in alchemical treatises as Hortolanus) is a name sometimes used for John Garland, who was primarily a rhetorician. A treatise on alchemy, Compendium Alchimiae, was often attributed to him, though it was actually by one Martin Ortolan. Garland, it seems, gained not only an item for his bibliography but a new name as well. See Thorndike (History of Magic, vol. 3 [1934], ch. 11), on Ortolanus and his influence.
Morien "is said to have been a hermit in the mountains near Jerusalem. The two 'books of Morien' in the form of dialogues between him and Kalid the son of Gesid may be read in Latin (translated from Arabic) in MS. Digby 162" (Mac 2:510). See also Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 1416 (SC 7609-11), fols. 90r and 91r. Hermes, Geber, Ortolon, Morien, and Avicenna are frequently cited together in popular early to mid-fourteenth-century alchemical treatises such as Arnald of Villanova's various Rosaries, the Desiderabile Desiderium, attributed to John Dastin (mid-fourteenth century), and Petrus Bonus' Pretiosa Margarita Novella (c. 1330). See Thorndike (History of Magic, vol. 3, chs. 3-5).
2610 Avicen. Avicenna (980-1037) lived in Persia, the district of Bokhara. A great deal is known about his childhood and latter life. About one hundred treatises are attributed to him, many of which circulated in England in the fourteenth century. His best-known and most-copied work is his Canon of Medicine. Macaulay notes that a "short treatise of Avicen on Alchemy may be found in MS. Ashmole 1420" (2:510).
2624 the parfite medicine. The perfect medicine is that which has the capacity to transform the imperfect to completeness. As an alchemical idea it pertains to the "elixir" with its capacity to "werk to be parfit" (4.2576-77), the power to change base metals or alloys to silver or gold; it may also be affiliated with the philosopher's stone that can transmute metals or be medicine to restore (refine) health or life, whether to metals or creatures.
2637 Carmente. Evander's wife, a prophetess, and, according to Hyg. 278, the mother of Cadmus. She brought an alphabet of fifteen letters, based on Cadmus' Greek alphabet, to the Latins. See Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon 6, col. 159: "Post [Faunum] regnavit Latinus, cuius mater nomine Carmentis, nympha, literas Latinas invenit" ["after Faunus Latinus reigned, whose mother was the nymph Carmentis, who invented Latin letters"], trans. Galloway. See also Tacitus, Annales 11.14, and Isidore, Etymologiae 1.4.l, 5.39.1. Martianus Capella derives her name from carmen (a song or prophetic chant) because she "got her name from the songs she poured out as prophesies" (vol. 2, p. 53). Gower referred to Carmente earlier in the CA Prologue, Latin verses i, line 4; see explanatory note, vol. 1, p. 284.
2640 Aristarchus. Aristarchus of Samothrace, head of the library at Alexandria, was reputed to be "extremely scholarly," the one with whom scientific scholarship began (Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 159). He wrote commentaries on Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Greek dramatists. He was viewed by medieval writers as a great schoolman.
2641 Donat and Dindimus. Aelius Donatus, fourth-century teacher of St. Jerome, was the most influential grammarian. His Ars Minor introduces beginning students of Latin to the eight parts of speech and grammatical functions; the Ars Maior is more advanced and includes sections on flaws and virtues of speech. He also wrote commentaries on Terence and Virgil (Oxford Classical Dictionary, pp. 494-95). Dindimus is Didymus (first century B.C.), a student of Aristarchus at Alexandria, who is said to have written between thirty-five and four thousand works - redactions, commentaries, lexicography, grammar studies on orthography and inflections, synopses of Solon, and others (Oxford Classical Dictionary, pp. 467-68).
2648 Tullius with Cithero. Gower seems to consider Tully and Cicero to be two different people. See Macaulay's note (2:510). Compare CA 7.1588-1606, where Tullius is a rhetorician and watchman over rules of order, and Cithero a Roman consul in debate over the execution of Catiline and his coconspirators.
2654 Jerom. The translator of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate). He was a student of Donatus.
2668-69 in poesie / To the lovers Ovide wrot. The allusion is to such works in general as Amores, Ars Amatoria, and the Remedia Amoris, though love lies at the heart of the Heroides and many of the tales in the Metamorphosis, Gower's two most favored sources.
2669-71 To the lovers Ovide wrote / . . . if love be to hot, / In what manere it scholde akiele. Ovid's Remedium Amoris parodically sets itself to disenchant lovers; it was much revered in medieval culture as an indication that Ovid at some point had transformed his licentious morality, evident in such works as the Ars Amatoria, into a more nearly Christian morality (AG).
2675-79 See Simpson (1995, pp. 150-51) on reading and consent. "Amans's reply insists on the connection between desire and literary understanding . . . Amans, then, as desire, desires only the fulfillment of his very self" (p. 151). Genius, as "enformer" (see 2.2496-500), must find the means whereby he can "enforme" him.
2676 I wolde his bokes rede. See Simpson (Sciences and the Self, pp. 230-71) on issues of reading as a key factor in Gower's poetic, a poetic rooted in imagination: "What else is the Confessio Amantis than, at one level, an extended and extremely subtle account of the psychology of reading?" (p. 254). See also 4.875-88 as an account of the components of reading, and 7.5411-19 on Amans' difficulty in being an attentive reader/listener. "The end of the play . . . reveals the way in which the imagination plays an intricate part in the process of psychic reintegration" (p. 269).
2706 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur de Sompnolencia, que Accidie Cameraria dicta est, cuius natura semimortua alicuius negocii vigilias obseruare soporifero torpore recusat: vnde quatenus amorem concernit Confessor Amanti diligencius opponit. [Here he speaks concerning Somnolence, which is called the chamberlain of Sloth, whose half-dead nature it is to excuse itself by sleepy torpor from observing the vigils of any business. Wherefore the Confessor very diligently questions the Lover as far as this concerns love.] The phrasing "observing the vigils" metaphorically invokes an evening religious service that Somnolence has missed by falling asleep.
2795 rede and here of Troilus. Lovers are often presented as wishful readers where the subject of their text offers an unheeded warning. E.g., in Dante's Inferno 5, lines 127-38, where Paolo and Francesca are reading the romance of Lancelot ("Galeotto fu l'libro e chi lo scrisse" - "A pimp was the book and he who wrote it") when they are caught and murdered by her husband. In Chaucer's TC Criseyde is reading the ominous "romaunce . . . of Thebes" (2.100) when Pandarus approaches her with his "uncle" proposition. In a felicitous touch Gower has Amans' fantasy feasting on the story of Troilus (presumably from Chaucer's text, which was dedicated to Gower), as the lover panders his imagination with happy love thoughts, heedless of the poem's dark conclusion.
2855 Ha, whi ne were it day? Gower gives Amans' alba a comic twist. In most auroral complaints, lovers are conventionally happily in bed together, lamenting the approach of dawn. E.g., the Prayer of Cephalus (CA 4.3187-3252), which fulfills the conventions exactly, as Cephalus literally lies in bed with Aurora, beseeching Apollo to hold back the sun. See also TC 3.1450-63, where Troilus bemoans the coming of "cruel day" (3.1450) that will separate him from his Criseyde; or The Reeve's Tale, where Aleyn laments "Fare weel, Malyne, sweete wight! / The day is come; I may no lenger byde" (CT I[A]4236-37); or where Romeo and Juliet, in Shakespeare's play (3.5), try to convince themselves that the lark is a nightingale so that the night might last. Here the poor solitary Amans laments the duration of night, yearning for day, though also thinking, in his restless frustration "upon the nyhtingale" (4.2872).
2876-83 See Olsson ("Love, Intimacy, and Gower," pp. 73-77) on Amans' fantasies of stolen love, his fear of opposition, and the marketplace conception of his desires, which are intimate and secure for him only insofar as they remain mental, fictive, and private. In their "world of unsecured truths and shape-shifting fictions, the only constant is an unstable carnal appetite that willy-nilly fosters physical intimacy" (p. 78).
2903 Danger is left behinde. Loss of inhibition is often a feature of the psychology of medieval literary dreams. See RR, lines 2411-35, where the lover, in his dreams, holds his beloved quite naked in his arms; or the condition where, in his mind, he does all that he desires to do, with no constraint from the woman (lines 21553-750).
2927 ff. The story of Ceïx and Alceone is based on Ovid, Met. 11.266-748. Compare Chaucer's retelling of the tale in Book of the Duchess, lines 62-220, especially the descent into the cave of sleep, and also the storm scene in VC 1.1663-94. Gower may be working from Chaucer here, but that does not inhibit his own powers of invention.
Latin marginalia: Hic ponit exemplum, qualiter Sompnia prenostice veritatis quandoque certitudinem figurant. Et narrat quod, cum Ceix Rex Trocinie pro reformacione fratris sui Dedalionis in Ancipitrem transmutati peregre proficiscens in mari longius a patria dimersus fuerat, Ivno mittens Yridem nunciam suam in partes Chymerie ad domum Sompni, iussit quod ipse Alceone dicti Regis vxori huius rei euentum per Sompnia certificaret. Quo facto Alceona rem perscrutans corpus mariti sui, vbi super fluctus mortuus iactabatur, inuenit; que pre dolore angustiata cupiens corpus amplectere, in altum mare super ipsum prosiliit. Vnde dii miserti amborum corpora in aues, que adhuc Alceones dicte sunt, subito conuerterunt. [Here he presents an instructive example concerning how dreams sometimes represent the certainty of truth, prognosticatively. And he narrates that when Ceix, king of Trocinia, was drowned on behalf of his brother Dedalion, who had been transformed into a hawk while traveling by sea very far from his country, Juno, sending Yris her messenger into the regions of Chymeria to the house of Sleep, ordered that her messenger should certify the outcome of this matter through dreams to Alceona, the king's wife. When this was done, Alceona, investigating the matter, discovered her husband's body where it had been tossed up dead on the waves; and she, longing to embrace the body, in wrenching grief threw herself into the deep sea after it. Wherefore the gods, pitying them, immediately transformed both their bodies into birds, which to this day are called "halcyons."]
2930 hire oghne hertes lif. Bakalian reiterates her proposition that this tale, like those of Penelope, Alcestis, and Lucrece, emphasizes the virtues of true marriage - the authority, dignity, holiness, and honor. Neither Ceix nor Alceone are guilty of Sloth, but, rather, they embody its remedy (Aspects of Love, p. 46). Indeed, we might turn to the Mirour de L'Omme to understand the virtuous behavior they embody that cures Sloth - their Prouesce (MO, lines 14101-15180) and her children: Alceone in her diligence stands "Vigile, contre le vice de Sompnolence" (MO, lines 14101-10); she is magnanimous rather than indolent (Peresce, MO, lines 14197-98) as she pursues her lost husband through prayers and vision; and her love is constant, rather than lazy (Lacheté, MO, lines 14318-19), and solicitous rather than idle (Oedivesce, MO, lines 14401-06), as she flies over the water to reach him. In sum, her/their behavior is knowing and wise (Science), rather than negligent, full of conscience and intelligence, reason and remembrance (MO, lines 14592-604).
2979-81 Bennett points out that Caxton, in his translation of Ovid, follows Gower's account of Iris' visit to the cave of Morpheus, borrowing such descriptive phrases as reyny cope (line 2979) and colours of diverse hewe (line 2981) in his "And dyde on his rayne cope" and description of the bend of the rainbow "dyversly colowred" ("Caxton and Gower," p. 216). See also note to 4.3014b-19.
3009-14a The soporific effects of the running stream of Lethe Gower takes from Ovid, Met. 2.602-04: "muta quies habitat; saxo tamen exit ab imo / rivus aquae Lethes, per quem cum murmure labens" [ "There mute silence dwells. But from the bottom of the cave there flows the stream of Lethe, whose waves gently murmuring over the gravelly bed, invite to slumber"], 4.163.
3014b-19 Again, the details follow Ovid, Met. 11.610-12:
at medio torus est ebano sublimis in antro,
plumeus, atricolor, pullo velmine tectus,
quo cubat ipse deus membris languore solutis.
[But in the cavern's central space there is a high couch of ebony, downy soft, black-hued, spread with a dusky coverlet] (trans. Miller, 4.163).
Gower's hebenus that slepi tree (line 3017) is a felicitous touch, as if, besides its soft, black, nighttime properties, it has a medicinal slepi quality. Trevisa/Bartolomaeus, De Proprietatibus Rerum 17.52, says that ebenus makes a soft, sweet-smelling smoke and that it is good as a purge and for "comforte"; in a salve (collirium), it "helpeþ yhen" (2.944), but no mention is made of its being a soporific. Caxton admired the line and borrowed from it in his "The cowche was made of Hebenus that sleepy tree" (Bennett, "Caxton and Gower," p. 216). Henry Bradley ("'Cursed Hebenon,'" pp. 85-86) suggests Gower's line as source for Marlowe's "jouyce of Hebon" (Jew of Malta 3.4.103), which in turn lies behind Shakespeare's potent juice of hebona that Claudius pours in old Hamlet's ear. Spenser may also have hebonus that slepi tree in mind in Faerie Queene 2.7.52, where the tree of "Heben sad" grew in the Garden of Proserpina, surrounded by "a blacke flood which . . . is the river of Cocytus deepe." All three Renaissance writers could have, of course, been drawing upon Caxton, without knowing the original source of the phrase.
3020-21 fethrebed alofte . . . with many a pilwe of doun. Compare Chaucer's BD, lines 248-55, where the narrator offers gifts of a featherbed, black satin coverlet, pillows, and striped pillowcases to the gods if they will grant him sleep. Apparently Gower's Iris made her journey after Chaucer's narrator fulfilled his pledge! Ovid mentions no featherbed or pillows, though the ebony bed is "plumeus" and has a dark coverlet (Met. 2.611).
3059-62 In liknesse of hir housebonde . . . / These othre tuo it schewen al. The orchestration of the dream, with Morpheus' different helpers playing different roles and maneuvering stage-scenery, resembles a courtly "Disguising" or "Interlude," various names for brief plays. For brief descriptions and further references, see Wickham (Medieval Theatre, pp. 159-66, 169-75.) (See also Galloway, "Literature of 1388.")
3088 double harm. A grief two times over. Compare TC 1.1: "The double sorwe of Troilus."
3114 Hir will stod as it was tofore. Pearsall contrasts Ovid's transformations with Gower's, where though her body changes to "briddes forme" (line 3109), Alcyone's will remains unchanged, "an affirmation of the pathetic endurance of wifely fidelity" (1966, p. 480).
3187 ff. Amans' Prayer of Cephalus is based, perhaps, on Ovid's Amores, 1.13.39-40, though there the situation is reversed, with Aurora invoking the steeds of night. The lover's aubade is apparently original for the most part with Gower. Saturn's metal is lead; it is thus associated with dullness and slowness. Cephalus would have the sun residing under Saturn's influence in order that it might be slow getting up. See Specht on the rhetorical prescriptions of adlocutio (dramatic soliloquy that impersonates an appeal for pity).
3190 ff. Latin Marginalia. Hic dicit quod vigilia in Amantibus et non Sompnolencia laudanda est. Et ponit exemplum de Cephalo filio Phebi, qui nocturno cilencio Auroram amicam suam diligencius amplectens, Solem et lunam interpellabat, videlicet quod Sol in circulo ab oriente distanciori currum cum luce sua retardaret, et quod luna spera sua longissima orbem circuiens noctem continuaret; ita vt ipsum Cephalum amplexibus Aurore volutum, priusquam dies illa illucesceret, suis deliciis adquiescere diucius permittere dignarentur. [Here he says that wakefulness, not Somnolence, should be praised among lovers. And he presents an instructive example concerning Cephalus the son of Phebus, who, in the silence of night embracing his girlfriend Aurora most amorously, called out to the sun and moon, asking, namely, that the sun might slow down its chariot with his light in making an orbit more distant from the east, and that the moon, traveling an orbit with a very long trajectory, might prolong the night, so that they might deign to permit Cephalus, wrapped in the embraces of Aurora, to enjoy his pleasures longer before the day arrived.]
3240-42 nyhtes mone and the goddesse . . . in Cancro thin oghne hous. Luna (moon, Diana) is at home only in Cancer, the fourth mansion, the house of treasures and terminations. If Luna and Venus share Cancer in gladness (4.3245), it is a happy and profitable time for lovers (Walter Clyde Curry, Chaucer and the Medieval Sciences [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926], pp. 173-75).
3269 Of all his dette he paieth non. The "conjugal debt" is sex, as the common medieval interpretation of 1 Corinthians 7:3 asserted; for contemporary literary comments, see, e.g., The Wife of Bath's Prologue, CT III(D)129-30, and The Parson's Tale CT X(I)375.
3317 ff. For the story of Mercury and Argus see Ovid, Metam. 1.588-721. The author of Chaucer's Ghoast (1672) uses lines 3317-52 as the basis of his "translation" of Ovid's story of Io and Argus.
Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur in amoris causa contra istos qui Sompnolencie dediti ea que seruare tenentur amittunt. Et narrat quod, cum Yo puella pulcherima a Iunone in vaccam transformata et in Argi custodiam sic deposita fuisset, superueniens Mercurius Argum dormientem occidit, et ipsam vaccam a pastura rapiens, quo voluit secum perduxit. [Here he speaks in the cause of love against those who, having given themselves over to Somnolence, lose those things which they are held to preserve. And he narrates that, when Io, a very beautiful young woman, was transformed into a cow by Juno and had been thus deposited in the custody of Argus, Mercury intervened, killing Argus while he was asleep, and snatching the cow from the pasture, leading her with him where he wanted.]
3321 the goddesse. In Ovid, Jupiter turns Io into a cow to hide her from Juno. In Gower Juno turns her into a cow, setting up Argus as watchman, as a punishment for infidelity.
3354 mochel Slep doth ofte wo. Genius' aptitude for gnomic statements serves well to conclude the narrative in terms of his particular goals. The tale becomes a survey of sleepy choices in which its folk lose themselves through somnolence.
3390 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur super vltima specie Accidie, que Tristicia siue Desperacio dicitur, cuius obstinata condicio tocius consolacionis spem deponens, alicuius remedii, quo liberari poterit, fortunam sibi euenire impossibile credit. [Here he speaks against the last species of Sloth, which is called Sadness or Despair, whose obstinate character it is to put away the hope of any consolation, and to believe that the good fortune of any remedy, by which it might be freed, could not possibly come to it.]
3396 Tristesce. "Gower's addition of Despair as a seventh child of Envy is a master stroke. It provides fitting conclusion to the first half of the Confessio . . . . Amans shares more than he would like to see with Dido and Phyllis, those lovers strung up between hope and suicide" (Peck, Kingship and Common Profit, p. 96). N.b., the variety of terms Genius uses to define this sin: obstinacie (4.3434), wanhope (4.3443), desesperance (4.3499), despeire (4.3541), which he twice rhymes with empeire (4.3505, 4.3542), to get at the potent impairment of dwindling effects caused by tristesce, as it leans toward suicide.
3434 ff. Latin marginalia: Obstinacio est contradiccio veritatis agnite. [Obstinacy is the rejection of recognizing the truth.]
3489-95 David Allen, remarking on the analogy of Amans' love of his lady, who offers him no hope, and the penitent Christian's hope for divine grace, suggests that Amans makes a stride forward by intuiting "the flaw in the analogy between earthly and heavenly love upon which his entire confession is based" ("God's Faithfulness," p. 210).
3498-99 I am in Tristesce al amidde / And fulfild of Desesperance. "Genius ends the book with the tale of Iphis' suicide outside the gate of his would-be mistress, Araxarathen, who refuses to recognize him. It is a fit emblem of the lover of fantasy's fate. Though Genius may not have a very full understanding of the moral implications of this tale of self-destruction through indulgence of willful fantasy, his example at least shows Amans the futility of despondency. That is in itself some consolation" (Peck 1978, p. 97).
3515 ff. See Ovid, Met. 14.698-761. Gower reverses the social rank of the lover and his mistress. In Ovid, Anaxarete is highborn while the youth is lowborn. Ovid's lady feels no remorse; she is simply turned into a stone as she sees the funeral pass by her window. See Macaulay's discussion (2:513), but, especially that of David Allen, who argues thoughtfully that Gower uses the tale in its altered form to introduce theological considerations on the efficacy of God's volition. The Tale of Iphis at the beginning of Book 4 suggested that the god of love is favorable to those stable in love (see 4.443-44). The opposite seems to be the case here, as nothing this Iphis does can move Araxarathen. By reversing the social rank of the lover and mistress Gower ties the story more directly into the debate over God's potential and absolute powers. (See explanatory note to 4.3577-80.) "Amans has given himself over to a being . . . of absolute power" who rejects him absolutely; but all the while he imagines that "the lady has ordained a way for him to win her favors," according to the ordination of the Christian God ("God's Faithfulness," p. 218). Amans thus stands "in a state of complete contradiction" (p. 219), his labor being sloth rather than true "busynesse." See also Burke ("Women in John Gower's Confessio," pp. 248-50).
3518 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic narrat qualiter Iphis, Regis Theucri filius, ob amorem cuiusdam puelle nomine Araxarathen, quam neque donis aut precibus vincere potuit, desperans ante patris ipsius puelle ianuas noctanter se suspendit. Vnde dii commoti dictam puellam in lapidem durissimum transmutarunt, quam Rex Theucer vna cum filio suo apud Ciuitatem Salamynam in templo Veneris pro perpetua memoria sepeliri et locari fecit. [Here he narrates how Iphis, the son of King Theucer, on account of love for a certain girl, Araxarathen by name, whom he was not able to conquer by gifts or pleas, in despair hanged himself one night before the doors of the father of the said girl. Wherefore, the gods, moved, transmuted the said girl into a most hard stone, which King Theucer caused to be located and buried along with his son in the temple of Venus in the city of Salamyna, in perpetual memory.]
3577-80 David Allen links the wording here to the death of another king's son, Christ, who dies "showing his love for an inferior, humanity" ("God's Faithfulness," p. 213). Similar readings of the story are found in the Ovide Moralisé, especially 14.5601-05; whereas William Donald Reynolds points out that the reader is instructed to "say allegorically that this girl is the soul, this young man Christ who was hung on the gibbet of the cross for love of her" ("Ovidius Moralizatus," p. 414).
3627-28 And as I dede, do to me. / For I ne dede no pité. In Ovid, Anaxarete is "unmoved by her lover's fate." In Gower, "stricken with remorse" over her lack of pity, Araxarathen follows the golden rule and begs for punishment. "She behaves, in fact, like a lady" (Pearsall, "Gower's Narrative Art," pp. 480-81).
3648-66 See Lynch's discussion of this vivid description with which Genius concludes his tale. The descriptive technique differs from the rest of the tale, written in a plain style, with little pictorial material (pp. 173-76). Lynch calls the tale an epitome of the way Gower points his narratives.
Abbreviations: A = Bodleian Library MS Bodley 902 (SC 27573), fols. 2r-183r; B = Bodleian Library MS Bodley 294 (SC 2449), fols. 1r-197r; C = Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 67, fols. 1r-209r; F = Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 3 (SC 3883; copy-text for this edition), fols. 2r-186r; J = Cambridge, St. John's College MS B.12 (34), fols. 1r-214r; Mac = G. C. Macaulay; S = Stafford, now Ellesmere 26, fols. 1r-169v; T = Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.2 (581), fols. 1r-147v.
65 Lachesse. So F, S, and B; Mac: lachesce.
86 remembrance. So in S; F: remebrance; J and B: remembraunce.
138 mihte. So in F and A. Mac emends to miht as in J and S.
170 Hath. F: Had. Mac's emendation on the basis of other good MSS.
187 Lachesce. So in F, S, and B; Mac: Lachesse.
269 Althogh. So in J and S; F: All thogh, followed by Mac; B: Al þough.
317 Latin marginalia, line 2: ymaginatiua. F: ymaginatitiua; B: ymaginatiue.
514 mihte. So in F, A, and S; Mac: miht; J: myht; B: might.
584 out. So in B and Mac; F: ouht; S: out fro.
586 al. So in F, S, and B; Mac: all.
684 To. So in F; J, S, B, and Mac: That.
708 what. So in J, S, B, and Mac; F: whatt.
833 al. So in F, J, S, and B; Mac: all.
1031 necligent. So in F and B; S and Mac: necgligent.
1222 Mi. So in F and S; Mac: my, as in B. Also in line 2675.
1224 Mac omits the speech marker.
1321 faye. Several good MSS read: faire. See Mac 2.337.
1321-22 J reads: The beaute of hir face shon / Wel brihtur þen þe cristel ston.
1336 thei. So in F, S, and B; Mac: they.
1568 hir. So in F, S, and B; Mac: her.
1592 mai. So in F and S; Mac and B: may. So too in lines 2308 and 3176.
1619 ff. Latin marginalia, line 2: torpescat. F: nultenus. Mac's emendation.
1805 knyhthode. So in S and Mac; F: knyhode; J: knyghthode; S: knighthode.
1838 Bot. So in S; Mac and B: But; J: Bote. So too in line 3266.
1875 to the(e) (two words). So in J, C, and B; F, A, and Mac: tothe.
1893 lust. So in J, S, B, A, and Mac; F: luste.
1944 be slain. So in J, S, B, and Mac; F: beslain.
2010 made. So in F and B. Mac emends to mad, as in A, J, C, and T.
2183ff. Latin marginalia, line 1: Turnum. So in B; F: Turnuum. Mac emends silently.
2251 eldemoder. Several good MSS read eldirmodor, or some variant. J: elde modor; S: eldemoder; B: olde moder. See Mac 2.362.
2324 a wise. So in J, S, B, and Mac; F: awise.
2503 remenant. So in B and Mac; F: rememant.
2512 left. So in J, B, and Mac; F: lefte.
2534 ferst. So in F, J, and A. Mac emends to ferste, with support from S.
2534 ff. Latin marginalia, line 3: qui membra. So in B and Mac; F: que membra.
2642 and. Mac emends to as, following S and B.
2743 schal. So in J, B, and Mac; F: shal.
2867 him. So in J and Mac; F and B: hem.
3233 Thi. So in J, S, B, and Mac; F: This.
3427 grete. So in F and A. Mac emends to gret, with support from J, C, and B.
3437 resoun. So in F and B; Mac: reson.
3445 Til. So in F, J, and B; Mac: Till.
3515 Whilom. So in S, B, and Mac; J: Somtyme.
3560 mannes. So in S, B, and Mac; F: manes; J: monnes.
3576 slepest. So in J, S, B, and Mac; F: sleplest.
3596 syh. Mac emends to syhe, in accord with A, J, S, and B.
3607-08 vengance/chance. So in S; F and Mac: vengance/chaunce; B: vengaunce/chaunce.
3678 a man. So in J, B, and Mac; F: aman.