Thèses sur le sujet « Confessio amanti »

The stories we tell give meaning and coherence to our political situation; they reproduce, interrogate, and, at times, challenge the discourse of authority. Thus, when the political situation changes so do our narratives. In the thirteenth century, responding to a majestic rhetoric of vis et voluntas (force and will), the barons strengthened the community of the realm by turning it into a powerful collective identity that fostered political alliances with the gentry. By The Will of the King demonstrates how Ricardian poetry was shaped by and responded to the conflict between majestic and political rhetoric that crystallized in the politically turbulent years culminating in the Second Barons’ War (1258-1265). By placing Gower’s Confessio Amantis and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in dialogue with this political tradition, I demonstrate how narrative became a site of conflict between vertical, cosmic descriptions of power and horizontal realities of power, a conflict from which the contours of a civic habit of mind began to emerge. Over the past twenty years, scholars have begun to investigate the evolution of this habit of mind in the late Middle Ages. By looking at the narrative practice of Gower and Chaucer through the lens of thirteenth-century political innovation, I extend and fill in this depiction of a nascent political imaginary. Each poet responds to the new political circumstances in their own way. Gower, placing the political community at the center of Book VII of the Confessio, rigorously reworks the mirror for princes genre into a schematic analysis of political power. For Chaucer, political rhetoric becomes visible at the moment that the traditional majestic rhetoric of kingship collapses. The Canterbury Tales, as such, restages the conflict of the thirteenth century in aesthetic terms—giving form to the crisis of authority. Ultimately, Ricardian poetry exposes and works through an anxiety of sovereignty; it registers the limits of a majestic paradigm of kingship; and reshaping narrative, aesthetic, and hermeneutic practice, it conjures a new political imaginary capable of speaking to and for a community which had emerged during the reign of Henry III.

Il lavoro di ricerca ha per oggetto le traduzioni iberiche della Confessio Amantis di John Gower, due versioni in prosa del secolo XV, pervenuteci in un unico testimone rispettivamente. In particolare, si presenta l’edizione diplomatica di parte del ms. Madrid, Real Biblioteca, II-3088, compilato in lingua portoghese, copia effettuata nella città di Ceuta nel 1430, il cui originale fu probabilmente quel Livro do amante citato nell’inventario della biblioteca privata di Edoardo I di Portogallo, oggi considerato perduto. Se ne trascrivono per la prima volta, dopo il ritrovamento avvenuto nel 1995, il Prologo ed i Libri I, II, III, IV secondo criteri strettamente paleografici; fanno seguito l’edizione critica degli stessi ed il confronto tra le due traduzioni iberiche, al fine di determinare il tipo di rapporto tra le stesse ed il tipo di filiazione rispetto all’opera inglese, e di giustificarne, contestualizzandola, la ricezione nell’ambito delle corti iberiche, legate tra loro da relazioni familiari, e dei gusti letterari del tardo Medioevo peninsulare. L’opera, e le sue traduzioni, è un ars amandi in otto libri, oltre al prologo, in cui un Confessore illustra ad un Amante, in una cornice dialogica, i diversi comportamenti peccaminosi o virtuosi, attraverso exempla tratti da fonti antiche e coeve. Il settimo libro è un trattato di educazione del principe, che vede per protagonista la figura di Alessandro Magno. Nell’ultimo libro viene inserita la storia di Apollonio di Tiro. Edizione diplomatica, edizione critica e confronto testuale costituiscono il nucleo centrale della Tesi di dottorato. Precede il lavoro uno studio preparatorio sulla tradizione, nonché sugli studi che la riguardano. Nella parte introduttiva si analizzano entrambi i testimoni manoscritti e si apportano nuovi dati inerenti la confezione, la circolazione e la conservazione degli stessi. Partendo dagli elementi linguistici e paralinguistici dell’incipit e del colophon, si cercano di stabilire il momento e le circostanze storiche, sociali e culturali in cui videro la luce le due traduzioni. L’apporto scientifico della Tesi è dato dallo studio e dalle edizioni diplomatica e critica del testimone portoghese, copiato in territorio nord-africano in scrittura corsiva bastarda su supporto cartaceo di provenienza europea e presto trasferito nella corte castigliana, presso la quale fu probabilmente decorato parzialmente, integrato con tavole e indici in lingua castigliana, conservato, e rilegato, per poi cadere nell’oblio per vari secoli. Riconosciuto tra gli autori più importanti della letteratura medievale inglese, divenuto famoso anche grazie al rapporto d’amicizia con Geoffrey Chaucer, ed autore in più lingue, soprattutto di opere di carattere moralizzante, John Gower compose la Confessio Amantis alla fine del secolo XIV, in tre redazioni consecutive, la prima delle quali si fa risalire ad attorno al 1386. Una copia manoscritta di questa, caratterizzata dalla dedica al re Riccardo II e dal riferimento al poeta Chaucer, presente nell’epilogo, servì da modello per la traduzione portoghese che venne probabilmente prodotta presso la corte della regina Filippa di Portogallo, discendente della famiglia plantageneta, stabilitasi in territorio lusitano in seguito alle nozze con Giovanni I di Avis, avvenute nel 1387. Filippa, e Caterina, sovrana di Castiglia, figlie entrambe del duca di Lancaster, Giovanni di Gant, il quale era intervenuto in più occasioni nelle vicende iberiche della Guerra dei Cent’anni, lasciarono in eredità ai figli Edoardo I e Giovanni II, principi e re di Portogallo e di Castiglia rispettivamente, l’opera di Gower, già tradotta, o in lingua originale. Le traduzioni, eseguite in portoghese da Roberto Paim, di origini inglesi - e il cui cognome fa sospettare che fosse legato da vincoli familiari con la consorte di Chaucer, Philippa Payn -, ed in castigliano da Juan de Cuenca, appartenente ai circoli nobiliari di Huete, città che ospitava molti esiliati di origine portoghese, sono giunte in due apografi del secolo XV: la copia in portoghese risale al 1430 e fu eseguita a Ceuta da João Barroso per conto di Fernando de Castro ‘il giovane’; l’esemplare castigliano, il cui incipit dà notizia della traduzione portoghese di Paim quale base per la traduzione castigliana, è da situare negli anni ’80 dello stesso secolo. La presenza di un elevato numero di errori di copia, interni ed esterni, così come di lacune e di spazi in bianco, testimoniano come entrambi i manoscritti siano copie di originali perduti, eseguite ai fini della conservazione presso le biblioteche reali, probabilmente per uso privato dei sovrani. Non è stato possibile determinare l’appartenenza dei testimoni, per mancanza totale di riferimenti extratestuali o, nel caso del manoscritto castigliano, a causa della perdita dell’inventario dei beni librari di Filippo II, di cui si crede facesse parte. Il sovrano, fondatore del Monastero de El Escorial, presso la cui biblioteca si conserva la Confisyon del amante castigliana, donò vari volumi personali; tra questi, non è da escludere che fosse presente anche il manoscritto castigliano, che fu uno dei primi volumi consegnati alla nuova istituzione, nel 1575, come si legge nell’inventario di Briviesca. Il testimone portoghese, trasferito da Ceuta alla corte castigliana di Giovanni II, fu integrato nella sua confezione presso la biblioteca reale, tra i cui fondi non catalogati è rimasto conservato fino a circa un decennio fa. La presenza della traduzione portoghese della Confessio Amantis di Gower presso l’ambiente letterario della corte castigliana destò, con tutta probabilità, l’interesse del pubblico, o del singolo sovrano, per un’ulteriore traduzione in lingua castigliana. Il confronto tra i due testi, e di questi con l’opera del poeta inglese, dimostra la diretta dipendenza della Confisyon del amante dalla Confessio portoghese, nonostante sia evidente che la traduzione lusitana è molto più fedele al testo inglese, del quale riproduce quasi servilmente la sintassi, le scelte lessicali e lo stile, sebbene si tratti di una traduzione in prosa di una composizione in versi. Al contrario, nel traduttore castigliano è evidente un costante senso critico, inteso all’innovazione linguistica e all’abbellimento stilistico dello scarno testo portoghese, ma non è esente da ben più semplici errori meccanici, di lettura o di interpretazione, molto spesso già presenti nella traduzione in lingua lusitana. I risultati del presente lavoro costituiscono una proposta di integrazione, di rielaborazione e di aggiornamento degli studi già presenti sulla tradizione della Confessio Amantis nella penisola iberica. Le edizioni paleografica ed interpretativa del testo portoghese rendono il testo fungibile e lo propongono come punto di partenza per future e più specializzate ricerche. Le uniche due copie iberiche conosciute sono le superstiti di una tradizione che si sospetta più ampia, e che trovò la propria fortuna nell’ambito delle corti letterarie preumanistiche di Edoardo I di Avis e di Giovanni II di Trastamara. Un ulteriore lavoro di catalogazione dei fondi inesplorati delle tante biblioteche pubbliche e private esistenti dentro e fuori il territorio iberico potrebbe riservare più di una sorpresa.
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This dissertation examines the use of personae, the rhetorical artifices by which an author creates different voices, in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. I argue that the Confessio attempts to expose how discourses of sexual desire alienate subjects from their proper place in the political world, and produce artificial personae that only appear socially engaged. The first three chapters consider the creation of the personae in the context of medieval Aristotelian political thought and the Roman de la Rose tradition. The last three chapters examine the extended discourse of Gower's primary personae in the Confessio Amantis, drawing upon Gower's other works and the history of Gower criticism.

Dissertation

Many critics have seen Confessio Amantis as a work of reformist rhetoric that, drawing deeply on medieval Aristotelian conflations of ethics and politics, urges readers toward personal moral reform as the crucial means by which to heal the body politic. In such a view, the moral and public interests on full display in Mirour de l’Omme, Vox Clamantis, and elsewhere remain central to Gower’s purpose in Confessio. However, while Mirour and Vox also foreground religious concerns, Confessio is often seen as “secular” in a modern sense. I argue in this dissertation that Confessio indeed bears strong affinities to Gower’s other religious-ethical-political works, and that the main differences that set it apart from them must be understood in connection with Gower’s decision to write this work “in oure Englissh.” Notwithstanding its debt to aristocratic culture, Confessio imagines a broader and more popular audience than do Vox and Mirour. Gower’s novel language choice has major implications especially for Confessio’s uncharacteristically delicate handling of religion. Chapter 1 examines Confessio’s Ovidian debt and suggests that Confessio’s many invocations of Metamorphoses, given that poem’s fourteenth-century reception, align Confessio with Ovidian universal satire in a way that suggests totalizing religious-ethical-political synthesis. However, Confessio departs from the mainstream of fourteenth-century commentated Ovids by stripping Metamorphoses of its clergial patina and, crucially, adopting a markedly lay stance. Investigating Gower’s attitude to English vernacularity, chapter 2 notes Confessio’s association of translation with decay and demonstrates that scientific and theological passages in Gower’s English works adopt a lower register than analogous passages in his Latin works. Chapter 3 investigates the probable causes of these downward modulations, comparing Gower’s sense of linguistic decorum to those discernible in contemporary English vernacular theology. Chapters 4 and 5—on metamorphosis and art, respectively—argue that Gower finds in Ovidian writing rich resources particularly adaptable to the most delicate of Gower’s rhetorical tasks in Confessio: to address, as layman, a lay audience on matters that are unavoidably, and indeed largely, religious. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that Gower’s voice of lay religious critique plays an important role in the histories of laicization and secularization.

The aim of this study is to demonstrate that John Gower's Confessio Amantis is a work of great philosophical and poetic sophistication which is worthy of greater critical attention and esteem than it has so far received. It attempts to do this in a number of ways: firstly, it outlines some of the reasons that Gower's poem has been somewhat neglected; secondly, it looks at Gower within his literary context; thirdly, it examines the poem in the context of the poet's social, religious and political milieaux. By examining the poem from these perspectives, it is hoped that some critically useful indications of the intellectual breadth of Gower's poem will have been delineated. Chapter One: Place and Time Other critics have traced the development of Gower's adverse critical reputation, but it is Gower's proximity (poetically, linguistically and socially) to his more famous contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, which has contributed most to Gower's denigration. While his works have been more closely scrutinised in recent decades, a full appreciation of Gower's work can be achieved only by examining Gower in his own right. An analysis of the Confessio in relation to Gower's most probable intended audiences indicates a poet striving to produce a work to which a wide range of people could respond to and make use of on a number of levels. Similarly, Gower's view of himself as an author, as indicated by the Prologue of the poem, is further evidence of the breadth and seriousness of his endeavour. Chapter Two: Modes and Styles The ways in which Gower chose to frame and to present his ideas are further indications of the poem's sophistication. His use of confession, an analytical dialogue between two people with carefully defined roles, was an innovation which presented many rich poetic and philosophical possibilities. An examination of the role of the sacrament of confession in late fourteenth-century society shows that Gower had chosen a mode of discourse which was not only highly familiar to his audience but which was the most powerful tool for psychological analysis available at that time. Gower makes rich use of that tool to examine his major character, Amans, and, through this 'Everyman' figure, to examine humanity in general. As a 'lover's confession' the Confessio Amantis is an examination of human sexuality on one important level, but Gower simultaneously examines 'love' in its broader, social aspects and so explores aspects of human nature on a macrocosmic level also. Chapter Three: Voices and Characters The focus of this analysis is the central figure, Amans. The way in which Gower presents this figure is vital to an understanding of the breadth of Gower's achievement in this poem. Amans is an Everyman figure both as an archetypal lover and as an archetypal human being. Iconographical and textual evidence is surveyed to examine the presentation of this vital figure, as are relevant calendrical schemes and the topos of the Twelve Ages of Man. The breadth of possible interpretation built into the figure of Amans is another indication of the breadth of meaning in the poem. The relationships between Amans and the other major poetic figures in the work, Genius, Venus and Nature, show that Gower aimed to present a carefully considered, well constructed and intellectually challenging vision of love and its roles in the cosmos. Chapter Four:- Findings and Outcomes The confessional dialogue and its conclusion which make up the bulk of the poem are devoted to these microcosmic and macrocosmic concerns. They are framed and complemented by the poem's prologue and epilogue, which reinforce the poem's social and political concerns. Gower was highly concerned with the politics of his time, and wrote the poem to inform those politics by showing a path towards a 'common good'. By examining the political environment in which the Confessio was written, we can get some idea of what motivated him to write this poem and why he conceived of it as he did. The total structure of the poem makes it clear that he wished it to be both a poem which could be enjoyed and a proposal of a 'middle way' which could be used, by people of his own time and in times to come. He attempted to write a poem for everybody. The conclusion of the study serves to indicate further areas of study which this kind of analysis of Gower's poem could make possible.

The Confessio Amantis, a poem completed in 1393, opens with its author's pledge to: wryte of newe som matiere essampled of these olde wyse [write anew some matter modeled on these old wise books]. Expressing a commonplace among writers of vernacular literature in late medieval England, John Gower describes authorial activity as the process of translating and assimilating pre-existing narratives. This dissertation argues that such conceptualizations of authorship were embraced by illuminators of vernacular literature in their burgeoning notion of invention before the ascendance of print: as translation and compilation provided a model of creativity founded on the alteration of models, illuminators located an ideal congenial to both the restrictions and freedoms of their own profession. The centerpiece of the study is Pierpont Morgan MS M. 126, a manuscript of the Confessio Amantis produced c.1472 and made for Edward IV and his Queen Consort, Elizabeth Woodville. Although it has been acclaimed as one of the most impressive extant manuscripts of Middle English literature, it has never been the subject of a major study. The aim of the dissertation is to recognize and restore to the illustrator the power of his position between the conception of a text and the consumption of a book. Part One focuses on the illustrator's interactions with the textual voices of the Confessio Amantis, demonstrating how the images in nineteen manuscripts of the poem, including the Morgan Confessio, address the identity of the author of the poem (Chapter One); and how miniatures in the Morgan Confessio reinterpret its Ovidian narratives (Chapter Two). Part Two shifts attention to the illustrator's confrontation with his patrons. Although their impact on the production of this manuscript appears to have been minimal, I observe how, as patrons they furnished a visual context for the Morgan Confessio from within their own library of illustrated historical manuscripts (Chapter Three) and books on science (Chapter Four). Produced just before Caxton printed his first book in Westminster in 1476 and standing at the threshold of standardization, this manuscript offers a complex glimpse into the variance that epitomized creative activity in illustrated vernacular manuscripts.

Satire and counsel recur together in the secular literature of the High and Late Middle Ages. I analyze their collocation in Latin, Old Occitan, and Middle English texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth century in works by Walter Map, Alan of Lille, John of Salisbury, Daniel of Beccles, John Gower, William of Poitiers, Thomas Hoccleve, and John Skelton. As types of discourse, satire and counsel resemble each other in the way they reproduce scenarios of social interaction. Authors combine satire and counsel to reproduce these scenarios according to the protocols of real-life social interaction. Informed by linguistic pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and cultural anthropology, I examine the relational rhetoric of these texts to uncover a sometimes complex and reflective ethical discourse on power which sometimes implicates itself in the practices it condemns. The dissertation draws throughout on sociolinguistic methods for examining verbal interaction between unequals, and assesses what this focus can contribute to recent scholarly debates on the interrelation of social and literary practices in the later Middle Ages. In the first chapter I introduce the concepts and methodologies that inform this dissertation through a detailed consideration of Distinction One of Walter Map’s De nugis curialium . While looking at how Walter Map combines discourses of satire and counsel to negotiate a new social role for the learned cleric at court, I advocate treating satire as a mode of expression more general than ‘literary’ genre and introduce the iii theories and methods that inform my treatment of literary texts as social interaction, considering also how these approaches can complement new historicist interpretation. Chapter two looks at how twelfth-century authors of didactic poetry appropriate relational discourses from school and household to claim the authoritative roles of teacher and father. In the third chapter, I focus on texts that depict relations between princes and courtiers, especially the Prologue of the Confessio Amantis which idealizes its author John Gower as an honest counselor and depicts King Richard II (in its first recension) as receptive to honest counsel. The fourth chapter turns to poets with the uncertain social identities of literate functionaries at court. Articulating their alienation and satirizing the ploys of courtiers—including even satire itself—Thomas Hoccleve in the Regement of Princes and John Skelton in The Bowge of Court undermine the satirist-counselor’s claim to authenticity. In concluding, I consider how this study revises understanding of the genre of satire in the Middle Ages and what such an approach might contribute to the study of Jean de Meun and Geoffrey Chaucer.