Chaucer's Language and the Philosopher's Tradition

Abstract

Burnley's book argues that for authors like Gower and Chaucer, culture, whether courtly or scholastic, was international and multi-lingual; linguistic boundaries which trouble modern critics did not constrain their consciousness, and connotations and associations of words they used extended into literary traditions of French and Latin (8). Gower's trilingual poetry, for example, shows that for Gower language was largely a question of stylistic register. In addition, Chaucer and Gower's audience must have been composed of educated men like civil servants and lawyers who would have had linguistic competence to appreciate rich philosophical and ethical complexity of their thought and language. After Burnley's introduction, Gower appears sporadically throughout book, most prominently in chapters 1 (The Tyrant) and 4 (The Philosopher). In former, Burnley describes Gower's political convictions and his method of contrasting rex tyrannus with exemplary king. Burnley defends Gower against allegations of sycophancy and argues that Gower tended to dissolve real historical kings into exemplary figures in line with (for Gower) salient historical and rhetorical patterns. While Richard II was young, Gower saw himself as Aristotle advising Alexander, but he gradually came to envision himself more as Seneca restraining madness of Nero. Burnley then describes how Senecan tradition throughout Middle Ages viewed tyranny as primarily a psychological problem, and thus signified by presence of cruelty and anger and by lack of reason and pity. In chapter 4, The Philosopher, Burnley comes back to Gower, this time focusing on two tales that teach patience and stoicism, tale of The Patience of Socrates and tale of Diogenes and Alexander. Burnley suggests that in latter, the names of participants are inconsequential (71), because Gower's main point is to create a conceptual opposition between philosopher and tyrant, and between reason and will. Aside from these extended discussions of Gower's work, Burnley makes a number of other brief references to Gower. He mentions, for instance, that Gower views politics as well as virtue of prudence as aspects of practical philosophy (45, 54-55); that Gower's term Folhaste, used in relation to stories of Jupiter, Juno, and Tiresias and Pyramus and Thisbe, is a rare word in Middle English (47-48); that Gower frequently conflates pity and mercy and describes Christ's incarnation as an example of God's pity that extends beyond justice (139, 143); that Gower's story of Donation of Constantine tackles issue of virtuous pagan; and that Gower understands gentillesse as a virtue consonant with courtesy and reasonable living (152). [CvD]