Gower, Liminality, and the Politics of Space

Abstract

This essay studies John Gower's use of language related to place and space, and to the establishment of narrative settings, largely in the Confessio Amantis. Gower's representation of space in the establishment of landscape and place is notable for its liminality, Many of these liminal scenes are the most memorable narrative transitions in the entire work. The Vox Clamantis also projects liminal spaces, more expected in the dream-vision format, but there the experience of liminality is created by narrative perspective rather than by words or word clusters. Reliance on a liminal imaginative geography suggests how complicated, and ultimately compromised, were Gower's efforts to align his ethical, political and poetic agendas into a coherent program.