Medieval Multilingualism and Gower's Literary Practice

Abstract

Medieval Multilingualism and Gower's Literary Practice Tim William Machan The first time I heard the name John Gower, I was an undergraduate and aspiring medievalist deep in conversation with one of my professors. Desperately trying to convey maturity and professionalism, and secretly grateful simply to receive the professor's special attention, I tried to laugh at the humorous moments, nod thoughtfully at the thoughtful ones, and generally give the impression that I really knew what the conversation was about—and this despite the fact that all I'd really read from the Middle Ages was Beowulf and Sir Gawain (both in translation), the Canterbury Tales, and Sir Orfeo. Then it happened. "Well, there's John Gower, of course," he said, at which I of course nodded, "who wrote three long poems in different languages, although some people say he actually wrote the same poem three times, once in each language." Gauging my response carefully, I smiled and nodded until the professor safely moved on to other topics, leaving me, and my cover, intact. But the professor's offhand remark has now haunted me for over twenty-five years. He was referring, of course, to Gower's three longest works: Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis. What would it mean, I have wondered, to write the same poem in each of three different languages? How could such a thing be possible—syntactically, lexically, and metrically? Why would anyone attempt to do so? Who would try, for whom, and when? And in what physical setting [End Page 1] or cultural context? In these twenty-five years I have been trained as a medievalist and historical linguist—thanks in part, I hasten to add, to the professor who first uttered Gower's name in my presence. And both professionally and recreationally I have attended to the grammars and sociolinguistic underpinnings of medieval languages in particular with a zeal matching that of Dickens's Miss Blimber, who was "dry and sandy with working in the graves of deceased languages. None of your live languages for Miss Blimber. They must be dead—stone dead—and then Miss Blimber dug them up like a Ghoul."1 All this, however, has not laid to rest Gower's multilingual ghost for me. This is what I hope to do in this essay in what I see as part séance, part exorcism. Specifically, I want to summon the shade of polyglot Gower against the background of multilingualism in general and late-medieval multilingualism in particular. And I want to use these backgrounds to define and evaluate Gower's multilingual literary practices. Whatever my success in looking for answers to the questions I raised above, the questions themselves will emerge, I think, as far more complex and crucial than I at least realized a quarter of a century ago. Here is Gower himself on multilingualism: And over that thurgh Senne it comThat Nembrot such emprise nom,Whan he the Tour Babel on heihteLet make, as he that wolde feihteAyein the hihe goddes myht,Wherof divided anon ryhtWas the langage in such entente,Ther wiste no what other mente,So that thei myhten noght procede.2 In this, the Prologue to Confessio Amantis, Gower articulates common medieval exegesis of the Tower of Babel as the symbol and material cause for the dispersion of languages from Adam and Eve's original Hebrew. Sociolinguistically, language change and variation originated because of human pride and in this sense testify, like all moral failures, to our fallen condition. As Gower observes a few lines later, [End Page 2] For Senne of his condiciounIs moder of divisiounAnd tokne whan the world schal faile. (Prologue, 1029-31) By this logic, language contact portends the apocalypse, and whenever we as humans speak, the regional, social, and diachronic variance of our speech serves as yet another instance of our social and spiritual divisions from one another and from God. In a gloss to this passage—ironically, written in Latin, of course—Gower affirms this common medieval sociolinguistic exegesis by noting that Nimrod built the Tower "in dei contemptum," with the result that divine retribution divided "lingua prius hebraica...