Scott, Chaucer, and Medieval Romance: A Study of Sir Walter Scott's Indebtedness to the Literature of the Middle Ages

Abstract

According to Mitchell, Confessio Amantis is one of the many works of medieval literature with which Scott was familiar, but Scott's attitude towards the poem was evidently typical of his time. He read it, certainly, but except for the of and some lines from Book VI referring to the Tristan-story [6.467-75?] (which he quotes in the note to II.1 of Sir Tristrem [the ME version, which he edited in 1804]), it made little impression on him; on the whole he found in 'dull' (p. 37; the source for the last quotation is not specified). Scott edited the works of Dryden in 1808; and in his headnote to Dryden's translation of the Wife of Bath's Tale he cited both Florent and Marriage of Sir Gawaine: What was a mere legendary tale of wonder in the rhyme of the minstrel, and a vehicle for trite morality in that of Gower, in the verse of Chaucer reminds us of the resurrection of a skeleton, reinvested by miracle with flesh, complexion, and powers of life and motion (p. 36). Interestingly enough, Scott does not appear on any of the available lists of Gower allusions and commentary. bibliography is not large, and the example of Scott suggests that there are still other references to be identified. See Macaulay, Complete Works, II, viii-ix; Heinrich Spies, Bisherige Ergebnisse und weitere Aufgaben der Gower-Forschung, Englische Studien, 28 (1900): 163-74, 207?8; Spies, Goweriana, 1. Weitere Hinweise auf Gower in der englischen Literatur, Englische Studien, 34 (1904): 169-75; Spies, rev. of Macaulay, Complete Works, IV, Englische Studien, 35 (1905): 105-06 and n.; Fisher, Gower (1964), pp. 1-36; N.W. Gilroy-Scott, John Gower's Reputation: Literary Allusions from the early fifteenth century to the time of 'Pericles', YES, 1 (1971): 30-47; and Derek Pearsall, The Gower Tradition, in Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments (1983), pp. 184-94.] [PN. Copyright Gower Society. JGN 9.1]