The Dante Anecdote in Gower's Confessio Amantis, Book VII

Abstract

In the second recension of the Confessio Amantis, John Gower added an anecdote on the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri as an example in his discussion of flattery in Book VII. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, Petrarch's Rerum memorandarum libri has been indicated as the source for such an anecdote. The anecdote in question does not appear in what is currently considered to be the third and final version of Gower's work; it together with other passages is one of the characteristics defining the second version of the Confessio Amantis. In this article I investigate the origins and early history of this anecdote and the most likely channels for its transmission to Gower. This investigation revises previous assessments of Petrarch's influence and suggests the likelihood that Gower had recourse to oral sources based upon a received synthesis of the two main strands of the anecdote. These findings offer support for a revision of the chronology of recensions 2 and 3 of the Confessio Amantis, and also raise wider questions about the use of source material not only by Gower but also by other medieval and early modern poets. My contention, as illustrated below, is that the Dante anecdote in the Confessio Amantis represents the earliest known written manifestation of an oral tradition that is in fact the conflation of two different strands of the tale. A specific, practical consequence of this contention is to rule out the possibility, should anyone be so inclined, of referring to such anecdote as evidence of Gower's direct knowledge of Petrarch's Rerum memorandarum libri. More importantly, an awareness of the multifarious background from which the anecdote arose provides a useful case study illustrating the importance of oral traditions as narrative material for medieval writers and showing that the lines of demarcation between oral and written sources were far from clear-cut. Tracing oral traditions is ipso facto a hazardous enterprise. However, in this case, we are fortunate in that this specific tradition has left behind a trail of written clues. In an important and influential study of Dante's fortune in England, published in 1909, Paget Toynbee indicated a paragraph in Petrarch's [End Page 420] Rerum memorandarum libri as the source of the Dante anecdote in the second recension of John Gower's Confessio Amantis.1 The Gower anecdote reads in this manner: Nota exemplum cuiusdam poete de Ytalia, qui Dante vocabatur. How Dante the poete answerde To a flatour, the tale I herde. Upon a strif bitwen hem tuo He seide him, "Ther ben many mo Of thy servantes than of myne. For the poete of his covyne Hath non that wol him clothe and fede, But a flatour may reule and lede A king with al his lond aboute." (VII.2329–37*)2 The Petrarch text is as follows: Dantes Allegherius, et ipse concivis nuper meus, vir vulgari eloquio clarissimus fuit, sed moribus parumper contumacior et oratione liberior quam delicatis ac fastidiosis etatis nostre principum auribus atque oculis acceptum foret. Is igitur exul patria cum apud Canem Magnum veronensem, comune tunc afflictorum solamen ac profugium, versaretur, primo quidem in honore habitus deinde pedetentim retrocedere ceperat minusque in dies domino placere. Erant in eodem convictu histriones ac nebulones omnis generis, ut mos est; quorum unus procacissimus obscenis verbis ac gestibus multum apud omnes loci ac gratie tenebat. Quod moleste ferre Dantem suspicatus Canis, producto illo in medium ac magnis laudibus concelebrato, versus in Dantem: "Miror" inquit, "quid cause subsit, cur hic cum sit demens nobis tamen omnibus placere novit et ab omnibus diligitur, quod tu qui sapiens diceris non potes." Ille autem: "Minime" inquit, "mirareris, si nosses quod morum paritas et similitudo animorum amicitie causa est."3 Dante Alighieri, also a former fellow citizen of mine, was a most excellent author in the vulgar tongue, but of rather more insolent manners and freer speech than is...