A Southwark Tale
Gower, the 1381 Poll Tax, and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10784651 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Sebastian Sobecki (0000-0002-5987-1260, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 92 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 630-660 |
| Publication date | 2017-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Speculum (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-7134 • E-ISSN: 2040-8072 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/692620 |
| OpenAlex | W2717319900 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 20 |
During the second half of the 1380s, John Gower, the leading fourteenth-century poet and an acquaintance of Geoffrey Chaucer, was working on his longest English poem, the Confessio Amantis. Chaucer, in turn, is believed to have been writing some of the material that would later form The Canterbury Tales. In addition, Chaucer was probably finishing Troilus and Criseyde, which must have been available before March 1388, at least in part, to Thomas Usk, the poet and undersheriff of London, who names the poem and borrows from Chaucer's Boece in his Testament of Love. 1 It is in the Confessio and in the Troilus, that is, in works written in the second half of the 1380s, that Chaucer and Gower first refer to one another in a literary context. 2 The only other instance that connects the two names is a 1378 legal record, in which Chaucer hands power of attorney to Gower and the lawyer Richard Forster. 3 Rather than reading this document as proof of Gower and Chaucer's supposed personal friendship, I adduce new evidence for Gower's legal training that suggests that the 1378 record was a purely professional arrangement-Chaucer might simply have needed a team of lawyers at the time. There is no reason to read this document through the prism of an instance of poetically embedded praise some ten years later, particularly given Gower's likely career as a lawyer
Fifteenth · Middle English · Classics · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · History · Medieval Iberian Studies · Medieval Literature and History
Lordship and Literature
John Gower, Poetry and Propaganda in Fourteenth-Century England
The Medieval Office of Works
Bishop, Prioress, and Bawd in the Stews of Southwark
John de Cobham and Cooling Castle's Charter Poem
Ecce patet tensus
The Oxford History of the Laws of England
The History of the Equitable Jurisdiction of Chancery before 1460
Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls, 1323-1364
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2024 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |