Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus and John Gower's Confessio Amantis

ISBN-13: 9780521471817 / Angielski / Twarda / 1995 / 334 str.

J. Simpson; James Simpson; Alastair Minnis

Opis

This study examines two great poems of the later medieval period, the Latin philosophical epic, Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus (1181-3), and John Gower's English poem, the Confessio Amantis (1390-3). James Simpson locates these works in a cultural context dominated by two kinds of literary humanism, in which the concept of self is centered in the intellect and the imagination respectively, and shows the very different modes of thought that lie behind their conceptions of selfhood and education.

Recenzje

'The originality of the juxtaposition is one measure of the provocativeness and occasional brilliance of Simpson's vigorous and ambitious new study, which offers radically novel readings of both poems at the same time that it draws them together in an intriguing exploration of the nature of the humanist poetics of the Middle Ages.' John Gower Newsletter

Spis treści

1. Introduction; 2. The outer form of the Anticlaudianus; 3. A preposterous interpretation of the Anticlaudianus; 4. Alan's philosopher-king; 5. Ovidian disunity in Gower's Confessio Amantis; 6. Genius's psychological information in Book III; 7. The primacy of politics in the Confessio Amantis; 8. Poetics; 9. Conclusion: varieties of humanist politics.