John Gower: The French Balades

198 Pages·2011·2.474 MB·English

by  R. F. Yeager

John Gower
T F B
he rench alades
p Middle english TexTs series p
General editor
Russell A. Peck, University of Rochester
associate editor
Alan Lupack, University of Rochester
assistant editor
John H. Chandler, University of Rochester
advisory Board
Theresa Coletti Michael Livingston
University of Maryland The Citadel
Rita Copeland R. A. Shoaf
University of Pennsylvania University of Florida
Susanna Fein Lynn Staley
Kent State University Colgate University
Thomas G. Hahn Paul E. Szarmach
University of Rochester The Medieval Academy of America
David A. Lawton Bonnie Wheeler
Washington University in St. Louis Southern Methodist University

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John Gower
T F B
he rench alades
Edited and Translated by
R. F. Yeager
TEAMS • Middle English Texts Series
MEDIEvAL InSTITUTE PUBLICATIonS
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo
Copyright © 2011 by the Board of Trustees of
Western Michigan University
Manufactured in the United States of America
The Library of Congress has already cataloged the paperback as follows:
Gower, John, 1325?-1408.
[Traitié. English & French]
The French balades / edited and translated by R.F. Yeager.
p.cm. -- (Middle English texts series)
English and French on facing pages.
"Published for TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle
Ages) in association with the University of Rochester."
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58044-155-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Yeager, Robert F. II. Gower, John, 1325?-1408. Cinkante. English &
French. III. Title.
PQ1463.G98T7313 2011
841'.1--dc22
2010052306
ISBN 978-1-58044-155-1
eISBN 978-1-58044-452-1
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1
TRAITIÉ SELONC LES AUCTOURS POUR ESSAMPLER LES AMANTZ MARIETZ
Introduction 5
Text 12
Explanatory Notes 34
Textual Notes 44
CINKANTE BALADES
Introduction 49
Text 56
Explanatory Notes 132
Textual Notes 148
APPENDIX 1: A TRANSLATION OF THE TRAITIÉ (QUIXLEY) 153
APPENDIX 2: A NOTE ON GOWER’S FRENCH BY BRIAN MERRILEES 175
BIBLIOGRAPHY 179

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The translations and commentary printed here have indebted me to few, but to those,
deeply. Foremost among them is Brian Merrilees, who assiduously read everything, com-
mented gently but always wisely and with extraordinary patience, and contributed as well
the learned pages on Gower’s particular Anglo-French patois. His encouragement, his excite-
ment about the project, and his willingness to allow my many questions to find him in
Canada, Normandy, or New Zealand were several times the margin by which the work went
forward. Similarly, Robert S. Sturges’ benignly proffered clarity about Gower’s grammar in
the Traitié was instrumental in convincing me at an early stage to carry on. Indispensable
help at one level or another with questions related to manuscripts came from Derek Pearsall,
A. S. G. Edwards, Dan Mosser, Ralph Hanna, Helen Cooper, Alastair Minnis, John Fleming,
Eva Oledzka of Duke Humphrey’s Library, Sandra Bailey of the library at Wadham College,
the anonymous “Enquiry Officer” in Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University
of Nottingham, Sam Block, and the most gracious staff at Fondation Bodmer. Kathryn D.
Van Wert and John H. Chandler formatted the volume and prepared it for publication.
Patricia Hollahan and Tom Krol at MIP saw the volume through the press. And, as is true
for so many of us, I am doubly grateful to Russell A. Peck — immediately for his work with
this volume and his good guidance as general factotum of TEAMS, but more generally (and
profoundly) for his friendship over lo, these many years. We are all grateful to the NEH for
helping to fund the series.
vii

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
The English poet John Gower (d. 1408) has left substantial bodies of work in Middle
English, Latin, and Anglo-French — all three, that is, of the major languages of his place
and time. This accomplishment is truly remarkable, not only among poets in medieval
England or on the Continent, but among poets generally, then or ever. It is hard to name
anyone other than Gower who has done so, let alone in such quantity and with such skill.
That Gower sought this singularity self-consciously, and was proud of it, requires no firmer
evidence than a look at the tomb he designed for himself in Southwark Cathedral. Beneath
his effigy’s head lie three great books bearing the titles of his most important poems: Vox
Clamantis (composed in Latin), Confessio Amantis (in Middle English), and Speculum Meditantis
(better known by its French title, Mirour de l’Omme).1 Gower’s claim to be England’s trilingual
master memoria in aeterna is echoed in the short poem in Latin elegiacs, “Eneidos, Bucolis,”
attributed to an unidentified “Philosopher” in the manuscripts (but almost without doubt
from Gower’s own hand), in which Gower is found superior to Virgil, whose Georgics,
Bucolics, and Aeneid were written — after all! — in Latin alone.2 One can imagine conver-
sations about choice of language taking place between Gower and his longtime friend
Geoffrey Chaucer, with Gower firmly cautioning Chaucer not to tie his chance at immortality
to a vernacular both poets considered to be woefully and whimsically mutable.3
Literary history has, of course, thus far proven Chaucer’s the better wager. More the
linguistic optimist, and an intellectual true to his times, Gower failed to foresee his country-
men’s rapid spiral into near-complete monolinguality. (The early fifteenth-century English
rendering of the eighteen balades of the Traitié selonc les auctours pour essampler les amantz
1Thus the titles as they appear on the tomb today. We cannot be as certain that this order
represents Gower’s intention as we are that all three titles were so displayed at installation.
2The ascriptive headnote reads: “Carmen, quod quidam Philosophus in memoriam Iohannis
Gower super consummacione suorum trium librorum forma subsequenti composuit, et eidem gratanter
transmisit” [“A poem, which in remembrance of John Gower a certain philosopher composed in the
following form and happily sent to the same man, to commemorate the completion of his three
books”]. “Eneidos, bucolis” is known from five manuscripts: London, British Library, MS Cotton
Tiberius A.iv; Glasgow, University of Glasgow Library, MS Hunter 59 (T.2.17); London, British
Library, MS Harleian 6291; Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98; and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS
Fairfax 3, the latter two of which Gower is thought likely to have supervised in production. See further
the discussion of “Eneidos, Bucolis” by Kuczynski in “Gower’s Virgil,” pp. 172–73.
3Chaucer famously expresses his concern about the mutability of English in Troilus and Criseyde
V.1793–96; see further “Chaucers Wordes unto Adam, His Owne Scriveyn.” For Gower, English
seemed shaky, a language in need of support: as he points out in the Confessio Amantis Prol.22–23
“fewe men endite / In oure Englissh” (second recension).
1