Writing the literary zodiac: Division, unity, and power in John Gower’s poetics

444 Pages·2009·1.14 MB·English

by  Kimberly Zarins

WRITING THE LITERARY ZODIAC:
DIVISION, UNITY, AND POWER IN JOHN GOWER’S POETICS

A Dissertation
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School
of Cornell University
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

by
Kimberly Zarins
August 2009
© 2009 Kimberly Zarins
WRITING THE LITERARY ZODIAC:
DIVISION, UNITY, AND POWER IN JOHN GOWER’S POETICS

Kimberly Zarins, Ph. D.
Cornell University 2009

This dissertation explores attitudes toward literary form in fourteenth-century
London’s trilingual culture and what it means to package science, politics, and social
upheaval as literature. John Gower, the author of substantial poems in the three
languages of his day treating topics as varied as clerical greed, aristocratic vice,
rebellion, astronomy, and alchemy, writes at the intersection of literature, history, and
science. Though called a historian and a compiler, Gower was foremost a poet whose
political, cultural, and scientific writings grew out of his sense of poetry as a whole
built from smaller pieces.

Division was a force Gower feared, yet exploited. Though Gower critiques the broken
political body, most famously in his treatment of the 1381 Rebellion but also
throughout his many writings on politics, division could also signify marvelous
design. To Gower, the music of the mythical harper Arion is not pure magic but a
technical product of “mesure,” a word signifying notes organized in a pattern.
Similarly, the stars of the zodiac are divided into signs, and alchemy, though it
transforms diverse metals, requires divided elements before it can unite them through
an elaborate process of refinement. Gower examines the sciences’ negotiation between
division and harmony as a way of articulating his own poetic project. Division is a
theme throughout his corpus, physically rendered by the metaphor of the body—be it
zodiacal, alchemical, political, bestial, incestuous, or verbal—and thus the body’s
valences are multiplied by examining its parts as well as its whole structure. Division
is not always something to be feared; it can be a way to know an object more fully by
examining its detailed composition.

Broadly speaking, the chapters investigate Gower’s poetic experiment with parts and
wholes. Chapters One and Two explore the parts and wholes of language.
Meaningful play in rhyme words can underscore words within words and differences
in words that appear the same. Syllabic play, meanwhile, allows a poet to build words
from pieces. Chapter Three investigates Gower’s attitude toward alchemy, the process
of converting base metals to gold, or multiplicity to singularity. While Gower lauds
this science, he is aware of language’s limitations in engaging in this process; words
generate more words, and translations lose the secrets of older texts composed in other
languages. In Chapter Two I discussed the bodies of the 1381 rebels, allegorized as
beasts with hybrid forms, while Chapter Four explores processes of change in
composite bodies, including the zodiac man, Nebuchadnezzar’s Statue of Precious
Metals, and the Greek pantheon as an anatomical man. Chapter Five contrasts
Chaucer’s and Gower’s literary presentation of astronomy; Chaucer’s House of Fame
seeks authority in literature, while Gower’s praise of science is for its own sake.
Gower’s treatise is given a literary spin in the manner in which Gower writes of the
constellations as objects that operate as couplets, both of which engage in meaningful
repetition and productive duality. Chapter Six treats linguistic composite bodies
through the theme of incest in riddles as developed in Gower’s Mirour de l’Omme and
Confessio Amantis.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Kim Zarins is a medievalist who has taught courses at Cornell University, San
Francisco State University, and Santa Clara University. In the fall 2009 she will be an
Assistant Professor of English at the California State University at Sacramento. She
has published chapters in book collections on Victorian medievalism, Shakespeare’s
medieval cultural contexts, and John Gower. She also is the author of a children’s
book. She lives with her husband and son in Northern California.
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To Mark and Arthur
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I have many debts professional and personal to friends, family, colleagues, teachers,
and students. Writing on John Gower has exposed me to a group of brilliant scholars.
My thanks go to Russell Peck, who urged me to pursue my interest in rime riche and
made me feel that my work contributed to Gower studies; to R. F. Yeager, who has
been an encouragement all along; and to Maura Nolan, who generously read my rime
riche chapter with incredible care and fine editing. Getting such encouragement from
scholars beyond Cornell’s safe haven has been invaluable. That same support and
inclusion applied after my family’s move to California. My sincere thanks go to
Beverly Voloshin and Lorretta Stec, for the honor of teaching at San Francisco State
University, and to John Hawley for allowing me to teach the Chaucer course at Santa
Clara University. I am especially blessed to connect with medievalists in the Bay
Area, especially Maura Nolan at the University of California, Berkeley; Julie Paulson
at San Francisco State University; Diane Cady at Mills College; and Jennifer Summit
at Stanford University: thank you for making me feel a part of the medievalist
community of the Bay Area. As I prepare to teach at the California State University at
Sacramento, I am glad to be near so much talent and kindness.

I am grateful for my years at Cornell, which was an unbelievably wonderful and
nurturing place. I have fond memories of the Risley dinners with Tom Hill, Katherine
Terrell, Zubair Amir, and Mimi Yiu; of stunning waterfalls and unbeatable ice cream;
of a lovely trip with friends to the Netherlands for Hyowon Kim’s wedding; of John
Sebastian shattering a window (“it was just a pebble”) in his zeal to get into the
building after lock-up for an evening Old Norse session; of Tom Hill’s Norse reading
group, much missed; of movie nights in Ithaca enjoying good company and Sarah
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Heidt’s legendary pies. I will never forget teaching my Norse mythology class and the
students who remained friends over the years: Christina Rockwell, who catches snakes
bare-handed; Allison Kong; Alex Wolf; Corinne Kendall, who taught me to knit;
Colleen Dougherty; Matt LaBoda; and Mark Barnett. I am grateful for the talented
group of peers who exchanged drafts and encouraged each other at every step; my
deepest debts personal and professional go to Katherine Terrell, Esther Hu, Johanna
Kramer, and Libby Maxey. Thank you for your friendship, and may your children’s
photos adorn my refrigerator for many years to come. To Connie and Maurizio, thank
you for your encouragement; I await the day you move to California.

Of Cornell faculty, my thanks go to Dorothy Merman, then Director of Graduate
Studies, and to all the faculty, too many to name, who changed the way I read and
teach. Fred Ahl informed my understanding of the Latin epic and gave me my first
encounter with Statius. I will fondly remember Carol Kaske’s Spenser course and my
time assisting her teach the Culture of the Renaissance undergraduate course. Harry
Shaw’s course on the novel keeps influencing how I think about medieval literature
and reminds me how good it is to read beyond one’s area of specialization.

My deepest thanks of all go to my amazingly learned and wise committee, Andrew
Galloway, Winthrop Wetherbee, and Thomas D. Hill. This dissertation owes
everything to you three. Thank you, Tom, for being so giving—not just the dinners at
Risley, but for always being available for a chat, for pulling me aside to share a book,
and for hosting the Norse reading group. Pete, you are an inspiration, as kind as you
are brilliant. Thank you for your mentoring, your wonderful Dante and Chaucer
courses, your discernment when I had a messy essay at hand, and your kind
encouragement. Andy, you have been such a wonderful mentor and a dear friend.
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Thank you for tirelessly reading draft after draft with energy and insight, and for being
a support to me especially in these last couple years. I can’t thank you enough. It has
been a joy learning from all of you. Thank you for helping me along this path as a
reader, writer, student, teacher, and parent.

And, lastly, thanks to my family. To my parents, Barry and Valerie, and to Mark’s
parents, Ray and Diane. And, most especially, to Mark, my loving thanks for taking
this journey with me. And to Arthur, our little one who, to adapt the words of
Katherine Paterson, took away from my writing time yet was the very person who
gave me something to say: I love you more than words.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Biographical sketch iii
Dedication iv
Acknowledgements v
Table of Contents viii
Introduction: Division and Gower’s Body of Work 1
Part One: Metamorphosis in a Word
Chapter One: Rhyme and Metamorphosis in the Confessio Amantis 33
Chapter Two: Decapitation in a Word: Syllabic Play and Metamorphosis in Gower’s
Vox Clamantis 103
Part Two: Alchemy and Idols
Chapter Three: Golden Measure: Arion and Alchemy in Chaucer and Gower 132
Chapter Four: Nebuchadnezzar and Bodily Babel: Gower’s Composite Bodies 169
Part Three: The Riddle of Form
Chapter Five: Writing the Literary Zodiac: The House of Fame and Gower’s Heavens
215
Chapter Six: The Science of Eloquence: Linguistic Vertu and Incest’s Riddled
Arithmetic 258
Epilogue: Life Beyond Change 319
Appendix A: Rime Riche in Direct Discourse in Gower and Chaucer 331
Appendix B: Gower’s Rime Riche Couplets 333
Bibliography 423
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