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Studia Neophilologica
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The “Confession” in Gower's

Confessio Amantis
a
Peter Nicholson
a
English Dept. , University of Hawaii , 1733 Donaghho Road,
Honolulu, Hawaii, 96822
Published online: 21 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: Peter Nicholson (1986) The “Confession” in Gower's Confessio Amantis ,
Studia Neophilologica, 58:2, 193-204, DOI: 10.1080/00393278608587945

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 Studia Neophilologica 58:193-204, 1986

The "Confession" in Gower's Confessio Amantis

PETER NICHOLSON

Chaucer provided the label by which Gower has become known to most of his twentieth-
century readers when he addressed him as "moral Gower" at the end of Troilus and
Criseyde.1 The epithet is not inappropriate, and Gower might well have been pleased. His
two earliest long poems, the Mirour de l'Omme and the Vox Clamantis, are unashamedly
didactic in intent, and his best-known work, the Confessio Amantis, is a collection of
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exempla arranged according to the Seven Deadly Sins. The Confessio is also quite
different, however, in ways that determine precisely how "moral" may be applied to it.
Unlike the two earlier poems, all of its most important lessons are presented not by
exhortation but by way of analogy, in the many exempla that fill up the frame; and all of
the moralizing is presented not as a direct address to the reader but dramatically, in the
dialogue between the narrator "Amans" and his confessor. The whole framework of
fictional moralizing has received little attention from the commentators on the poem; and
apart from the attempts (which are often illuminating) to trace common moral themes in
the tales and the story of the narrator's instruction,2 Gower's exempla are most often
studied in isolation from the dialogue in which they occur.3 Even C. S. Lewis, who
described the confession as "the master-stroke which organizes the whole of Gower's
material," denied a "dramatic" unity to the poem, and treated Amans' life, the stories,
and the moral instruction as separable components of Gower's design.4 The confession
device is just as important, however, both to the moral and to the imaginative dimensions 忏悔构成了整
首诗歌的框架
of the work, as the pilgrimage that serves as the setting for Chaucer's collection of tales.
Amans provides not merely the occasion for the poem but also the anchor for all of the
confessor's teaching, and his presence allowed Gower to shift the emphasis from purely
abstract moralizing to the difficulties of the individual sinner's real experience. As in
Chaucer's collection, moreover, the frame allowed Gower to profit imaginatively from the
juxtaposition of his stories, and permitted treatment of broad questions affecting Amans
and his condition that span a number of tales and that go far beyond the categories
provided by the Seven Deadly Sins. The poet exploited all of the possibilities of the
confession frame, sometimes boldly and sometimes quite subtly. The result is a genuine
exploration rather than a mere set of moral assertions, and a more complex and more 忏悔文学的框
sophisticated analysis of the morality of human love than Gower has been given credit for. 架下探索的各
种可能性。
That analysis begins with the description of the overwhelming power of love at the
opening of Book I. Love is presented, not as a moral failing in itself, but as a painful and
uniquely paradoxical condition of human life. It is a natural and unavoidable state: the
"naturatus amor" of the opening Latin epigram (I, v. 1), set by God in "lawe of kinde"
(31), that love "a quo non solum humanum genus, sed eciam cuncta animancia naturaliter
subiciuntur" (17-19 mar.),} it binds us to all of God's other creatures in the endless
perpetuation of the species. In its other, more specifically human aspect, however, it is
much more like uncompromising Fortune with her wheel: blind (47), unpredictable
(48-51), yet overpowering (34-38), no one can govern either its onset or its degree, much
less remedy its pain; and as a particularly sorrowful example the narrator offers us himself,
a man far from Samson.or Hercules in strength but conquered by just as great a love (92
vv. 1-2). He sets up the framework for the rest of the poem by describing the effects of his
passion. It is springtime,

13-868172
 194 P.Nicholson Studia Neophil 58 (1986)

Whan every brid hath chose his make

And thenkth his merthes forto make
Of love that he hath achieved;
(I, 101-3)

but the narrator, unable to share in the general mirth because of his own lack of "sped"
(107), walks out into the woods alone, and there he repeatedly swoons with sorrow and
calls out to Cupid and Venus for their aid. The contrast to the birds is a familiar device:
Gower also uses it in his thirty-fifth ballade, where the context is also an envious lament
that Nature has given so much favor to her other creatures.6 There is nothing in itself
"unnatural" about Amans' longing, therefore, despite the extremity of his pain.7 Using
imagery drawn from a long tradition of earlier lyrics Gower first presents him to us not as
an image of sinfulness but as an example of the uniquely human capacity for unhappiness
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in love.
The remedy is to come, however, in an unconventional way, for when Cupid and Venus
appear they do not bring the quick relief that Amans expected. Cupid shows only
indifference to his plight, and stays only long enough to fix Amans' heart with a fiery
arrow: Love remains both unremitting and overpowering even to the most unfortunate of
his victims. Venus is less disdainful than her son but she responds no more directly to
Amans' prayer. Far from identifying with his passion she begins to interrogate him, and
she turns the question from the gratification that he seeks to the very source of all his pain.
Her first question, "What art thou, Sone?" (154), comes as rather a surprise; and after
Amans repeats his need for her relief (161-63) she makes clear the real purpose of her
coming:
Sehe seide, 'Tell thi maladie:
What is thi Sor of which thou pleignest?
Ne hyd it noght, for if thou feignest,
I can do the no medicine.'
(I, 164-67)

Her instructions, as Russell Peck has observed,8 recall Lady Philosophy's charge to
Boethius: "Yif thou abidest after help of thi leche, the byhoveth discovre thy wownde."9
The similarity is neither accidental nor mere parody. Venus clearly sees Amans' "sor"
very differently from Amans himself and the love poetry that he echoes, and consequently
she offers a very different type of relief. Amans has some difficulty with the notion. Like
Boethius in Book I of the Consolatio, he continues to view his situation only in terms of
his discomfort and misfortune, and after each of Venus' instructions he makes a plea for
some reassurance of her aid. But she has not come to provide the satisfaction that her
"pite" traditionally implies. The whole question of "sped," the only lack that Amans
recognizes, is set aside, and Venus, obviously faced with a difficult case, summons her
clerk and confessor Genius.
The relief that Amans seeks, the release from the discomfort and misfortune that
accompany love, is to come through his "confession." Both the paradox of this remedy
and also its very necessity are set out in the epigram with which the next section of the
poem begins:
Confessus Genio si sit medicina salutis
Experiar morbis, quos tulit ipsa Venus.
Lesa quidem ferro medicantur membra saluti,
Raro tarnen medicum vulnus amoris habet.
(I, 202 vv. 1-4)

"Rarely does the wound of love have a physician." In this poem, however, the confession
to Genius is to take on the task of "healing" that until now only Venus or the lady herself
 Studia Neophil 58 (1986) The "Confession" in Gower's Confessio Amantis 195

had been able to perform; and the problems of love are to be solved not by immediate
gratification but through another uniquely human capacity that Genius will frequently
invoke, the ability to reason. Venus has shifted the subject not just from one type of relief
to another but also from the narrator's condition, which he cannot alter, to his conduct and
behavior, which he can, and Lady Philosophy again provides the model. She offers
Boethius, through reason, through example, and through an examination of his own past
behavior, an escape from the pains and discomforts of Fortune without denying either the
inevitability or the unfairness of its operation; and Genius will do no less for poor Amans.
There is more than a single dimension, therefore, to Amans' "confession." The first, of
course, is the penitential: Genius will proceed from one category of sin to another and
carefully examine Amans upon his conduct. Equally important is the dialogue on the
Boethian model: Genius will develop an argument on the nature of love like Lady
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Philosophy's on Fortune, an argument that follows from the passage that begins Book I
and that will define the relationship between the naturalness of a God-given condition and
the need for reason and moral governance as the only remedy for its pain. And with
Amans as the special object of his lessons, Genius' argument will remain bound to the
problems faced by the most unhappy of human lovers. Amans is perfectly suited for the
role that he must play. His haplessness, his single most characteristic trait, in fact protects
him from the worst sins that a man might commit for love, but it embodies both the frailty
and the awkward aspiration that make moral governance so necessary. As Genius devel-
ops his argument he remains a constant presence, weighing each lesson against his own
behavior and against his abjectness as a lover; and both his uncertainty and the sometimes
surprising application of Genius' teaching are important ingredients in the search for moral
truth with which the poem is finally concerned.
The way in which the confession proceeds can be illustrated from Book I, which
contains some particularly good examples both of the ways in which Genius' argument is
constructed and of the importance of Amans as the object of his lessons. Like most of the 忏悔文学的共
Confessio the book is organized superficially around specific categories of sin: first a 通 特征。
preliminary lesson on the sins of the eyes and ears; then lessons on the five subspecies of
Pride; followed finally by a lesson on Humility, the remedy for Pride. The underlying
argument, however, especially when the exempla are taken into account, deals with
broader and much more complex themes; and Amans has a large part in determining both
the direction and the moral impact of Genius' lessons. On close examination Book I
provides not only a demonstration of Gower's method but also a carefully structured
outline of all the essential points in his doctrine of human love.10
Genius begins his argument with the very first group of tales. The announced theme is
the moral vulnerability of the senses. More importantly, we see Genius here in his most
serious and priestlike role as he addresses the most self-destructive forms of passion,
those in which reason is entirely obliterated, before taking up the specific forms that moral
governance must take. His first warning concerns "mislok," the dangers that occur
through seeing, and as an example of one danger Genius cites the experience of Amans
himself, the "firy Dart / Of love" (322-23) that enters the heart by way of the eyes. The
image has a long history, of course, in classical and medieval love poetry, but Genius' use
of it is also perfectly good medieval psychology of sin, and typically of the Confessio
(Amans' "healing" is another good example) Gower juxtaposes in a single image both the
lyric and the homiletic perspectives on Amans' condition. The exempla that Genius uses
also broaden the lesson imaginatively at the same time that they illustrate his point. Both
are drawn ultimately from the Metamorphoses. The first tells of Actaeon, who gazes upon
the naked Diana while she is bathing; as his punishment he is turned into a stag and hunted
down and eaten by his own dogs. The second tells of Perseus' slaying of the serpent-like
 196 P.Nicholson Studia Neophil 58 (1986)

Gorgons, who turned any man who looked directly upon them into stone. Gower short-
ened the first tale and he lengthened the second in order to create an analogy between
them and to heighten their imaginative equivalence as images of the effects of love. The
naked Diana, bathing at the spring, becomes in Gower's version an image of the seductive-
ness of beauty, another metaphorical equivalent of Love's arrow; and Actaeon's fate
portrays rather grimly the self-destructiveness of the unguarded passions.11 In the second
story, Perseus bears the shield of Athena and Mercury's sword,12 overtly representing the
"wisdom and prouesse" (429) with which to combat the transforming effects of the
monster. These two tales are clearly meant to be juxtaposed and are less interesting
individually than as a pair. Linking them at the highest imaginative level, of course, is the
unstated similarity between Diana and the Gorgons; and the analogy between them, rather
than either tale on its own, provides the most effective lesson on penetrating the masks
and deceptions of the passions.
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Genius also gives a lesson on the sins of hearing, using as his examples the asp from
Psalm 58, which stops its own ears when threatened by a charm, and Ulysses, who
blocked the ears of his men against the song of the Sirens.13 The lesson of all four tales is a
warning for Amans against the "Sotie ... / Wherof that now thi love excedeth / Mesure,
and many a peine bredeth" (539-42), and the point has been made very effectively. When
Amans is finally given the chance to speak his statements are very brief, but they have the
flat definitiveness of self-recognition: he has seen Medusa, and he has also heard the
Sirens' song. Even in accepting Genius' lessons, however, Amans redefines them, and he
opens up the problem of the relationship between Genius' general moral truth and the
realities of his own experience. The literal comparison of his lady to Medusa creates an
unavoidably comic hyperbole out of Genius' example, and turns the subject from Amans'
moral danger to the pain he has suffered from being in love. He ruefully extends the
metaphor, moreover, when he declares,
Min herte is growen into Ston,
So that my lady therupon
Hath such a priente of love grave,
That I can noght miselve save.
(I, 553-56)

It is a cold image, both of his inability to help himself and of his lack of "sped." Finally,
instead of heroically defeating the Sirens he falls down fainting where he sees his lady
stand (559-63). Amans says as much in a few words as Genius says in many, but we are
obviously in a much more human world of emotion in his reply and we can measure the
distance between the exempla and the difficulties of Amans' life. Amans does indeed
exhibit a lack of reason in Genius' terms, but all of his acknowledgments, and the unheroic
comparison of the swooning lover to the conqueror, introduce a psychological dimension
that is much more telling than the condemnation of the vice and that directs our attention
not so much to Amans' sinfulness as to the ordinary, quite human nature of his fallibility.
Amans' replies here are the beginning of the process of self-discovery that will occupy
the remainder of the confession. The man who swoons at his lady's feet, of course, is not
an ordinary exemplar of Pride, and not all of the lessons in Book I will apply to him so
directly. Genius begins his teaching where Venus began (173-76), with the need for
truthfulness in love, and is concerned that Amans' sickly disposition might be merely a
guise intended to help him gain his way. On this point Amans' ineptitude is also his
protection, and he insists, like Troilus to Pandarus under rather different circumstances
(T&C II, 1527-30), that he has absolutely no need to feign (713-16). One excess preserves
him from another, as it were, and only his concession that he might have been guilty of
Hypocrisy in the past gives justification for the lesson that follows. One must keep truth in
 Studia Neophil 58 (1986) The "Confession" in Gower's Confessio Amantis 197

love "in alle wise" (747), Genius tells him, and he proceeds with a tale on the bitter
consequences of deceit in love. This is the only tale in Book I about a man who is
overcome just as Amans is, and like Amans, Mundus typifies an essential frailty of human
nature, that innate susceptibility to love (769-75). Unlike Amans, however, and as if to
supply the example that is lacking in Amans, Mundus gets the opportunity to put his will
into action by means of an elaborate plot of deceit. Love itself is obviously taken for
granted here, both in the moralizing and in the exemplum, and the story thus marks an
important step in Genius' argument: his concern here is not the need to guard oneself
against passion but the need for honesty, and by implication virtue in the most general
sense, in the practice of love. As the tale itself illustrates, truthfulness is the most
encompassing of the virtues.14 The dangers of a lack of honesty are harm to oneself and
also harm to others, a point quickly reinforced in the story of the Trojan Horse that
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immediately follows.
Amans has a greater part to play in the next section, for the lesson is given in direct
response to his own behavior. We get our first, rather unexpected indication of how he
might indeed be guilty of some forms of Pride, and thus of some of the unsuspected forms
that Pride may take. The subject of the lesson is Inobedience. More importantly for the
general argument, Genius turns from obedience to moral law in general to the necessity of
following the commandments of Love. The inobedient one, he says, "desdeigneth alle
lawe" (1243). The particular type of obedience that he has in mind, however, is made clear
in the opening epigram:
Quern neque lex hominum, neque lex diuina valebit
Flectere, multociens corde reflectit amor.
Quern non flectit amor, non est flectendus ab vllo.
(I, 1234 vv. 3-5)
Genius echoes these verses in lines 1249—51; and he requires of Amans that he be
"buxom" to Love (1255-57). There is obviously no contradiction for Genius between the
laws of love and universal moral law, and the need for this second type of governance
follows easily and naturally from the first. We get our first full portrait of Amans' behavior
in his reply, and as in the discussion of Hypocrisy he appears to use his haplessness as an
exculpation from the sin. Certainly nothing could be further from Inobedience than the
hopeless and abject submission that he describes. He acts not like a "beste" (1240) but
like a fawning puppy (125&-63); and when he acknowledges that he disobeys his lady on
two points alone—her insistence that he speak no more of love, and that he choose
another—we too are willing to accept his claim that "it is no pride" (1305). This time,
however, his very protest provides an example of two subspecies of Inobedience that
Genius calls "Murmur" and "Compleignte," and the rest of the discussion is concerned
with the particular type of Pride that Amans has unwittingly exemplified. Our very first
view of Amans was of a dejected lover, complaining of his fate, and Genius finally corrects
him here not in the name of moral governance generally but in the name of Love. Amans
makes his own contribution to Genius' lesson by describing the emotional condition that
he suffers as a result of his "sin":
With many a Murmur, god it wot,
Thus drinke I in myn oghne swot,
And thogh I make no semblant,
Min herte is al désobéissant.
(I, 1389-92)
Just as before, his acknowledgment is much more revealing than the condemnation of the
vice. And as a remedy for his unhappy condition Genius offers him one of his most
delightful stories, the "Tale of Florent," as a lesson on the rewards for obedience in love.
 198 P.Nicholson Studio Neophil 58 (1986)

The tale is best known as an analogue of Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale." Gower's
version differs in a great many particulars, but it is just as well suited for its purpose, as a
lesson for Amans, as Chaucer's version is suited to its teller. Gower's, for instance, is told
much more from the man's point of view than the Wife of Bath's is. Far more attention is
given to Florent's choices and dilemmas, and the result is not only more appropriate to the
context but in some ways better balanced and more pointed than Chaucer's tale.15
Gower's has somewhat less suspense: the hag does not withhold her demand for marriage,
for instance, but reveals it immediately as one of the conditions of her help; but as a
consequence we get to see Florent denying her only six lines after he has promised her
anything that she desires (1555-61). In the rest of the tale long passages are given to his
indecision and his uncertainty, and there is also a long description of the loathly lady
herself (1674-91), a wonderful effictio that shows her entirely from Florent's point of view
and that puts us into his dilemma much more effectively than the Wife of Bath could afford
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to do. Her loathsomeness, rather than her fidelity, remains the single issue at the end, and
thus the lesson on obedience stands out rather more sharply. The ending, of course, holds
out a particularly high reward for virtuous conduct, and the hapless Amans, who has just
given a long speech about his own hard luck in love, siezes at the bait. With the image of
the pliant eighteen-year-old before him he eagerly promises his "obeissaunce" to love,
and he also shows a new eagerness for Genius' lessons (1865-75). It is one of the finer and
more comic moments of the confession. In his delight Amans unwittingly exemplifies
another of the subspecies of Pride, for the very next lesson is concerned with "Surqui-
drye," or Presumption.
The lesson on Surquidrye is drawn very broadly, and Genius begins by quickly taking
care of the two minor forms that Amans himself might be guilty of, loving beyond his
worth, and believing that he is loved where he is not. Amans' reply gives a persuasive
portrait of the endless uncertainties of the lover. Love is clearly no more than an empty
hope for him, a condition that he aptly compares to rowing a bottomless boat (1957-62);
and where he has been guilty of excessive hope he points out the immediate retribution he
has received in his disappointment (1963-68). In defense of his loving beyond his worth,
however, he protests to Genius,
To alle men that love is fre.
And certes that mai noman werne;
For love is of himself so derne,
It luteth in a mannes herte.
(I, 1930-33)
With so complete a confession from Amans Genius can go on to a more general lesson,
one that spans the next three tales and that in large part confirms Amans' self-exoneration
and redeems him of blame for that part of his condition that lies beyond his own power.
The first tale, of Capaneus, is the shortest in the entire discussion of Pride and defines
Genius' theme in broadest terms. The presumptuous man, Genius had said in his introduc-
tion, believes that all his strength and wit come from himself rather than from God
(1900-6). So Capaneus, refusing to recognize God's power, receives punishment in a
vengeful thunderbolt at the moment of his greatest pride. The tale that follows is about a
more specific example of forgetting one's mortal weakness, and brings the discussion a bit
closer to home. The King of Hungary is criticized by his brother for having humbled
himself before two old men on the road, and he proposes to teach his brother a lesson. He
sends to his brother's house the "trump of death," the official summons to execution. The
brother, not knowing why he has been condemned, dresses himself, his wife, and their five
children in their poorest clothes and comes before the king to beseech his pardon. The king
tells him that just as the brother had humbled himself when faced with death through the
 Studio Neophil 58 (1986) The "Confession" in Gower's Confessio Amantis 199

judgment of another man, so the king had humbled himself when he saw his own death,
according to the laws of Nature and of God, in the faces of the two pilgrims. The tale is
constructed very effectively upon contrasts—between the brother's humble procession,
for instance, and the glorious procession with which the story begins—and upon unstated
analogies, most importantly that between the "lawe of kynde" that the king evokes in his
lesson to his brother (2231) and the "kynde" that governs the awakening of springtime and
the gaiety of all the citizens earlier on (2081-90). It clearly contains lessons on more than
one type of Humility.16 The most important lesson, however, lies in the similarity
between the brother and Capaneus, and in the need to recognize the limits of our mortal
nature, both in our own conduct and in our judgment of others.
The point, however, is lost upon Amans, who perhaps speaks for many readers when he
impatiently declares:
Mi fader, I am amorous,
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Wherof I wolde you beseche

That ye me som ensample teche,
Which mihte in loves cause stonde.
(I, 2258-61)
The necessity of submitting to the laws of Nature is just as important in the case of love,
however, and Amans' demand is like the challenge of the king's brother, who did not
recognize the power of Nature when it was placed before him in the visages of the two old
men. Genius brings home the point with a clearer example of Surquidrye in love, the tale
of Narcissus. As Gower tells it, Narcissus' fault is believing himself immune to love.17
"No strengthe of love bowe mihte / His herte" (2286-87), Genius says; and like Capaneus,
he is struck with vengeance precisely where he is most proud: when he looks into the well
he believes he sees the image of a Nymph (2316-17), and he falls in love with one whom he
can obviously never hope to gain. After his death, the flower that springs from his grave,
blooming only in winter, is the final proof that his "folie" in not submitting to love was
"contraire to kynde" (2356-57). This tale reverberates upon the last one, for death and
love are brought together under the same natural law; and the lesson confirms the
insurmountable power of love remarked by Amans (1930-33) and described at the very
opening of Book I. It is also the culmination of Genius' argument on Obedience and the
third major step in his discussion of moral governance. The corollary to the overwhelming
power of love is that one cannot be free of the excesses that Genius himself condemns
simply by renouncing love. Renunciation, as in Narcissus' case, is itself one of the worst
forms of Pride and perhaps the most dangerous, since Nature exacts her vengeance most
harshly on those who are unprepared. And against those like the King of Hungary's
brother, who presume to judge others in ignorance of their own mortal nature, Genius
advocates, in a conclusion with far-reaching implications, not the way of the ascetic but
the way of the wise.
Amans has little in common, however, with anyone who has ever disdained to love, and
instead he sees in Narcissus' punishment a reflection of his own desire:
Bot wolde god that grace sende,
That toward me my lady wende
As I towardes hire wene!
(I, 2373-75)

We return, suddenly and humorously, to the one unchanging aspect of Amans' character,
his ceaseless but unsuccessful striving. His lack of success is central to the two lessons
that follow, for as a conclusion to his long discussion of Pride Genius takes the seemingly
inborn haplessness of the narrator and places it in two contrasting perspectives. The first
of these two lessons, on Boasting, is clearly inappropriate for Amans, and emphasizes the
 200 P. Nicholson Studia Neophil 58 (1986)

comedy of his failed hopes and desires.18 When Genius asks him if he has ever boasted of
any gift or letter or greeting that his lady has sent he can only reply, with both discourage-
ment and annoyance, that he has never had any occasion for the sin (2428-48). Genius is
satisfied, but in preparation for the much more serious lesson that follows he tells the story
of Albinus and Rosemund, one of the grimmest tales in the Confessio, as a warning. The
tale is concerned, though almost incidentally, with the changing fortunes of love. It is also
directly concerned with the broader moral themes of Book I. It creates an effective image
of Pride in general in the great feast that Albinus summons to celebrate his wealth and
power, and an even more effective image of the empty glory of Boasting in the ornamented
skull with which he toasts his victories over both Rosemund and her father. Like the
knights at the feast, moreover, who "casten care aweie" (2516) and think only of their
immediate pleasure, Albinus fails to recognize in the midst of all his success the grim
symbol of his own mortality, as becomes clear in the destruction that inexorably follows.
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From this tale it is only a small step to the last and most harmful of the vices of Pride,
Vainglory. The vainglorious man, like Albinus, takes no heed of the life that lies beyond
and thinks only of the joys and pleasures of the present world. The vainglorious lover in
particular, Genius says, thinks only of the novelty of his dress and of the songs that he
makes to celebrate his love, foolishly thinking that his joy will last forever. The lesson
strikes rather closer to home this time, for Amans cannot deny that he has arrayed himself
and sung like every other lover; but as he has already explained several times before, the
reward has been only disdain rather than any joy. There is the same, accustomed mix of
pathos and comedy in his reply. This time, however, there is also a new element, for his
protest ignores the general moral context in which Genius' lesson is placed, and his excuse
has serious implications of which he seems unaware. For when he complains,
Bot yit ne ferde I noght the bet.
Thus was my gloire in vein beset
Of al the joie that I made,
(I, 2735-37)
his comment, from a moral perspective, is entirely to the point. And when he goes on,
Yit couthe I nevere be so gay
Ne so wel make a songe of love,
Wherof I myhte ben above
And have encheson to be glad,
(I, 2744-47)
he describes not only his own lack of success but the condition of all who place too much
value on their love. The entire passage reveals the complexity of moral dimension that
Gower achieves with his persona. Amans' great pleasure in hearing of her "good astat"
(2764) leaves little doubt about the worthiness of his lady; and Genius gently absolves him
of whatever guilt he has without condemnation (2772). Yet Amans makes no reference in
his speech to his own mortality or to the afterlife that Genius told him to consider, and the
virtuous pleasure that he describes is still without comparison to the greater joy that he
unknowingly alludes to (2746-47). Genius is still obliged, moreover, to instruct him, "This
veine gloire forto fie, / Which is so full of vanité" (I, 2783-84). For the sin lies not in the
pleasure or reward but in the preoccupation. At this point the hapless Amans, loving
earnestly and winning only sorrow, taking joy only in the report of a woman whom he can
never attain, is no longer merely a comic figure. For a brief moment, in the more serious
mood that comes as we near the end of Book I, his disappointed hopes stand as an image
of all the vain desires that mortals pursue.
This is Amans' last confession in Book I, and it opens the way for the great widening of
perspective with which the book concludes. The last two tales contain Genius' most
 Studia Neophil58 (1986) The "Confession" in Gower's Confessio Amantis 201

general lessons on Pride. The story of Nebuchadnezzar's punishment follows the Book of
Daniel very closely, and depicts vainglory in the lack of recognition of the place of even
the mightiest of kings beneath almighty God. The "Tale of the Three Questions," on the
other hand, is apparently of Gower's own invention. It tells of the humbling of another
proud king, not by God Himself but by a young girl who both exemplifies and teaches
Humility. It concludes the book, moreover, with the only direct appeal to revelation, in
the references to the incarnation as an example of both humility and love (3066 vv. 1-4;
3275-80). Both tales also contain a lesson on human love. After the first Genius tells
Amans to remember Humility as an essential part of his humanity and as a precondition for
the "sikernesse" that he so clearly lacks (3043-48). For lovers generally he concludes,
A proud man can no love assise;
For thogh a womman wolde him plcse,
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His Pride can noght ben at ese.

(I, 3050-52)

In context, "at ese" can mean either "satisfied" or "secure." Both senses suggest, in
rather different ways, that love in itself is never a sufficient pleasure; and the second
implies, with somewhat greater seriousness, that the proud lover, forgetting God, is as
void of "sikernesse" as Nebuchadnezzar was before his fall. The last tale also treats love
and Pride together, but ends more positively. Peronelle is the opposite of Nebuchadnezzar
in every way. Her principal virtue is her understanding of Humility, which she uses to
correct a king, to save her father, and to win for herself a husband. Thus, though the tale is
concerned with moral virtue generally, it ends upon a virtuous love; and though the first of
Peronelle's answers to the king's riddles concerns the fruitlessness of earthly toil, the tale
ends not with a renunciation of the world but with a happy marriage. Book I concludes,
therefore, with the broadest possible perspective on the human condition and also with an
affirmation of human love; and with the contrary examples of Lucifer and Peronelle before
him there is a double meaning in Genius' final counsel:
Forthi, my Sone, if thou wolt love,
It sit thee wel to Ieve Pride
And take Humblesce upon thi side;
The more of grace thou schalt gete.
(I, 3422-25)

The two senses of "grace" in this passage provide a fitting conclusion to the moral
teaching of Book I, for Genius has represented the claims both of our mortal aspirations
and of our spiritual nature too; and though his doctrine of love is built upon a recognition
of the conflicting and sometimes paradoxical demands upon our behavior, it also holds out
the possibility of a reconciliation. His argument has been complex, but it has proceeded
one step at a time: from the absolute need for reason to govern the passions; to the
particular forms that reason and moral governance must take; to the need to recognize the
demands of our mortal nature as well; ending finally by placing the entire discussion
beneath a heavenly perspective while simultaneously embracing the reality of human love.
Like the "Tale of Apollonius" in Book VIII, another romance that occurs at an equally
crucial point in the poem's design, the tale of Peronelle and the "Three Questions"
achieves a balance between the differing aspects of our nature. The final reward for virtue
in the most general sense, here defined as a rejection of Pride, is the very best one may
achieve both in one's moral and spiritual life and in one's earthly endeavor too. In earthly
terms, the reward for virtuous conduct is not merely a happy marriage but a triumph over
the uncertainties and painfulness traditionally associated with human love with which
Book I begins. This reconciliation is expressive of Gower's highest ideal, for it offers a
 202 P.Nicholson Studia Neophil 58 (1986)

place for human love within God's total scheme that is both an affirmation of the mortal
part of our nature and also the strongest basis for Gower's advocacy of virtue in love.
Equally important to Gower's doctrine, however, is the difficulty of attaining this ideal,
a difficulty that is embodied in the contrast between Peronelle and Amans. For the
resolution that Peronelle achieves can only be an aspiration for the narrator, and the
differences between them are in one sense the differences between a tale of romance and
real life. Gower's presentation of love requires a figure who must steer his way among the
many conflicting demands upon him. Amans fulfills the role, and in doing so he defines in
very human terms the nature of the quest with which the poem is concerned. In many
ways his story is more interesting than Peronelle's. By turns impatient, despondent,
rueful, eager, annoyed, he provides that variety of response that proves that Gower is
always thinking about the human application of Genius' lessons. Gower also takes care to
place his haplessness, his single most memorable trait and his strongest link to a long
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tradition of literary lovers, in a number of different lights. At times in Book I he arouses

our sympathy for his enormous hard luck. At other times (as when Genius interrogates him
on Boasting) he is merely a comic foil, and his ill success as a lover stands for
the comedy of all human aspirations in an imperfect world. There are also important
moments—in the discussion of Presumption, and the examination on Vainglory—when his
misunderstanding provides a dramatic illustration of the blindness to one's own nature that
is caused by Pride, and his inaptness is merely a disguise for the unknowing ease with
which one may fall into sin. Even at these moments, however, when his behavior is so
important to Genius' definition of Pride, he is not condemned, for his failures are in every
way as limited as his successes. The revelation in his last confession that he is most guilty
of the most serious form of Pride occurs subtly but unmistakably, and is just as chastening
for the reader as it is to Amans. Since it occurs ironically, however, the emphasis is not on
Amans' failure but on his fallibility, and on the weakness and vulnerability of our mortal
nature that Amans represents that makes the quest for moral governance both so difficult
and so necessary.
The Confessio is thus a moral work, to be sure, but its dramatic form is an essential part
of the morality that it teaches, for the entire poem is built around an exploration of the
relationship between general moral truth and the realities of human endeavor. The frame
Gower chose provided a way of structuring his poem around familiar and easily definable
lessons. It also gave him a chance to examine his real subject from a variety of different
perspectives and to include the many different examples of human behavior upon which
his complex view of the morality of human love is built. Most importantly of all it provided
the dialogue, and the portrayal of Amans' search for understanding that makes him
representative not just of lovers but of all mortals who are also sinners. As in that other
great collection of tales by Gower's contemporary, the understanding that finally emerges
from the confession goes far beyond a simple morality of sinful and virtuous behavior. The
worst possible misunderstanding of Gower's frame is to see it as an endless excoriation of
Amans for the sins that he commits as a consequence of being a lover. For Amans is not
presented to us as a figure of evil, of which there is a sufficient number in Genius'
exempla, but as an example of the endless human quest both for certainty and for
satisfaction; and his search for understanding, with its half-starts, its blind alleys, and its
all too rare apotheoses, is itself exemplary of the complex nature of the moral life. Most of
the remaining books of the poem follow the model of Book I very closely. Each explores in
more detail some particular aspect of the difficulties of human love or of moral life more
generally, all within the context of an examination upon the Seven Deadly Sins. Only at
the very end of the poem, the course of his life having figuratively run, is Amans released
from the demands of Nature that are at the root of his lack of certainty and his pain. This
 Studia Neophil 58 (1986) The "Confession" in Gower's Confessio Amantis 203

ending provides no real resolution for the problems of the main body of the poem,
however, and Gower's understanding of the narrator's quest is better represented in the
brief scene that follows the "Tale of the Three Questions" (3426-32). Amans is quiet, and
contrite, and he asks patiently for more of Genius' counsel. There is no end to the search
for understanding, or to the conflict between our conduct and our ideals, between our
ability and our aspirations.

English Dept.
University of Hawaii
1733 Donaghho Road
Honolulu, Hawaii 96822
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NOTES
1 T&C V, 1856. On Gower's reputation and on his relation with Chaucer see Derek Pearsall, "The
Gower Tradition," in A. J. Minnis, ed., Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassess-
ments (Cambridge: Brewer, 1983), pp. 179-97. On what Chaucer may have meant by "moral" in
1387 see R. F. Yeager, " ' O Moral Gower:' Chaucer's Dedication of Troilus and Criseyde,"
Chaucer Review, 19 (1984), 87-99.
2 Particularly Patrick J. Gallacher, Love, the Word, and Mercury: A Reading of John Gower's
Confessio Amantis (Albuquerque, NM: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1975); and Russell A. Peck,
Kingship and Common Profit in Gower's Confessio Amantis (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
Univ. Press, 1978).
3 Much important work has, of course, been done on the exempla. See, for instance, Charles
Runacres, "Art and Ethics in the 'Exempla' of 'Confessio Amantis'," in Minnis, Responses and
Reassessments (note 1, above), pp. 106-34; and by Kurt O. Olsson, "Rhetoric, John Gower, and
the Late Medieval Exemplum," Medievalia et Humanistica, N.S. 12 (1983), 185-200, esp. pp.
196-98.
4 C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1936), pp. 200, 210-11.
5 Quotations are from the standard edition by G. C. Macaulay, The Complete Works of John Gower,
4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899-1902). The Confessio Amantis appears in vols. II-III, and
is reprinted in The English Works of John Gower, 2 vols., EETS, e.s. 81-82 (London: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1900-01).
6 Complete Works, I, 365-66.
7 Compare Peck, p. 29.
8 Peck, p. 30.
9 Book I, prose 4; from the translation attributed to Chaucer: The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed.
F. N. Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 323.
10 Important discussions of Gower's doctrine may be found in J. A. W. Bennett, "Gower's 'Honeste
Love'," in Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory ofC. S. Lewis, ed. John Lawlor
(London: Arnold, 1966), pp. 107-21; Henry A. Kelly, Love and Marriage in the Age of Chaucer
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 121-60; and Kurt Olsson, "Natural Law and John
Gower's Confessio Amantis," Medievalia et Humanistica, N.S. 11 (1982), 229-61. On Book I,
compare the discussions in John Hurt Fisher, John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of
Chaucer (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 194-95; and Peck, pp. 38-58.
11 Compare Peter G. Beidler, "The Tale of Acteon," in John Gower's Literary Transformations in
the Confessio Amantis, ed. Peter G. Beidler (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America,
1982), pp. 8, 10; and the discussions by Maria Wickert, Studien zu John Gower (Köln: Universi-
täts-Verlag, 1953), pp. 174-80; and Julia Cresswell, "The Tales of Acteon and Narcissus in the
Confessio Amantis," Reading Medieval Studies, 7 (1981), 32-34.
12 Gower found both weapons in the version in the Ovide Moralisé. See Conrad Mainzer, "John
Gower's Use of the 'Mediaeval Ovid' in the Confessio Amantis," Medium Aevum, 41 (1972), 216.
13 On the possible allegorical significance of both the asp and Ulysses see Thomas J. Hatton, "The
Role of Venus and Genius in John Gower's Confessio Amantis: A Reconsideration," Greyfriar, 16
(1975), 34-35. That Genius fails to point out the associations that Hatton describes, however, is no
argument that Genius is to be treated as an ironic figure, for there are a great many lessons
consistent with his teaching that are left inexplicit in the Confessio.
14 See the discussion of "truth" and "troth" in this tale in Kelly, pp. 123-25.
15 See Derek Pearsall, "Gower's Narrative Art," PMLA, 81 (1966), 483-84.
 204 P.Nicholson Studia Neophil 58 (1986)

16 See Judith Shaw, "John Gower's Illustrative Tales," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 84 (1983),
437-47.
17 Compare Peck, p. 52, and Cresswell, pp. 35-37, whose readings are influenced by more modern,
and hence anachronistic, conceptions of "narcissism."
18 Gallacher, p. 47.
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