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"In Propria Persona": Artifice, Politics, and Propriety in John Gower's Confessio Amantis

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Date
2009
Author
Irvin, Matthew William
Advisor
Beckwith, Sarah
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Abstract

This dissertation examines the use of personae, the rhetorical artifices by which an author creates different voices, in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. I argue that the Confessio attempts to expose how discourses of sexual desire alienate subjects from their proper place in the political world, and produce artificial personae that only appear socially engaged. The first three chapters consider the creation of the personae in the context of medieval Aristotelian political thought and the Roman de la Rose tradition. The last three chapters examine the extended discourse of Gower's primary personae in the Confessio Amantis, drawing upon Gower's other works and the history of Gower criticism.

Type
Dissertation
Department
English
Subject
Literature, Medieval
Literature, English
Amans
Confessio Amantis
Genius
Gower
persona
poetry
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1668
Citation
Irvin, Matthew William (2009). "In Propria Persona": Artifice, Politics, and Propriety in John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Dissertation, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/1668.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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