Confessio Amantis, Notes

The marginal Latin glosses, identified by a capital L in the left margin next to the text, are transcribed and translated in the notes and can be accessed by clicking on (see note) at the corresponding line.

CONFESSIO AMANTIS: FOOTNOTES

Book 2

1 The sin of Envy is greatly chafed by sorrow, for his mind does not stay happy for any time at all; what others rejoice in, he laments. He has not a single friend whose desire he would carry out from simple helpfulness. A neighbor's glory vexes his thoughts, and every delight of others is a sorrow to him. Indeed, this vice frequently assails a lover, when Venus sheds favor not on him but on the rest. It is a love that is delusional by its own motives, and the joys that another carries he believes are an injury to himself.

2 Spite, when he sees another's joyous thoughts, stirs up injuries of sorrow, born from himself alone. The envious man today ridicules the weepings of others, for whom tomorrow's fates prepare his own laments. Thus in love, the man who is joyous when he sees baffled lovers stands in the same circumstance as the envious man. Even if in vain, and even if he himself at the same time is destroyed, he nonetheless hopes for solace by another's ruin.

3 The worst part of Envy is Detraction, which stirs up a plague of infamy with the gustings of the mouth. The tongue resounds in the air with poisonous speech, just as Rumor flies away, in scandal to another. The faithful ones whom she inflicts unawares with bites from the back often lack a medicine for the wound. But noble love guards a tongue, so that the word he speaks produces nothing sinister.

4 Whose tongue neither tower nor cross (i.e., head or tail of a coin, hence, "no money")

5 I.e., we replaced it with a healthy child of poor parents

6 A double-talker will undertake nothing without singing with a double mouth, and while he speaks in daylight, night covers his intentions. His face holds light, his mind shadows; his words healing, but his action produces grave illness. The peace that he solemnly promises you is a foreshadowing of greater war; if he should offer helpfulness, learn that guile lies underneath it. What lies displayed as faith is fraud inside, and the conclusion of a crafted truce denies the beginning it had. Oh, how such a condition deforms a lover, who, appearing to be more in love, is not at all.

7 Supplanter of Another's Honor is an envious man, and where he plows he turns over your rows. What he makes is a secret work, and it lies hidden like a snake in the grass: then, in a sudden twist of fate, the evil one is present. Thus a cunning lover supplants another lover, and seizes hiddenly what he cannot have in public. And often, the supplanting one grafts to the plant of love what another thinks he possesses among his own goods.

8 Lines 2872-78: And then make yourself so sly / As to blow a note of such a pitch / Through the trumpet into his ear, / As if it were a voice from heaven, / [So] that he might consider it and believe / It was by God's command

9 The goad of envy, an ill-timed birth, hurts without cause; for it possesses sin without sin tempting it. He has no need for Cupid's bow to tempt him, since the heathen flame devours Venus's torches. The cheeks, drained of red, which a dusky pallor obscures, reveal the other limbs to be frigid in nature.

Book 3

1 Wrath along with its peers is on par with the furies of Acheron; by means of it, Fury has no pity for the moment. Wrath disturbs melancholic souls, so that no scale holds its weights in equal judgment. Wrath weighs heavily in every cause; among lovers it stirs up weighty grievances on little grounds. Where a man is full of discord and lightly assails love, lamentation instead of playfulness often fills his face.

2 Wrath stirs up conflict, which, released and loosening the tongue's reins, runs everywhere through the paths of infamy. The nursemaid of quarrels, she informs those chatterers, and Venus releases them from her side to be wanderers. But he who deals patiently and keeps things concealed with a silent mouth conquers, and he follows the path of a desired love.

3 Hatred is like the devil's scribe, to whom Wrath will give the substance of the inscription for the heart's inner sanctum. Love will not release whomever the reins of hatred hold [or: The love of hatred will not release whomever its reins hold], nor will it permit entry to the secrets of its law.

4 He who cannot restrain his hand and whose "spirit is in his nostrils" will often be fearsome to the people. And more often Venus transforms joys into sorrow when such a friend is present in the wedding-bed. Love must be enticed by a caress not by blows, and a hasty hand shatters friendships.

5 The creature that God himself creates, Homicide slays, sprinkling the ground with human blood as an avenger. A human being's bloodthirstiness is like a beast's: once - alas! - it is poured out, pity lies conquered, and rage urges on the work. The Angel said "peace on earth," and the final words of Christ express a peace from which wars now depart.

Book 4

1 They say that Sloth is the nurse of the vices, and, tardy and sluggish, it is also torpid in all good matters. What might be done today it transfers, indolent, to tomorrow, and after the horse is stolen it closes the doors. Cupid denies his rewards to the one asking tardily, but Venus plays at merry love for one who is prompt.

2 How I-Showed-Up-Too-Late came to the distribution of alms

3 He who tries nothing accomplishes nothing, and a man rarely collects the reward of Friendship with a silent mouth. There is moderation in words; but love does not favor the man who is stingy in uttering words to his love.

4 The forgetful one, whom Sloth reveals not to remember himself, slips from others' minds. Thus negligent love, who is not mindful of time passing, loses and offends what he cannot obtain.

5 When it is the proper time to plant, let the farmer who neglects the garden hold himself responsible if fruit should be lacking. The right moment will have passed, nor is a later one efficacious; the man tardy in his love lacks this teaching.

6 I know not what good this life will be to the useless man, drifting far from any labor and weaving his idlenesses. Love does not thrive in such a wretch, but Love rather claims as his own those who do deeds of valor.

7 Venus approves the man whom prowess in arms tests; and the reprobate man whom torpor possesses she disapproves. Mad sluggishness does not know the banners of love, for, lazy, he arrives too slowly at the victory prize.

8 Labor with the hands is productive, such that in daily life and actions a man might be able to live. But he who for the sake of wisdom bears labors in the mind prevails further and obtains perpetual merit.

9 A man yielding to sleep his rights loses his case, and his side wins, as it were, but a half-death. Venus is a sentry guard in love, and, awakened, she carries to her bed that service which she keeps for the wakeful.

10 Lines 3259-65: Without the sleep of Sluggardiness, / Whom Venus from her companionship / Has exiled on the grounds that he is the very one who has often miserably treated those / Who [are] pleasureless, far from any playfulness, / In bed in their chamber where it happens / That love should have been expected

11 No fortune is pleasing when despair has delivered its wound; where moisture has dried up, the ground will not green up. But great-hearted love deposits hope and therefore achieves deliverance, since good fortunes then favor him.

CONFESSIO AMANTIS: EXPLANATORY NOTES

Abbreviations

AG
Anel.
BD
CA
Civ. Dei
CT
Fab.
Gest Hyst.The
HF
KJV
LGW
MED
Metam.
MO
OED
PF
PL
Rom.
RR
TC
Vat. Myth.
VC

Andrew Galloway
Anelida and Arcite
Book of the Duchess
Confessio Amantis
De Civitate Dei (Augustine)
Canterbury Tales
Hygini Fabvlae (Hyginus)
"Gest Hystoriale" of the Destruction of Troy
House of Fame
King James Version (Bible)
Legend of Good Women
Middle English Dictionary
Metamorphoses (Ovid)
Mirour de l'Omme
Oxford English Dictionary
Parliament of Fowls
Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne
Romaunt of the Rose (Chaucer)
Le Roman de La Rose
Troilus and Criseyde
Vatican Mythographers
Vox Clamantis

*For MS abbreviations, see head of textual notes.

Notes to Book 2

9 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic in secundo libro tractat de Inuidia et eius speciebus, quarum dolor alterius gaudii prima nuncupatur, cuius condicionem secundum vicium Confessor primitus describens, Amanti, quatenus amorem concernit, super eodem consequenter opponit. [Here in the second book he discourses about Envy and its species, the first of which is called Sorrow for Another's Joy; and the Confessor, initially describing to the Lover its condition as a vice as far as love is concerned, subsequently interrogates him about this.]

10 hot Envie. See Braswell's discussion in "Confession as Characterization" on similarities between Gower's method of interrogation and fourteenth-century penitential manuals (pp. 81-87). See Olsson (1992, pp. 92 ff.) on Genius' use of "conventional modes of the forma tractandi - definition, proof and refutation, division, and the positing of examples" in his confessional discourse on the vices.

11 my sone. See Craun (p. 133) on Gower's extensive use of the phrase throughout CA as a formula of subordination derived from practices of confession.

16 ff. So God avance my querele. From the beginning of Book 2 Amans is more fully developed as a "character," representing what Burrow calls "the inconsistencies of an undisinterested mind" (1983, p. 10). From this point on in Books 2-4 Amans himself becomes as interesting in his dramatically convoluted responses to questions of his behavior as the tales Genius tells for his instruction. His origin shares more with Machaut's Le Livre dou Voir Dit and Froissart's Espinette Amoureuse than with the RR (1983, p. 6). The querele - a dispute, debate, complaint, lament, argument - becomes a genre in its own right in the later fourteenth century, especially for lovers with their perpetual questions and sallies into arenas of contention. The term carries connotations of battle as well as legal strife. Gower uses the term a couple dozen times in CA, and it defines most of Amans' postures in the middle books of the poem.

20 Ethna. Gower often uses the volcanic Mt. Etna as a sign of the eruptive nature of Envy and also Wrath. Compare Prol.329-30, and 2.163-66, 2837-39. Stockton (p. 477n21) cites comparable passages in MO, lines 3805 ff., and The Tripartite Chronicle 2.207. The idea perhaps originates in Ovid, Metam. 5.346-58, where the proud and envious giant Typhoesus, buried under Sicily, vents his rage by means of the volcano's eruptions; and 13.867-69, where Cyclops, with Etna in his breast, pleads with Galatea to love him rather than Acis.

83 Write in Civile. That is, in civil law (the Roman law used in England only in special property cases, especially the transmission of clerical property; other kinds of property were governed by English common law). As Macaulay (2.480) shrewdly suggests, the proverbial statement Gower presents seems ultimately dependent on Justinian's Institutes 1.7, which repeals the law passed under Augustus Caesar (3 AD). The Fufian Caninian Act restricted the proportion of an owner's slaves who could be freed at the owner's death (a restriction apparently originally intended to keep down the numbers of new citizens at a time when the Empire "still seemed to be expanding": see O. F. Robinson, "Persons," in Ernest Metzger, ed., A Companion to Justinian's Institutes [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998], p. 21; for a text and translation of the Act in Justinian, see Justinian's Institutes, trans. Peter Birks and Grant McLeod, with the Latin text of Paul Krueger [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987], pp. 40-41). The proverbial notion alluded to in lines 83-87 evidently emerged from an early misreading: the text of Justinian that medieval authors read usually corrupted the names used to identify the law to read "Lex Fusia Canina" ("the Fusian canine law," with both a misreading of minims to make Caninia into canina, and a misreading of f as s to make Fusia from Fufia - both errors that probably dated back early in the textual tradition of Justinian and remained uncertain until more recent editions: Macaulay's own source-text apparently read "Furia Caninia"). Since the text in Justinian argued that the law should be repealed "quasi libertatibus impedientem et quodammodo invidam" ("as a hindrance to and in some sense an invidious enemy of freedoms"), medieval authors found ways to link the idea of invidia (in context "invidious enemy" but also simply the sin "envy") to this "Fusian canine law," and thence to the useless envy of dogs who protect property from which they do not themselves benefit. Thus, as Macaulay (2.480) notes, John Bromyard in the later fourteenth century under Invidia in his Summa confessorum states that "omnes isti sunt de professione legis Fusie canine. Ille enim Fusius inventor fuit legis cuius exemplum seu casus est iste. Quidam habet fontem quo non potest proprium ortum irrigare . . . Posset tamen alteri valere sine illius nocumento, ipse tamen impedit ne alteri prosit quod sibi prodesse non potest, ad modum canis, sicut predictum est: a cuius condicione lex canina vocata est inter leges duodecim tabularum, que quia iniqua fuit, in aliis legibus correcta est, sicut patet Institut. lib. i de lege Fusia canina tollenda" ("all those of the legal profession are Fusian canines. For this Fusius was the founder of a law whose pattern or circumstance was this: a certain man owned a spring from which he could not water his own fields . . . Even though he would have been able to help another without harming himself, he nonetheless prevented anyone else from profiting from what could not profit him, just like a dog, according to the saying. From this the law was called the 'canine law' among the laws of the twelve tables, but because it was iniquitous, it was corrected in other laws, just as is said in the Institutes, book 1, 'concerning the repeal of the Fusian canine law'") (AG). See also Fisher, pp. 155-56, 365n38, who compares dog-in-the-manger passages in MO and VC.

101 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum saltem contra istos qui in amoris causa aliorum gaudiis inuidentes nequaquam per hoc sibi ipsis proficiunt. Et narrat, qualiter quidam iuuenis miles nomine Acis, quem Galathea Nimpha pulcherrima toto corde peramauit, cum ipsi sub quadam rupe iuxta litus maris colloquium adinuicem habuerunt, Poliphemus Gigas concussa rupe magnam inde partem super caput Acis ab alto proiciens ipsum per inuidiam interfecit. Et cum ipse super hoc dictam Galatheam rapere voluisset, Neptunus Giganti obsistens ipsam inuiolatam salua custodia preseruauit. Set et dii miserti corpus Acis defuncti in fontem aque dulcissime subito transmutarunt. [Here the Confessor presents an illustrative example at least against those who, while in the cause of love being envious of the joys of others, do not at all profit themselves by this. And he tells about a certain young knight named Acis, whom the most beautiful nymph Galatea deeply loved with her whole heart. When they were under a certain rock next to the shores of the sea holding conversation with one another, Polyphemos the giant, having broken a rock, threw a huge part of it from above on Acis's head, killing him through envy. And although after this the giant wanted to rape the aforesaid Galatea, Neptune prevented him, preserving her inviolate by his safe custody. But even the gods, pitying dead Acis, instantly transformed his body into a spring of sweetest water.]

104 ff. The story of Acis and Galatea may be found in Ovid, Metam. 13.738-897. N.b. also Vat. Myth. II (201). Macaulay notes that Polyphemous' running around Etna in a jealous rage before killing Acis is Gower's addition (2.480). See Runacres' discussion of the tale as an exemplum that balances artistry of narrative with ethics, particularly in its focus on Polipheme's voyeuristic obsession (2.111-14) that leads to his hatred not of Galatea herself but of her capacity to love another (pp. 130-34).

106 As Ovide in his bok recordeth. Ovid is Gower's major literary source for CA. Pearsall (1966, p. 478) notes that Ovid "provides 38 of the 133 stories in the poem." See also Simpson (1995, pp. 134-66).

107-84 Chaucer's Ghoast (1672) borrows these lines as Arg. 5 in the "love of antiquity's" "twelve pleasant fables of Ovid penn'd after the ancient manner of writing in England."

145 grete see. I.e., the Mediterranean. See CA 3.2488. Compare CT I(A)59.

150 fyre. See MED s. v. vire n. 1, i.e., a bolt from a crossbow. But Gower could be punning: Ito (p. 38n21) reads as fire, thinking perhaps of a flaming arrow, relating the passage to MO, lines 3805-19, where Envy, Etna, and burning are affiliated. See also Runacres on Poliphemous: "His heart burns, and he flees like some huge flaming arrow, burning like Etna" (p. 131).

224 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur Confessor de secunda specie Inuidie, que gaudium alterius doloris dicitur, et primo eiusdem vicii materiam tractans amantis conscienciam super eodem vlterius inuestigat. [Here the Confessor speaks about the second species of Envy, which is called Joy for Another's Sorrow, and, at first treating the substance of that vice, he then investigates further the Lover's conscience in terms of it.] Burrow (1983, p. 9) emphasizes the orderly, point-by-point manner of Genius' questions, noting that delight in the poem lies less in the systematic opposing of the lover's conscience than the unpredictable ingenuity of Amans' responses.

246-47 of that thei brewe soure / I drinke swete. Proverbial. Not cited by Whiting.

261 ff. Latin marginalia: Boicius: Consolacio miserorum est habere consortem in pena. [Boethius: "A consolation of the wretched is to have company in their pain."] Proverbial, but not in fact by Boethius ("misery loves company"). A common proverb. See Whiting W715. Reidy (Riverside Chaucer, note to lines 746-47 of The Canon's Yeoman's Tale, p. 949) observes: "A Latin marginal note in Ellesmere and one other MS have the beginning of the common Latin proverb 'The solace of the wretched is to have companions in grief' (Walther 29943), quoted in slightly different form (Walther, Nova Series, 35687) in some other MSS." See also TC 1.708-09, with Latin marginal glosses in MSS Rawlinson Poet. 163 and Arch. Selden. B.24, both in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

291 ff. The Tale of the Travelers and the Angel derives from the widely known Fables of Avianus, fable 22. The Latin text and translation may be found in Minor Latin Poets, pp. 715-17. A lively translation appears in The Fables of Avianus, trans. David R. Slavitt, p. 30. In Latin the fable is only 20 lines long (13 lines of prose in Crane's edition). See also Jacques de Vitry Exemplum 196 on the avaricious and envious men; Robert Holcot In Librum Sapientiae Regis Solomonis, lectio 29; Guilelmus Peraldus, Summa Virtutum ac Vitiorum, John Bromyard, Summa Pr�dicantium l.6.19, to name a few. See Crane's edition of Jacques de Vitry, p. 212, for more.

293 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum presertim contra illum, qui sponte sui ipsius detrimentum in alterius penam maiorem patitur. Et narrat quod, cum Iupiter angelum suum in forma hominis, vt hominum condiciones exploraret, ab excelso in terram misit, contigit quod ipse angelus duos homines, quorum vnus cupidus, alter inuidus erat, itinerando spacio quasi vnius dici comitabatur. Et cum sero factum esset, angelus eorum noticie seipsum tunc manifestans dixit, quod quicquid alter eorum ab ipso donari sibi pecierit, illud statim obtinebit, quod et socio suo secum comitanti affirmat duplicandum. Super quo cupidus impeditus auaricia, sperans sibi diuicias carpere duplicatas, primo petere recusauit. Quod cum inuidus animaduerteret, naturam sui vicii concernens, ita vt socius suus vtroque lumine priuaretur, seipsum monoculum fieri constanter primus ab angelo postulabat. Et sic vnius inuidia alterus auariciam maculauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example especially against that man who willingly endures his own detriment for the sake of another's greater pain. And he narrates how, when Jupiter sent his angel in a man's form from on high down to earth in order to investigate the circumstances of men, it happened that this angel journeyed around for about the span of a day in the company of two men, one of whom was covetous, the other envious. And when it had become late, the angel, then making clear his identity to their understanding, said that whatever one of them should petition him for, that he would obtain immediately, and he swore that it would be doubled for the companion traveling with him. Whereupon the covetous man, snared by avarice, refused to petition first, hoping to receive double wealth for himself. When the envious man, perceiving the nature of his vice, had noticed this, he unflinchingly demanded that he himself might first be one-eyed in order that his companion might be deprived of both eyes. And thus the envy of the one spoiled the avarice of the other.]

298 An angel. Sidrak and Bokkus labels the covetous man "�e deuelis gripe [griffen] of helle"; the angels would be a better model for man since in heaven no angels "coueite� o�eris blis / But holde� hem paide [pleased] eche of his" (1.285, lines 4766, 4779-80). Thus it is that angels are particularly shrewd at investigating this particular sin and serve as "Goddes sonde" (2.324).

387 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor de tercia specie Inuidie, que Detraccio dicitur, cuius morsus vipereos lesa quamsepe fama deplangit. [Here the Confessor discourses about the third species of Envy, which is called Detraction, whose venomous bites very often a wounded reputation bewails.]

Craun (p. 136n63) relates Genius' remarks on Detraction, Malebouche, and backbiting to to Peyraut's Summa de Vitiis, fols. G8r-H2v; the Speculum Vitae, lines 14143-228; De Lingua, fols. 165v-68v; Etienne de Bourbon's Tractatus, fols. 228v-30v; the Speculum Morale, cols. 1144-51; Carpenter's Destructorium, fols. 507v-508v; the Fasciculus Morum, pp. 158-62; John Bromyard's Summa Pr�dicantium, fols. 71r-84v; and Robert Mannyng's Handlyng Synne, lines 1239-1306 and 3529-646.

389 Malebouche. "Wicked-tongue," a dangerous slanderer of lovers in RR (e.g., lines 2847 ff.), becomes a common prop in courtly literature for malicious gossip that degrades the lofty feelings the would-be lover wishes to engage in. See MO, lines 2677 ff. Chaucer uses only the anglicized form "Wikkid-Tunge" (Rom. 3871, 3878, 4141, 4233, 4267, 4484, 5851, 7355, 7422, 7474, 7476, 7498; compare TC 1.39, 2.785, 804, 5.755). But Lydgate follows Gower's French vocabulary with Malebouche in The Complaint of the Black Knight, line 260, as does Roos in La Belle Dame sans Mercy, line 741.

398 jangle. Gower devotes considerable attention to the sin of jangling, especially as a feature of Detraction (see 2.425, 452, and 526); but also of Cheste and Envy (3.832, 887), Idleness (4.1474), Jealousy (5.519 ff.), Stealth and Michery (5.6532), and Gossip (7.4774). Usually it is a woman, like the Wife of Bath or Dame Sirith, or the women in Dunbar's "Twa Mariit Wemen and the Wedo" all of whom are presented as arch-janglers. (See Trevisa, The Governance of Kings 2.2.21, pp. 248-49, on the evil of women janglers, or Jacques de Vitry for dozens of exempla on quarrelsome women.) In Gower, however, every instance of the vice exemplifies a negative trait in men.

399 heraldie. "Office of herald"; or perhaps "livery." See Macaulay (2.481).

417-32 Craun (p. 138) notes that the same image of flying dung beetles as a commentary on detraction occurs in the fourteenth-century Book of Vices and Virtue: "[de-tractors] ben �e biteles �at flen �e floures and loue� �e dong of an hors or a best, as men seen alday bi �e weye" (as quoted by Craun).

452 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic in amoris causa huius vicii crimen ad memoriam reducens Confessor Amanti super eodem plenius opponit. [Here in the cause of love, the Confessor rehearses for remembrance the sin of this vice, more fully questioning the Lover.]

454-551 Gower has received praise for his lively presentation of Amans in this third confession in Book 2. Burrow (1983) sees it as one of the best illustrations of Gower's "penetrating, but always general, psychological perception," a portrayal of what Burrow wittily calls "the inconsistencies of an undisinterested mind" (p. 10). See Nicholson's useful summary of critical observations on the passage (p. 184).

467 unknowe unkest. Proverbial. See Whiting U5. Compare Chaucer, TC 1.809: "Unknowe, unkist, and lost that is unsought." The idiom also occurs in Usk and Charles of Orleans (see Whiting). Evidently its purview is courtly and literary. As is often the case in CA, proverbs come in clusters. Compare the proverbial effects of 2.470 and 473.

479 evere I am adrad of guile. "In speaking against detractors, the lover asks for [his lady's] good, but ironically, his own speech, as he colors 'the wordes of his sawe,' includes the deceit and enchantment he fears his lady is subjected to by others." Besides, she is "a knowing person and not a mere innocent, and . . . does not really need his protection" (Olsson, 1992, p. 94).

513-14 Burrow comments on this dramatic moment as Amans' comic inconsistency shifts from "self-righteous claims" to open confession (1983, p. 10).

529 I wolde save. The lover's protecting of his beloved's good name is a commonplace requirement of courtesy. See Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. John Jay Parry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), the first case (pp. 167-68), and rule 13, "When made public love rarely endures" (p. 185).

587 ff. Chaucer's Man of Law also tells the "Tale of Constance" (see Schlauch's discussion in Sources and Analogues to the Canterbury Tales, pp. 155-206; and Hibbard). Olsson (1992, pp. 92-106) comments on the radical differences between the complex narration of Chaucer and the plain style of Gower. Unlike Chaucer's heroine, surrounded with the "ring of protective, talismanic texts" of the Man of Law, Gower's Constance is "self-possessed" (Olsson, p. 95). Although both Gower's and Chaucer's poems are derived from Nicholas Trivet's Anglo-Norman Chronicle, Gower's version is closer to the source and was apparently written earlier than Chaucer's. See Correale on the relationship of Gower to Trivet. Macaulay enumerates Gower's variations from his original (2.482-484). An analogue of the story of Constance, which includes a moral commentary, may be found in the English Gesta Romanorum (cap. LXIX). For further discussion of the tale, see Wetherbee (1989); Peck (1978, pp. 62-70); Esch (1968); Elizabeth Archibald, "The Flight from Incest: Two Late Classical Precursors of the Constance Theme," Chaucer Review 20 (1986), 259-72; and Yeager (2001). See Wetherbee (1999, pp. 605-06) and Dimmick (pp. 132-36) for links with the Tale of Apollonius. See also Hibbard, pp. 23-34, for comparisons with the Middle English romance Emar�; and Dimmick (pp. 130-37) on the tale in terms of conventions of romance narrative.

587 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur Confessor contra istos in amoris causa detrahentes, qui suis obloquiis aliena solacia perturbant. Et narrat exemplum de Constancia Tiberii Rome Imparatoris filia, omnium virtutum famosissima, ob cuius amorem Soldanus tunc Persie, vt eam in vxorem ducere posset, Cristianum se fieri promisit; cuius accepta caucione consilio Pelagii tunc pape dicta filia vna cum duobus Cardinalibus aliisque Rome proceribus in Persiam maritagii causa nauigio honorifice destinata fuit: que tamen obloquencium postea detraccionibus variis modis, prout inferius articulatur, absque sui culpa dolorosa fata multipliciter passa est. [Here the Confessor speaks against those making detractions in the cause of love, who by their slurs disturb others' comforts. And he narrates an instructive example about Constance, daughter of Tiberius the Emperor of Rome, a woman most famous for every virtue, on account of whose love the one who was then sultan of Persia promised to make himself Christian, in order that he might take her as a bride. With his pledge having been accepted, by the counsel of Pelagius, the pope at that time, the said daughter along with two cardinals and other dignitaries of Rome was sent with full ceremony on the voyage for the sake of the marriage in Persia. She, however, by the detractions in various manners of those casting slurs on her, as is detailed below, later without any guilt of her own suffered in many ways wretched travails.]

590 Tiberie Constantin. For discussion of the father-daughter relationship between Constance and her father, particularly in terms of power and authority issues, see Bull�n-Fern�ndez (pp. 75-101).

601-10 Sche hath converted. In Chaucer Christ does the converting. See also 4.597-98. Wetherbee contrasts Gower's Constance with Chaucer's, emphasizing the "measure of reality" (1989, p. 72), that she has in Gower. She is "continually engaged with the world around her through the medium of social institutions." Although she is "in many respects a representation of the mission of the church," carrying with her

the threat or promise of radical transformation . . . the prevailing emphasis is on how she fulfils her evangelical mission, how her influence is mediated by the attraction her human presence exerts on others, and by the institutions of the different cultures with which she comes in contact. Her strength involves not only her constancy in faith but her humanity and intelligence, and it expresses itself best in situations which call her womanhood into action and enable her to function as daughter, wife, and mother as well as saint. (P. 70)

In the end, she does not simply transcend earthly confines, she becomes "in effect the Church itself" (p. 81).

641 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter adueniente Constancia in Barbariam Mater Soldani, huiusmodi nupcias perturbare volens, filium suum vna cum dicta Constancia Cardinalibusque et aliis Romanis primo die ad conuiuium inuitauit: et conuescentibus illis in mensa ipsum Soldanum omnesque ibidem preter Constanciam Romanos ab insidiis latitantibus subdola detraccione interfici procurauit. Ipsam que Constanciam in quadam naui absque gubernaculo positam per altum mare ventorum flatibus agitandam in exilium dirigi solam constituit. [How, when Constance had arrived in Barbary, the sultan's mother, desiring to disturb this marriage, on the first day invited her son along with the said Constance and the cardinals and other Romans to a feast. And while they were all gorging together at the table, she procured that, by hidden treachery with sly detraction, the sultan and all the Romans there, apart from Constance, would be killed. She ordered that Constance be cast into exile, placed onto the high seas in a ship without a steering-oar, assailed by the blasts of the winds.]

656 be double weie. Several have commented on Gower's keen awareness and strong asseverations on double talk (Sins of the Tongue) in the Tale of Constance. Elizabeth Allen compares Gower with Chaucer "as a fellow muddier of moral waters" (p. 629), who, as a moral poet, explores contingencies rather than positing answers and uses this tale in particular to trouble audiences rather than reassure them. Gower seems fully aware of "the moral value of narrative instability" as he "destabilizes" Trivet (p. 641).

699-700 The dissh forth with the coppe and al / Bebled thei weren overal. The grotesque uses of sacramental imagery "provides a measure of the alienation of the culture of Barbarie, not only from Christianity, but from simply human pietas" (Wetherbee, 1989, p. 71).

714 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter nauis cum Constancia in partes Anglie, que tunc pagana fuit, prope Humber sub quodam castello Regis, qui tunc Allee vocabatur, post triennium applicuit, quam quidam miles nomine Elda, dicti castelli tunc custos, e naui lete suscipiens vxori sue Hermynghelde in custodiam honorifice commendauit. [How after three years, the ship with Constance arrived in the regions of England, which was then pagan, near the Humber under a castle of the king at that time, who was called Allee. A certain knight, Elda by name, at that time the guardian of the said castle, happily taking her from the ship, commended her to the keeping of his wife Hermynghelda with all honor.]

749-834 Trivet has Hermyngeld baptized before she dies. In Gower she is murdered before baptism. Dulak (pp. 368-69) remarks that the alteration is significant in that Gower thus represents the three kinds of baptism in his conversion narrative: baptism of blood (the Sultan), baptism of desire (Hermyngeld), and baptism of water (Alla). In Chaucer "Jhesu hath converted [her] thurgh his grace" (CT II[B1]538).

751 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Constancia Eldam cum vxore sua Her-mynghelda, qui antea Cristiani non extiterant, ad fidem Cristi miraculose conuertit. [How Constance miraculously converted to the faith of Christ Elda, along with his wife Hermynghelda, who had hitherto not been Christian.]

769-71 'In trust of Cristes lawe . . . behold and se.' That Hermyngeld through her "creance" (2.754) can assist in miracles without having been baptized of water supports Dulak's notion that her desire constitutes baptism. See explanatory note to lines 749-834.

779 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter quidam miles iuuenes in amorem Contancie exardescens, pro eo quod ipsa assentire noluit, eam de morte Hermynghelde, quam ipsemet noctanter interfecit, verbis detractoriis accusauit. Set Angelus domini ipsum sic detrahentem in maxilla subito percuciens non solum pro mendace comprobauit, set ictu mortali post ipsius confessionem penitus interfecit. [How a young knight burning with love for Constance, to which she did not want to assent, accused her with detracting words of the death of Hermynghelda, whom he himself had killed by night. But an angel of the Lord, striking him suddenly in the jaw while he was detracting her, not only convicted him for his lie but also, with a mortal blow after his confession, utterly killed him.]

811-13 Craun notes that the knight chiefly defames Constance because he envies her advancement of the chamberlain who had previously had to rely on him; such political motivation is not evident in Trivet, where the knight seemingly "acts to cover his sexual advances" (p. 149).

847 stille as eny ston. Proverbial. See Whiting S772 and variants "dumb as any stone," S762, and "mute as any stone," S765. Compare CA 1.1794 and 2104.

890 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Rex Allee ad fidem Cristi conuersus baptismum recepit et Contanciam super hoc leto animo desponsauit; que tamen qualis vel vnde fuit alicui nullo modo fatebatur. Et cum infra breue postea a domino suo impregnata fuisset, ipse ad debellandum cum Scotis iter arripuit, et ibidem super guerras aliquamdiu permansit. [How King Allee, having been converted to the faith of Christ, received baptism, and after this married Constance with a joyous soul; but she did not at all declare to anyone what she was or from where. And when, after a short time, she had become pregnant by her lord, he left to fight with the Scots, and he remained there for a time engaged in battles.]

905 Lucie. Macaulay observes that the name appears to be trisyllabic: Luc�e (2.485).

911 She tolde hem nevere what sche was. Several have commented on Constance's maintaining an aura of mystery about her origins. See Nicholson (p. 192). Of particular interest is Esch's suggestion that Constance's silence creates a M�rchenmotif about her that adds to Domilde's accusation that she is "of fairie" (2.964). Gower heightens the fairytale quality of the story when, upon the death of Constance, we are told that God takes her "fro this worldes faierie" into his own "compaignie" (2.1593-94).

916-17 Kelly (pp. 140-41) compares the role of nature in conception here with natures role in the impregnation of Canacee in 3.143 ff.

931 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Regina Constancia infantem masculum, quem in baptismo Mauricium vocant, Rege absente enixa est. Set inuida Regis mater Domilda super isto facto condolens litteris mendacibus Regi certificauit quod vxor sua demoniaci et non humani generis quoddam monstrosum fantasma loco geniture ad ortum produxit; huius modique detraccionibus aduersus Contanciam in tanto procurauit, quod ipsa in nauim, qua prius venerat, iterum ad exilium vna cum suo partu remissa desolabatur. [How while the king was absent Queen Constance gave birth to a male infant, whom in baptism they call Maurice. But the envious queen mother Domilda, lamenting because of this, certified with lying letters to the king that his wife had brought into the world a monstrous phantasm of demonic and not human species in the place of an offspring; and by means of these detractions against Constance so managed it that she was abandoned again to exile in the ship in which she had first arrived, along with her tender offspring.]

947 Domilde. In Trivet her name is given as "Deumylde," "Doumilde," "Dounylde," "Domulde," and "Domylde." In Chaucer she is "Donegild." Macaulay notes that the Rawlinson MS has "Downilde" (2.485).

960 ff. Latin marginalia: Prima littera in commendacionem Constancie ab Episcopo Regi missa per Domildam in contrarium falsata. [First letter in commendation of Constance, sent by the bishop to the king, falsified to its opposite by Domilda.]

964 faierie. See explanatory note to 2.749-834, above.

1013 ff. Latin marginalia: Secunda littera per Regem Episcopo remissa a Domilda iterum falsata. [Second letter sent back by the king to the bishop, again falsified by Domilda.]

1048 Brent in a fyr before here yhen. Elizabeth Allen (p. 644) comments on the irony of Constance's "imagined public burning" as a result of Domilde's deceit. Domilde will ultimately be the one "caste" into the fire (2.1287).

1078-83 Dimmick notes the "delicate pathos" of the lines as "an emblem of human love informed by the divine" (p. 131).

1084 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Nauis Constancie post biennium in partes Hispanie superioris inter Sarazenos iactabatur, a quorum manibus deus ipsam conseruans graciosissime liberauit. [How Constance's ship was tossed after two years into the regions of upper Spain among the Saracens, from whose hands God, preserving her, liberated her by His grace.]

1084-1125 Chaucer's heroine is more placid than Gower's. In Chaucer an unnamed thief boards the boat to make her his leman, but Mary helps her, the thief falls overboard, and "Crist unwemmed kept Custance" (CT II[B1]924). Gower's heroine is closer to Trivet's, where when Constance convinces Thelo�s, the "fals knyht and a renegat" (2.1093), to look out at the port to see if anyone is near, he, as a result of Constance's prayer, is blown overboard.

1126 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter nauicula Constancie quodam die per altum mare vagans inter copiosam Nauium multitudinem dilapsa est, quarum Arcennus Romanorum Consul, Dux et Capitaneus ipsam ignotam suscipiens vsque ad Romam secum perduxit; vbi equalem vxori sue Helene permansuram reuerenter associauit, necnon et eiusdem filium Mauricium in omni habundancia quasi proprium educauit. [How Constance's little ship, wandering through the high seas, one day fell in among an abundant multitude of ships, whose leader and captain, Arcennus, the consul of the Romans, led her unrecognized all the way with him to Rome. There he reverently joined her as an equal to his wife Helen, so long as she would remain there, and he also reared her son Maurice with every benefit as if he were his own.]

1148-49 I am / A womman wofully bestad. Constance's point is injustice done, not self-pity. See Grennen's discussion of Chaucer's Custance as the "embodiment of the virtue of constantia, a virtue she is given innumerable opportunities to demonstrate precisely because of the failure of human legal structures to protect her" (p. 498). The same is true of Gower's heroine. But, as Olsson points out, her security lies in her nature. "Her eyes are always open, and her tale never betrays in her an attitude of 'hadde I wiste'" (p. 96).

1226 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Rex Allee inita pace cum Scotis a guerris rediens et non inuenta vxore sua causam exilii diligencius perscrutans, cum Matrem suam Domildam inde culpabilem sciuisset, ipsam in igne proiciens comburi fecit. [How King Allee, returning from the wars after peace had been entered into with the Scots, and with his wife not to be found, and diligently inquiring into the cause of her exile, caused his mother Domilda to be burned by throwing her into the fire when he discovered her in that matter to be guilty.]

1264 At Knaresburgh. Edwards (pp. 306-09) argues that, because of its affiliations with the murder of Thomas � Becket, Knaresburgh still bore the aroma of treachery and treason in Gower's day, hence Gower's addition of the detail.

1278-93 O beste of helle . . . thi bacbitinge . . . to dethe broght / And brent tofore hire sones yhe. Chaucer simply says "that Alla, out of drede, / His mooder slow" (CT II[B1]893-94). Ito (pp. 32-33) links Gower's more violent account to "Trivet's lurid description of the matricide" but notes that Gower, appropriately, shifts the mode of execution from the sword to the fire, as befits the volcanic rage of Domilde's backbiting. Compare Gower's affiliation of Envy and Wrath with Mt. Etna elsewhere in CA (2.163, 2037, and Prol.329), and also MO, lines 3805-18.

1285 I schal be venged. Macaulay notes that "the first and second recensions have 'It shal'" (2.486).

1310 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter post lapsum xii annorum Rex Allee absolucionis causa Romam proficiscens vxorem suam Constanciam vna cum filio suo diuina prouidencia ibidem letus inuenit. [How after the passage of twelve years, King Allee, making his way to Rome for the sake of absolution, joyously discovered by divine providence his wife Constance there, along with his son.]

1355-63 Peck notes that Gower, unlike Chaucer or Trivet, places Alla's encounter with Constance on the return trip, after visiting the pope, as if to link the king's shriven condition with his recovery of his family. "The king sets his life in hierarchical order so that other reorderings may follow" (1978, p. 68).

1370-82 Moris is not the only child in CA who makes possible the denouement. Gower often uses children as guides to their stumbling parents. Compare his role with that of Peronelle in the Tale of Three Questions (1.3067 ff.), and Thais in the Tale of Apollonius (8.271 ff.).

1473 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Constancia, que antea per totum tempus exilii sui penes omnes incognitam se celauit, tunc demum patri suo Imperatori seipsam per omnia manifestauit: quod cum Rex Allee sciuisset, vna cum vniuersa Romanorum multitudine inestimabili gaudio admirantes cunctipotentem laudarunt. [How Constance, who previously for the entire time of her exile had concealed herself unrecognized from everyone, finally then revealed herself in all ways to her father the emperor. And when King Allee had understood, he, along with the entire multitude of Romans, marveling in inestimable joy, together praised the Almighty.]

1516 my querele. See Bull�n-Fern�ndez's remarks on the significance of Constance's querele with her father (pp. 83-86), which to some degree reflects the perpetual debate between the Church and spiritual ideology, and political and lay power invested in the state.

1524-25 thogh his moder were come / Fro deth to lyve out of the grave. This striking metaphor, in which the father sees his wife in his daughter's child (a passage original with Gower), perpetrates a number of provocative innuendoes. Bull�n-Fern�ndez compares Constance to Mary vis-�-vis her father as "she becomes her father's mother" (p. 92). The passage also strengthens Genius' emphasis on the law of nature so central to his ideology.

1555 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Mauricius cum Imperatore vt heres Imperii remansit, et Rex Allee cum Constancia in Angliam regressi sunt. [How Maurice remained with the emperor as the heir of the empire, and King Allee returned with Constance to England.]

1572 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Rex Allee post biennium in Anglia humane carnis resolucionem subiens nature debitum persoluit, post cuius obitum Constancia cum patre suo Rome se transtulit moraturam. [How King Allee, after two years in England, underwent the decline of human flesh and paid his debt to nature; after his death Constance betook herself to stay in Rome with her father.]

1572-77 Bot he (death) which hindreth . . . And for no gold mai be forboght . . . Tok with this king such aqueintance . . . he parteth from his wif. Tatlock (p. 184n) suggests that this passage lies behind Chaucer's flourish, "For Deeth, that taketh of heigh and logh his rente, / Whan passed was a yeer . . . / Out of this world this kyng Alla he hente" (CT II[B1]1142-44).

1589 Latin marginalia: De morte Imperatoris. [Concerning the emperor's death.]

1592 Latin marginalia: De morte Constancie. [Concerning Constance's death.]

1594 ff. Latin marginalia: De coronacione Mauricii, qui adhuc in Cronicis Mauricius Imperator Cristianissimus nuncupatus est. [Concerning the coronation of Maurice, who to this day is called in chronicles "Maurice the most Christian emperor."]

1595 Moris hir sone was corouned. Bull�n-Fern�ndez speculates that there may be a hint of "a kind of incestuous love" here, "that Moris's inheriting from Constantine suggests that he is the offspring of the father and the daughter" (p. 92). But the point seems rather to be that Constantine, who sought an heir by marrying Constance to the Sultan, simply accepts his only child's offspring, which fortunately is male. He, in his long-standing grief over the alleged death of Constance, finds that his lineage is not barren after all - a provocative Christian motif of the grafted-on heritage, especially since Moris is "the Cristeneste of alle" (2.1598).

1613 ff. The story of Demetrius and Perseus is found in several potential sources, including Justin, Epitome of the Philippic history of Pompeius Trogus, Book 32; Valerius Maximus, Factorum ac Dictorum Memorabilium 1.5.3; Orosius, Commonitorium 5.20; and perhaps Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale 5.65 ff. See Macaulay (2.487) for discussion.

1613 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra istos detractores, qui in alterius vituperium mendacia confingentes diffamacionem fieri procurant. Et narrat qualiter Perseus, Philippi Regis Macedonie filius, Demetrio fratri suo ob eius probitatem inuidens, composito detraccionis mendacio ipsum apud patrem suum mortaliter accusauit, dicens quod ipse non solum patrem set et totum Macedonie regnum Romanis hostibus proditorie vendidisset: quem super hoc in iudicium producens, testibus que iudicibus auro subornatis, quamuis falsissime morte condempnatum euicit: quo defuncto eciam et pater infra breue postea mortuus est. Et sic Perseo successiue regnante deus huiusmodi detraccionis inuidiam abhorrens ipsum cum vniuersa suorum pugnatorum multitudine extra Danubii fluuium ab Emilio tunc Romanorum Consule euentu bellico interfici fortunauit. Ita quod ab illo die Macedonie potestas penitus destructa Romano Imperio subiugata deseruiuit, et eius detraccio, quam contra alium conspirauerat, in sui ipsius diffamacionem pro perpetuo diuulgata consistit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those detractors who, fashioning lies in vituperation of another, cause defamation to be made. And he tells how Perseus, son of Philip, king of the Macedonians, being envious of his brother Demetrius on account of his probity, lethally accused him before his father, composing a lie of detraction, declaring that Demetrius was selling by treachery not only his father but also the whole kingdom of Macedonia to their enemies, the Romans. Bringing him to the judicial court on these grounds, and with witnesses and judges having been suborned by money, he destroyed him by having him condemned to death, however falsely. And after he died, his father within a short time had died as well. And thus with Perseus taking the throne as successor, God, abhorring the envy of this kind of detraction, destined him to be killed as a consequence of war along with the entire multitude of his warriors beyond the Danube River by Emilius, then consul of the Romans. Wherefore from that day on the power of Macedonia, having been entirely destroyed and subjugated, was subservient to the Roman Empire; and his detraction, which he had conspired against the other, became well known in perpetuity to his own defamation.]

1706 Godd wode noght it were unknowe. Gower often presents God as an overseer who sets things straight after deceitful men pervert them. E.g., 1.2776-79, where God uses Nebuchadnezzar to show just vengeance; also the several proverbs on truth, including "For trowthe hise wordes wol noght peinte" (1.284). See also explanatory note to 2.1752-53, below.

1728 th'envious belle runge. Proverbial. See Whiting B233.

1745-51 The maladie (line 1747) that the king catches, a malady that catches all men, is apparently not in this instance death, but rather a deep depression that is the result of his distraught and sorrowful condition (lines 1745-46). And whan this king was passed thus (line 1749) does not mean that he died, but rather that he sojourns in his debilitating condition. Perseus thus must seize the regiment (line 1751), rather than inherit it. We are told subsequently that the king dies by starvation in prison in Albe (2.1853-57).

1752-53 Proverbial. Whiting does not cite this specific passage, but it is akin to such truth proverbs in CA as Prol.369, 3.205, 5.4604, and 7.1957-60.

1884 ff. Latin Marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor super quarta specie Inuidie, que dissimilacio dicitur, cuius vultus quanto maioris amicicie apparenciam ostendit, tanto subtilioris doli fallacias ad decipiendum mens ymaginatur. [Here the Confessor discourses about the fourth species of Envy, which is called Dissimulation. The more his face displays an appearance of friendship, the more his mind schemes tricks for deceiving by subtler guile.]

1912 Genius uses the term semblant as an equivalent to "good intention"; "that is, Genius is suggesting that Amans attempt to see without prejudice what is being intuited, knowing that that is impossible" (Peck, 1994, p. 259).

1921-22 See explanatory note to 3.1076-78.

1926 ff. Latin Marginalia: Hic in amoris causa Confessor super isto vicio Amanti opponit. [Here in the cause of love the Confessor questions the Lover about that vice.]

1928-29 custummer / To Falssemblant. On the capitalistic metaphor linking Falssemblant to the merchants and Lombard bankers as well as lovers, see Peck (1994, pp. 259-60).

2090 asay. Macaulay follows F to read a say, then views say as a shortened form meaning "trial." But given the a- here and the common word asay (from French assai) it is more likely that the scribe left a space accidentally and that asay is the intended form (AG).

2100-22 Gower's hostility toward Lombard bankers and their Falssemblant and Fa-crere (make believe, deception) resonates throughout the poem and is echoed in Chaucer too (e.g., The Shipman's Tale). Lombard values seek gain and mercantile profit, rather than common profit, "to cheat men of the profits from their own land" and to usurp the rights of others (Peck 1978, p.70).

2145 ff. The story of Deianira and Nessus is found in Ovid, Metam. 9.8-272. It also appears in Hyginus, Fab. XXXIV-XXXVI; Vat. Myth. I (58); Ovid, Heroides 9; and Boccaccio, Genealogie Deorum Gentilium Libri 9.17. Mainzer (p. 217) identifies two details in Gower's version that are found in Ovidius Moralizatus but not in Ovid's narrative, namely that Iole is the daughter of King Eurytus and that "Hercules changed clothes with her." The idea of Falssemblant comes mainly from Jean de Meun's allegorical representation in RR, where he is one of the principal agents in Jean's attack on hypocrisy amongst the friars, as well as lovers (lines 10467-12380). In Gower, Deianara is more clearly a victim than she is in the sources, suggesting once again his sympathy for women. See Brown (pp. 15-19).

2148 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra istos, qui sub dissimilate beneuolencie speculo alios in amore defraudant. Et narrat qualiter Hercules, cum ipse quoddam fluuium, cuius vada non nouit, cum Deianira transmeare proposuit, superueniens Nessus Gigas ob amiciciam Herculis, vt dixit, Deianiram in vlnas suas suscipiens trans ripam salvo perduxit. Et statim cum ad litus peruenisset, quamcito currere potuit, ipsam tanquam propriam in preiudicium Herculis asportare fugiens conabatur: per quod non solum ipsi set eciam Herculi mortis euentum fortuna postmodum causauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who defraud others in love under a falsified image of benevolence. And he narrates how, when Hercules tried with Deianira to cross a certain river whose fords he did not know, Nessus the Giant intervened on behalf of his friendship for Hercules (as he claimed), and, lifting Deianira up onto his shoulders, transported her across the stream to safety. But as soon as he had arrived at the shore he fled as fast as he could run, trying to carry her away for himself to Hercules' disadvantage. By this means he later brought about, by chance, the result of his own as well as Hercules' death.]

2227 lief or loth. Proverbial. See Whiting L232. The sense might also be "friend or foe," i.e., "everyone."

2270 he him clotheth in hire cote. Gower makes emphatically clear the maxim that each man must wear what he chooses, setting up the conclusion, 2.2279-2302, where Hercules willfully clothes himself in the shirt that destroys him. See Peck (1978, pp. 61-62).

2270-71 clotheth . . . clothed. On the interstices between make believe, false seeming, feigned "chiere" (2.2143), clothing, and staged fantasies in the tale, see Peck (1994), pp. 260-62.

2331 ff. Latin Marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor de quinta specie Inuidie, que Supplantacio dicitur, cuius cultor, priusquam percipiatur, aliene dignitatis et officii multociens intrusor existit. [Here the Confessor discourses about the fifth species of Envy, which is called Supplantation, whose plowshare, before it might be noticed, often gouges as an intruder another's dignity and duty.]

2346 chalk for chese. Proverbial. See Whiting C134. Compare CA Prol.416.

2382 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic in amoris causa opponit Confessor Amanti super eodem. [Here in the cause of love the Confessor asks the Lover about that same thing.]

2366 The gloss is Macaulay's (2.489).

2430 tant ne quant. Macaulay compares MO, lines 3654 and 23358 (2.489).

2452 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Agamenon de amore Brexeide Achillem, et Diomedes de amore Criseide Troilum supplantauit. [How Agamenon supplanted Achilles from Brisede's love, and Diomedes supplanted Troilus from Criseyde's love.] Gower may have gotten the story from Hyginus (Fab. CVI) or Ovid (Heroides 3). Macaulay notes that "In Beno�t and Guido the name is 'Briseida,' but Boccaccio was aware that Briseis was a different person (Gen. Deorum, xii. 52)" (2.489).

2459-95 Gower's story of Geta and Amphitrion relates to the legend of Hercules' conception. See Metam. 6.112; Hyginus, Fab. XXIX; and Vat. Myth I (50), where Jupiter lies with Alcmene disguised as Amphitrion, her husband, while he is away in battle. Gower substitutes Amphitrion for the supplanter, though the wife Alcmene remains the same; where he gets Geta, the new husband, is not known. Nor is there reference to the conception of Hercules. In Hyginus, Amphitrion accepts the fact that Jove must have lain with his wife and from that day he does not lie with her himself. Perhaps in Gower we are to understand that Amphitrion follows Jove's example and seeks out other women who might "undo" the door (line 2483) for a husband in disguise. Genius's making of Geta and Amphitrion close friends adds to the villainy of Amphitrion's behavior. See Wright on links with Vitalis of Blois' twelfth-century Latin comedy, Geta, particularly with regard to names and motifs of supplantation (pp. 214-17).

2459 ff. Latin Marginalia: Qualiter Amphitrion socium suum Gentam, qui Almeenam peramavit, seipsum loco alterius cautelosa supplantacione substituit. [How Amphitrion substituted himself for his companion Geta by a deceptive supplantation in another's place.]

2483 Undo. The undo-the-door trope is a favorite fabliaux convention, as the virtuous one asks for entry but is frustrated by circumstances on the other side. N.b., the comic variation in The Squire of Low Degree, lines 534 ff. See Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 323, on the false bridegroom motif.

2499-2500 enforme . . . forme. See Simpson (1995, pp. 1-6) on Gower's wordplay on enforme/forme/enformasioun. "Genius is not simply passing on 'information' passively; he is instead actively informing a tale" (p. 4). (N.b. also 4.924-25) Simpson emphasizes the polysemous wordplay on form as "shape," "material," "a process of filling the shape," an imparting process. "[I]n practice Genius's literary act of informing stories is designed to teach, or inform, Amans, and so the act of literary information shades into a pedagogic sense" (p. 5). See 5.450 on Genius who "wolde enforme and teche."

2501 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic in amoris causa contra fraudem detraccionis ponit Confessor exemplum. Et narrat de quodam Romani Imparatoris filio, qui probitates armorum super omnia excercere affectans nesciente patre vltra mare in partes Persie ad deseruiendum Soldano super guerras cum solo milite tanquam socio suo ignotus se transtulit. Et cum ipsius milicie fama super alios ibidem celsior accreuisset, contigit ut in quodam bello contra Caliphum Egipti inito Soldanus a sagitta mortaliter vulneratus, priusquam moreretur, quendam anulum filie sue secretissimum isti nobili Romano tradidit, dicens qualiter filia sua sub paterne benediccionis vinculo adiurata est, quod quicumque dictum anulum ei afferret, ipsam in coniugem pre omnibus susciperet. Defuncto autem Soldano, versus Ciuitatem que Kaire dicitur itinerantes, iste Romanus commilitoni suo huius misterii secretum reuelauit; qui noctanter a bursa domini sui anulum furto surripiens, hec que audiuit usui proprio falsissima Supplantacione applicauit. Et sic seruus pro domino desponsata sibi Soldani filia coronatus Persie regnauit. [Here in the cause of love the Confessor presents an instructive example against the fraud of detraction. And he tells about a certain son of the Roman emperor, who desiring above all things to engage in deeds of arms, betook himself across the sea, without his father's knowledge, into regions of Persia to serve the Sultan in the wars, remaining anonymous and with only one knight as his companion. And when the repute of his knightly prowess had grown higher there than any others, it happened that in a certain war that had broken out against the caliph of Egypt, the Sultan was mortally wounded by an arrow; before he died, he passed a certain most secret ring of his daughter to the nobleman, saying how his daughter had sworn under the bond of paternal blessing that whoever offered her the said ring would gain her as wife ahead of all others. With the Sultan dying, the Roman, traveling with his companion toward the city which is called Cairo, revealed to him the secret of his mystery. And his companion knight, stealing the ring furtively from his lord's purse at night, applied what he had heard to his own purposes, by most false Supplantation. And thus the servant instead of the lord, with the Sultan's daughter married to him, was crowned and reigned over Persia.]

2501 ff. The cronique (line 2504) that Genius cites as source for the Tale of the False Bachelor has not been found. Thorpe (pp. 175-81) suggests that Gower may have known an early sequel to The Seven Sages of Rome, Le Roman de Marques de Rome, which has numerous parallels with Gower's tale, up to line 2714. Minnis (1983, p. 60) proposes a juxtaposition of two Roman tales, one pagan and one Christian, in this tale and the tale of Constantine that follows.

2741 ded as eny ston. Proverbial. See Whiting S759 and S759a. Compare "still as any stone," S771. See note to line 847.

2795 ff. Gower might have found accounts of Boniface's corruption of the papacy in various chronicles, including those of Rishanger, Higden, and Walsingham. See Macaulay's discussion (2.490-91) of both historical and legendary materials on Boniface. The tale includes a number of inaccuracies, particularly the capture at Avignon, but suits Genius's purposes well. See Scanlon's discussion of the anti-clerical critique in CA that begins in the Prologue and culminates in the tales of Boniface and Constantine in Book 2, where Gower demonstrates shrewdly the necessity of lay authority in the face of clerical corruption (pp. 248-67).

2804 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra istos in causa dignitatis adquirende supplantatores. Et narrat qualiter Papa Bonefacius predecessorem suum Celestinum a papatu coniectata circumuencione fraudulenter supplantauit. Set qui potentes a sede deponit, huiusmodi supplantacionis fraudem non sustinens, ipsum sic in sublime exaltatum postea in profundi carceris miseriam proici, fame que siti cruciari, necnon et ab huius vite gaudiis dolorosa morte explantari finali conclusione permisit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those supplantors in the cause of acquiring dignity. And he tells how Pope Boniface supplanted his predecessor Celestine from the papacy, with a scheme fraudulently constructed. But He Who deposes the powerful from their seats, not tolerating the fraud of this sort of supplantation, allowed the one who had been sublimely exalted to be thrown later into the wretchedness of deep prison, tortured by hunger and thirst, and at the last end to be uprooted from the joys of this life in a sorrowful death.] Gower's shift of the exempla from romance traditions to historical exempla, such as Boniface and Constantine, links the conclusion of Book 2 to the earlier chronicle of Constance and illustrates well Gower's perception of the close relationships between "history" and "tale-making" as components of ethical reflection. See Macaulay's extended discussion of English chronicle accounts of Boniface, particularly those of Walsingham and Higden (2.490-91).

2966 Lowyz. The French king who deposed Boniface VIII, when the pope threatened him with excommunication, was Philip the Fair (Philip IV, 1268-1314), not Louis.

2983 miht with miht schal be withstonde. Proverbial. See Whiting M535.

2995 Guilliam de Langharet. Guillaume de Nogaret, whom Philip sent to arrest the pope and bring him to trial by a church council in France. For discussion of events surrounding the two "quarelles" (n.b. 2.2967), see Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050-1300: with Selected Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988); Joseph R. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); and Charles T. Wood, Philip the Fair and Boniface VIII: State vs. Papacy (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1967).

3028-29 The image of the envious man devouring himself evokes Gower's strong conviction that "the church destroys itself when its officials supplant Christ and, with Envy and Avarice, devour their own members. Such robbing of the people is a form of cannibalism" (Peck 1978, p. 73).

3033 ff. Latin marginalia: Cronica Bonefacii: Intrasti ut vulpis, regnasti ut leo, et mortuus es ut canis. [Chronicle of Boniface: "You have entered like a wolf, reigned like a lion, and died like a dog."]

3055 kepe Simon fro the folde. I.e., protected the people from simony; that is, the buying and selling of ecclesiastical preferments and benefices, or any form of making profit from sacred things, a practice named after Simon Magus (Acts 8:9-24).

3056 ff. Latin marginalia: Nota de prophecia Ioachim Abbatis. [Note concerning the prophecy of Abbot Joachim.] Macaulay (2.491) notes that the marginal notation is in a different hand and that the Latin is omitted altogether in some MSS.

3058 ff. Latin marginalia: Quanti Mercenarii erunt in ouile dei, tuas aures meis narracionibus fedare nolo. [I do not wish to befoul your ears with my declarations of how many merchants there will be in the sheepfold of God.]

3059 mercerie. On the basis of this passage MED, n. (a), suggests figuratively "the stock in trade of simoniacs."

3085 ff. Latin marginalia: Qualiter Ioab princeps milicie Dauid inuidie causa Abner subdole interfecit. Et qualiter eciam Achitofell ob hoc quod Cusy in consilio Absolon preferebatur, accensus inuidia laqueo se suspendit. [How Joab, a leader in David's army, for the sake of envy killed Abner by guile. And how also Achitophel because Cusy was exalted in Absolon's council hanged himself with a noose, burning in envy.] See 2 Kings (2 Samuel) 3:27 and 17:23.

3085-94 Abbot Joachim's warning has not been identified. Accounts of Joab's treachery and Achitophel's death occur in 2 Kings 3:6-39; 16:20-17:23 (2 Samuel 3:6-39; 16:20-17:23, KJV). The reference to Seneca in line 3095 is based on Dante, Inferno XIII.64. Compare Gower's earlier mention of the business in MO (lines 3831 ff.). See Stollreither's discussion of eighteen passages that Gower draws from the Old Testament in compiling the exempla of CA (see Quellen-Nachweise zu John Gowers Confessio Amantis. I Teil. [Munich: Kastner & Lossen, 1901]).

3095-99 Compare Chaucer, LGW F.358-60, where Envy is compared to a "lavendere [washerwoman] of court."

Latin verses vi (before line 3111). Line 4: The ethnica flamma is, literally, a "heathen flame" (from the Vulgate Bible on); but Macaulay takes it as possibly an adjective for "Mt. Ethna," described at several spots in Gower's texts as a metaphor for Envy. A pun on such a sense is very likely. Yet here the literal sense "heathen" seems primary, because the cult of Venus is described throughout the CA in quasi-Christian terms (with Genius as priest, etc.), so any force that competed with that quasi-religion would be (quasi-) heathen. The Christian scope of what follows in this section of Book 2, with the story of Constantine and Pope Sylvester, strongly reinforces the intersection, here at least, between Venus's teachings and those of Christianity (AG).

3114 ff. Latin Marginalia: Hic describit Confessor naturam Inuidie tam in amore quam aliter secundum proprietatem vicii sub compendio. [Here the Confessor describes the nature of Envy, as much in love as in a summary of the vice according to its properties.]

3122-25 thilke blod . . . / Is drye . . . / Thurgh whiche Envie is fyred ay. See Fox, pp. 32-33, on the destructive effects that Envy can have to the physiology of the body.

3174 moder of Pit�. In MO charity is presented as the remedy. Thus the strong emphasis in the story of Constantine and Sylvester makes a fitting conclusion to Book 2. On thematic links between the story and that of Constance at the beginning of Book 2, see Bull�n-Fern�ndez, pp. 42-45, 83-86, and 97-100; and Yeager (2001), where the theme of "motherhood" links the mother Constance to the mother church. On the political potency of the ethics of pity in the latter 1380s, see Galloway, pp. 90-104.

3187 ff. The story of Constantine and Sylvester is based on the Legenda Aurea. See Porter's remarks on Amans as "surrogate for Richard II" in this section of the poem, where "the Donation of Constantine . . . sow[s] the seeds of dissolution within the Church," a topic he had previously explored in VC (p. 147).

3190 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum de virtute caritatis contra Inuidiam. Et narrat de Constantino Helene filio, qui cum Imperii Romani dignitatem optinuerat, a morbo lepre infectus, medici pro sanitate recuperanda ipsum in sanguine puerorum masculorum balneare proposuerunt. Set cum innumera multitudo matrum cum filiis huiusmodi medicine causa in circuitu palacii affuisset, Imparatorque eorum gemitus et clamores percepisset, caritate motus ingemiscens sic ait: "O vere ipse est dominus, qui se facit seruum pietatis." Et hiis dictis statum suum cunctipotentis medele committens, sui ipsius morbum pocius quam infancium mortem benignus elegit. Vnde ipse, qui antea Paganus et leprosus extiterat, ex vnda baptismatis renatus vtriusque materie, tam corporis quam anime, diuino miraculo consecutus est salutem. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example concerning the virtue of charity against envy. And he narrates about Constantine, the son of Helen, who when he had obtained high office in the Roman Empire became infected by the illness of leprosy; and for the sake of recovering his health, the physicians proposed to bathe him in the blood of male children. But when an innumerable multitude of mothers with sons had arrived in the courtyard of the palace on account of this medicine, and the emperor had perceived their moaning and outcries, he, groaning and moved by charity, thus spoke: "O truly he is a lord who makes himself the servant of charity." And with these words committing his condition to the healing of the Almighty, he benignly chose his own illness rather than the death of infants. Whence he who previously had been pagan and leprous emerged from the waves of baptism having been reborn in both substances of his being, body and soul, and was consequently healed by divine miracle.]

3220 leche. The sense here may be simply "physician" or "cure," but the more technical sense of the term may be more precise, where leche refers to a solution poured over something to draw out a particular substance; hence, my gloss "solution," with reference to the blood of infants in which Constantine is to bathe to draw out the leprosy.

3243-73 Pearsall (1966, p. 478) singles out this passage as an example of Gower's narrative power: "Gower's special achievement is to embody, in Constantine's soliloquy and in the description of the working of his mind and heart, the very substance of human charity and pity, and not only that, but also to convey, through Constantine's meditation on the essential equality of all men in the sight of the 'divine pourveance' (lines 3243-73) the justness of moral discrimination which precedes virtuous action."

3249-59 White cites this passage as evidence for Gower's aligning of nature with the body. The And ek of line 3257 "marks a movement away from the sphere of kinde toward the reasonable soul," which is of God's shaping jurisdiction that lies beyond nature (2002, pp. 185-86).

3251 kinde hath in hire lawe. Yeager (1991) attempts to differentiate Gower's use of kinde and nature. But White, citing Gower's use of the feminine adjective in this line, challenges the distinction: "Gower conceives of Kinde here in terms of Romance literature's Goddess Nature (contrast Langland's male personification Kinde), demonstrating how the native and romance terms can be equivalent for Gower in at least one very important area" (2000, p. 174n2).

3257-59 Fisher (p. 196) sees the passage on equality as "one of Gower's favorite adages," derived "ultimately from Cassiodorus' Varia xii.3."

3263-64 The universal enfranchisement of people, regardless of estate, is a common topic in Gower. Compare 8.2109-20.

3275-79 Genius echoes Matthew 7:12 (also Luke 6:31), the "Golden Rule," a biblical passage that Gratian, in his discussion of natural law, picked up from Isidore: "Ius naturae est quod in lege et in euangelio continetur, quo quisque iubetur alii facere, quod sibi uult fieri, et prohibetur alii inferre, quod sibi nolit fieri" [Natural law is what is contained in the law and the Gospels, by which each person is commanded to do to another what he would wish done to himself, and is prohibited from doing to another what he would not wish done to himself]. Dist. I ante c. 1 (Corpus Iuris Canonici, ed. E. Friedberg [Leipzig, 1879], I.l). I am indebted to Barr, p. 50, for the reference and translation. Gower's phrasing reflects his interest in law even as much as his interest in scripture.

3432 The ground of al the Newe Lawe. On the intersection of Christian charity and natural law as a focal topic in the Tale of Constantine and Sylvester, see Olsson (1992), pp. 102-06.

3491-92 Compare Piers Plowman B.15.556-68. The claim about the Donation of Constantine was significant to the Lollards, who (unlike Gower) sought to strip the church altogether of its "poisonous" worldly possessions. The story of the angel appears as early as Gerald of Wales in the twelfth century; some accounts present the voice as the devil's. (For references to further reading, see Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988]), pp. 330-35 (AG).

Notes to Book 3

1 If thou the vices lest to knowe. See Simpson (1995), ch. 6 (pp. 167-97) on the "psychological information" of Book 3 and of the limitations of both Genius' and Amans' abilities to sort through the limitations of what they can understand.

5 A vice forein fro the lawe. The MED glosses forein in this line as "contrary, inimical" (see adj. 3 [d]). The "foreignness" of wrath to law makes it particularly dangerous to social and political structure. See Fisher, p. 196, who sees the line as Gower's means of focusing on legal issues throughout his canon.

8 And yit to kinde no plesance. See note to 3.2263-64 on the contrariness of pride, envy, and wrath to nature.

8 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic in tercio libro tractat super quinque speciebus Ire, quarum prima Malencolia dicitur, cuius vicium Confessor primo describens Amanti super eodem consequenter opponit. [Here in the third book he discusses the five types of Wrath, the first of which is called Melancholy, which the Confessor first describes then asks the Lover concerning it.]

27 Malencolie. On melancholy as a mental or emotional disorder affiliated with wrath in Gower's day, see Mary F. Wack, Lovesickness and Its Commentaries (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), pp. 11-13, 162.

47-48 mennes game . . . pure grame. Ito, p. 244-45, sees Gower's prominent use of adnominatio (a paronomasia - punning and word play through phrasal rhymes) as a means of sharpening the contrast of ideas. Gower uses comparable word play in MO. For other examples, see CA 2.55-56, 5.4885-86, 5.5327-28, 5.7053-54, 6.1379-81, 6.3571-72, and 8.479-80.

128 angri snoute. A fine example of Gower's persona surpassing, through "comical deformity," "self-satire," and "dramatic self-parody," the literary mold in which he has been cast. See Peck (1978, p. 81).

131 In loves stede. Compare the Latin construction in vicem amoris, which defines a role, rather than a physical location.

143 Gower's source for the Tale of Canacee and Machaire is Ovid, Heroides 11. Genius softens the story and appeals to the reader's sympathy for Canacee by adding her speech to her father and her letter to her brother. To heighten the pathos and focus on the father's cruel anger, he places the death of the child, bathed in his mother's blood, after the mother's death. See Chaucer's witty allusion to this "wikke ensample" in the Introduction to The Man of Law's Tale, CT II(B1)77-80. Lydgate retells Gower's version in his Fall of Princes (1.6833- 7070). The tale reveals "none of the stock responses of the narrow moralist, but a sober and compassionate meditation on the blind instinctual nature of sexual passion" (Pearsall, 1966, p. 481). "Melancholy, not incest, is the topic governing the tale" (Olsson, 1992, p. 112).

143 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra istos, qui cum vires amoris non sunt realiter experti, contra alios amantes malencolica seueritate ad iracundiam vindicte prouocantur. Et narrat qualiter Rex Eolus filium nomine Macharium et filiam nomine Canacem habuit, qui cum ab infancia vsque ad pubertatem inuicem educati fuerant, Cupido tandem ignito iaculo amborum cordis desideria amorose penetrauit, ita quod Canacis natura cooperante a fratre suo inpregnata parturit: super quo pater, intollerabilem iuuentutis concupiscenciam ignorans nimiaque furoris malencolia preuentus, dictam filiam cum partu dolorosissimo casu interfici adiudicauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who, although they have not really experienced the powers of love, are vindictively provoked to wrathfulness against other lovers, in a melancholic severity. And he narrates how King Eolus had a son, Macharius by name, and a daughter, Canace by name. After they had been raised together from infancy up to adolescence, Cupid at length penetrated the desires of both their hearts amorously with a burning arrow, such that Canace, with nature cooperating, became pregnant by her brother and gave birth. Whereupon their father, ignorant of the unbearable lusts of youth and prepossessed by an excessive melancholy of fury, judged that the said daughter with her offspring in this most mournful case be put to death.] The story is attractively told in Gower, despite the quibbling of Chaucer's Man of Law. Lydgate was evidently moved by Gower's version, as he somewhat incongruously inserts it into Fall of Princes as the conclusion to Book 1 (1.6835-7070). As in Gower, the heart of Lydgate's narrative is Canacee's touching letter of complaint to her brother.

148-81 See White's discussion of the basic natural sexual instinct (CA 8.68-70) where, before the positing of laws to the contrary, incest was accepted behavior, a perspective that remains present in nature and that is "certainly operative of Genius' account of what happened to Canace and Machaire" (2002, p. 194).

154-57 In Book 3, especially, Gower explores richly the complex ambiguities of nature. On questions of whether persons may go against the lawes of nature (line 157) without punishment - "fordon the lawe of kynde," as Chaucer puts it (TC 1.238) - see Olsson (1982, pp. 232-34). But although Gower grants some allowances toward leges naturae, neither he nor his priest "is content merely to exonerate the impulses of animalic 'kinde'" (p. 233).

172 lawe positif. "Nature informed by reason." (Kelly, p. 141). Macaulay notes:

Gower's view is that there is nothing naturally immoral about incestuous marriage, but that it is made wrong by the "lex positiva" of the Church. This position he makes clear at the beginning of the eighth book, by showing that in the first ages of the world such marriages must have been sanctioned by divine authority, and that the idea of kinship as a bar to marriage had grown up gradually, cousins being allowed to marry among the Jews, though brother and sister might not, and that finally the Church had ordered:

That non schal wedden of his ken
Ne the seconde, ne the thridde.
VIII.147 ff.

If attacked by Chaucer with regard to the subject of this story, he would no doubt defend himself by arguing that the vice with which it dealt was not against nature, and that the erring brother and sister were in truth far more deserving of sympathy than the father who took such cruel vengeance. (2.493)

As Schueler emphasizes, in this tale Gower does not defend incest, but rather acknowledges the power of natural love (1972, p. 253).

178 enchaunted. Gower's term here has received considerable commentary, from "overlaid with the nostalgia of his own loss but instinct with a pity and understanding" (Fison, p. 21); the blinding of creatures as blind Cupid does (Bennett, 1986, p. 108); and a spell cast on people regardless of law and reason (Collins, p. 120); to children "innocently blind" (Runacres, p. 125). The enchantment does not exculpate the lovers, however; as C. David Benson points out, the term "usually carried a clearly sinister meaning" (pp. 103-04). See Nicholson (1989), p. 221.

205 The sothe, which mai noght ben hid. Proverbial. See Whiting S490.

213 he was to love strange. See Bull�n-Fern�ndez's reading of the tale (pp. 158-72) on levels as diverse as confinement of the body politic by an absolutist king to the confinement of Canacee, whose subtext is confined by patriarchy and Genius, her "literary father." In this respect "Canacee exemplifies literary creativity" (p. 160). See explanatory note to line 268.

225 ff. When Eolus ignores Canacee's touching plea, Olsson suggests, "he rejects a basic good in nature, the good of cognatio. . . . The extraordinary power of this tale is that while it exposes a weakness in kinde itself, it also builds that perception into a dissuasion from melancholic wrath" (1992, p. 113).

248 naked swerd. It is "as though [Eolus] is proposing incest at a double remove, substituting the knight for himself and the sword for the phallus" (Spearing, p. 217).

268 I wole a lettre unto mi brother. Bull�n-Fern�ndez sees Canacee as a woman locked in a private sphere. In Ovid she has a nurse to talk to. In Gower she is totally isolated, able only to write a letter with ink and, ultimately, with the blood of her body. "Writing the letter can . . . be seen as Canacee's attempt to create a private space for herself . . . . [P]erhaps both Chaucer and Gower explored and developed a sense of privacy of the self in their work partly as a response to Richard's pretense that he owned both everybody's goods and their lives. Both writers may have seen a need . . . to erase the line between private and public" (p. 165). C. David Benson makes the point that the tale is "a 'wikke ensample' of one who loved sinfully," which "does not invite our sympathy for the couple so much as our horror at the sin they have committed and the evil it produces." Gower, he points out, has added to Ovid the secrecy of their passion, "inspired by irrational desire," which all recognize, "including the couple themselves, as wrong, and disastrous in its consequences" (pp. 102-03). Olsson observes that incest may be "inordinatus, but it is not innaturalis": "Nature 'kepth hire lawes al at large' (3.174), but the human being is obligated to temper or 'modifie' those laws by reason and, as derived from it, the 'lawe positif'" (1992, p. 113).

322 ne bad to do juise. Literally: "would not order [someone] to impose judicial punishment," the infinitive setting up a sequence of parallel infinitives in the next lines, ". . . to bear . . . to seek . . . to caste." Perhaps the sequence begins with "to winne" in line 316.

337-59 "The Moral perspective that Gower adopts for the Canace and Machaire story tends to protect Nature from censure by turning over attention to the father's culpability as he overreacts to something presented as a natural necessity" (White, 2002, p. 197), which from the position of positive law seems to proclaim "Nature's potential moral anarchy" (White, 2002, p. 199). On love as "a disease endemic is to natural God-given order, the law of kinde," see White (2002), pp. 204-05.

342-59 Kelly observes that the proposition that Amans has no power to alter the laws of nature (see 3.154-57) simply demonstrates once again that "Gower has let his confessor run away with himself. . . . Genius is not speaking the truth but merely the opinion of lovers" (p. 144).

344-50 Simpson compares Genius' excusing the incestuous lovers to Dante's Francesca "in her claims for moral leniency in . . . her technically incestuous love" (1995, p. 173).

352 That nedes mot that nede schal. Proverbial. See Whiting N61. The fatalistic maxim is a favorite of Gower. See also 1.1714 and 8.1020.

355 Bennett notes that "law of kind" and "kindly law" were "the earliest English equivalents to lex naturae; 'laws of nature' first occurring in Gower" (1957, pp. 197-98n3). He goes on to note that "natural law" first occurs in Cursor Mundi.

361 The details for the story of Tiresias and the Snakes occur in Ovid, Metam. 3.324-27; Hyginus, Fab. LXXV; and Vat. Myth I (16), all of which Gower probably had access to, though it is Ovid that he cites. The tale is a good follow-up to Canacee and Machaire in defining the virtues and limitations of nature. See explanatory note to lines 373-75.

364 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic narrat qualiter Tiresias in quodam monte duos serpentes inuenit pariter commiscentes, quos cum virga percussit. Irati dii ob hoc quod naturam impediuit, ipsum contra naturam a forma virili in muliebrem transmutarunt. [Here he narrates how Tiresias discovered on a certain mountain two serpents mingling together, whom he struck with a rod. The gods, wrathful on account of the fact that he had impeded nature, transmogrified him unnaturally from a male into a womanly form.]

369-94 The author of Chaucer's Ghoast (1672) borrows these lines as his "translation/retelling" in an ancient manner of the tale of Socrates' patience in Arg. 11. Chaucer's Wife of Bath does allude to the tale, but the source of the seventeenth-century poet's ghostly version is Gower, not Chaucer.

373-75 Fisher, p. 196, cites this passage to demonstrate the interface between law and nature: the Tale of Tiresias and the Snakes "illustrates the all-embracing virtue of legitimate sexual intercourse." "Tiresias is punished for disrupting nature by having his own nature disrupted" (Cresswell, p. 37, as cited by Nicholson, p. 224).

383 More is a man than such a beste. Simpson (1995, pp.176-77) juxtaposes the act of Tiresias against the snakes with that of Aeolus, who destroys Canacee and her baby for her incestuous coupling with Machaire, to show how man is more than beast and thus lives by more complex rules.

398-99 Let every man love as he wile, / Be so it be noght my ladi. Earlier, Amans recognizes his own destructive impulses as he terrorizes his household (2.87-98). But now he seems more moderate, even potentially sympathetic of Canacee and Machaire, providing he gets his way. This leads to his invoking his wrath "Alone upon miself" (3.402), which Elizabeth Allen (pp. 634-35) likens to the progress of Canacee's suicide, as she brings home her guilt. The point is that "Amans's limitations encourage us to face a particular danger of self-examination: the risk of an obsessive, self-destructive, disconnection from an outside world where every man can 'love as he will' as long as it does not touch others . . . The Confessio insists not only on the reader's inward turn but also, in response, a search for willed interconnections, however tenuous or tangential: the Confessio seeks to make self-examination socially responsible" (p. 636).

417 ff. See Craun, pp. 117-18, on Cheste and Detraction as Sins of the Tongue in penitential manuals.

421 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor super secunda specie Ire, que Lis dicitur, ex cuius contumeliis innumerosa dolorum occasio tam in amoris causa quam aliter in quampluribus sepissime exorta est. [Here the Confessor treats the second species of Wrath, which is called Conflict, from whose aggressions very often arises many an occasion of sorrows both in the cause of love and elsewhere in very many things.]

433 as a sive kepeth ale. Proverbial. See Whiting S305. Stockton, p. 405n3, notes other examples in VC 3.1546, 6.1359, and MO 17656-58.

463-65 the harde bon / Althogh himselven have non, / A tunge brekth. For the proverbial idea, see the Latin verses at the opening of CA (Prol.i, and note on p. 284 of vol. 1 of this edition).

502-03 instede of chese, / For that is helplich to defie. Soft and semi-soft cheese was considered an aid to digestion: "mylky chese moyste� �e wombe (stomach) . . . . And chese y-ete after mete �ruste� dounward the mete" (John Trevisa, trans., On the Properties of Things 2.1334.15-20). Seymour emends mylky to [newe], but I have preferred to follow the reading of the six principal manuscripts.

532 agein the pes. A legal phrase. Any crime is something done "against the [king's] peace" (contra pacem). For references, see John Alford, Piers Plowman: A Glossary of Legal Diction (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988), s. v. pes.

577-78 no man mai his time lore / Recovere. Proverbial. See Whiting T307. Compare CA 4.1485-87. Perhaps the most amusing expression of the proverb is Harry Bailey's in CT II(B1)28-31.

585 oule on stock and stock on oule. Proverbial. See Whiting O69. The implication is that the branch (stock) on which the owl roosts becomes beshitten and thus befouls the bird in return.

616 ff. Latin marginalia: Seneca: Paciencia est vindicta omnium iniuriarum. [Seneca: Patience is the conquerer of all injuries.] The thought is consistent with the moral essays of Seneca popular in the Middle Ages (esp. "On Wrath" and "On Mercy"), but the precise formulation does not come from those, nor from the apocryphal collection of "proverbs" associated with Seneca (Proverbia Senecae) (AG).

621 wol noght bowe er that he breke. Proverbial. See Whiting B484. Compare Chaucer's TC 1.257-58: "The yerde is bet that bowen wole and wynde / Than that that brest."

640 Chaucer's Jankyn puts his chiding Wife of Bath in her place with the same story (CT III[D]727-32). He learned the story from Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum I.48 (PL XXIII, col. 278), whence Gower may also have learned it, though the story was a commonplace epitome of patience.

643 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum de paciencia in amore contra lites habenda. Et narrat qualiter vxor Socratis ipsum quodam die multis sermonibus litigauit; set cum ipse absque vlla responsione omnia probra pacienter sustulit, indignata vxor quandam ydriam plenam aque, quam in manu tenebat, super caput viri sui subito effudit, dicens, "Euigila et loquere": qui respondens tunc ait, "O vere iam scio et expertus sum quia post ventorum rabiem sequuntur ymbres": et isto modo litis contumeliam sua paciencia deuicit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example concerning the necessity in love of keeping patience against attacks. And he narrates how Socrates' wife attacked him one day with many speeches; but when he endured all trials patiently without any response, the wife, indignant, suddenly poured out on her husband a pot full of water that she was holding in her hand, saying, "Wake up and speak." He then responding said, "O truly now I know and have experienced, that after a frenzy of winds follow rains." And by this means he conquered the invective of the strife with his patience.]

671 swelle. Wrath is the pent-up vice; often in medieval lore the angry man is said to swell to bursting. The idea dates at least as early as Seneca (first century), "On Anger" 1.20 and 2.36.

693 Chaucer's Xantippa is less gentle than Gower's. In her rage she dumps a pisspot upon Socrates's head; he calmly wipes his beard and observes: "Er that thonder stynte, comth a reyn!" CT III(D)732.

731-64 "A lover of antiquity," the author of Chaucer's Ghoast (1672) "borrows" these lines for his Arg. 3 on Ovid's Tiresias, as if they were his own "penn'd after the ancient manner of writing in England."

734 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum, quod de alterius lite intromittere cauendum est. Et narrat qualiter Iupiter cum Iunone super quadam questione litigabat, videlicet vtrum vir an mulier in amoris concupiscencia feruencius ardebat; super quo Tiresiam eorum iudicem constituebant. Et quia ille contra Iunonem in dicte litis causa sentenciam diffiniuit, irata dea ipsum amborum oculorum lumine claritatis absque remissione priuauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example how one must take care not to interfere in another's quarrel. And he tells how Jupiter was arguing with Juno on a certain question: whether a man or a woman felt hotter passion in the lust of love; for this they established Tiresias as their judge. And since he declared against Juno in the case of the said conflict, the irate goddess deprived him forever of sight in both eyes.]

781-814 These lines are plagiarized as Arg. 4 of Chaucer's Ghoast (1672) as the "antiquarian" poet attempts to effect "Chaucer's" style.

783 ff. Chaucer's Manciple also rehearses a version of this tale. It is a story from Ovid, Metam. 2.531-632, often told by medieval authors: e.g., Ovide Moralis�; Machaut, Le Livre dou Voir Dit, lines 7773-8110; Seven Sages of Rome, lines 2193-2292; and various allusions in RR. See James Work, in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, pp. 699-722.

784 ff. Latin marginalia: Quia litigantes ora sua cohibere nequiunt, hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra illos qui in amoris causa alterius consilium reuelare presumunt. Et narrat qualiter quedam auis tunc albissima nomine coruus consilium domine sue Cornide Phebo denudauit; vnde contigit non solum ipsam Cornidem interfici, set et coruum, qui antea tanquam nix albus fuit, in piceum colorem pro perpetuo transmutari. [Since disputants cannot conceal their utterances, here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who in the cause of love presume to reveal the counsel of another. And he narrates how a certain bird who was the whitest of white, the crow [corvus] by name, laid bare to Phoebus the counsel of his mistress Cornida; whence it happened that not only was Cornida killed, but also Corvus, who had previously been snow white, was transmuted forever into pitch black.]

815 Be war therfore and sei the beste. "Beware, therefore, and speak only the best." Compare 3.768. The admonitory phrases bear some resonances with the repeated injunctions to "beware" by Chaucer's Manciple, who admonishes the Cook: "My sone, keep wel thy tonge, and keep thy freend. / A wikked tonge is worse than a feend" (CT IX[H]319-20); see also "Beth war, and taketh kep what that ye seye" (IX[H]310) and "Kepe wel thy tonge and thenk upon the crowe" (IX[H]362). Some have held that Chaucer, with his ten "my sone's" in forty lines, is sending up Gower's story.
Ultimately the point derives from early medieval sayings about guarding the tongue, e.g. "maledicus ne esto" (pseudo-Cato, "Do not be abusive" [Minor Latin Poets, p. 596, line 41]). Translations of such advice poetry were popular in the later fourteenth through the fifteenth centuries, and sometimes emphasize Gower's phrase about careful restraint of the tongue. For a direct parallel, see Lydgate's "Say the Best, and Never Repent" (in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, pp. 795-99). While Lydgate's short advice poem clearly draws on Chaucer's many comments on the same topic, his collection of notions more often parallels Gower, and Lydgate's poem may even be inspired by this moment in the CA. For broad discussion of the pastoral background of the topic of "sins of the tongue" and aspects of its place in Middle English literature, see Craun.

818 another place. I.e., Ovid's Fasti 2.585-616, where the story is told at greater length. In Ovid, Laar is not condemned as a jangler, except by Jupiter.

818 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic loquitur super eodem: Et narrat qualiter Laar Nimpha de eo quod Iupiter Iuturnam adulterauit, Iunoni Iouis vxori secretum reuelauit. Quapropter Iupiter ira commotus lingua Laaris prius abscisa ipsam postea in profundum Acherontis exulem pro perpetuo mancipauit. [Here he speaks about the same thing: and he narrates how Laar the Nymph had secretly revealed to Juno, Jupiter's wife, how Jupiter had committed adultery with Juterna. On account of this Jupiter, moved to wrath, first had Laar's tongue cut away, then committed her perpetually to exile in deepest Acheron.]

838 reule. With his keen interest in law, Gower uses the noun reule with technical precision in diverse ways. In CA Prol.108 "reule" connotes "jurisdiction"; in 1.883 its sense is that of "a religious practice." In 4.2642 it implies "a norm of procedure within an academy"; or in 7.1051, "the law of nature." In 7.47, it suggests "a set of rules governing morality in general." In expressions like "oghe reule" (3.1169) or "oute of reule," (6.1283) the sense is "lack of control" or "disorder." Here, given the terms of confession that Genius has established, Amans uses the word to suggest the regulation governing the religious contract he has set up with Genius, his priest.

847 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor de tercia specie Ire, que Odium dicitur, cuius natura omnes Ire inimicicias ad mentem reducens, illas vsque ad tempus vindicte velud Scriba demonis in cordis papiro commemorandas inserit. [Here the Confessor discourses about the third species of Wrath, which is called Hatred, whose nature, summarizing all enmities of Wrath in its mind like the devil's scribe, inserts them into the heart's paper as memoranda until the time of inflicting them.]

973 The story of Nauplius's revenge occurs in Beno�t, Le Roman de Troie, lines 27671-27930; Gest Hyst. 32.12552-12704; Hyginus, Fab. CXVI; and Vat. Myth. II (201 ff.). Gower appears to have followed more than one source.

973 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra illos qui, cum Ire sue odium aperte vindicare non possint, ficta dissimilacione vindictam subdole assequuntur. Et narrat quod cum Palamades princeps Grecorum in obsidione Troie a quibusdam suis emulis proditorie interfectus fuisset, paterque suus Rex Namplus in patria sua tunc existens huiusmodi euentus certitudinem sciuisset, Grecos in sui cordis odium super omnia recollegit. Vnde contigit quod, cum Greci deuicta Troia per altum mare versus Greciam nauigio remeantes obscurissimo noctis tempore nimia ventorum tempestate iactabantur, Rex Namplus in terra sua contra litus maris, vbi maiora saxorum eminebant pericula, super cacumina montium grandissimos noctanter fecit ignes: quos Greci aspicientes saluum portum ibidem inuenire certissime putabant, et terram approximantes diruptis nauibus magna pars Grecorum periclitabatur. Et sic, quod Namplus viribus nequiit, odio latitante per dissimilacionis fraudem vindicauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who, when they are not able openly to inflict their wrath's hate, pursue their punishment surreptitiously. And he narrates that when Palamades, prince of the Greeks, had been treacherously killed by certain of his rivals at the siege of Troy, his father King Namplus, when he had learned while he was in his own country the certainty of this event, collected in his heart a hatred for the Greeks above all others. Whence it happened that, after Troy was sacked, when the Greeks were returning home by ship toward Greece across the deep ocean, at the darkest point of night they were tossed about by a tempest of extraordinarily strong winds; and King Namplus, in his land across from the seashore where the greatest dangers of rocks jutted out, caused great fires to be set on the peaks of mountains. The Greeks, seeing those, firmly believed that they had discovered a safe harbor there, and approaching the land with the ships torn apart, the majority of the Greeks were endangered. And thus, what Namplus was not able to do by force, he inflicted through fraud of dissimulation by means of a hidden hatred.] Runacres cites the opening of this gloss as an example of moralitas that serves "as a constant reminder of the importance of the ethical purpose of the poem" that may not be "closely linked to the . . . narraciones" (p. 121).

977 tornen hom agein. See Olsson (1995, pp. 86-92) on the centrality of the woman and home to Gower's ideology of return and repose. He notes perceptively the large number of rough homecomings, such as those of the Greeks here (compare the tales of Leucothoe, 5.6722-51, or Elda's desperate circumstance as he would wake his wife, 2.836-38, or Jephthah's unhappy return, 4.1517). "Life at home can be disrupted or destroyed by domestic tyranny, external assault, random misfortune, and, perhaps most tragically, betrayal" (p. 92). But regardless of circumstances, the quality of the return is likely to be bound up in memory, that Boethian domicile possessed well by Gower's four good wives in 8.2617-18, "a memory that . . . fully acknowledges their own unsettled condition and their suffering. They understand their humanity [as the Greeks in these lines do not], and they also understand what it means to be rooted in relationship: their lives 'at home,' for all they must remember, help give them, unsentimentally, both constancy and stability" (p. 93). It is this sense of home and repose upon which Gower builds the conclusion to his poem in Book 8.

981-1000 "Ships and the sea, indeed, are always good in Gower . . . . This excellence in Gower's sea-pieces has led some to suppose that he was familiar with sea travel - as he may well have been; but it is, in fact, only one manifestation of his devotion to movement and progression, his preoccupation with things that change as you watch them" (Lewis, p. 207). See also 4.1741 ff., 4.3063, and 8.1928-29.

1073-75 Proverbial. A variant of Whiting J75.

1076-78 Compare 2.1921-22. Mitchell, remarking on the intrinsic deception of mirrors to which Gower alludes, notes the common use of mirror imagery in didactic discourse on memory and meditation in the later Middle Ages and suggests that by means of such recurring remarks, Gower craftily "implicates the specular supposition of exemplary rhetoric itself" (p. 130). For a summary of uses of mirrors in speculation on mental behavior see Herbert Grabes, The Mutable Glass: Mirror-Imagery in the Titles and Texts of the Middle Ages and English Renassance, trans. Gordon Collier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Gower uses the idea of a mirror's illusory reflection that has nothing therinne (3.1078) to underscore the trickiness of imagination as it feeds such illusions as hatred, a self-deception that can overthrow a person (3.1079-80), or sustains Falssemblant, who, indeed, offers a treacherous "glas" (2.1921).

Latin verses iv (before line 1089). Lines 1-2: sit spiritus eius / Naribus, "whose spirit is in his nostrils," a biblical phrase for an angry man; see Isaiah 2:22 (AG).

1094 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic tractat Confessor super quarta et quinta specie Ire, que impetuositas et homicidium dicuntur. Set primo de impetuositate specialius tractare intendit, cuius natura spiritum in naribus gestando ad omnes Ire mociones in vindictam parata pacienciam nullatenus obseruat. [Here the Confessor treats the fourth and fifth species of Wrath, which are called Aggressiveness and Homicide. And first he intends particularly to discuss Aggressiveness, whose nature, bearing its "spirit in his nostrils," prepares it to inflict all manner of wrath in its readiness for vengeance and makes it not at all act with patience.] For the phrase "spirit in his nostrils," see above, note on Latin verses iv (before line 1089).

1193-99 See White on the power of natural love, whose influence may sometimes be overwhelming (1987, p. 319). "Gower does not seem to see the universe as a place considerately arranged so that the man of goodwill shall move reasonably smoothly towards salvation; rather he sees it as a battleground on which man in his weakness must face adversaries immensely superior to him and by no means wholeheartedly committed to his spiritual good" (p. 321). See also White (1988, p. 605).

1194-99 love is of so gret a miht . . . Will scholde evere be governed / Of Reson more than of Kinde. A focal passage on the potential destructive powers of blind Nature without the good governance of Reason. On the proverbial wisdom of line 1194, see Whiting L518, L534, L538, L540, and L544, on CA 1.18, 1.35, and 5.4556. See also Chaucer's The Franklin's Tale, CT V(F)764-66, and PF, line 12.

1201 The story of Diogenes' confrontation with Alexander is a favorite medieval tale. See Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale 3.68 ff.; Latin Gesta Romanorum, cap. CLXXXIII; Walter Burley, De Vita Philosophorum, cap. I. The messenger and the axeltree are apparently Gower's additions to the story. Pfister suggests that Gower draws on Valerius Maximus (p. 86).

1204 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum, quod hominis impetuosa voluntas sit discrecionis moderamine gubernanda. Et narrat qualiter Diogenes, qui motus animi sui racioni subiugarat, Regem Alexandrum super isto facto sibi opponentem plenius informauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example showing that a man's aggressive will must be guided by discretion's rudder. And he narrates how Diogenes, who had subjugated the motions of his mind to reason, very fully informed King Alexander when he questioned him about this.]

1331 Chaucer also tells the story of Pyramus and Thisbe in LGW. The story is based on Ovid, Metam. 4.55-166. Of the two, Chaucer follows the source more closely, in a mood of high sentiment. For a brief comparison of these two Middle English accounts with Ovid, see Macaulay (2.497-98). See Harbert (pp. 91-93) for an insightful comparison of Gower and Ovid.

1331 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic in amoris causa ponit Confessor exemplum contra illos qui in sua dampna nimis accelerantes ex impetuositate seipsos multociens offendunt. Et narrat qualiter Piramus, cum ipse Tisbee amicam suam in loco inter eosdem deputato tempore aduentus sui promptam non inuenit, animo impetuoso seipsum pre dolore extracto gladio mortaliter transfodit: que postea infra breue veniens cum ipsum sic mortuum inuenisset, eciam et illa in sui ipsius mortem impetuose festinans eiusdem gladii cuspide sui cordis intima per medium penetrauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who in the cause of love very often offend by rushing excessively from aggressive impetuosity to their own destruction. And he narrates how Piramus, when he did not find his girlfriend Thisbee ready at the time of his arrival in the place designated by both, with a spirit impetuous from anguish drew his sword and fatally transfixed himself. And when she, arriving later within a short time, found him thus dead, she too hastening to her death pierced the innermost regions of her heart with the point of the same sword.]

1370-71 In Gower the lovers work together to make a hole in the wall, unlike in Ovid, where the chink is simply found.

1375-76 . . . hote / . . . hote. Kim Zarins, in her unpublished essay "Poetic Justice: Rime Riche and Wordplay in Gower's Confessio Amantis" (presented at the Cornell/Rochester graduate student symposium at the University of Rochester, April 13, 2002), explores the extended resonances of Gower's prominent use of this device. Pyramus is not just hote [called] Pyramus, "he is hot and hotly desired," as his name, derived from the Greek word for fire, implies. It is as if "hote" "determines Pyramus's character and fate" (p. 4). See also the puns on "hote" in 4.87-88, which anticipate Dido's fiery doom; and 3.21-22, where wrath is presented as burning passion.

1386 the softe pas. Gower's Middle English uses some case inflections for certain idioms; here, softe has a final -e because it is in a dative or residually instrumental case.

1469 what hath he deserved? Pearsall emphasizes Gower's ignoring of Ovid's metamorphoses to focus instead on moral issues as his characters perceive them. The word deserved provides "an index of Gower's preoccupation with human actions as responsible, as part of a meaningful pattern" (1966, p. 480).

1537 Daunger. The personification of female insecurity, resistance, and aloofness in RR, who repeatedly thwarts Amans in his love quest. See Maxwell Luria, A Reader's Guide to the Roman de la Rose (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1982), pp. 42-44; and John V. Fleming, The Roman de la Rose: A Study in Allegory and Iconography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 187-89.

1615-58 This tour de force of proverbs is unusual even for the sententious Genius. The point seems to be that therapy often begins in commonplace wisdom, out of which something more substantial may come. Compare Philosophy's use of proverbs as she begins to engage the confused Boece in Consolation of Philosophy 1.m.6 and 3.m.1. Several of the wise sayings are cited in Whiting, though not all.

1630-31 Thanne if he felle and overthrewe - / The hors. The syntax seems awkward because of the delayed antecedent (it is the horse that falls, not the rider) and the use of overthrewe as an intransitive verb (see Macaulay 2.499 on overthrewe). The passage, beginning at line 1629, is proverbial, combining two proverbs - the chaffing at the bridle (see Whiting B533) and "Dun is in the myre" (see Chaucer's The Manciple's Tale, CT IX[H]5; and Whiting D434).

1658 He hath noght lost that wel abitt. Proverbial. See Whiting A6. Compare CA 4.1776.

1680 Folhaste doth non avantage. Proverbial. See Whiting F463. Compare 3.1861.

1685 ff. The source may be Ovid, Metam. 1.452-567.

1688 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra illos qui in amoris causa nimia festinacione concupiscentes tardius expediunt. Et narrat qualiter pro eo quod Phebus quamdam virginem pulcherimam nomine Daphnem nimia amoris acceleracione insequebatur, iratus Cupido cor Phebi sagitta aurea ignita ardencius vulnerauit: et econtra cor Daphne quadam sagitta plumbea, que frigidissima fuit, sobrius perforauit. Et sic quanto magis Phebus ardencior in amore Daphnem prosecutus est, tanto magis ipsa frigidior Phebi concupiscenciam toto corde fugitiua dedignabatur. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who in the cause of love desire too hastily and too slowly carry it out. And he narrates how since Phebus pursued a certain very beautiful virgin, Daphne by name, with too great a hastiness for love, Cupid irritably wounded Phebus's heart with a golden arrow burning very hotly, but in contrast pierced Daphne's heart more somberly with a certain lead arrow which was exceedingly cold. And thus the more ardently in love Phebus pursued Daphne, the more coldly she disdained him, whole-heartedly fleeing Phebus' lust.]

1716-20 Genius' remarks on the significance of the laurel tree seem to be based on Ovide Moralis� rather than Ovid. See Mainzer, pp. 217-18.

1729-35 Amans' response reveals "a flicker of wit sometimes [to be found] in the lover's literal-minded responses" (Pearsall, 1966, p. 477). The wry humor is part of Gower's dramatic sense of narrative voice. See also Runacres, p. 128, and Bennett, 1986, p. 413, cited by Nicholson, pp. 242-43.

1757-1862 Gower's story of Athemas (Acamas) and Demephon is based chiefly on Le Roman de Troie, lines 28147 ff., though it is found also in the Troy stories of Dictys and Guido.

1760 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra illos qui nimio furore accensi vindictam Ire sue vltra quam decet consequi affectant. Et narrat qualiter Athemas et Demephon Reges, cum ipsi de bello Troiano ad propria remeassent et a suis ibidem pacifice recepti non fuissent, congregato aliunde pugnatorum excercitu, regiones suas non solum incendio vastare set et omnes in eisdem habitantes a minimo vsque ad maiorem in perpetuam vindicte memoriam gladio interficere feruore iracundie proposuerunt. Set Rex Nestor, qui senex et sapiens fuit, ex paciencia tractatus inter ipsos Reges et eorum Regna inita pace et concordia huiusmodi impetuositatem micius pacificauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who, inflamed by excessive fury, desire to inflict the punishment of their wrath beyond what is appropriate. And he tells how Kings Athemas and Demephon, having returned from the Trojan war to their own people and having not been received peacefully there by their own populace, collected from elsewhere an army and, in a frenzy of anger, proposed not only to devastate their own regions but also to put to the sword everyone living in them, from the least to the most important, as a permanent memorial to their revenge. But King Nestor, who was old and wise, allowed patience to lead him and mildly pacified this aggressiveness, initiating a peace and a treaty between the kings and their kingdoms.]

1772 soghten frendes ate nede. Proverbial. See Whiting F634. Compare 5.4912-14, for variant.

1792-1800 Of yonge men the lusti route . . . / Of hem that there weren yonge. Compare the portrayal of the hasty foolishness of the young in matters of war in Chaucer's Tale of Melibee CT VII(B2)1034-35, as they oppose the wise counsel of the elderly.

1861 Folhaste is cause of mochel wo. Proverbial. See Whiting F463. Compare 3.1680.

1885 Gower's most direct source for the story of Orestes seems to be Beno�t, Le Roman de Troie, lines 28047-112; 28285-412; 28469-533. For a lively modern English translation see Mary Elizabeth Meek, Historia Destructionis Troiae, Book 33 (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1974), pp. 243-46. See also Gest Hyst. (c. 1350-1400), ed. G.A. Panton and D. Donaldson, EETS o.s. 39, 56 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1869, 1874; rpt. 1968), 33.12937-13042, and Lydgate's adaptation, Troy Book, 5.1467-1780. This is one of the few instances in which Gower's story, with its conflict of religious and political obligations and its intimations of later Renaissance elaborations of royal family tragedy, is longer than his author's. Its reception by critics has been mixed. Pearsall (1966), p. 483, remarks that Gower's retelling "fails completely to make its point or to extract any simple story line" and refers to it as "a sad mangling of high tragedy." Hiscoe sees the omission of the murder of Agamemnon as comic. See Nicholson, pp. 244-45, for a review of critical opinions.

1887 ff. Latin marginalia: Hic ponit Confessor exemplum contra illos qui ob sue concupiscencie desiderium homicide efficiuntur. Et narrat qualiter Climestra vxor Regis Agamenontis, cum ipse a bello Troiano domi redisset, consilio Egisti, quem adultera peramauit, sponsum suum in cubili dormientem sub noctis silencio trucidabat; cuius mortem filius eius Horestes tunc minoris etatis postea diis admonitus seueritate crudelissima vindicauit. [Here the Confessor presents an instructive example against those who, on account of the desire of their lust, are made murderers. And he narrates how Climestra the wife of King Agamemnon, when he had returned home from the Trojan war, stabbed her spouse to death in the silence of the night while he was sleeping, by the counsel of Egistus, whom she, adulterer, doted on. Afterwards, Horestes, then of tender age and alerted by the gods, with a most cruel severity, revenged his death.]

1899-1901 Who that is slyh . . . makth the ferre lieve loth.' Compare Chaucer's The Miller's Tale (I[A]3392-93); see Whiting S395 for other variants.

1920 moerdre, which mai noght ben hedd. Proverbial; see Whiting M806. Compare Chaucer's The Prioress's Tale, "Mordre wol out" (CT VII[B2]576), and The Nun's Priest's Tale (CT VII[B2]3052 ff.).

2033 'Old senne newe schame.' Proverbial. See Whiting S338. Compare CA 6.5116 and VC 4.874.

2055 O cruel beste unkinde. White cites this line, along with 1.2565 (Rosamund and Albinus), 5.5906 (Philomela, Procne, and Tereus), and 8.222 (Amon, Thamer, and Absolon), to define Gower's regard for "the high dignity of the natural order," that order being the "action and feeling conceived as normal and appropriate to the relationship between man and wife" (2000, p. 177). Simpson (1995, pp. 190-91) sees this as "a critical moment in the argument of Book III" as the question is raised, "is one 'unkynde' act justly dealt with by another?" The question goes back to the Tale of Canacee and Machaire at the beginning of the book and stands in contrast to the behavior of Tiresias and the snakes, where an "'unkinde' act of disturbing natural law is readily understandable." The implication in such passages is that natural law is insufficient in itself, demanding "a politics" formed out of personal ethics that places constraint on human relationships (Simpson 1995, pp. 191-92). See also Olsson (1982, pp. 229-61).