JOHN GOWER: THE MINOR LATIN WORKS: NOTES
ABBREVIATIONS: CA: Gower, Confessio Amantis; CB: Gower, Cinkante Ballades; Cronica: Gower, Cronica Tripertita; CT: Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; CVP: Gower, Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia; IPP: Gower, In Praise of Peace; Mac: Macaulay edition; MO: Gower, Mirour de l'Omme; TC: Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde; Thynne: William Thynne, printer, The Works of Geffray Chaucer (1532) [prints IPP from Tr]; Traitié: Gower, Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz; VC: Gower, Vox Clamantis.
All biblical citations are to the Vulgate text, and, unless otherwise noted, all biblical translations are from the Douai-Rheims. For a list of manuscript abbreviations, please see Manuscripts in the Introduction.
ENEIDOS BUCOLIS: NOTES
Prose Philosophus. An alternative translation could be the more general "wise man," with implications for the identity of "philosophical" Strode; on whom see Delasanta, "Chaucer and Strode." Macaulay (4.419) suggests this Philosophus as also the author of a quatrain following CA in many manuscripts including F, prefaced by the heading "Epistola super huius opusculi sui complementum Iohanni Gower a quodam philosopho transmissa" ("A letter about the completion of this, his little work, sent to John Gower by a certain philosopher"):
Quam cinxere freta Gower tua carmina leta
Per loca discreta canit Anglia laude repleta.
Carminis Athleta satirus tibi sive Poeta
Sit laus completa quo gloria stat sine meta.
[O Gower, enclosed by the sea and filled with praise
England, throughout many regions, recites your joyous poetry.
Master of verse, satirist -- or poet -- for you
May praise be full where glory stands without end.]
1 Eneidos, Bucolis, que Georgica. Although Gower's work makes infrequent direct use of Virgil, and his reading beyond the Aeneid must remain in doubt, that he knew Virgil's oeuvre by name seems incontestable. In the same manner he would have been aware of Virgil's achievement, sufficient to recognize it as a writer's model and to pay himself -- or accept -- a high compliment with the comparison.
5 libellis. "Little books," compared to Virgil's "libris" (line 3). The humility topos is standard. Compare Chaucer's "Go litel bok" (TC 5.1786) and the concluding stanzas of TC generally, with which classicizing sensibility (and competitive self-assertion) Eneidos bucolis has much in common.