“Nede hath no law”: The State of Exception in Gower and Langland

This article discusses the use of the legal maxim necessity knows no law in the works of William Langland and John Gower. Whereas Langland’s usage has stirred up great controversy, Gower’s unique application of the canon law adage has received hardly any attention. On the surface, it is difficult to think of two authors less alike, and the way in which they relate the concept of necessity to different subjects (the poverty debate, fin amour) seems to support that feeling. Yet this article argues that reading Langland and Gower side by side is mutually illuminating. Specifically, this article reveals how their engagement with natural law challenges post-modern assumptions that inform the comparative study of law and literature. By reading Langland and Gower in relation to the provocative work of Giorgio Agamben, this article suggests that whereas critics traditionally prefer the exception to the law, authors like Gower seek to include the exception within the juridical order

The Consolation of Exempla: Gower’s Sources of Hope and “Textual Healing” in the Confessio Amantis

This article examines the role of exempla as the root cause of hope and healing in John Gower\u27s Confessio Amantis. I argue that these exempla provide remedial action in the text. The exempla are sources of metaphorical healing in the text, functioning as what I have termed “textual healing,” that is the medicinal aspects of the text that helps remedy Amans (and the reader, to a certain extent) back to full health. This article also draws upon reading the Confessio Amantis as a consolatio poem, linking it to Boethius\u27 Consolation of Philosophy in particular. I also discuss the role of textual healing within the context of Shakespeare\u27s Pericles, in which Gower plays the Chorus, and his restoratives also metaphorically heal the audience. For both Amans and the reader, this healing process makes us more aware and enlightened readers and lovers

Blindness, Confession, and Re-membering in Gower\u27s Confessio

Much scholarship on Gower’s Confessio Amantis has focused on the poem’s assertion that poetic narration, represented by Amans’ ongoing confession, has the ability to restore the fragmentary natures of social and spiritual bodies. Surprisingly, the role that the (dis)abled body plays in the poem’s struggle with fragmentation and integration has been ignored. By focusing on the poem’s representation of blindness in the tales of Medusa and Constance, I will demonstrate that the formal structure and thematic explorations of the Confessio, in fact, rely upon the (dis)abled body and its inextricable relationship to narration. Indeed, it is Amans’ disabling illness that inaugurates the poem and provides Gower with the vehicle through which to critique the fractured body politic of fourteenth-century England, and it is only through the act of narration that both bodies may be “cured.” Using modern and medieval disability scholarship, this paper will posit that the poem’s reliance on a topos of disability that creates a “problem” that the poem must then attempt to unify. In particular, the poem fixates on blindness, linking physical and metaphorical blindness to sin, and thus division, and its cure to unification. In the Confessio, this cure is contingent upon the act of confession, of providing a story that unifies the “trouble” of the deviant body. As a result, Gower asserts the poet as the rememberer and re-memberer of bodies spiritual, social, and physical

Genius and the practice of ethical reading

There has been a tendency in Gower scholarship to emphasize what Genius is not doing in the Confessio Amantis: the stories he does not tell, the sins he fails to discuss, and the interpretations he does not pursue. Some critics view Genius's supposed deficiencies as intentional failings designed by Gower to challenge his readers; still, these readings are centered on absence rather than presence. This paper offers a new interpretation of Genius's role in the Confessio, and, in particular, of Genius's use of classical exempla, by arguing that the absence of allegorized versions of these tales is, in fact, the result of a conscious decision to use an alternate method of reading ---ethical reading- rather than allegorical interpretation. Instead of merely appropriating or desecularizing "old bokes," the process of ethical reading preserves the status of secular texts while reframing them to make them morally useful for new generations of readers

Christine de Pisan: Le Debat des deux amans y la realidad múltiple.

Sin resume

Reading incest: tyranny, subversion, and the preservation of patriarchy

British literature is rich in stories crafted around the problem of incest. Incest has long been seen as a universal, or near-universal, taboo, yet dynasties have been founded upon it--and have fallen because of it. This dissertation explores usage of the incest theme in the medieval and early modern literary periods, and into the mid-eighteenth century, a time which saw the emergence of a new form of literature named by one of its creators as Gothic. While incest remains firmly taboo across this long period of time, writers and storytellers appropriate it to reflect some of the anxieties attendant upon their times. To understand the usefulness of incest in mirroring societal disarray across centuries, it is necessary to first understand the historical background of consanguineous relationships, a history which is full of ambiguities and contradictions. Thus incest seems a natural choice for John Gower, who relies on incest in his Confessio Amantis, and in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur, where it is used to allegorize the misdeeds of tyrannical kings who fail to rule wisely, and lead themselves and their people to misery. Given the popularity of drama in the early modern period, it is through this genre that the usage of incest best reveals the anxieties of this age, anxieties which include not only tyrannical kings but also the risks of increasing female autonomy. Incest in Shakespeare's Pericles, Beaumont and Fletcher's A King, and No King and John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi works to showcase the dangers of uncertainty when it comes to matters of inheritance, especially when the inheritance involves the throne. Added to this is the fear that rising female agency might eventually succeed in completely undermining the patriarchal and monarchical social structures that were still believed by many to be divinely ordained. By the mid-eighteenth century, changes in economic and political systems appeared to threaten the institution of the family, and incest proved to be a useful metaphor for expressing these anxieties. I conclude that reading incest across four centuries of literary works reveals that while societal threats change over time, a common desire to preserve, uphold, and defend patriarchy remains

Gower\u27s Herte-Thoght : Thinking, Feeling, Healing

While much has been said about the ethical principles of Gower\u27s poetry, less has been said about his understanding of the body, its principal organs, and its relation to the medical discourse of the time. This short paper, presented initially as part of the Hope and Healing Symposium sponsored by The Gower Project, approaches the poet\u27s work from a more medically inflected point of view, one that suggests a stronger kinship between the material body and its use as a metaphor for the body politic. Gower appears to be situated within a continuing debate launched by Aristotle and taken up by Galen about whether the heart or the brain governed the body and housed the soul. The heart-brain relation signified in the oft-repeated phrase herte\u27s thoght in the Confessio suggests the poet\u27s recognition of the symbiotic kinship between thinking and feeling, an interconnectedness incapsulated in an illustration in Geraldus de Hardywyck\u27s Epitomata seu Reparationes totius philosophiae naturalis Aristotelis. Also relevant to a more medically inflected reading of the poet\u27s major works is his understanding of Anger as heart disease in the Mirour de l\u27Omme and the dis-ease of community exemplified by the Rising of 1381 in the Vox Clamantis. All three works demonstrate the need for hope and healing, both individual and communal, in a troubled late medieval England

The need of support in communities using EcoSan latrine products in farming for safe practices

A cross sectional mixed method study was conducted in Burera District, one of the pioneer districts in Rwanda using EcoSan latrines and their products in farming, to assess the practice for community health safety. This research involved household interviews and observations, key informants interviews and focus group discussion as data collection methods. The results showed a high appreciation of the use of EcoSan latrine and products for both proper sanitation suitable for the volcanic area and farming as well among study communities. However, the communities aren’t well informed about health risks related to the handling of EcoSan latrine products and this situation coupled with the lack of standard operation procedures and guidelines at community level, explains the noted inconsistency in stabilisation, handling, application of the faeces and urine in farming to prevent potential health risks

Romance d\u27Estelle no. 3

Que j\u27aime avoir les Hirondelles a ma fenetre,tous les ans, venir m\u27apporter des nouvelles de l\u27approche du doux printems le meme nidme disent elles ba revoir les memes amoursce n\u27est qu\u27a des amans fideles a vous annoncerles beaux jours a vous annoncer les beaux jours. 2e CoupletLorsque les premieres geleesFont tomber les feuilles des bois,Les HIrondelles rassembleesS\u27appellent toutes sur les toits:Partons, partons, se disent elles,Fuyons la neige et les autans;Point d\u27hiver pour les coeurs fideles,Ils sont toujours dans le printems. 3e CoupletSi par malheur dans le voyage,Victime d\u27un cruel enfant,Une Hirondelle mise en cageNe peut rejoinder son amant;Vous boyez mourir l\u27hirondelleD\u27ennui de douleur et d\u27amour;Tandis que son amant fidele,Pres de la, meurt le meme jour