SPEAKING OF SODOMY: GOWER’S ADVICE TO PRINCES IN THE CONFESSIO AMANTIS
Book 7 of Confessio Amantis begins as an account of Aristotle's education of Alexander, and it concludes with the lesson on Chastity and with negative examples of lecherous rulers. "Gower's book of statecraft thus ends up offering an art of love as a manual of advice for rulers and in the process conflates sexual regulation and political rule" (428). Gower's strategy derives from a long tradition of criticism of Richard II and his counselors that "persistently focused on its alleged transgressive sexual practices" (423-24), culminating "in a politically motivated allegation of sodomy that sought to substantiate Richard's unfitness to rule and to justify Henry IV's usurpation of the throne" (424). Hanrahan begins with a discussion of the broad and often imprecise meanings of both "sodomy" and "unnatural" in contemporary texts, simultaneously designating that which was considered unspeakable and also a wide range of non-sexual acts. Gower reflects contemporary anxieties over the king's counselors both in VC Book 6 and in the CA Prologue, and in changing the dedication of CA to Henry of Derby, Gower appealed to an exemplary figure of good counsel. In Book 7, the discussion of chastity begins with the claim that lust effeminizes a man, echoing directly one of the charges that was laid against Richard and his court, for instance in Walsingham; and Genius' use of Sardanapalus, who finally lost his throne, as his example anticipates the later justification of Richard's deposition for the same cause. Though Gower never mentions sodomy by name, the allegation nonetheless "haunts" his poem (436), as it does the other texts that assert that lechery can lead men to become like women, and in his lessons in Book 7, "Gower creates a nexus of unnatural crimes that enmeshes his advice with implicit warnings against sodomitical practices" (437) . The implicit criticism of Richard extends to the linkage that Gower draws between Alexander and Richard as recipients of Aristotle's advice, for "born in treason and lust," as Genius demonstrates in his tale of Nectanabus in Book 6, "Alexander springs from the unnatural desires that Genius seeks to warn rulers against" (441). Hanrahan emphasizes the punishment of unnaturalness in the tales of "Lucrece," "Virginia," and "Tobias and Sara." The latter tale also anticipates Amans' "rejection of the sin against nature" in the poem's conclusion (443). Reformed, he has a vision of the court of Cupid dressed in the "newe guise of Beawme" (8.2970), a clear reference to the court of Richard II that identifies the king with ostentatiousness of dress and the pursuit of pleasure, the same "lecherous and luxurious practices that have transformed past rulers into effeminate men. Gower thus ends up offering his advice from the position of a reformed sodomite, and he effectively implicates the king as a sodomite in two ways: by offering negative examples of unnatural rulers for Richard's edification, and by providing his reformed persona as a model for the king to emulate" (445). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 22.1]
Court Politics
The conception of court politics provides an alternative to classic notions of bureau cracy. Many staffs in large organizations are expected to operate in contradistinction to bureaucratic norms—to carry out the wishes of the top man, to fit his purposes, conveniences, and so on. Courts may often be necessary; at any rate, they are often inevitable, simply because of the leaders' convictions that they must have "instru ments" and the fact that they must have surplus "resources" of manpower which they can direct as they choose. This paper is devoted to analyzing this conception in general and showing how and why, in particular, it is likely that the White House will often consist of a "court" team.
"The Plain Round Tale of Faithful Thady": Castle Rackrent as Slave Narrative
Critics of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent tend to focus on textual elements—gender issues, the symbolism of the Big House, colonial hegemony— or contextual readings by placing Edgeworth in the Anglo-Irish history and tradition. While such criticism usually in some way examines the main theme of the text, the appropriation of power and authority, little of it accomplishes both the textual and contextual analysis that Castle Rackrent deserves. Exploring Thady’s “plain round tale” as a slave narrative in content and form sheds new light on the work both textually and contextually; in Thady Quirk, Edgeworth has created a typical slave narrator who recounts a history of oppression which is ultimately mediated by an outside editor. As John Cronin writes of Castle Rackrent, “What Maria Edgeworth has given us . . . is a magnificently realised slave, a terrifying vision of the results of colonial misrule. There must have been a moment of clearly deliberate artistic decision in which she realised that what needed to be said must be said through one of the submerged people.”1 The three main textual elements of the narrative indicate its likeness to typical slave narratives: its presentation of a conflicted slave narrator, its use of the framing device of the outside editor, and its narrative structure of episodic anecdotes that utilizes memory, description, and didacticism.