Lordship and Literature: John Gower and the Politics of the Great Household (Oxford English Monographs)

Contents......Page 10
List of Abbreviations......Page 12
Introduction......Page 14
1. The Great Household and an Economics of Power......Page 22
The Late Medieval Great Household......Page 24
Models of Lordship......Page 31
Reciprocal Lordship and Centralization......Page 41
Gower’s Kentish Group and the Coup of 1388......Page 48
Royal Magnificence......Page 62
Economic Crisis......Page 70
3. Service Allegory: The Great Household in Genius’s Confession......Page 78
The Magnificent Household of Avarice......Page 81
The Household of the Interior: Amans Assimilates Genius’s Domestic Discourse......Page 86
Chamberlain Danger......Page 88
4. Courtly Love and the Lordship of Venus......Page 112
The Lover’s Confession and the Limits of Genius......Page 114
Venus’s Remedy: The Politics of Penance......Page 122
Magnificent Cupid......Page 131
5. Women as Household Exchange in Genius’s Tales......Page 145
Daughters Disenfranchised and Self-Exchanging Women......Page 150
Medea’s Self-Exchange......Page 159
Negotiating Female Will and Desire in the Exchange of the Princess of Pentapolis......Page 165
The Sins of the Fathers: Incest, Negligence, and Magnificence......Page 174
6. Justice and the Affinity......Page 186
Justice and the Great Household in the Late Fourteenth Century......Page 188
Trouthe and Law......Page 195
The Livery and Maintenance Debate......Page 201
7. Retribution as Household Exchange in Genius’s Tales......Page 207
‘And in hir Chambre Prively’: The Household Contours of Retribution in Genius’s Tales......Page 208
The Place of the Law: Unofficial and Official Justice in Livery and Maintenance Petitions......Page 223
The Unwritten Community of Worship: Unofficial and Official Justice in Genius’s Tales......Page 235
‘The Wreeche which Horestes Dede’: An Epitome of Unofficial Retribution......Page 246
8. Total Reciprocity and the Problem of Kingship......Page 255
Merciless Pity: Slippage to the Sovereign in Confessio Amantis, Book 7......Page 261
Conclusion......Page 275
Bibliography......Page 279
C......Page 306
G......Page 308
H......Page 309
L......Page 310
N......Page 311
R......Page 312
T......Page 313
Y......Page 314