Images Of Kingship In Chaucer And His Ricardian Contemporaries

By Author: Porter Black
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At the conclusion of Images of Kingship in Chaucer and his Ricardian Contemporaries, Samantha Rayner observes that Ricardian poets reacted to the challenges of the reign of Richard II by turning away from the king and emphasising instead the importance of self-governance in individuals who were not merely English subjects, but also subjects to the most important ruler of all; that is, God. The conclusion is one which extends the idea of kingship beyond the realm of the political and historical, a necessary move when one considers, as the author acknowledges, that the Ricardian poets were not all uniformly and overtly focused on kings, or indeed on their own king. The 'kingship of the inner self that emerges on the last page of the book offers a thread of coherence for the study, but the individual chapters are sometimes at odds with this final gesture at an overarching argument. Indeed, in the introduction to Images of Kingship, Rayner argues that in concentrating on the individual in society, the Ricardian poets also reveal their attitudes about good and bad kings. In this opening formulation, in other words, the theme of self-rule ...
... points to the theme of political rule, reversing the direction implied by the book's conclusion. Yet despite a rather soft focus in Thomas Sabo the structure of the argument, this study is not without its merits. It is a virtue of the book, for example, that each chapter is at pains to recount in detail the moments in each poem that deal with kingship or its related themes. Readers unfamiliar with the writers or texts explored by Rayner certainly stand to profit from the thematically organised, clearly written summaries contained in each chapter. There are not many surprises in the analyses, but there is a thoroughness which must be acknowledged.

Chapter one deals with John Gower, and more particularly, with Book VII of the Confessio Amantis. While Rayner acknowledges that a concern with Thomas Sabo Bracelets rule permeates all of Gower's work, she finds Book VII of the Confessio, with its debts to the mirror for princes genre, most central to her argument. There are some interesting touches throughout what is essentially a sequential reading of Book VII. Rayner makes some nice observations about connections between language and power, for example, and begins to develop a useful discussion of Gower's awareness of the contrast between the kings of the past and his own contemporary situation. This particular point could be considerably strengthened by some consideration of Gower's overtly political Latin writing. Rayner has a good eye for detail at the level of the line, but often her observations are left undeveloped. An intriguing paragraph on the lexis of masculinity in Gower's descriptions of kingly rule could easily be expanded, for example, and a remark on the duplicate end-rhyme on 'reule' left me eager for more such commentary. Gower is, as Rayner points out, the Ricardian poet most explicitly concerned with kingship. For that reason alone, I would have appreciated more discussion of his work.

Chapter Two concentrates on William Langland's Piers Plowman, and acknowledges straight away that 'kingship is not one of [Langland's] major concerns' (p. 35). Nevertheless, Rayner's chosen emphasis works quite well at first in the section on the Visio, as she delineates the balance between king, commons, and Kind Wit. A segue to the consideration of knighthood is certainly justified by the poem's repeated references to the roles of kings and knights, but the exploration of knighthood necessarily dilutes the attention to kingship. Elsewhere in the chapter, Rayner explores the poem's representation of power and its abuses in terms of Langland's historical context. Much of the discussion seems somewhat beside the point, however. Rayner opens consideration of the Vita by noting that its focus on the individual's effort to live righteously means that there is 'not as much that is relevant to earthly kingship' as in the Visio, and it is not until a discussion, late in the chapter, of the connection between earthly titles and the dominion of God that the theme of rule re-emerges with any force. Rayner closes by linking Langland to what she sees as a common Ricardian concern for the impact of the king's governance on the spiritual health of the community, and then turns to her next subject, the Gamain-poet.