SOURCE: Chandler, Katherine R. “Memory and Unity in Gower's Confessio Amantis.” Philological Quarterly 71, no. 1 (winter 1992): 15-30.

In the following essay, Chandler stresses remembrance as a unifying theme of the Confessio Amantis.

A new focus of attention informs recent discussion about the artistic unity of Confessio Amantis. Hugh White has proposed that John Gower uses divisiveness as a means to organize the poem's heterogeneous materials. White argues:

Gower is profoundly sensible of the unhappy dividedness of things, which he regards as perhaps the most significant feature of man's existence in this world. The design of the poem seems to me to reflect Gower's concern with division, and its development to illustrate how attempts to overcome division and the problems it brings inevitably end in failure.¹

It is apparent from the poem that Gower is genuinely concerned with “divisioun” and its moral and political implications, but we might question the...