SOURCE: Peck, Russell A. “The Phenomenology of Make Believe in Gower's Confessio Amantis.” Studies in Philology 91, no. 3 (summer 1994): 250-69.

In the following essay, Peck studies the “fascination with the mind's capacity to abstract signs from things” Gower demonstrates in the Confessio Amantis.

Oure wit may not stiȝe vnto the contemplacioun of vnseye thinges but it be ilad by consideracioun of thinges that beth iseye.

—John Trevisa, De proprietatibus rerum¹

Often we speak of things which we do not express with precision as they are; but by another expression we indicate what we are unwilling or unable to express with precision, as when we speak in riddles. And often we see a thing, not precisely as it is itself, but through a likeness or an image, as when we look upon a face in a mirror. And in this way, we often express and yet do not express...