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Article: Chamberlain danger: the social meaning of love allegory in the Confessio Amantis.(Critical essay)
- Article from:
- Medium Aevum
- Article date:
- March 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The substance of the lover's climactic petition to the powers of love at the end of the Confessio Amantis is the expulsion from retinue of his lady's chief servant:
So that Danger, which stant of retenue
With my ladi, his place mai remue. (CA, VIII.2285-6) (1)
Danger and Amans's contest forms a key strand of the poem's frame narrative and within it Gower creates a new Danger who embodies ideas of politics and service valorized by the Confessio and central to contemporary political contests about the proper distribution of power. (2) Danger finds his main antecedent in the wild villein Dangler in the Roman de la Rose. In both the Rose and the ...