John Gower's Confessio Amantis is difficult to pigeonhole: a late fourteenth-century Middle English text, it is at once a social complaint, a romance, a dream vision, a penitential manual, and a mirror for princes. Within the text, a social complaint frames a dialogue between a Lover and Genius, the priest of Venus, in which the Lover confesses his sins against love. That dialogue in turn frames over one hundred exempla, or moralized tales, each illustrating a particular sin against love. Book Seven of the Confessio, however, focuses on the education of Alexander and the arts of kingship. As Kurt Olsson has observed, the Confessio's aggregation of genres and emphases creates more than one dialectic within the poem.1 Recent criticism has suggested three oppositions within the poem: the political versus the personal realm,2 the Christian versus the secular realm,3 and the ethical versus the poetic realm.4 While acknowledging the presence of other voices within the poem, this paper will focus on the Confessio's secular voice: the voice that complains of the division that plagues fourteenth-century England, and dreams of seeing that division replaced by love. This voice, which I associate with the implied author, is deeply concerned by the unravelling of human bonds, represented in their most basic form by the nuclear family.

    "Love is falle into discord," Gower complains at the beginning of the Confessio.5 In particular, Gower shows how war perverts love. For example, Genius asserts that the Crusades pervert the love of Christ, who bought all other men with his death "In tokne of parfit charite" (3.2496). Whereas Christ died to free men, and His apostles died to spread faith in Christ, the Church in Gower's time is killing others. As a result, many of those who were won to Christ's faith have gone astray, and "The charite wherof we prechen" has become "noght worth a Stree" (3.2538-39). Instead, "mai men se moerdre and manslawhte / Lich as it was be daies olde," before Christ walked the earth (3.2544-45).6 But Gower does more than just tell us that war is wrong. In many of his exempla, Gower shows us how war drives apart families and perverts parental love into deception and violence. The three most vivid examples of this perversion revolve around the figure of Ulysses: they are "King Namplus and the Greeks" (3.973-1083), "Nauplus and Ulysses" (4.1815-96), and "Achilles and Deidamia" (5.2961-3201). Gower borrows all three tales from medieval traditions concerning the Trojan War. Thus, all three tales traditionally depict violence. In addition, all three traditionally implicate Ulysses, the Trojan hero known for deception. However, Gower alone creates a particular emphasis on families and children, by making key changes in the central story.

    The medieval tradition from which Gower's stories arise begins with Ovid's Metamorphoses, where Ajax accuses Ulysses of framing Palamedes, another Greek soldier. According to Ajax, Ulysses accused Palamedes of betraying the Greeks for money, and cemented the charge by planting the money in Palamedes's quarters. Treacherous Ulysses was "male convicti nimium memor iste furoris" ("Too mindful of madness unfortunately exposed"), Ajax claims.7 The details of Ulysses's "exposed madness" appear in Hyginus's Fabulae, a first-century B.C. compilation of traditional stories. Here, we see that Ulysses was a draft-dodger, aiming for an exemption on the grounds of mental instability:

Agamemnon et Menelaus Atrei filii cum ad Troiam oppugnandam coniuratos duces ducerent, in insulam Ithacam ad Vlixem Laertis filium uenerunt, cui erat responsum, si ad Troiam isset, post uicesimum annum solum sociis perditis egentem domum rediturum. (5) 2. itaque cum sciret ad se oratores uenturos, insaniam simulans pileum sumpsit et equum cum boue iunxit ad aratrum. quem Palamedes ut uidit, sensit simulare atque Telemachum filiumeius cunis sublatum aratro ei subiecit et ait, Simulatione deposita inter coniuratos ueni. tunc Vlixes fidem dedit se uenturum; ex eo Palamedi (10) infestus fuit.8
(When Agamemnon and Menelaus, the sons of Atreus, were leading the princes who had sworn together to attack Troy, they came to Ithaca, to Ulysses, the son of Laertes, to whom it had been reported, that if he went to Troy, he would return home after twenty years alone, lacking any companions. Therefore, when he knew that those making the request were coming, feigning insanity he put on a dunce cap and yoked a horse with an ox to his plow. When Palamedes saw him, he sensed that he was faking and having lifted Ulysses's son Telemachus from the cradle, threw him beneath the plow, and said, "Having laid aside fakery, I have come with those who have sworn together." Then Ulysses pledged that he would come; from that time on, he was hostile to Palamedes.)

    In Gower's version, Ulysses has not been told that he will return home alone after twenty years. Instead, the Confessio specifically tells us that he loves his wife too much: when the Greeks come to take him to Troy, "Anon upon Penolope / His wif, whom that he loveth hote, / Thenkende, wolde hem noght behote" (4.1822-24). In addition, Gower specifically describes Ulysses drawing his plough aside for his child, a detail Hyginus omits (4.1854-55). Gower thus creates a symmetrical pair of motivations for Ulysses: he dodges the draft out of love for his wife, but succumbs to the draft out of love for his child. Unlike Hyginus's Ulysses, Gower's protagonist always thinks first of his family.

    This portrait of Ulysses as a family man does not originate with the Confessio. In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Ulysses blames his hesitation on his wife, classing himself with the great Achilles to make his case seem sounder: "me pia detinuit coniunx, pia mater Achillem, / primaque sunt illis data tempora, cetera vobis" ("An affectionate wife held me back; an affectionate mother held back Achilles. The first days were given to them, the rest to you").9 Thus, Ovid's Ulysses also weighs duty to family against duty to comrades. But Gower makes the relationship between the family and the military more adversarial than Ovid does, by making one key change in the traditional story. In Gower's version, it is not Palamedes but Palamedes's father, Nauplius, who drags Ulysses off to war. In other words, Gower pits the two fathers against one another.

    The true significance of this revision becomes apparent when we remember that Ulysses is responsible for the death of Palamedes. The story of Ulysses's treachery against Palamedes would have been known to medieval audiences even if it had appeared only in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In fact, though, versions of the story found their way into a wide variety of texts, including Dictys of Crete's Ephemerides Belli Troiani, Servius's commentary on Virgil's Aeneid, Lactantius Placidus's commentary on Statius's Achilleid, Pierre Bersuire's Ovidius moralizatus, BenoŒt de Sainte-Maure's Roman de Troie, and Guido delle Colonne's Historia destructionis Troiae. Several of these authors describe the betrayal as Ulysses's revenge on Palamedes for drafting him. While Hyginus tells the two stories separately, Servius and Lactantius conflate them into one,10 and Pierre Bersuire even has Palamedes seek advice from Ulysses, and then blames Palamedes for not being more wary: "Potest etiam dici quod fatuum est quod homo illi cui nocuit se commitat vel ab eo consilium petat" ("It can also be said that he is foolish who entrusts himself to a man whom he has harmed, or seeks advice from that man").11 By changing the identity of Ulysses's recruiting officer from Palamedes ("Palamades" in the Confessio) to his father Nauplius ("Nauplus" in Confessio Book Four; "Namplus" in Confessio Three), Gower replaces the pair of tricksters with a pair of devoted fathers.

    That Nauplius is just as devoted to his son Palamades as Ulysses is to his son Telemachus, becomes clear in "King Namplus and the Greeks," another of Gower's tales concerning Ulysses. Here again, Gower gives a traditional story a fresh emphasis. The story on which "King Namplus" is based once again appears as a brief allusion in the Metamorphoses, where Diomedes speaks of "cumulumque Capherea cladis" ("Caphereus [Nauplius's homeland], the peak of our destruction").12 The full story appears again in Hyginus: because Locrian Ajax has dragged Cassandra from Pallas's temple, a storm and adverse waves arise, in which Ajax is struck by lightning, and as the rest of the sailors pray to the gods,

Nauplius audiuit sensitque tempus uenisse ad persequendas filii sui Palamedis iniurias. 3. itaque tamquam auxilium eis afferret, facem ardentem eo loco extulit quo saxa acuta et locus periculosissimus erat; illi credentes humanitatis causa id factum nauis eo duxerunt, quo facto plurimae earum confractae sunt mili(5)tesque plurimi cum ducibus tempestate occisi sunt membraque eorum cum uisceribus ad saxa illisa sunt; si qui autem potuerunt ad terram natare, a Nauplio interficiebantur.13
(Nauplius heard and felt the time had come to avenge the injuries of his son Palamedes. Therefore, as if he were offering them help, he raised a burning torch on the very spot where there were sharp rocks and the most dangerous place; believing it had been done out of humanity, they directed their ship there, through which act many of them were smashed to pieces, and many soldiers along with their leaders died in the storm, and their limbs were dashed against the rocks along with their guts; and if any were able to swim to shore, Nauplius killed them.)

and he a Sone hadde,
At Troie which the Gregois ladde,
As he that was mad Prince of alle,
Til that fortune let him falle:
His name was Palamades. (3.1003-07)

Bot thurgh an hate natheles
Of some of hem his deth was cast
And he be tresoun overcast.
His fader, whan he herde it telle,
He swor, if evere his time felle,
He wolde him venge, if that he mihte,
And therto his avou behihte. (3.1008-14)

    In Gower's "King Namplus and the Greeks," we see how war turns a father's love to hatred. However, in "Nauplus and Ulysses," we see war make that same loving father willing to jeopardize the life of another man's son. Like Hyginus's Palamedes, Gower's Nauplus knows immediately that Ulysses's insanity is merely feigned; Gower says that "Nauplus, which the cause kniew, / Ayein the sleihte which he feigneth / An other sleihte anon ordeigneth" (4.1838-40), drawing on the traditional topos of the trickster tricked. By setting Ulysses's son in front of his plough, Nauplus "in such wise. . . thoghte assaie, / Hou it Ulixes scholde paie, / If that he were wod or non" (4.1848-50). The word "paie" is significant here: Nauplus is not so much testing Ulysses as "paying" him back, whether he is mad or not. The fervor of Nauplus's militarism at this point completely overwhelms any parental feeling he might have, as his concluding speech makes clear: it is "gret schame to a king," Nauplus declares (4.1862), when

Thou wolt in a querele of trowthe
Of armes thilke honour forsake,
And duelle at hom for loves sake:
For betre it were honour to winne
Than love, which likinge is inne. (4.1864-68)

    In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Ulysses answers Ajax's charge by pointing out that Achilles, too, dodged the draft: "Quid, quod me duri fugientem munera belli / arguit incepto serum accessisse labori / nec se magnanimo maledicere sentit Achilli?" ("What though he argues that, fleeing the wages of hard battle, I came late, when the toil had already begun? Does he not realize he is speaking ill of the great Achilles, as well?").14 As we saw, Ulysses goes on to explain that he was responding to his wife, while Achilles was responding to his mother. The full story of Achilles's draft-dodging for his mother unfolds when Ulysses takes credit for drafting Achilles:

Praescia venturi genetrix Nereia leti
dissimulat cultu natum, et deceperat omnes,
in quibus Aiacem, sumptae fallacia vestis:
arma ego femineis animum motura virilem
mercibus inserui, neque adhuc proiecerat heros
virgineos habitus, cum parmam hastamque tenenti
'nate dea,' dixi 'tibi se peritura reservant
Pergama! quid dubitas ingentem evertere Troiam?'15
(His mother the Nereid, foreseeing that he would come to his deathbed, hid her son with clothes, and had deceived everyone, Ajax included, with the trick of the clothes he put on: I slipped in with the feminine prizes arms that would move a manly heart, and although the hero had not yet put aside his maidenly garments, I said to him as he grabbed the shield and spear, "Son of a goddess, Pergamum, about to perish, is waiting for you! Why do you hesitate to overthrow great Troy?")

    In the Confessio's version of the story, "Achilles and Deidamia," Gower once again emphasizes the toll that callous militarism takes on families. The title itself introduces a figure that Ovid's Ulysses does not bother to mention: Deidamia, the mother of Achilles's son. As with "Nauplus and Ulysses" and "King Namplus and the Greeks," Gower revises a traditional story to create an emphasis on familial bonds rather than on individual heroics or vice. Whereas "Nauplus" and "King Namplus" create a symmetric pair of fathers (Ulysses and Nauplius), "Achilles and Deidamia" creates two symmetric pairs: the pregnant young Deidamia is presented first as part of a pair of children (with Achilles) and then as part of a pair of mothers (with Thetis). At the beginning of the tale, we see the proud, protective love of Nauplius and Ulysses mirrored in Thetis and Lichomede (Deidamia's father). By the end, we see all three families (Thetis's, Lichomede's, and Achilles and Deidamia's) marred or destroyed by the ruthless tactics of Ulysses, a parent who, like Nauplius, has already been parted from his own child.

    Even more than "Nauplus and Ulysses" and "King Namplus and the Greeks," "Achilles and Deidamia" lingers over family portraits. Gower begins by describing Thetis's protective stance towards her young son, "whom to kepe and warde, / Whil he was yong, as into warde, / Sche thoghte him salfly to betake" (5.2963-65). Like Nauplius and Ulysses, though, Thetis is less scrupulous about other people's children. In her anxiety over her young boy's safety, Thetis lights upon another family in which to hide him: the family of Lichomede, a king with "faire dowhtres manyon" (5.2978). Already, we see the stage being set not for war but for marriage; and sure enough, Lichomede allows Achilles, "for Thetis his moder sake" (5.3044), to share living quarters with Deiadamia, "His oghne dowhter, the eldeste, / The faireste and the comelieste / Of alle hise doghtres whiche he hadde" (5.3045-49). Unlike Ovid's version, Gower's tale lingers over the growing intimacy between Achilles and Deidamia, taking pains to emphasize the naturalness of their relationship. "Wher kinde wole himselve rihte, / After the Philosophres sein, / Ther mai no wiht be therayein," the narrator begins, and adds,

And that was thilke time seene.
The longe nyhtes hem betuene
Nature, which mai noght forbere,
Hath mad hem bothe forto stere. (5.3058-64)

Lichomede nothing lowh,
Whan that he syh hou that it ferde,
For thanne he wiste wel and herde,
His dowhter hadde be forlein;
Bot that he was so oversein,
The wonder overgoth his wit. (5.3186-91)

    All three "draft-dodging" tales--"King Namplus and the Greeks," "Nauplus and Ulysses," and "Achilles and Deidamia"--depict the way in which militarism perverts and sometimes destroys familial love. But these tales need not be viewed in isolation. Over the course of Books Three, Four and Five of the Confessio, Gower carefully builds a composite picture of the sort of pressures that society can exert upon the family, and the negative results that can ensue. For example, "King Namplus and the Greeks" forms a part of a larger series of tales in which love begets anger or hatred. In "Canace and Machaire" (3.143-335), a father's devotion to his daughter makes him finally hate her. In this story, the father's love turns to hatred when he discovers that his children have committed incest together. Rather than focus on the incest, though, Genius accuses the father of failing in his devotion to his daughter. According to Genius, "he which ladde his wraththe so / Hath knowe of love bot a lite" (3.332-33). In decrying the sin of parental wrath rather than the sin of fraternal incest, "Canace and Machaire" suggests the extreme importance Gower places on parental devotion.16

    In the tale of "Orestes" (3.1885-2200), a son's devotion to his father "Agamenon" leads him not merely to hate his mother "Climestre," but to rip out her breasts and throw her body "Unto the hound and to the raven" (3.2077).17 Genius ostensibly condemns the murderous mother, but his formulation of the moral is complex and ambiguous: "Who that thenkth his love spiede / With moerdre, he schal with worldes schame / Himself and ek his love schame" (3.2298-200). In avenging his father on his mother, Orestes, too, speeds his love with murder, and faces "worldes schame": "fame with hire swifte wynges / Aboute flyh and bar tidinges, / And made it cowth in alle londes" (3.2107-09), until the kings of the surrounding region assert that "'He is noght worthi forto regne: / The child which slowh his moder so'" (3.2126-27). Unstated but hovering over the tale once again is the destructive influence of the Trojan War, which traditionally catalyzes the chain of tragic events by forcing Agamemnon to murder his daughter Iphigenia. Gower begins his tale of Orestes by alluding to the "renoun" of the Troy story as a whole, "Whos fame stant yit. . . / And evere schal to mannes Ere" (3.1885-87) and of Agamemnon's leading role in particular, a "thing. . . knowen overal" (3.1893). The tale of Orestes needs little revision to demonstrate the malign influence that war can exert on a family.

    "Nauplus and Ulysses" occurs in the very next chapter, Confessio Book Four, where it forms part of a series in which love is pitted against militarism. Like the tale of Orestes, three of the tales in this series make reference to Troy, which by the end of the Confessio becomes a symbol of the evils of war. Book Four opens with the story of "Eneas and Dido" (4.77-142), in which Eneas arrives at Carthage "With gret navie, which he ladde / Fro Troie" (4.80-81). Like many of Gower's Troy stories, "Eneas and Dido" focuses on the relationship between the two characters rather than on the military goal which destroys it; far from glorifying Aeneas's conquests, the narrator ends the story with Dido's suicide, asserting simply that "tariinge upon the nede / In loves cause is forto drede" (4.139-40).18 "Eneas and Dido" is immediately followed by "Ulysses and Penelope" (4.147-233), where again, military conquest is presented strictly as an obstacle to love. Here, Penelope writes a letter to Ulysses at Troy, threatening unchastity if he does not come home soon. Flying in the face of all tradition, Gower has Ulysses sail straight home from Troy in this story, with the result that "thus was cessed the debat / Of love, and Slowthe was excused" (4.230-31). In "Demephon and Phillis" (4.731-878), Demephon opens the story by sailing "To Troieward with felaschipe" (4.732), again to his peril. Like Gower's Dido and Penelope, Phillis here writes a letter threatening suicide if he makes "eny tariinge" (4.101), and makes good her threat when Demephon does delay. At the end of the story, Demephon "gan his Slowthe forto banne, / Bot it was al to late thanne" (4.877-78).

    Reminiscent of the tales in Confessio Book Three, the tale of "Jephthah's Daughter" once again portrays a murdering father (4.1505-95). A biblical parallel to the classical story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia, "Jephthah's Daughter" is perhaps the most blatant example in the Confessio of war destroying a family, since it is Jephthah's victory in war that forces him to kill his daughter. Like Nauplius and Ulysses, Jephthah subscribes to a militarism that robs him of human sympathy: in exchange for victory in battle, he promises God a human sacrifice, not even of an enemy, but of the first person who greets him on the way home (4.1515-16). When he discovers the folly of his vow, Jephthah's ensuing meditation again reveals the extent to which war has dehumanized him. Without a bit of irony or self-consciousness, he contrasts his joy in battle with his sorrow at killing his daughter, lamenting,

I hadde al that I coude sein
Ayein mi fomen bi thi grace,
So whan I cam toward this place
Ther was non gladdere man than I:
But now, mi lord, al sodeinli
Mi joie is torned into sorwe,
For I mi dowhter schal tomorwe
Tohewe and brenne in thi servise. . . (4.1540-47)

    Finally, Confessio Book Five, in which "Achilles and Deidamia" appears, is full of stories of families destroyed or abandoned. Immediately following "Achilles and Deidamia," Genius tells us the story of "Jason and Medea" (5.3247-4229), in which once again, a hero is seduced first into militarism (or "knyhthode") and then into abandoning his family. Just as Achilles responds to the lure of the "bryhte helm" by arming himself "in knyhtli wise" (5.3168-81), Jason responds to the glittering fleece by determining that he will "of his knyhthod undertake / To do what thing therto belongeth" (5.3280-81). Each sails off with a boatload of heroes in the direction of Troy: Achilles "is to the Siege go / Forth with Ulixes and Diomede" (5.3200-01); Jason takes with him "suche as were of his lignage, / With othre knihtes whiche he ches / . . . and Hercules, / Which full was of chivalerie" (5.3292-94), and stops first at Troy, where the local king's lack of hospitality engenders "the dissencion / Which after was the destruccion / Of that Cite" (5.3307-09). Gower mentions the Trojan War here even though the narrator admits that "that is noght to mi matiere" (5.3310), in order to alert the reader that this is another tale of violence begetting violence, perverting love and breaking bonds; that is, Gower identifies "Jason and Medea" as a "Troy story," even claiming that "the tale in special / Is in the bok of Troie write" (5.3244-45).

    Like "Nauplus and Ulysses," "Achilles and Deidamia," and "Orestes," "Jason and Medea" involves several interlocking sets of broken bonds. Like Achilles, Jason is "stered" both "Of love, and ek of his conqueste" (5.3412-13); as in the other Troy stories, this dichotomy leads to multiple tragedies. Just as Ulysses's sowing his land with salt foreshadows the abuse of his land and family in his absence, Jason's sowing the land with serpent's teeth and raising self-slaughtering armies from the "seeds" foreshadows the barrenness and self-slaughter that his ruthlessness will ultimately beget. Like Deidamia, who attempts to hide her pregnancy (the "lost. . . maydenhede" that was "afterward wel knowe," 5.3068-69), Medea deceives her father on behalf of "The kniht which hath mi maidenhede" (5.3740). Gower focuses not on her theft of her father's treasure, but on her abandonment of her family: when men tell the king that Medea and Jason have slipped away in the night, he immediately

axeth where his dowhter was.
Ther was no word bot Out, Allas!
Sche was ago. The moder wepte,
The fader as a wod man lepte. . . (5.3909-12)

    Like Jason himself, the Lover evinces no sympathy for the suffering protagonists in the story, but is instead captivated by the glittering fleece. When Genius accedes to his desire to know more about this prize, we discover that behind the tragedy of Jason and Medea lies yet another story of abandonment: the tale of "Phrixus and Helle" (5.4243-4361). Here again, a king takes a second wife after having children with the first, albeit after the first wife's death. Through a complicated stratagem, the second wife convinces the king to sacrifice his children to the goddess Ceres, echoing Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia to Athena, and the other stories of murdering parents ("Canace and Machaire," "Jason and Medea") which precede this one. Genius emphasizes the interconnectedness of his stories of violence and deception, noting that from Phrixus's sheep "cam after al the wo, / Why Jason was forswore so / Unto Medee, as it is spoke" (5.4359-61). These interconnected stories of familial abandonment and murder prepare us for the stories of "Theseus and Ariadne" (5.5231-495) and "Tereus" (5.5551-6047). Although "Tereus" is the closest to "Orestes" and "Jason and Medea" in terms of sheer perversity and horror, it is in the story of Theseus and Ariadne that Genius finally steps forward and condemns people who choose glory or passion over familial bonds, asserting that Theseus "the lawe of loves riht / Forfeted hath in alle weie, / That Adriagne he putte aweie" (5.5476-78). The vice which all these heroes and kings--Namplus, Aeolus, Orestes, Ulysses, Achilles, Jason, Theseus and Tereus--share is "unkindeschipe," a word which means at once "unkindness" and "unnaturalness." Unkindeschipe is a self-perpetuating quality: it affects a man's heart so that "he can no good dede aquite" (5.5488). For this reason, Genius commands, "This vice above all othre fle" (5.5495).

    We can trace a rough progression from tales of perverted devotion to family in Confessio Book Three, to discussion of the militarism which perverts it in Confessio Book Four, to an emphasis on the victims of the perversion--women and children--in Confessio Book Five. In all three books, however, Gower repeatedly privileges an individual's bonds to spouse and children over any other--over the demands of heroic destiny, chivalric glory, or societal convention. All is not fair in love and war, Gower asserts. The world is continually worsening, and "If that a man the sothe seie, / The cause hath ben divisioun" (Prol.850-51). The solution, Gower suggests, is not to let our basic bonds--to marriage and to family--be weakened at any cost.