SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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of the king, whose primary duty is to succor his people through the right sort of love. A
pattern begins to emerge that links the Prologue to the rest of Confessio Amantis
structurally while the problem of what constitutes love unifies it thematically: The
organization of tales in the books echoes the structure of the Prologue 7 , for the tales are
told in an order of sins with least harmful effects to those with the most harmful. In
addition, in the Prologue, the single books, and the work as a whole, there is a line of
rising intensity, a climactic interruption by a tale of some distress, and then a remediating
turn so that Prologue and book and poem end on a hopeful note. An in-depth look at
Book one will demonstrate the pattern.
Book one, dedicated to pride and its five branches—Hypocrisy, Murmur and
Complaint, Presumption, Boasting, and Vainglory—contains much in the way of advice
to the king: a king should avoid hypocrisy (the Tale of Mundus and Paulina), be true to
his word (The Tale of Florent), should retain the dignity of his office (The Trump of
Death), and avoid vainglory (Nebuchadnezzar’s Punishment). The argument seems clear:
a good king, with right governance, can unify people through appropriate and kynde love.
These cautionary tales exemplify the ways that a right-thinking king should behave,
bringing peace rather than discord to his people. In querying Amans, Genius begins with
the misuse of the senses, and relates the Tale of Acteon, taken from Ovid, to illustrate
unwise use of the eyes, 8 because
7 Baker and Peck note the pattern of increasing intensity of the sin of incest throughout the books; I find
that this pattern commences even in the Prologue.
8 Peck notes the classical idea of the eye as the “most important sense for human revelation. . . the principal
sense organ for guiding reason. Augustine’s three steps toward virtue (visio, contemplation, actio) mark
also the three steps toward sin. In both instances the process begins with the eye’s response to beauty or
the desirable, which in turn stimulates the will and desire” (313 fn775). Plato explains”why the eye is