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| Title: | Wounding those who live wickedly |
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| Notes: | "Text on the above image in one version of the Vox Clamantis (MS Hunter 59 (T.2.17) folio 6v) reads "I throw my darts and shoot my arrows at the world. But where there is a righteous man, no arrow strikes. But I wound those who live wickedly. Therefore let him who recognizes himself there look to himself." [from Wikimedia]
"Vox Clamantis ("the voice of one crying out") is a Latin poem of around 10,000 lines in elegiac verse by John Gower that recounts the events and tragedy of the 1381 Peasants' Rising. The poem takes aim at the corruption of society and laments the rise of evil. Gower takes an entirely aristocratic side in the poem, regarding the peasants' claims as invalid and their actions as following the anti-Christ.Gower's earlier Mirour de l'Omme had proposed the metaphor of the microcosm: man is, within himself, a miniature world and a metaphor of the world. As disorders occur in the man, they occur in the wider world. In Vox Clamantis, the same general trope is employed, but Gower emphasizes the role of the political, with a dire view of the effects of the polis and political on both the man and the cosmos. Gower outlines the proper duty of each of the three estates of society and argues that none of those alive were close to acting in a proper manner.The poem is an important account of life under Richard II in London and the effects of the peasants' rebellion. Using the rebellion (which clinched several demands for the peasants) as an allegory, Gower expresses his concern for a future vacant of law and education. Gower, who frequently stressed the importance of each concept in his work, feared that either would be meaningless in a land rife with barbarism and chaos, and men of his position would have no purpose." [from Wikipedia] |
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| Date: | ca. 1400 |
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| Building: | Glasgow University Library
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| Object/Function: | Books and manuscripts |
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| City/Town: | Glasgow, Scotland
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| Country: | United Kingdom
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| Scripture: | Psalm 1
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| Lectionary links: | CProp18
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| General Subject: | World
Wickedness
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| Permalink: |
https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55641
(Use this link to refer back to this image.)
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| Copyright Source: | http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Gower_world_Vox_Clamantis.jpg |
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| Copyright Permission: | Please visit the URL in the Copyright Source field on this page for details about reusing this image. |
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| Attribution: | Wounding those who live wickedly, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55641 [retrieved May 2, 2024]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Gower_world_Vox_Clamantis.jpg. |
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| Record Number: | 55641
Last Updated: 2021-11-10 17:13:05
Record Created: 2013-06-17 16:46:38 |
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| Institution: | Vanderbilt University
Collection: Art in the Christian Tradition |
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