Having subdivided the text into three distinct parts, namely the State, the Church and the Commons, Gower's prologue addresses all three areas from its "medial" style" indicate. Although initially dedicated to the king, this poem is addressed to all - the "obscene" as well as the learned, although perhaps with less emphasis on the commons While the trinity of estates in the conventional sense suggests a structure in which the three estates (those who pray - the clergy; those who fight - the nobility; and those who work - the peasants) were expected to work together for good. common, their real history is one of constant friction and conflict. In Gower's vision, this idealism has given way to deep pessimism, even despair in the face of the current disintegration of the social order. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get an original essayJust like in the General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, what is interesting in Gower's Prologue is not that it depicts an archaic and closed social order, but that it reveals an order that is on the verge of expected disaster. Gower's characters are by no means content to stay in their place, but rather are engaged in the corrupt pursuit of wealth, status (apart from their estate), and respectability. The conflict between old and new, and between tradition and ambition, is evident throughout the Prologue, underlined by the poet's constant nostalgic comparisons between the utopian situation of "but" and the failure of "now ". Simon has undertaken the cause, the world is taken over; (Prol. 240-249) While taking into account that the Confessio Amantis was written at a time when social structures and social theory were constantly evolving, it should be noted that one of the main differences between the medieval order and order The order of modern society is the preeminent role played in the first by the Church and its many institutions. The Church was itself a complex social structure and inevitably constituted one of the divisions made in medieval social theory. A clear bipartisan divide between clergy and laity – those who belong to the Church and those who do not. Another division, among several tripartite divisions and arising from the doctrine of the Roman Church on clerical celibacy, is based on sexual activity: virgins, widowers and widowers, and married people. (This is the classification that Chaucer's Wife of Bath claims to accept while defending her right to remarry as often as she wishes.) Gower uses the metaphor of these divisions ("Regnes ben divided" Prol. 127) emphatically in the Prologue of Confessio Amantis. to depict the decrepitude of 14th century England: the source of all the misfortunes of the time. As Gower says, sin is “a moder of division” (Prol. 1030), and division is a “moder of confusion” (Prol. 852). Through the metaphors of division, Gower connects the romantic plot of books 1–8 with the successional critique of the Prologue. The Prologue also functions as an indicator of Gower's own political alliance - ("A book for the love of King Richardes / To whom belong my liegeance.") Dedicated initially to Richard II, the Prologue to the Confessio was as much indicative of Gower's admiration for Richard II, as he later was, due to his revision, revealing his disappointment with the same monarch. While the Confessio could have been the result of Gower's visit to the royal barge (as recounted in lines 24 to 92 of the first recension of the poem), Gower's Prologue."