SOURCE: “John of Gaunt and the Rhetoric of Frustration,” in ELH 43, No. 3, Fall, 1976, pp. 279-99.
In the following essay, Friedman studies the form and content of Gaunt's dying speech and argues that the speech reveals Gaunt to be deeply frustrated with his inability to insure the existence and stability of his particular view of “England's essence.” Friedman emphasizes that Gaunt's speech is more than the national panegyric it is often taken to be and that Gaunt does not simply serve as an objective commentator on England's glories.
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