11 100 2176 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Fitzgerald frames her essay with Polonius's precepts from Shakespeare's "Hamlet," suggesting, "Shakespeare is drawing on an older, vernacular tradition and practice of masculine advice poetry"--"an obscure body of conduct poetry concerned with the performance of masculinity" (108). Fitzgerald focuses on couplets that "perform masculine authority in multiple modes" (109), and in so doing must navigate the tension between homosocial elements of masculinity and the excesses that would have been decried in what Vance Smith has called "arts of possession." The "later medieval masculine social self" is revealed in the content, performance, production, circulation, and form of this poetry. "Masculinity," Fitzgerald argues, "becomes a commodity to trade" (110). She calls attention to their "fungible nature" as they draw men together in networks of exchange. Beginning with couplets from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, Fitzgerald traces iterations of them using the "Index of Middle English Verse"; she includes a useful chart that helps to illustrate the poetic body generated by these connected couplets. The interchangeability of these couplets is key--hence the use of the term "fungible couplets"--and results from a "mercantile discourse and ethics" that is "entirely masculine" and that seems to be particular to the middle class (115). They often employ the "performative voice of father advising son," which leads Fitzgerald to discuss particular examples wherein we find these voices appropriating authority in the copying of the couplets. Chaucer is appropriated in the Carthusian MS (British Library MS Add. 37049), and Gower in Hill's manuscript (Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354). The act of copying might itself be considered a performance of masculine authority wherein the copyist takes on the voice of masculine authority. Hill, for example, copies tales from "Confessio Amantis" but neglects to include their allegorical frame: "Yet, at the end of each tale, Genius's voice still survives in a few lines, often addressing the now-absent Amans as 'my son' and underscoring the moral and ethical lesson of the tale" (124). Fitzgerald returns to Shakespeare to conclude, suggesting that Shakespeare does not mock Polonius through the precepts he spouts but rather in so doing displays "the ways that masculinity and masculine authority are a performance, and to recognize the contradictions and anxieties of masculinity itself in his own age and the age preceding him" (125). [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fitzgerald, Christina M. Published Exemplaria 32 (2020): 107-29. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Copying Couplets: Performing Masculinity in Middle English Moral Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Espie is concerned with Tudor reception of Chaucer, treating Gower and (more extensively) Lydgate as mediators of Chaucer for Spenser and his contemporaries, exploring several ways Chaucer was understood, presented, and emulated in Spenser's "The Shepeardes Calender." There are many kinds of "mediation" of Chaucer underlying Spenser's "Calender"--early Tudor editions of Chaucer among them, Espie shows. He pays most attention, however, to "networks of Medieval intertextuality" (244) as they play out in Spenser's work, offering as one example Gower's and Lydgate's possible influences on the June eclogue of the "Calender"--how this eclogue "integrates a commendation [of Tityrus/Chaucer] that Spenser may have derived from Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' and a plaintive voice that he models on what I'll call the Lydgatian mode" (246). Espie assesses Venus's praise of Chaucer in CA 8.2499 as one who "has made 'as he wel couthe' many 'ditees and songes' of love" (Espie's emphasis), exploring how the "commonplace phrase" wel couthe "plays an uncommon role" at the end of CA insofar as "Gower's passage is unique in using the phrase . . . to describe Chaucer's skill as an amorous poet--unique, that is until the 'Calender'" (252-53), where Colin's pursuit of love is central to both his role as poet and his commendation of Tityrus/Chaucer, and where suggestive resonances of "couthe" recur as the phrase is repeated elsewhere in Spenser's work. Combining the Gowerian echo with Lydgate's "plaintive voice" in the June eclogue, Espie argues, Spenser "remakes the Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate triumvirate into a Chaucer and Colin pair" (256), assimilating an old tradition into a new one. Espie also suggests that Gower's presentation of Chaucer as a love poet underlies the inclusion of Thomas Usk's "Testament of Love" in William Thynne's and John Stow's editions of Chaucer, and that John Leland "implicitly align[s] himself with Gower" in his praise of Chaucer. Such "well-read Chaucerians in Tudor England not only consulted Venus's words from the 'Confessio' but also used them to shape their representations of Chaucer" (253). In much of his essay, Espie examines how Lydgate's idea of Chaucer's "Janus-faced poetics" might have influenced E.K.'s prefatory epistle and Spenser's own "paradoxical poetics" (261) in "the process of poetic succession" (262), and how Chaucer's Pandarus-like interpretive mode made its mark on E.K. as an interpreter. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Espie, Jeff. Published Spenser Studies 31-32 (2017): 243-71. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource (Un)couth: Chaucer, "The Shepheardes Calender," and the Forms of Mediation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review As do most assessments of Gower-as-Chorus in Shakespeare and George Wilkins' "Pericles," Dymkowski's essay focuses--justifiably--on the range of functions of the choric character in the drama rather than on Gower the man or his tale of Apollonius as a source of the play. She is largely concerned with the metatheatrical functions of the character in various modern productions of the play, with most extensive attention paid to two productions (1958 and 1989) in which the character was played by a black actor in an otherwise white cast. Exploring how "contemporary productions negotiate the challenge of making the character work for a modern audience" (248)--whose members are largely ignorant of Gower and his poetry--Dymkowski assesses how the Chorus generally helps to make the "audience aware they are watching a play" and "consciously engage with the nature of theatre itself" (246), before going on to assess individual productions. Prefatory to this line of argument and exposition, she usefully rehearses "what Gower might have meant to the play's original audience" (237), offering a clear, if conventional, review (pp. 237-41) of Jacobean familiarity with Gower and his works, claiming that the original audience of "Pericles," "even without direct knowledge of Gower's work, could be presumed to identify him as an important literary figure, as an ethical and wise man, as a patriot, and as a storyteller" (239). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dymkowski, Christine. Published In The Narrator, the Expositor, and the Prompter in European Medieval Theatre, ed. Philip Butterworth (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 235-64. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Ancient [and Modern] Gower": Presenting Shakespeare's "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Cary's study of medieval Alexander the Great narratives remains the foundational resource for all further work on the subject. He traces the historical and legendary Alexanders, Occidental and Oriental, from ca. 200 B.C. (Pseudo-Callistenes) through the fifteenth century A.D. His comments on Gower's sources and uses of Alexander appear variously, in relation to multiple texts. He attributes "Alexander and the Pirate" (CA III. 2363-437 to Augustine ("City of God" 4.4), citing Gower's moralized use of the story (97), and elaborates subsequently, noting that Gower's moral is "the necessity of self-control," which, Cary suggests, Gower connects with an anti-war theme: "Alexander conquered all the world; he let his will go beyond his reason; but in the end he was poisoned, and what did his unreasonable wars avail him then?" (254). The Diogenes story (III. 1201-1330), which makes a similar point about following reason over will, Cary attributes to a source modeled on Valerius Maximus, but supplemented by another, "possibly from Walter Burley" (253-54). He notes that Dindimus' critique of Alexander (V. 1453-96) "is supported by the brief narration of the legendary story of Alexander and Candeolus" (V. 1571-85) in which both enter a cave where Alexander "felt the presence of the gods, and conversed with Serapis" 254); of Candace, mother of Candeolus, Gower gives a brief reference, "probably borrowed from the 'Roman de toute chevalerie'" (254). Gower "tells with evident pleasure the story of the adultery of Nectanabus" and comments "that sorcery did not help him or save him from death" at Alexander's hand (255). Cary finds "typical of the period that Gower has Callisthenes and Aristotle teach [Alexander] "Philosophie, Entenden, and Astronomie" rather than "fencing and fighting" (255). Book VII, Cary says, is "based on the Secret of Secrets" (255). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cary, George. Ross, D. J. S., ed. Published Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, ,Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Medieval Alexander. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1956 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bychowski notes that the goal of "Confessio Amantis" is "to bring those excluded and isolated by the presumptions of the world, especially anyone in a wood of suicide, into meaningful and life-giving community discourse" (209). Hence, the CA and the confessional genre of poetry writ large "may be considered a literary and social form by which trans persons would be known and controlled as well as how trans lives came to embody and resist these discursive structures of genre and gender" (209). Narcissus, in particular, is the representative of the trans community in Gower's poem and is the focus of the four sections of the essay: "The Wód of Suicide," "The 'Ymage' of the Nymphs," "The Wonder Hot Day," and "Flowers in Winter." Each section centers on a Middle English keyword: "wód," "ymage," "condiciŏun," and "otherwhiles." In "The Wód of Suicide," Bychowski asserts that Gower's Confessio Amantis has a "necropolitical frame"--that confession is what brings Gower back from the brink of death as he despairs his isolation in a wood of suicide (219). She illustrates the ambiguity of the word "wood" in Middle English, concluding the "wód" is confession's public form, and that the creation of alternative "wóds" allows a space for reclamation. In "Ymage," Bychowski writes, through framing, "'The Tale of Narcissus' turns social presumptions into confessions that reveal certain truths while eschewing others" (228). "Ymage" in this tale sets in sharp relief the social construction of gender: Narcissus recognizes themself as a woman but has been taught not to see themself that way. For Bychowski, precariousness rather than personal vanity is the "condiciŏun" for Gower's iteration of "The Tale of Narcissus": their division from women as a result of patriarchy, the well as potentially a place of reconditioning in which Narcissus can see a feminine self without judgment. Finally, in "Flowers in Winter," Bychowski defines "otherwhiles" as "alternative times and events that play out again and again" and "time[s] beyond rest" (241-42). The slow death of suicide is highlighted in the context of these "otherwhiles," and in so doing, Gower provides a space in which to contemplate liveable and bright trans futures. The essay establishes both significant theoretical terminology (e.g., "trans necropolitics") and social positioning (e.g., "By allowing medieval confession to speak together with trans theory, readers can better see that cultural genealogies of anti-trans sentiment continue to run in the blood of patriarchies and some feminist movements, so-called 'Trans-exclusive Radical Feminists' (TERF), even as these systems of presumption and exclusion take different forms in medieval and post-medieval eras" (216). [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bychowski, M. W. Published Medieval Feminist Forum 55 (2019): 207-48. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Necropolitics of Narcissus: Confessions of Transgender Suicide in the Middle Ages. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review As her title indicates, Burke argues that Gower's "Cinkante Balades" was written following a model established by Christine de Pizan in her "Cent Balades." "This discovery is important for Christine studies, as it affirms an example of her influence on the world stage beginning as early as 1398, when her 'Cent Balades' must have already been known to readers in France, as well as carried to England (in a manuscript that has not survived) by John Montague, Earl of Salisbury" (172). "For Gower studies," she states, "this discovery of filiation is a game-changer" (172). Her argument rests on two points: dates of 1398 for the "Cent Balades" (so that Salisbury could bring them with him from France to England) and 1399 for the "Cinkante Balades"; and that Christine's and Gower's works share a "common plan" (177)--"almost exactly the same blueprint" (178). She takes both works as inspired by love, and reads "Cinkante Balades" I-IV as "a personal tribute to their author's happy proposal of marriage and his joy at the acceptance of his bride" (182), finding in IIII* "anaphora that rings forth the constancy of joyful love" (183), relating it to the Song of Songs (184). She concludes, "Although Gower's collection in no way surpassed the youthful genius of Christine in her 'Cent balades,' he created a worthy tribute to her legacy of moral lyrics composed in many voices, but united in diversity by the theme of love" (184). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke, Linda. Published In Genèses et filiations dans l'oeuvre de Christine de Pizan, ed. Dominique Demartini and Claire le Ninan (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021), pp. 171-84. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Personal as Political. John Gower's "Cinkante balades" as English Response to the "Cent balades" of Christine de Pizan. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This article provides a careful examination of the Tale of Constance from Book 2 of the "Confessio Amantis" in terms of the shifts in attitudes toward crusading in the later fourteenth century. He leads with reference to the 1396 Battle of Nicopolis (a disaster for the European Christians), and goes from there to suggest that Gower would have been somewhat suspicious of the crusading impulse, as part of the "lawe positif" he critiques in the Prologue to the CA. When Brown brings his attention to the Tale of Constance, he examines its sources: the folkloric trope of the "calumniated queen," and Nicholas Trivet's Anglo-Norman "Chronicle." In particular, though Brown notes that Gower has to squeeze the story a bit to fit it into the book on Envy, most of his analysis will focus on Gower's changes to the details of Trivet's version of the story. He notes in particular that Gower leaves out some of the details of the treaty between Tiberius and the Sultan (the ceding of Jerusalem to the Christians), and the slaughter in revenge of "11,000 infidels" (183). He argues that for Gower had to eliminate these details because they reinforce the dangerous fantasy of the crusade, which was finding its last gasp in the fourteenth century. Brown goes on to cite scholars' analyses of Trivet's contributions to the story, as a "recollection of Christian glories from the early crusade era" (185). If, then, Trivet's story is a "Christian fantasy of the impossible Crusade" (186), for Gower, the cuts respond to the "volatile political climate and dangerous propaganda in England during the death throes of the Crusade era," especially in "response to Philipe of Mézières" (187). He concludes that this shows that Gower was ahead of many of his contemporaries in seeing that it was time for the crusades to be over. Brown's argument overall makes sense, at least for this story, and he makes a good case that Gower's work here contrasts with some of his contemporaries. He does not, however, tie this particular issue to Gower's broader preoccupation with war and peace across his oeuvre. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Brown, Harry J. Published In The Crusades: Other Experiences, Alternate Perspectives: Selected Proceedings from the 32nd Annual CEMERS Conference, ed. Khalil I. Semaan (Binghamton, NY: Global Academic, 2003), pp. 179-91. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "For Worldes Good." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Volume 1, pp. 279-80, discusses Thomas Berthelet's 1532 edition of the CA, finding "reason to consider the Gower and Chaucer (i.e., Thomas Godfray's edition of Thynne's "Works of Geoffrey Chaucer") as companion volumes" (279), citing John Leland's belief that the Chaucer was Berthelet's production. Blayney describes Berthelet's loan to Godfray of "at least four initials and the woodcut border" used in the Chaucer (279). "It is," he notes, "therefore reasonable to suspect that Berthelet may have had a stake in this edition, though whether as a major or minor shareholder is a matter for guesswork only" (280). Blayney establishes that this border design passed about among printers, appearing in books produced by Pynson and Redman, as well as Godfray and Berthelet, the latter using it "at least five times in 1533-5 before lending it again for Godfray's (dated) folio New Testament of 1536" (280), further strengthening the collaboration of the two printers--an idea also accepted by E. Gordon Duff and Andrew W. Wawn, the latter in his essay on The Plowman's Tale (280). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Blayney. Peter W. M. Published Cambridge UP, 2013. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Stationers' Company and the Printers of London, 1501-1557, 2 vols. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bahr's question in this essay is "Does knowledge of a manuscript's patron or circumstances of production . . . close off and thus subvert its potentialities as an aesthetic form?" (165). Versions of this question have preoccupied Bahr for some years. (See, e.g., "Reading Codicological Form in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript" [2011]; "Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London" [2013].) Here again his focus is London, British Library, MS Additional 59495 (olim Trentham), more specifically how the "tension between the synchronic and the diachronic [sharpens] when we consider the allusive intertextuality of many of Trentham's texts" (166). The manuscript-as-object, Bahr argues, "was always bound to exceed" whatever were Gower's "intentions when he began compiling Trentham." Or, as he puts it more broadly a little further on: "manuscript studies as a discipline" should not prize "historically discrete and verifiable data points" exclusively, but recognize that manuscripts' "vitality depends upon continued reading and creative reinterpretations" (166). To demonstrate this method, Bahr roves freely throughout the contents of the manuscript, comparing elements with, and surfacing allusions to, the "Book of the Duchess," "Parlement of Foules," and "Inferno" 5, 127-42 (Paolo and Francesca). He reads, at the same time, a variety of ways the manuscript, produced after the usurpation and seemingly intended as a gift to Henry IV, also contains nuanced--and not negative--backward glances at the reign of Richard II. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bahr, Arthur. Published In Chaucer and the Subversion of Form, ed. Thomas A. Prendergast and Jessica Rosenfeld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 165-81 Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Birdsong, Love, and the House of Lancaster: Gower Reforms Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Allen characterizes late-medieval Southwark as a noisy, bustling suburb, separate from but affected by many of the social and political restraints and opportunities of the City of London. She credits Martha Carlin's 1983 University of Toronto dissertation for many of her details and emphases, and offers her own interpretive perspective that seeks to align Gower's outlooks with the environs in which he lived for "most of his adult life" (111): "Gower's situation, near but not in the City, and among some of the most wealthy and powerful of the land, seems to have consolidated his moral and political interests" (114). Even though "Gower lived in and for the world of books and wrote with extreme veneration for the past and its writers which screens out direct record," we can nevertheless, Allen tells us, "trace something of Gower's Southwark in his . . . allegories and moral narratives" (115). Enticing as it is, this goal is accomplished in only a very general way. Allen describes noteworthy features of Southwark, identifies Gower's likely affiliations with personages of the area, describes a number of events in Gower's life and times, and offers an engaging survey of his major works, focusing on narrative devices and intended audiences. Mention of Southwark in this survey of the poetry is infrequent, however, so that links between Southwark and Gower's works are neither specific nor clear. As commentary rather than biography or analysis, the essay is well worth reading for its details, perspectives, and energetic prose, but its potential is unfulfilled, perhaps necessarily so. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Allen, Rosamund S. Published In London and Europe in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Julia Boffey and Pamela M. King (London: Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 1995), pp. 111-47. ISBN 978-1-870059-07-7. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower and Southwark: The Paradox of the Social Self. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Driscoll's abstract: "'By The Will of the King' demonstrates how Ricardian poetry was shaped by and responded to the conflict between majestic and political rhetoric that crystallized in the politically turbulent years culminating in the Second Barons' War (1258-1265). By placing Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' and Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' in dialogue with this political tradition, I demonstrate how narrative became a site of conflict between vertical, cosmic descriptions of power and horizontal realities of power, a conflict from which the contours of a civic habit of mind began to emerge . . . . By looking at the narrative practice of Gower and Chaucer through the lens of thirteenth-century political innovation, I extend and fill in [the] depiction of a nascent political imaginary. Each poet responds to the new political circumstances in their own way. Gower, placing the political community at the center of Book VII of the 'Confessio,' rigorously reworks the mirror for princes genre into a schematic analysis of political power. For Chaucer, political rhetoric becomes visible at the moment that the traditional majestic rhetoric of kingship collapses. 'The Canterbury Tales,' as such, restages the conflict of the thirteenth century in aesthetic terms--giving form to the crisis of authority. Ultimately, Ricardian poetry exposes and works through an anxiety of sovereignty; it registers the limits of a majestic paradigm of kingship; and reshaping narrative, aesthetic, and hermeneutic practice, it conjures a new political imaginary capable of speaking to and for a community which had emerged during the reign of Henry III." Author/Editor Author/Editor Driscoll, William D. Published Driscoll, William D. "By the Will of the King: Majestic and Political Rhetoric in Ricardian Poetry." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Oregon, 2017. iii, 335 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A78.09 (2018): n.p. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses and at https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/items/06271349-f5bb-46a9-8b3e-7c25df952afb. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource By the Will of the King: Majestic and Political Rhetoric in Ricardian Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Zuraikat and Rawashdeh compare Ovid's narrative of Acteon, embedded in the larger history of Cadmus and his house ("Metamorphoses III), to Gower's "Tale of Acteon" (CA, I.333-87). They present Gower's project as "a blend of 'narration' and 'focalization', where 'narration' is the telling of a story that simultaneously respects the needs and enlists the cooperation of its audience and 'focalization' is the submission of (potentially limitless) narrative information to a perspectival filter" (235). Thus they find that Gower is "aware of the great difference between Confessio Amantis's moral context and "Metamorphoses'" mythological one." Consequently, he "uses his borrowed material according to his poem's moral purpose. He does not passively paraphrase his classical sources; rather, he innovatively rewrites them in light of the Confessio's moral texture" (235). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Zuraikat, Malek J. Rawashdeh, Faisel I. Published Zuraikat, Malek J., and Faisal I. Rawashdeh. "John Gower's Moral Adaptation of Ovid's 'Tale of Acteon'." International Journal of Arabic-English Studies 19 (2019): 127-38. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Moral Adaptation of Ovid's "Tale of Acteon." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Williams identifies the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as a turning-point when "Middle English writers experimented with new ways of imagining and representing women's lives and experiences" (3). She centers her study around "womanhood" as a "gendered term," "both because it directly invokes the conceptual problem of what defines women collectively, beyond specific experiences or roles, and because it was used so widely and in such interesting ways in the late Middle Ages" (3). The book accords a chapter each to Chaucer, Lydgate and Henryson, Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe; chapter 2 treats "Beastly Women and Womanly Men: Gower's Confessio Amantis." Citing Judth Butler, Williams finds that Gowerian gender is "performative" (51). Gower is interested in transformations, which for him are "physical and explore how any figure can combine elements of womanhood, manhood, and beastliness. The intersections of these identities intrigue Gower and he locates them in many figures, including Amans . . . the loathly lady in the 'Tale of Florent' . . . Achilles and Iphis" (52). He also "is interested in the relationship between womanhood and social power," focusing on "how [womanhood] can act as a register of the morality of others, especially men" (52). These concerns lie behind the larger purpose of the frame narrative, which is "to teach Amans how to be a man" by showing him "how he should think about and react to women, especially the lady who is the object of his desire" (52). "The chapter connects Gower's concept of womanhood in the tales with the figure of Amans' lady in the frame narrative. As parts of his attempt to educate Amans on how to be a man and hence how to react to women, Genius persistently interprets his exempla, and even those with female protagonists, as lessons about male behavior. Only by understanding and sympathizing with female victims can Amans absorb the morals of the tales, but his continuing insensitivity toward his lady signals his inability to read women's experiences accurately" (53). The chapter has three sections. The first, "Beastly Women," treats the tales of "Florent," "Tereus," "Neptune and Cornix," and "Calistona" (53-65); the second, "Womanly Men," treats the "Tale of Achilles and Deidamia," "Sardanapalus," and the "Tale of Iphis" (65-72) ; the third, "'Mi ladi, which a womman is'," focuses on Amans' divided and underdeveloped understanding, revealing "his beastliness in his desire to violate the lady, like Tereus, and his womanliness in his inability to allow reason to overcome love, like Sardanapalus" (72-85, quote at 72). Amans' larger problem, in Williams' view, is that he suffers under an illusion: he expects his lady to act in accord with romance conventions while she, realistically, resists that stereotype. Ultimately, forced by Venus to acknowledge reality, Amans discovers himself, and a new purpose. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Williams, Tara. Published Williams, Tara. Inventing Womanhood: Gender and Language in Later Middle English Literature. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2011). Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Inventing Womanhood: Gender and Language in Later Middle English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In Part II of her article, Williams discusses the choric "Gower" as father figure in the play, especially the literary "fader" he was assumed to be in Early Modern England (610). As this "Gower" introduces the action to follow, he humbly admits to his prolixity: 'Pardon old Gower, this longs the text'." By calling his speech a "text," however, Williams claims that the choric "Gower" is also claiming the superiority of moralizing words over mere dramatic spectacle, as playwright Ben Jonson also argued (600, 609). Throughout his speeches, choric "Gower" personifies the authority of Gower the "moral" poet recognized as such by Caxton and others in early modern England. However, in Williams' view Shakespeare understood the modest literary persona of the poet Gower as "a sophisticated narrative strategy that he developed to ameliorate the effects of his shocking and scandalous subject matter," including incest, discussed in the "Confessio Amantis" as inherent in human sexuality from the days of Adam and Eve (610). Like his archetype the poet, Shakespeare's "Gower" proposes to control the depiction of immoral actions with a running moral commentary: "I do beseech you/To learn of me, who stands in the gaps, to teach you" (first Chorus 7-8, p. 611). Ben Jonson famously admired Gower (612) and disparaged "Pericles," which Williams attributes to its dramatic spectacle placed "alongside, rather than in tension with, verbal testimony" (613). For all his preaching, however, choric "Gower" shows himself unable to "separate moral discourse from transgressive sexuality," any more than Pericles can "separate himself from the pervasive presence of incestuous desire . . . " Only "in the daughter" can "these contradictions [be] resolved" (614). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Williams, Deanne. Published Williams, Deanne. "Papa Don't Preach: The Power of Prolixity in 'Pericles'." University of Toronto Quarterly 71.2 (Spring 2002): 595-622. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Papa Don't Preach: The Power of Prolixity in "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Caitlin G. Watt argues that Gower demonstrates that the confessional mode in "Confessio Amantis" is inadequate "to address such traumas as sexual violence" and that he calls for "a more egalitarian ethics of listening" (273). Using "the confessional discourse of feminist narrative anti-rape politics" (273), Watt considers the intersections of Gower's "Tale of Lucrece" with #MeToo movement insofar as confession may correct the social order and heal the one confessing. She attends to the numerous examples of sexual assault in CA, exploring how survivors are vulnerable to "public and legal patterns of counteraccusation" when they speak (274). Watt turns to the "Tale of Lucrece," which she claims "best illustrates Gower's representation of the pain of confession," adding that Gower's particular version of this tale focuses on the physicality involved (275). She claims Gower's narrative suggests a kind of voyeurism as a source of narrative pleasure--pain at the expense of Lucrece for the reader's entertainment--which parallels modern media's treatment of rape survivors and their narratives. Gower, however, takes us into the private experiences of Lucrece's rape, attempting to lead us through a reading that stresses her innocence; yet, as Watt explains, the confessors in Gower's tale "fail to alleviate her pain and succeed only in using her body to achieve revenge" (278). By the end of CA, though, Amans's swoon ends his suffering--a mercy not afforded to Lucrece and other rape victims in Gower's tales (and of course in the world). Watt concludes that the type of change sought by movements such as #MeToo cannot be achieved by confessional discourse alone: "It will require careful, self-reflective listening, and perhaps also new ways of reading the texts, medieval and modern, that have shaped the way we understand sexual violence" (280). [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watt, Caitlin G Published Watt, Caitlin G. "The Speaking Wound: Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' and the Ethics of Listening in the #metoo Era." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, 11 (2020): 272-81. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Speaking Wound: Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and the Ethics of Listening in the #metoo Era. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Truitt's study is of "medieval robots both actual and fictional," investigating "the complex history of medieval automata . . . to understand the interdependence of science, technology, and the imagination in medieval culture and between medieval culture and modernity" (1). In his third chapter, "'Talking Heads': Astral Science, Divination, and Legends of Medieval Philosophers," he discusses Gower's brief tale of Robert Grosseteste and the brass head he creates to foretell the future (CA IV.234-49), presented as an exemplum of one of the branches of Sloth (lachesse). Truitt points to an earlier brass head created by "Gerbert" [of Aurillac, the later Pope Sylvester II], citing William of Malmsbury's narrative as a source for the Grosseteste story (90), and alludes further to connections between the seven years Grosseteste labors and "the seven planets and their influence on the seven metals," as well as "the metaphor of 'Natura Artifex' employed by the Neoplatonist philosophers in the twelfth century" (90), without offering evidence or deeper explanation. He suggests that "Gower was familiar with Grosseteste, whose work (especially his 'Constitutions,' a treatise on clerical reform, and 'Le Chasteau d'Amor,' an Anglo-Norman romance) were influential in Ricardian England" (91); his source for these latter claims is George G. Fox (1931). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Truitt, E. R. Published Truitt, E. R. Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. 89-91. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Medieval Robots: Mechanism, Magic, Nature, and Art. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Tracy is interested in the connection between memory and confession, which she finds is examined in much of the major poetry in Middle English: "Piers Plowman," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Chaucerian romance, and--in chapter four--"Gower: Confessio Amantis and the Fear of Forgetting" (53-66). She focuses on "two pivotal scenes" (54), both from the frame narrative: Book I, 216-29, in which Amans, about to undergo confession, expresses concerns that his memory will be insufficient to facilitate a useful resolution, and Book VIII, 2894-97, in which Genius, the confession complete, instructs Amans to "Forget it thou and so wol I," for at this point Amans, via Venus' mirror, has come to grips with the reality of his old age, and can be relied upon for only appropriate behavior in the future. Tracy connects this kind of appropriate remembering with Gower's larger purpose, expressed in Prologue 1-11, of learning from history as "remembered" in old books. "Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'," she notes, "relies on the concern with forgetfulness in the process of confession to justify the framework of the text and defines the final stage of confession as being able to forget past sins while, at the same time, recollecting personal realities . . . . As a result of recalled memories, the confessing individual's spiritual condition is changed; his state of being is reformed after being subjected to an act of recollection. This model is reflected in the ending of the CA. After engaging in the confessional process, Amans concludes that his life, his mental being, will never be the same again" (63). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Tracy, Kisha G. Published Tracy, Kisha G. Memory and Confession in Middle English Literature. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. 53-66. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Memory and Confession in Middle English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review At 41 pages without illustrations, Stone's argument is lengthy, complex, and difficult to summarize succinctly. He offers an attempt in his attached abstract: "This article triangulates John Gower's revisions to the 'Mirour de l'Omme' and 'Vox Clamantis,' William Langland's revisions to 'Piers Plowman,' and English responses to the Western Schism. The Schism forced Gower to rework portions of the 'Mirour' and 'Vox,' and influenced Langland's depiction of the papacy in the B-text of 'Piers.' Recovering Gower's and Langland's representations of the Schism not only brings these two poets into direct dialogue, but it also illuminates an undertheorized set of religious, political, and imaginative discourses centered on the institutional nature and shape of the church . . . . scholars [should] understand these discourses as a loose but recognizable 'vernacular ecclesiology' common to both the poetical works of Langland and Gower as well as [a] much broader spectrum of later medieval literature." As this abstract suggests, in addition to substantial material providing background to the Schism (clearly on the assumption that most know little about it), its most salient points center around dating those passages in the MO, VC, (and incidentally the CA and "In Praise of Peace") and "Piers" which can be thought to address the Schism--not ever easy, since in no case do Gower and Langland confront it directly. For Gowerians, perhaps Stone's most enduring effort is tracing what he argues were parallel arcs of Gower's and Langland's thinking regarding "ecclesiology" (which Stone defines, quoting Paul Avis, as "the comparative, critical, and constructive study of the dominant paradigms of the church's identity" [101]), prompted by the Schism: "By 1377, Gower and Langland had, like many of their contemporaries, had already begun to think about the spiritual, political, and aesthetic consequences of ecclesia" (99). In 1378, the Schism caused Gower to revise the MO and the "A-text" (borrowing from Maria Wickert) of the VC, which "focused on the sins of the Avignonese papacy." With the Schism in 1378, which "c. September 1378-summer 1379" Gower configured "as a monstrous new birth in the 'Mirour'" (94). VC B1 adjusts to critique the chaos during "the torrid first few years of the Schism while B2 registers the situation after Despenser's Crusade" (95). The CA's remarks on the Schism reflect the period "between Despenser's Crusade and the death of Clement VII in 1394" (95); and in "In Praise of Peace" he "exhorts the Henrician regime to support inchoate conciliar efforts to end the Schism" (95). Stone finds Langland's revisions to "Piers" at B.19-20/C.21-22 obeying a similar chronology in pursuit of a remarkably similar reaction to the Schism (95-101). In a coda, he opines about how thinking through an "English ecclesiology" might benefit analyses of late medieval literary work. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stone, Zachary E. Published Stone, Zachary E. "Towards a Vernacular Ecclesiology: Revising the Mirour de l'Omme, Vox Clamantis, and Piers Plowman During the Western Schism." Yearbook of Langland Studies 33 (2019): 69-110. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Towards a Vernacular Ecclesiology: Revising the "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," and "Piers Plowman" During the Western Schism Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Building on his 2017 edition of "Le Bone Florence of Rome," Stavsky argues that this Middle English romance--and many others like it, including Gower's "Tale of Constance" in the Confessio Amantis--tones down the Orientalist pro-Crusades outlook found in its French source. In this essay, he uses the argument to help set up an analysis that counterpoises the pro-Christian "identitarian conception of virtue" (51) of Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" with a view of Muslims in the "Parson's Tale" "which prioritizes self-inspection and reform over warfare" (53); the latter perspective, Stavsky tells us, is also found in Gower's Tale and in "Le Bone Florence." "Florence" and Chaucer's Tale figure most prominently in the essay, although Stavsky also addresses the Middle English "Octavian romances" (37) and differences between English and French anthologies of the "Octavian-Florence cycle" (39) as well as Gower. He leans recurrently--and perhaps most heavily in his brief discussion of Gower--on the evidence of the ethnic labeling of non-Christian peoples and individuals, identifying what Middle English translators do differently than their French predecessors and as a result reduce their orientalism, as Stavsky sees it. In the case of Gower, Stavsky resists Emily Houlik-Ritchey's argument (in "Rewriting Difference: 'Saracens' in John Gower and Juan de Cuenca," 2017) that Gower uses "Sarazine" for the Sultan's mother in order to justify Crusade-like "retaliation against her descendants," as Stavsky puts it. To the contrary, Stavsky observes, Gower uses "Sarazine" only twice (the instance in the Tale and one in an accompanying Latin gloss ["Sarazenos" at 2.1084]), while equivalent terms occur in the Constance story of Nicholas Trivet's "Chronicles," Gower's source, in "no fewer than a dozen instances." Stavsky cites only one instance from Trivet (and a complete list would be useful): the phrase "Terre Seinte encontre les Sarasins," for which Gower offers no equivalent whatsoever in his adaptation, lessening the orientalism, Stavsky implies. Elsewhere, Gower tends to use "Barbarie" instead, a "rather vague designation that could be anywhere outside of Christendom," Stavsky maintains, and nowhere presented by Gower as "grounds for a new Crusade." Closing his one-page assessment of Gower's Tale, Stavsky describes it as an "exemplum against detraction that is designed to cure its addressee," citing Carol Jamison's 2012 essay "John Gower's Shaping of 'The Tale of Constance' as an Exemplum contra of Envy" (37). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stavsky, Jonathan. Published Stavsky, Jonathan. "Translating the Near East in the 'Man of Law's Tale' and Its Analogues." Chaucer Review 55.1 (2020): 32–54. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Translating the Near East in the "Man of Law's Tale" and Its Analogues. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Sprang examines Shakespeare's interest in the Middle Ages apparent in his late "tragi-comedies," taking both "Pericles" and "Kinsmen" as essentially Shakespearean. What drew his attention, in Sprang's view, was "an exploration of narrative structures and generic boundaries," rather than "themes or ideas" that might be called medieval. In particular, Sprang finds that "in the juxtapositions of grief, happiness, suffering, and joy that the (re)construction of the Middle Ages as an era ruled by 'fatum' [Fate] is clearly evident." The plays "tell the story of a world of inconsistencies and abrupt changes, and the key to their stereotypical view of the Middle Ages lies in their approach to narratives" in the "choice and/or creation of genres that can accommodate these narratives." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sprang, Felix C.H. Published Sprang, Felix C.H. "Never Fortune Did Play a Subtler Game: The Creation of 'Medieval' Narratives in 'Pericles' and 'The Two Noble Kinsmen'." EJES: European Journal of English Studies 15 (2011): 115-28. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Never Fortune Did Play a Subtler Game: The Creation of "Medieval" Narratives in "Pericles" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review So aims to outline the self-consciously "authorial ego" with samples selected from prologues of medieval vernacular literary texts written in England, namely Layamon's "Brut," Wace's "Roman de Brut," Lydgate's "Troy Book," Mannyng's "Chronicle," the anonymous "Cursor Mundi," and Gower's "Confessio Amantis." In the first 25 lines of the prologue in CA, So has observed four examples indicative of Gower's authorial intention. So argues that Gower is primarily motivated by a consciousness of his own benefits rather than an interest in English nationhood, as has been argued in recent heated discussions. He sees the resort to classical symbol in the CA as Gower's means of safeguarding his own self-interest. He finds that Gower is aware of 1) his own writing as means of interaction, which responds to the moral themed writing tradition; 2) the competition among contemporary English writers; 3) the political circumstances; and 4) historic positioning. In each of these, So has caught a glimpse of a self, or the ego: an ego that aims to transcend the shade of influence cast by previous writers, an ego that intends to win over the reader amid the competition with his contemporaries, an ego who is sensitive to his political safety, and an ego who is caring about his own involvement in developing history. Noticing the possible correlation of Gower's historical sense of writing and Gower's individual benefits, So borrows from Pierre Bourdieu's theory to justify Gower's self-interested writing. On the one hand, So points out that historically Gower must have enjoyed some class advantage--"cultural capital," in Bourdieu's theory. On the other, Gower's advantageous language skill in classics continuously enhances the influential power of classics in the mind of his reader, which earns him further symbolic capital, as defined by Bourdieu. He infers that Gower's writing would result in a consolidation and an enhancement of his existing social advantages, and thus his own interest would be further defended. [XW. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Published So, Francis K. H. "Authorial Ego in Early English Vernacular Literature." Review of English and American literature 10 (2017): 1-50. [蘇其康.古早地方話英文文學的自我意識.英美文學評論. 10期 (2017): 1-50.] [N. B.: this article is in Chinese.] Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource [ Authorial Ego in Early English Vernacular Literature. ] Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review After the reviewing various kinds of late-medieval scribal copying, Smith emphasizes the commonness of "scribal translation," by which, when confronting an exemplar written in a variety other than their own, scribes translated that exemplar into their customary language. Transmission of the CA differs from this norm, since it evidently had a high number of constrained scribes, that is, scribes who did not translate the language of their exemplar. One such scribe is that of Manchester, Chetham Library MS A.6.11, who reproduces Gower's forms even when they differ from his own preferred ones, as witnessed in his copy of "Gest Hystoriale." [TWM. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, Jeremy J. Published Smith, Jeremy J. "A Note on Constrained Linguistic Variation in a North-west Midlands Middle-English Scribe." Neophilologus 80 (1996): 461-64. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Language Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Note on Constrained Linguistic Variation in a North-west Midlands Middle-English Scribe. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Smith's essay is tightly packed, learned, and provocative. His final paragraph summarizes the essentials of his argument: "Gower's and Chaucer's poems both use the household to examine the precarious situation of the cultural past in late fourteenth-century England, and in particular the position that poetry will occupy. For Gower, the household is a space of order and tradition (what he calls 'solitus') that is in danger from within (from the gentry) and without (from the 'rustici'). The threat they pose is general precisely because the household is also an allegory of the rules and expectations that govern Gower's high poetic style in the 'Vox clamantis.' But like all allegories it does not contain the whole story. The noise that troubles it, the murmurings and the 'yhas,' are also a part of the very texture of Gower's poem, and, whether he intends it or not, his poem both records the turmoil around him and forges a way to articulate it, and therefore to find some kind of resolution in it. Yet the 'Vox clamantis' is also a memorial to a kind of poetry that lives only in the past, and that only makes sense when looking toward the past that the present is destroying. Chaucer's poem, on the other hand, imagines the anarchy and the noise of the present as the very sound of the household: the purpose of the Domus Dedaly is simply to reshape, not to control, the noise that comes into it. What resounds as anarchic buzzing returns to earth as a hopeless muddle of truth and lies . . . . For Chaucer, the allegory of the household comprehends the social and political instability of the realm, but reimagines it as the very condition of a poetry that emerges not just in the household that is the realm but in the household of all utterance, even the most banal and quotidian English of the day" (128). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, D. Vance. Published Smith, D. Vance. "The National Allegory of the Household: 'Domus' and 'Lingua' in John Gower's 'Vox Clamantis' and Geoffrey Chaucer's 'House of Fame'." In C. M. Woolgar, ed. The Elite Household in England, 1100-1550: Proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Symposium. Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2018. 110-28. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The National Allegory of the Household: "Domus" and "Lingua" in John Gower's "Vox Clamantis" and Geoffrey Chaucer's "House of Fame." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Seymour examines in this essay the revisions evident in the G version of Chaucer's Prologue to "Legend of Good Women" found in Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.4.27, the only witness to this version of the poem; he assesses both "accidental and intentional revisions to the text" (832). Along the way, he argues that Chaucer undertook his revision to please the newly crowned Henry IV and--he suggests in passing and without development--"in imitation" (841) of Gower's revision of his Prologue to the CA: "Some years earlier Gower had pointedly revised the Prologue to the 'Confessio Amantis' in Henry's favour, and the two poems and the two poets have much in common" (840). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Seymour, M. C. Published Seymour, M. C. "Chaucer's Revision of the Prologue to 'The Legend of Good Women'." Modern Language Review 92 (1997): 832-41. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer's Revision of the Prologue to "The Legend of Good Women." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Through analyzing Elias Ashmole's annotations of Gower's text, Curtis Runstedler suggests that Elias Ashmole "argues for a hermetic reading of Gower's story of Jason and the Golden Fleece in Book V of the Confessio Amantis." Even though Runstedler admits that Gower was likely not a practicing alchemist, he details Ashmole's belief that Gower was, including Ashmole's evidence for such assertions. In particular, Runstedler investigates Ashmole's annotations of Jason and the Golden Fleece, asserting "there is genuine evidence for reading the story as an alchemical allegory, and moreover it connects to the Renaissance tradition of reading classical stories as alchemical as well as Genius's view of alchemy as an ideal form of human labor in Book IV of the 'Confessio Amantis'." He analyses Ashmole's alchemical reading of Jason and the Golden Fleece, demonstrating the hermetic aspects of the tale and providing insights into how Gower's tale may have been valued for its alchemical aspects in early modern England. Runstedler first discusses Ashmole's "Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum" and alchemy in Book IV of CA, concluding that Ashmole's annotations "reveal that Gower's alchemy was still valued, and moreover, he was considered a true adept." He compares the alchemical passages of Book IV of CA and Ashmole's annotations, asserting that there is enough evidence to read, like Ashmole, the tale of Jason and the Golden Fleece as hermetic. Reading this story as alchemical is part of a humanist tradition in late medieval and early modern period. Runstedler then proceeds to analyze the tale for alchemical implications, particularly in the character of Medea. He posits that reading the tale as an alchemical allegory presents the Golden Fleece as the Philosopher's Stone, and "Ashmole's reading of Gower's version is also noteworthy since he validates alchemical success with Jason's discovery of the Stone, yet it also provides a moral warning against alchemists in the 'Confessio Amantis'." Runstedler concludes, Ashmole "enhances the value of English alchemy and its literature for his audience. Ashmole suggests a reading where the Philosopher's Stone can be attained, if only for the alchemist to lose everything to his vices." [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Runstedler, Curtis. Published Runstedler, Curtis. "Transmuting John Gower: Elias Ashmole's Hermetic Reading of Gower's Jason and the Golden Fleece." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media, 6.2 (2020): n.p. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Transmuting John Gower: Elias Ashmole's Hermetic Reading of Gower's Jason and the Golden Fleece. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Parsons takes up ll. 782-95, the list of names of the rebels-turned-beasts in Book I of the Vox Clamantis. His conclusion offers perhaps the best summary of his thoroughly learned article: "Reading the Visio's list of names against medieval naming conventions allows a number of significant points to emerge, in relation both to the text and to the norms on which it draws. In the first place, it shows that the sequence does not need to be treated as a suspension of Gower's allegory since his catalogue calls on the stock of names commonly given to medieval beasts. It also offers evidence against the tenacious view that medieval onomastics separated human from non-human creatures, as the text muddies rather than clarifies this putative divide. Taking a slightly wider view, Gower's use of these names also brings into view some of the mechanics of animal naming in the period, revealing a complex understanding of naming and its implications. In reaching for these terms while dissolving the rioters into an indistinguishable mob, Gower seems to be utilizing their 'general singular' qualities: they allow him to strip the rebels of personhood and specificity at a stroke, simply because they carry out such a process automatically. Alongside these details, however, Gower also gives us access to a further aspect of medieval animal naming, one worth raising as a final point. His inclusion of these sixteen names in this context demonstrates what sorts of anthroponym was deemed appropriate for non-human beings. The names he cites carry strong social overtones. After all, it is not for nothing that the names have invariably been read as 'plebeian': there is abundant proof of their association with the peasantry, even at a purely stereotypical level. As a result, Gower's selection of names indicates that not just any human name could be transferred to beasts. When medieval people applied human names to animals around them, they reached for names that were customarily associated with the lower social classes. This fact further suggests why the names should prove so attractive to Gower. They already express many of the same judgments formulated by his allegory, being founded on the same sense that peasants are subhuman 'ab ovo' that runs through his text. While the 'Visio' shows that the boundary between human and animal was more porous than is sometimes admitted, it also makes clear that this was a limited confusion, and that the points at which the two categories converged were themselves directed by political factors" (397-98). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Parsons, Ben. Published Parsons, Ben. "'Watte vocat': Human and Animal Naming in Gower's 'Visio Anglie'." JEGP 119 (2020): 380-98. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Watte vocat": Human and Animal Naming in Gower's "Visio Anglie'." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This article includes analysis of Gower the choric character in Shakespeare's "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." It does not discuss the works of Gower the poet. Famously disparaged by Ben Jonson as "a mouldy tale," "Pericles" serves Oesterlen, quoting Judith Butler, as a kind of test case for examining "the reciprocity of language and the body [that] is so creatively explored in [Shakespeare's] romances" (41). The "rich strangeness" of the romances is "more visionary than metaphysical," as the embodied experience of characters and audience is transformed into a vehicle of revelation. In "Pericles," Shakespeare (with his coauthors) created a new genre, the "dramatic narrative," in a "'mouldy tale' forever prone to all kinds of textual and bodily returns" (41). She sees the character of Gower as especially suited to personify the transcendental via the corporeal, as he returns, phoenix-like, from the "mould" of death to introduce a drama of "spectacular bodily and textual 'restorations'" (36, alluding to the "restorative" power claimed by Gower for his storytelling at "Pericles," choric Prologue 8). Mould-y indeed, the play creates "the mold" for something new, a melding of "narrative and drama," as the dead poet reappears at intervals to narrate past actions not enacted on the stage and set the scene to follow. Throughout this play, Oesterlen argues, the near-miraculous regeneration of the human body will be accomplished in close communion with a renewal of speech and text (37), as demonstrated by "outmoded" yet "re-creative" poetic style of Gower the character. Through sight and sound, the ancient tale is transfigured as "a play that matters [pun intended]" (38). Similarly, the "paradox" of the queen's restoration to life "is framed by the similarly anachronistic presence of Gower as narrator. This play "delays the need for explanation long enough to let the performance dominate the desire to know [as Pericles states]: "we do our longing stay/To hear the rest untold" (V.3.83-84, p. 41). Spoken by Gower, the final lines of the play sustain the theme of revival: "New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending" (Epilogue 18). This "ending" will not be permanent, however, as "the protean body of texts stays behind, promising 'new joy' with every new performance" (41). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Oesterlen, Eve-Marie. Published Oesterlen, Eve-Marie. "Why Bodies Matter in Mouldy Tales: Material (Re)Turns in 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre'." The Upstart Crow 24 (2004): 36-44. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Why Bodies Matter in Mouldy Tales: Material (Re)Turns in "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nolan's essay covers a wide ground. Ultimately her concern is to capture and delineate Gower's notion of the poet and poetry throughout his work: his "exploration, carried on in French, Latin, and English, repeatedly asks what poetry is 'for'" (243) [emphasis hers]. In the MO she finds Gower coming to terms with a dichotomous tension between "agency" (there complexly identifiable with Fortuna, and with the Kantian "sublime") and "sensation" (embodied in the beauty of the Virgin, and the aesthetic reward of its replication experienced through adoration). Each formative purpose requires its own unique poetic language/discursive mode. By contrasting Fortuna, especially present in the second of the Mirour's three large sections, with the Virgin, the focus of the third, Nolan is able to argue for the poem as foundational to Gower's oeuvre, an "experimental" space in which he adjudicates for the first time the "didactic and the sensual" (i.e., what later he himself terms "lust" and "lore" in the "Confessio Amantis"). As she concludes: Recreating the experience of the sublime or the beautiful, radical contingency or divinity, lies at the heart of Gower's aesthetic enterprise, beginning with the 'Mirour' and persisting throughout his career, and always in tension (but never subordinate to) his identity as 'moral Gower'" (243). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura Published Nolan, Maura. "Agency and the Poetics of Sensation in Gower's 'Mirour de l'Omme'." In Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England, ed. Frank Grady and Andrew Galloway. (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2013). 214-43. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Agency and the Poetics of Sensation in Gower's "Mirour de l'Omme." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Levelt begins his note by correcting the misattribution to Gower in Marcus Boxhorn's "Chronijck van Zeelandt" (1644) of Chaucer's lines from the description of the Merchant (General Prologue 1.273-77) and, tracking variants in Boxhorn's quotation of the lines, identifies the second-hand source of the quotation as an octavo edition of John Selden's "Mare clausum" (STC 22176) owned by Boxhorn. Levelt then goes on to explain that details of Boxhorn's brief biography of Gower which accompanies his misattribution apparently derives from John Bale's "Scriptorum illustrium majoris Britanniae . . . Catalogus," indicating, Levelt shows, that Boxhorn "somehow skipped to the wrong page" and followed Bale's mistaken claim that Gower died in 1402. Despite their interest in English history and literature, Boxhorn and others of his "learned circle" (16) in the seventeenth-century Dutch Low Countries, Levelt concludes, had only limited, secondhand acquaintance with Gower and Chaucer. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Levelt, Sjoerd. Published Levelt, Sjoerd. "Marcus Boxhorn's Misattribution of Verses from Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' to John Gower." Notes and Queries 67 [265], no.1 (2020): 14-16. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Marcus Boxhorn's Misattribution of Verses from Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' to John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ladd begins with the observation that "Estates satire . . . becomes relatively rare in the fifteenth century" (81), which he attributes chiefly to "the expansion of the available reading audience" (i.e., wealthy mercantile readers in English) and the consequent failure of the triadic social model to address concerns exterior to the antiquated "socioeconomic stereotypes" (81). Gower and Chaucer, recognizing that obsolescence, redirect their attention toward critiquing "what people do, rather than who they are imagined to be" (81), even as they adapt the extant estates format in organizing their poetry. This is more true of Gower, in the "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox " in particular, than of Chaucer; in the "Confessio Amantis," however, he like Chaucer in the "Canterbury Tales" "relegate[s] focused estates satire to an introductory role in their overall structure" (86). For Ladd, what brought Gower and Chaucer to realize the diminished literary value of estates satire was the shift in readers, away from aristocrats and clericals to merchants--a shift made apparent by recent work of Linne Mooney, Simon Horobin, and Estelle Stubbs tying the manuscripts to scribes affiliated with the Guildhall, and presumably commensurate customers (84-87). Lest they offend these readers with a format that proceeds "downward in social status" (86), they invent individual strategies for avoiding friction. "Gower's response is largely to avoid direct representations of a mercantile elite altogether" (88). As an example, Ladd cites the "Tale of Echo" in Book V, offering expectation of a critique of usury, as it comes under the heading of Avarice, "but Genius in the frame has shifted the focus of avarice from desire for money to desire of other things" (88). Gower is able to employ the vocabulary of commerce in the mythological tale (and in others, such as "Medea"), and criticize "brocours" and fraudulent weights and measures, within that fantasy context, thereby pointing fingers at no one directly. "Gower separates [the travel and luxury associated with the mercantile elite]," rendering moral judgment "by transposing these qualities to a mythological story," while dodging his reader's sense of identity and "open[ing] them up for effective critique" (90). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ladd, Roger A. Published Ladd, Roger A. "Selling Satire: Gower, Chaucer, and the End of the Estates." In Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. James M. Dean. Critical Insights Series. Ipswich, Mass.: Salem Press, 2017. Pp. 81-96. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Selling Satire: Gower, Chaucer, and the End of the Estates. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Hawes looks to the Actaeon story as an example of "the way in which evolving cultural and literary traditions can influence the reading of a mythological narrative" (21). She discusses Ovid's version in detail, concluding that he "raises the issue of (in)justice but does not seek closure for it. In the epic world of the 'Metamorphoses,' in which divine power determines all, there is little purpose in discussing justice in human terms" (24). In later antiquity the "Metamorphoses" tales were kept alive in allegorized form as exempla by Hyginus, Pseudo-Lactantius Placidus, and especially Fulgentius (28). The latter's "rather confusing account" presents Acteon as representing "the dangers of curiosity, fear, and . . . an excessively wasteful lifestyle" (28-29). This last aspect characterized twelfth-century approaches to Actaeon, e.g., Arnulf of Orleans and Giovanni del Virgilio; although in modified form, it remains visible in the "Ovide Moralisé" and the "Ovidius Moralizatus" (29). Dante recalls it in "Inferno" XIII.109-29, in his treatment of the squanderers Arcolano da Squarcia di Riccolfo Maconi and Iacopo da Santo Andrea, retrieving from Ovid the ravening dogs (33) while maintaining the medieval interpretation of wasteful spending and its consequent punishment, putting both to his own purposes. Gower resembles Dante in this, offering "not so much a translation of the original narratives as a bold remoulding, taking only what is necessary for the sense of the exemplum" (34)--which in this case is "mislok," or sinful looking. This sin Hawes goes to some length to connect with the emphasis placed on beauty by "courtly love" (34-35), and both with the dominant conceit of the "Confessio Amantis." Noting how Gower has adapted Ovid's story to his purposes (expending a good deal of space identifying aristocratic features of Gower's Acteon, and discussing the overlap of hunting and courtship), she comments: "Acteon's death appears as an afterthought: if the reader can comprehend the danger of indecent vision, then the punishment itself has a largely perfunctory role" (37). With Maria Wickert (quoted 37, fn. 53), Hawes finds this an "inept" and "dull" choice, aimed solely to "push his heroes and stories with high-principled directness towards a question of moral decision." A classicist to the end, she concludes: "It is testimony to the inherently flexible nature of classical myth that the same simple narrative of offense and punishment can . . . be utilised to illustrate both the pettiness and violence of the pagan gods within a world in which the frames of reference are constantly in flux, and the pitiless objectivity at the heart of the medieval conception of universal justice" (39). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hawes, Greta. Published Hawes, Greta. "Metamorphosis and Metamorphic Identity: The Myth of Actaeon in Works of Ovid, Dante, and John Gower." Isis: Journal of the Classical Association of Victoria, 21 (2008): 21-42. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Metamorphosis and Metamorphic Identity: The Myth of Actaeon in Works of Ovid, Dante, and John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Hamaguchi, Keiko. Published Hamaguchi, Keiko. "The Cultural Otherness of Custance as a Foreign Woman in the Man of Law's Tale." Chaucer Review 54 (2019): 411-40. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review As Hamaguchi states in her abstract, her article "explores how Chaucer highlights the cultural otherness of Custance as a foreign woman in England" . . . , how "Custance as the cultural other can be associated with real, historical foreign women . . . , and how aggression and xenophobia toward Custance" reflect similar, perhaps identical, late-medieval English attitudes toward foreign women--attitudes Chaucer sought to undermine through sympathy for Custance (411). At many points in her argument Hamaguchi compares Custance with the Constance figures in Gower's and Nicolas Trivet's versions of the story to show how Chaucer "accentuates her cultural otherness" (418) and how he consistently underscores this otherness by making her more vulnerable and helpless than either Gower's or Trivet's protagonist, often treated together here. Hamaguchi examines some dozen or more supporting details that occur in Chaucer but not the other two accounts, observing, for example, that Chaucer alone "focuses on [Custance's] unhappiness" (415) at leaving Rome, that Chaucer "accentuates her cultural otherness" through mention of "specific place names" during her journeys, and that only in Chaucer "does the foreignness of Custance's language appear" (418)--addressing some dozen differences overall. In only two instances does Hamaguchi address concerns and details that are not in Chaucer but are in Gower and Trivet: "love is an element" (427) in the latter accounts of marriage to the Anglo-Saxon king and, when confronted by a seducer in these accounts, she is "guileful" when thwarting her seduction through deception (435). Otherwise, Hamaguchi, shows, Chaucer's details emphasize the unhappiness and vulnerability of being a foreign woman, and she aligns Constance's condition with foreign women in Chaucer's world--particularly Anne of Bohemia, Isabella of France, and Katherine Swynford--by identifying historical parallels. There is little analysis here of Gower's or Trivet's narratives, but Hamaguchi's tally of details found exclusively in Chaucer is significant. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Cultural Otherness of Custance as a Foreign Woman in the Man of Law's Tale. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay focuses on one of the central differences between Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" and its Middle English analogues, including Gower's "Tale of Florent." Glasser points out that Chaucer's is the only version in which the knight is not fully aware that the ultimate price of the answer to the question will be marrying the old woman, and that this difference suggests the knight's marriage represents "forced consent" befitting the Wife of Bath's domineering character. The brevity of this essay reflects its cursory interrogation of the subject. The issue of consent (in marriage, sexual union, and elsewhere) is central to both Chaucer's and Gower's works, and this essay does not explore that issue, or attempt to define it historically, in any great detail. In characterizing the difference, the essay notes, "Only in Chaucer's version does the knight state in absolutely clear terms that he does not consent to marry the hag: 'Taak al my good, and lat my body go'" (241). But that statement is not dissent; rather it is a counteroffer in this contractual negotiation, and one that Florent also offers: "Florent behihte hire good ynowh / Of lond, of rente, of park, of plowh" (1.1555-1556). A stronger case for lack of consent in Chaucer's version might be made by exploring the fact that Chaucer notes the knight "Constreyned was": "he nedes moste hire wedde," (1071), since that line literally refers to being compelled or forced ("constreinen") into the agreement. The essay insightfully remarks that the Wife of Bath is unable to "envision a marriage unsullied by the dominance of her will," but while Chaucer's is the only version where marriage is not immediately understood as the price to be paid, it is not unique in the knight's resistance to that offer before consenting. [BWG. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Glasser, Marc. Published Glasser, Marc. "'He Nedes Moste Hire Wedde': The Forced Marriage in the Wife of Bath's Tale and Its Middle English Analogues." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen: Bulletin de la Société Néophilologique/Bulletin of the Modern Language Society 85.2 (1984): 239-41. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "He Nedes Moste Hire Wedde": The Forced Marriage in the Wife of Bath's Tale and Its Middle English Analogues Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1984 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gerber's essay encourages readers to recognize aspects of the intertextuality of the "Confessio Amantis." She describes a medieval "grammar school tradition that interrelated classical narratives with studies of the natural world" (259)--often via commentaries, mnemonics, and diagrams--and "consistently connected mythological narratives to encyclopedic knowledge" (260), arguing that this tradition is the basis of similarities between Gower's poem and medieval encyclopedias. Gerber also aims to affirm the unity of CA, indicating that the inclusion of scientific material in Book VII (especially astronomy and astrology)--often regarded by critics as digressive--is of a piece with, and even derives from, the intertwining of medieval natural science and mythological narrative found in medieval encyclopedias and commentaries. Similarly, elsewhere in CA, the nativity of the Gorgons (I.389-97) amalgamates "planetary and mythological features" (269) in ways that Ovid's original does not; the account of the Chaldeans (5.752-65) interprets "polytheism as natural science" (270); and in the Cephalus account in Book IV, Gower "uses mythological appropriations to develop not only ethical exegesis but also natural science" (272). One thinks also of Chaucer's "Complaint of Mars" and "Knight's Tale" as well as--perhaps--the multilayered meanings of the Pearl-maiden as child, beloved, flower, and precious gem. Amalgamations of ethics, love poetry, and science (especially astral sciences) in Middle English literature are not rare, but connecting them with medieval school traditions and encyclopedias, as Gerber does, helps us to see how broad-based this habit of mind was. However, I think Gerber over specifies things at times, as when she presents the program of illustrations in CA manuscript New York Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 126 as something of a direct extension of "schoolboy's training," declaring "that the structure and information that Gower co-opted from his academic training [and replicated in CA] extended beyond grammar school classrooms by the second half of the fifteenth century to appear in at least one aristocrat's library" (284). Declaring in general terms that the starry skies in the manuscript's "miniatures emphasize the relationship between narratives and natural sciences" (278) and that the Arion image in the manuscript "provides a miniature version of the Confessio's amalgamation of natural and narrative compositions" (281-82), Gerber argues for rather direct, causal relations among intertextual features that may be better understood as coexistent phenomena in a stage of intellectual history. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gerber, Amanda. Published Gerber, Amanda. "The Mythological Sciences of John Gower, Medieval Classicists, and Morgan MS M. 126." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 40 (2018): 257-88; 6 b&w figs. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Mythological Sciences of John Gower, Medieval Classicists, and Morgan MS M. 126. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Freedman's use of Gower is--per usual with historians until very recently--exclusive to Book I of the "Vox Clamantis," the "Visio Anglie," with two brief excursions into the "Mirour de l'Omme," and functions as support for claims about abuse of the peasantry by the elite classes. A sample: "The most sustained hysterical attack on rebellious peasants, likening them to animals, is book I of John Gower's 'Vox clamantis,' in which the rabble takes on the aspect either of domestic beasts that have escaped control (asses, oxen, swine, dogs) or of wild or verminous creatures (foxes, flies, frogs). At the end of book I, with the suppression of the revolt, the peasants have become draught animals, oxen, who have returned to the yoke after a terrifying episode in which they left the fields, forgot their nature, and turned into lions, panthers, and bears" (142-43). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Freedman, Paul. Published Freedman, Paul. Images of the Medieval Peasant. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Images of the Medieval Peasant. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Georgiana Donavin argues that in Gower's CA "[rhetoric's] sphere is governed by the almighty Word, imbuing verbal magic with divine creative force and modeling a benevolent speech act to which rhetoric can aspire." She contrasts Gower's tales in Book VI with "a benevolent rhetoric of enchantment" found in Book VII. Gower's rhetoric relies on the Augustinian concept of the Word, which is invested with "divine influence" and has the "ultimate suasive influence." Donavin asserts that "[The Word] is at once the basis of all incantations and the channel for Christian purpose in rhetoric." She then surveys Gower's "complex characterizations of magicians" throughout CA, beginning with the particularly negative portraits in Book VI. But then in Book VII, she claims "Genius moves toward a more positive view of verbal magic by connecting spells and 'carectes' to the holy and inventive Word" and he rejects the models put forth in Book VI. "It is the supernatural W/word that becomes the cornerstone of Gower's definition of rhetoric," Donavin continues, and "The mystical W/word, necessary for all incantations, render the magical Christological." Repetition is key for Gower and "has the potential to enact an 'imitatio Christi'." Finally, Donavin concludes, "In Gower's rhetoric lecture in Book VII of the CA, the Word casts a spell and is God's spell, potentially reinventing the truth for every speaker and transforming the mind of anyone who has an ear." [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Donavin, Georgiana. Published Donavin, Georgiana. "John Gower's Magical Rhetoric." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media, 6.2 (2020): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Magical Rhetoric. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Citing its "unforced yet profound symbolism" (128), Dean finds Gower's Tale of Apollonius (CA VIII) a treasury of prototypes for Shakespeare's "Pericles," which he sees as a play about "the storytelling process itself" (125) and the very meaning of "tales," which varies from an idle "old tale" to a revelation of secret truth (126-27). Imagery and symbolism skillfully deployed by Gower, and channeled in "Pericles," include the descent of Apollonius into the pitch-dark hold of the ship, suited to his despair, and his daughter's following him there. When her philosophical discussion fails to revive him, "in the derke forth sche goth / Til sche him toucheth" (VIII.1692), whereupon he begins to awaken. "Gower's episode concludes nobly," according to Dean, who quotes the evocative lines "This king hath founde newe grace / So that out of his derke place / He goth him up into the liht (1739-41, p. 129). Spiritually reborn, Apollonius learns that his life has a "destination" (130) despite the vagaries of fortune, much as Gower the character interprets the tumultuous series of events in Shakespeare's "Pericles." The music metaphor introduced by Gower, as Apollonius learns how to be "wel grounded" (l. 1992), is expanded by Shakespeare as the resurrected Pericles is divinely privileged to hear "the music of the spheres" (129). Dean speculates on possible common sources for both Gower and Shakespeare, including the story of Jonah, albeit modified by the sea journeys of the Apostle Paul as described in the Acts of the Apostles, especially the shipwreck and casting forth of Paul and his maritime companions. Like Paul, Apollonius and Pericles are anti-Jonah figures, who receive the divine command--in Gower, an "Avisioun" of the hero's future course (VIII.1801)--but unlike Jonah, they obey, and unlike Jonah, their presence on shipboard is protective to others (137). The extra-biblical sea journey described in the Golden Legend and the Digby Play of Mary Magdalene, which also features the casting overboard of a wife and child, the husband's patience, and their ultimate near-miraculous reunion (134-36) may also have been influential on both. [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dean, Paul. Published Dean, Paul. "Pericles' Pilgrimage." Essays in Criticism 50.2 (Apr 2000): 125-44. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Pericles' Pilgrimage. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Dauby seeks to "approach the art of Chaucer and Gower by comparing their adaptations of some textual points of [Nicholas] Trevet," from the "Man of Laws' Tale" and "The Tale of Florent," leaving aside "the question of factual differences or the . . . possible influence of one poet on the other" (80). Her focus is on proper names and titles; her conclusion is that "Gower follows Trevet faithfully…even to the point of monotony. Chaucer, on the contrary, does not hesitate to intervene and comment on both the story and the craft of narration" (83). She supports this with five pages of three-columned, comparative charts with examples from Trevet on the left, Chaucer in the middle, and Gower on the right (83-88). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dauby, Hélène. Published Dauby, Hélène. "From Trevet to Gower and Chaucer." Anglophonia: French Journal of English Studies 29 (2011): 79-88. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Trevet to Gower and Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Alongside Chaucer, and to a lesser degree Lydgate, Gower figures as a touchstone in Cooper's essay, their poetry first recognized in the earlier sixteenth century as "rare late medieval exceptions to the predominant papist norm" (244), their rough, "native" English simultaneously judged preferable to imported "ynkehorne termes" and (quoting Thomas Wilson) "the habit of returning travelers to 'pouder their talke with ouersea language'" (246). By the 1590s, however, Gower's language, and Chaucer's and Lydgate's, was seen as in need of "improvement"--largely the vocabulary adopted from humanism, one result of which being that while the quality of Gower's versification was devalued, the morals of his matter retained esteem. Notably, Cooper concludes with Ben Jonson's "English Grammar" (1623/1640), pointing out "Not least interestingly, [Jonson] takes a high proportion of his examples of the language from Gower and Chaucer, in a practical confirmation of the belief that it was with them that the language had moved from its initial barbarism to achieve excellence" (257). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cooper, Helen. Published Cooper, Helen. "'The most excellent creatures are not ever born perfect': Early Modern Attitudes to Middle English." In Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and Theories, 500-1500. Ed. Tim William Machan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. 241-60. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Language and Word Studies Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "The most excellent creatures are not ever born perfect": Early Modern Attitudes to Middle English. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Green's essay digs into Gower's process of revision, looking at the successive versions of lines depicting a procession of beautiful ladies seen by Rosiphilee, as these lines are altered in Macaulay's three recensions of the CA. C. S. Lewis had drawn attention to the revision of these lines in his "The Allegory of Love," citing the line in its third recension form as evidence for Gower's aesthetically demanding revisions of his own work. Green finds this account unpersuasive, and tracks a more complex path. Green argues that the revision from first to second recension was made in order to produce a couplet that would be more resistant to scribal error. This revision however, creating the couplet, "The beaute of here faye face / There mai non erÞly Þing deface," produced its own difficulty, as the lines in this form might easily seem to suggest that these ladies were fairies, the belief in which, as Green has argued in his "Elf Queens and Holy Friars," had been the subject of a systematic and hostile ecclesiastical campaign. Green thus reads the subsequent revision, that of Macaulay's "third recension," ("The beaute faye upon her face / Non erthly thing it may desface") as Gower's attempt to make it "clear that it is fairy beauty, not the fairies themselves, that is at issue" (225). In tracing Gower's careful negotiation of the language of fairies and fairyland, Green concludes that these revisions demonstrate that "Gower was far readier than Chaucer to respond to the imaginative appeal of fairyland, even as he paid lip-service to the conventional morality of those clerics who were determined to render it impotent" (226). [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Green, Richard Firth. Published Green, Richard Firth. "A Poet at Work: John Gower's Revisions to the 'Tale of Rosiphilee'." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 217-226. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Poet at Work: John Gower's Revisions to the "Tale of Rosiphilee." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay examines one particular aspect of what R.F. Yeager has called Gower's "lawyerly habit of mind," namely his views on "the appropriate purpose and use of incarceration" (204-205). Gastle argues that "Gower's treatment of imprisonment in the 'Carmen Super Multiplici Viciorum Pestilencia,' the 'Traitié Selonc les Auctours pour Essampler les Amantz Marietz,' and 'Confessio Amantis,' taken together, reveal both a belief (or a desire to believe) in the inherent justice of imprisonment when used for appropriate purposes (such as punishment for serious failures of fidelity or loyalty) and an anxiety concerning inappropriate use of imprisonment, an anxiety that may possibly have its roots in his own brushes with the threat of prison" (205). Gastle points out that, even given the paucity of life records for Gower, two records do survive that address legal disputes of the sort for which Gower's involvement could potentially have led to his own incarceration. Within the poetry, Gastle finds a persistent "association of incarceration with carnal transgression" (213), but also finds a tension in these representations between moments at which incarceration is presented as a just punishment and other moments (such as the story of Philomela) where incarceration is an expression of the unjust use of power. Such a tension derives, Gastle suggests, from "Gower's fraught position: he is both a man concerned with upholding law who can see law as the basis of a just world, and a man who, at the least, had to consider the possibility of being imprisoned himself for a matter of debt, a situation which he could not be expected to consider as just" (215). [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gastle, Brian W. Published Gastle, Brian W. "The Constraints of Justice and Gower's 'Lawyerly Habit of Mind'." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 203-216. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Minor Latin Poetry Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Constraints of Justice and Gower's "Lawyerly Habit of Mind." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Roger Ladd's essay reconsiders the use of Gower in Shakespeare's "Pericles" and "asks not only why the later playwright might have been interested in the Apollonius story, but also why Gower's version of it within the larger context of the ending of 'Confessio Amantis' might have been particularly relevant for adaptation into a play in the early seventeenth century" (190). Ladd begins with a careful review of the relevant evidence concerning Gower's age at the completion of the CA and then turns to "Pericles," arguing that whatever ambiguities exist about the accuracy of Gower's own self-depiction as an aged man, the play consistently uses Gower to give voice to strong oppositions between youth and age. Ladd concludes by arguing that the final chorus in "Pericles" functions in a way that is strikingly similar to Gower's self-revelation at the end of the CA: "the final chorus ultimately performs a similar function to the revelation of Gower's identity as Amans in 'Confessio'--both break a love-story framework to assert a degree of moral certainty--Gower-Amans' realization that he is too old for such things, and Gower the chorus' assertion that virtue and vice can be rewarded and punished appropriately" (199). This moral may fall short in the end, but the structural parallel provides some evidence of the depth of Shakespeare's engagement with Gower and his understanding of the place of the Apollonius tale within the CA as a whole. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ladd, Roger A. Published Ladd, Roger A. "'To Hear an Old Man Sing': Apollonius, Pericles and the Age of Gower." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 189-200. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "To Hear an Old Man Sing": Apollonius, Pericles and the Age of Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay examines the "conversation" between Gower and Chaucer's ideas of the priesthood (174). Both poets share a disregard for the fraternal orders, focusing instead on the figures of Genius and the Parson, "both of them secular priests," who are described "almost exclusively in terms of their relationships with the lay people in their care, whom they shrive and teach with integrity" (175). Kuczynski takes issue with readings that have suggested that the priesthood of Genius is meant to be seen as limited or marred by his connection to Venus or his role as a household chaplain in her court, arguing instead that his devotion to his office and the sharpness of his corrections of Amans are meant to present him as an example of "the hard work of good priests" (185). As such, Genius is an ideal image, representing Gower's belief that "if priests would only return to an ideal ministry based in the example of Christ and his apostles, their office and Holy Church herself will not have to undergo extreme reinvention" (188). [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kuczynski, Michael P. Published Kuczynski, Michael P. "Gower, Chaucer and the 'Treuth of Prestehode'." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 173-88. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, Chaucer and the "Treuth of Prestehode." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Grinnell uses this little studied poem, written towards the end of Gower's career, to argue that "Gower's light is penetrative, both physically and morally, highlighting the nature of medieval optical theory and evoking an ecology of light somewhat in concord with contemporary radiation theory" (161). Grinnell begins by evoking the contradictory nature of light in medieval thought, characterized physically at times as extra-transmissional and at times as intra-missional, and riven also in ethical thought between an association with the dangerous carnality of the senses and a contradictory association with the scriptural identification of light and God himself. Similarly, Grinnell reads Gower's poem as one far removed from his earlier stance of visionary revelation in the "Vox Clamantis." In this short lyric, Gower is no prophet, but an individual contemplating the interplay of shadow and light both in the fallen world and in his own existence, ending the poem with a prayer for a single candle to light his way. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Grinnell, Natalie. Published Grinnell, Natalie. "Gower's Light: The Ecology of 'De Lucis Scrutinio'." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 161-71. Gower Subject Minor Latin Poetry Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Light: The Ecology of "De Lucis Scrutinio." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay uses both the tools of source study and the modern insights of disability studies to return to the much-discussed question of the significance of Gower's representation of himself as an old man at the end of the CA. Rogers follows R. F. Yeager and others in emphasizing that the roots of this image of age lay in Gower's own very real ailments as an old man. Further, Rogers argues that it is Cicero, rather than Gower's more frequent sources such as Ovid and Aristotle, who lies behind Gower's depiction of old age as a turn away from passions but, emphatically, not a turn away from the possibility of political action. Indeed, as Rogers shows in a reading of the brief narrative "The Trump of Death," an acknowledgement of the universality of aging may be a necessary component in the creation of a virtuous political community, a corrective to the erratic passions of youth embodied in the young Richard II and the celebration of a wisdom and humility that comes only at the end of life. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rogers, William. Published Rogers, William. "Studies in Gower's Age: Ciceronian Echoes in Confessio Amantis." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 143-58. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Studies in Gower's Age: Ciceronian Echoes in "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review David Roberts here reads Gower's "Cronica Tripertita" as part of the long tradition of historical writing that culminated in the eventual definition of England "in terms resembling the modern nation-state" (135). Roberts reads the CrT as a striking diversion from earlier chronicles, such as Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia Regum Britanniae," in its willingness to name names and engage in much more direct criticism of contemporary political actors. Moreover, he suggests that, as a poet, Gower is interested in exposing the tradition of discretion as itself being a longstanding literary trope. As Roberts concludes, "[p]erhaps the greatest triumph of 'Cronica' is Gower's ability to combine his sensitivity as a poet with his role as a historian to produce a verse chronicle that maintains the veracity of the events while calling into question the poetic conventions that were driving contemporary chroniclers towards a preference for prose" (142). [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Roberts, David A. Published Roberts, David A. "What's in a Name: History, Genre, and Political Speech in Gower's Cronica Tripertita." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 135-42. Gower Subject Cronica Tripertita Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource What's in a Name: History, Genre, and Political Speech in Gower's "Cronica Tripertita." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Galloway argues here for the importance of humanism in the MO in a triple sense, with Gower's text demonstrating: 1) "a central focus on human affairs and human responsibility for shaping their circumstances and consequences"; 2) "a use of some ancient sources as means to bolster its secular and social ethics;" and, lastly, 3) "a continual attention to contemporary London and Westminster institutions and practices, especially mercantile practices and parliament" (122). Most crucially, Galloway suggests that Gower is distinctive in presenting himself through a striking quasi-clerical identity. As he describes it, "[Gower] is learned, he is courtly, he is worldly; but he is also a reader of ancient texts for purposes that fit neither the traditional social nor vocational contexts around him. It is in this sense, I think, that he forges an identity most suited to the new world of 'humanist' England and Europe, which features 'studia humanitatis' but also makes that the basis for a novel vocational and intellectual identity, appropriating and transforming received intellectual and social positions by viewing them as if from a remove" (123). Galloway substantiates these claims through a detailed reconsideration of Gower's use of Seneca in the MO, arguing both that Seneca is referenced much more frequently that has hitherto been acknowledged, but also that Gower engages these citations with great energy and creativity in order to bring them to bear on the particular social disruptions of the contemporary world of London. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Galloway, Andrew. Published Galloway, Andrew. "Gower in Striped Sleeves: 'Mirour de l'Omme' as Gower's Early Humanism." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 119-34. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower in Striped Sleeves: "Mirour de l'Omme" as Gower's Early Humanism. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Driver argues that, unlike other surviving illustrations of the CA, the illuminations of Morgan M. 126 ". . . do not act precisely as guides to Gower's meaning. Rather, they perform alternative readings or elaborate imaginatively on the stories they introduce" (99). Further, she suggests that "these pictures are consciously used to highlight some of Gower's own oddities in the text and to focus the reader's attention that are sometimes otherwise overlooked; for example, Gower's absolute fearlessness in addressing subject matter (none of Chaucer's prim pussyfooting around the story of Canace, for example) and the surreal transformation, often drawn from Ovid and other sources, of certain of Gower's characters." (99). Thus, rather than emphasizing the "moral" aspects of Gower's tales, "the artists embellish, even celebrate the more unsavory, taboo, or violent aspects of Gower's narrative" (100). Driver pursues this reading both through a fascinating exegesis of several of the images in M. 126 as well as a comparison of these images with a similar program of illustrations in the Rosenbach Lydgate. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Driver, Martha. Published Driver, Martha. "John Gower and the Artists of M. 126." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 99-115. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower and the Artists of M. 126. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nicholson's essay examines the five poems from the "Cinkante Balades" in which Gower writes through a female persona (numbers 41-44 and 46). Nicholson begins by noting how common it was to adopt a voice differing in gender from that of the poet, citing the examples of Machaut, Deschamps, Froissart, Granson, and the anonymous "chansonnier" of University of Pennsylvania MS Codex 902 who all wrote poems voiced as women, as well as that of Christine de Pizan, who "left more than 100 poems in the voice of a man" (82). Nicholson argues that Gower's use of this voicing is distinctive in that Gower includes several poems in which the women complain "not just that her lover has left her nor even merely that his promises were false, but that he has had multiple loves of which she was only one," and, moreover, that Gower treats this failing "more as a moral than as an emotional issue" and that he does so by drawing the language of moral condemnation less from the shared tradition reflected in Machaut "et al" than from his own discourse of moral condemnation in the MO and CA (84-85). He concludes by arguing that "[t]hese women are no less earnest than the spokesperson for moral reform in 'Mirour de l'Omme,' but they have much better reason to be, and Gower perhaps even realized that, in placing them in a setting in which the speaker has so personal a stake, the language that he uses has a much more powerful claim upon our attention than it does in 'Mirour,' and the ethic that it supports is for that reason all the more compelling" (97). [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nicholson, Peter. Published Nicholson, Peter. "Gower's Ballades for Women." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 79-97. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Ballades for Women. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Given the frequent attention paid in previous criticism to Gower's depiction of father-daughter relations, Peck chooses to focus his attention in this essay on Gower's portrayal of father-son relationships, beginning with what he calls "the dramatic presence of the father-son trope for the whole of the 'Confessio,' namely the relationship of Genius and Amans" (61). His analysis then focuses on three tales: the "Tale of the False Bachelor" (CA II.2510-781); "The Tale of Canace and Machaire" (CA III.143-360); and "The Tale of Constance" (CA II.587-1598). In his account, each of these narratives concern battles between the heart and the intellect, split priorities necessitated by the fact that, in Peck's formulation, "Genius, as priestly confessor, serves two masters: the pagan goddess Venus and the Christian Trinity . . ." (61). From these materials, Peck argues that: "In his 'Confessio Amantis,' John Gower may not be revolutionary in his critique of patriarchy and familial relationships under patriarchal jurisdiction, but no fourteenth-century English writer is more aware of and articulate about the limitations of patriarchal behavior in the practices of his own day" (59). [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A. "Patriarchy, Family, and Law in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 59-78. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Patriarchy, Family, and Law in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay examines the treatment of "poetic making" in VC Book II, with particular attention to the way in which such making is related to "the relationship between the human artistic and the divine Creator" (35). Through a series of careful textual readings that surely spring from their work on a forthcoming translation of the VC, Batkie and Irvin argue that "Gower's poetics, while grounded in Aristotelian rationality, are Christological in their making, a poetics of Incarnation" (36). Human creativity is best exercised not as a matter of invention, but of "ornamentation" or "thickening," a process that allows the artist "to participate directly in Christian 'cultus'" (42-45). As Batkie and Irvin sum up the analogy lying behind their analysis: "For God it is the fundamentally historical work of creation and redemption, in which God overcomes even the diversity between himself and creatures to enter and orient human history. For the human, participation in that 'opus' is 'cultus,' the praise that ornaments the historical 'opus,' and which develops out of the 'sensus' which God created in the human being specifically to flame into love and develop that 'cultus.' While that 'sensus' would require no other stimulation in Eden than consciousness of creation, in this fallen world, Gower sees poetry as the stimulation to that 'sensus,' and thus the production of 'cultus': in praise, but also in the critique of wickedness, which occupies much of the rest of" VC (56). [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Batkie, Stephanie L. Irvin, Matthew W. Published Batkie, Stephanie L. and Matthew W. Irvin. "Incarnational Making in 'Vox Clamantis' II." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 35-56. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Incarnational Making in "Vox Clamantis" II. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay gives us a bit of detective work concerning the "Sutherland fragment," a fragment known only from a photocopy of a single leaf held by the Huntington Library. As Pearsall says, the leaf was listed in the catalogue of a collection of manuscripts purchased by Henry Huntington from the library of the Duke of Sutherland in 1917. Sometime in the 1960s the Huntington Library realized that the leaf itself was not contained in the collection and requested a photocopy, which was provided. Pearsall's essay is an attempt to reconstruct the background of this surviving photocopy, namely "[what] it consists of, what manuscript it is possibly from, why it was not sent with the original collection of manuscripts, where the original leaf is now, and what part it may have played in recent sales activity" (21). Pearsall's tentative conclusions are as follows: "There was once, and may still be, a single leaf that had belonged to a manuscript of good quality of the fifteenth century, first quarter. All that now exists, so far as we know is a photocopy of that original leaf, made from a microfilm which was deposited, perhaps for a limited period, in the National Library of Scotland. Where that original leaf is now is a puzzle: perhaps in a desk-drawer or other infrequently visited repository in the National Library or in the residence of the Duke of Sutherland at Mertoun; perhaps irretrievably lost or destroyed; perhaps deposited in some distant bank vault, the property of a rich collector of medieval manuscripts and fragments" (30-31). Pearsall also appends an edition of the text of this fragment as an appendix. [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek. Published Pearsall, Derek. "The Sutherland Fragment of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 21-34. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Sutherland Fragment of Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay examines two reviews of G. C. Macaulay's Clarendon Press edition of "The Complete Works of John Gower" written by the poet Edward Thomas. Edwards provides both a reprinting of these two reviews, making them available for other Gower scholars, as well as an illuminating commentary on them. The first review, "Chaucer's Mate," presents a comparison of Gower's CA with Chaucer. As Edwards comments, this review is marked by the usual preference for Chaucer within this pairing, but it also goes out of its way to "articulate the intrinsic qualities of Gower as a poet and to see such qualities as positive ones" (12). The second review, "The Poet of Southwark," concerns only the fourth volume of Macaulay's edition, that containing the Latin works. Here, as Edwards points out, the method shifts to a more historical framework, leading Thomas to both make an early comparison between Gower and Langland and also to castigate Gower as a poet "lacking in courage" as Thomas reads the VC as a timid refusal to join with the forces of "reformation," siding rather with a "superficial and shameful" order (13). As Edwards further comments: "There is an obvious proleptic irony in Thomas' sense of Gower's predicament. The moral dilemma he believes confronted 'timid' Gower was one he was to face himself in a very different way when he chose to fight in the First World War; he died there on the battlefield in 1917" (13). [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, A. S. G. Published Edwards, A. S. G. "Edward Thomas on Gower." In Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Ed. Susannah Mary Chewning. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. 11-20. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Edward Thomas on Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Chewning, Susannah Mary, ed. Published Chewning, Susannah Mary, ed. Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. XIII. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Review This collection of fifteen essays is offered as a tribute to the remarkable career of R. F. Yeager. As the editor suggests, "[w]ithout R. F. Yeager's influence, Gower studies simply would not exist as it currently does within Medieval Studies, and the field would be lessened by that absence" (2). The collection is organized into five sections: TEXT (A.S.G. Edwards, "Edward Thomas on Gower;" Derek Pearsall, "The Sutherland Fragment of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis';" Stephanie L. Batkie and Matthew W. Irvin, "Incarnational Making in 'Vox Clamantis' II"); GENDER (Russell A. Peck, "Patriarchy, Family, and Law in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis';" Peter Nicholson, "Gower's Ballades for Women;" Martha W. Driver, "John Gower and the Artists of M. 126"); TIME (Andrew Galloway, "Gower in Striped Sleeves: 'Mirour de l'Omme' as Gower's Early Humanism;" David A. Roberts, "What's in a Name: History, Genre, and Political Speech in Gower's 'Cronica Tripertita';" William Rogers, "Studies in Gower's Age: Ciceronian Echoes in 'Confessio Amantis'"); SPIRIT (Natalie Grinnell, "Gower's Light: The Ecology of 'De Lucis Scrutinio';" Michael P. Kuczynski, "Gower, Chaucer and the 'Treuth of Prestehode';" Roger A. Ladd, "'To Hear an Old Man Sing': Apollonius, Pericles and the Age of Gower") and INTERSECTIONS (Brian W. Gastle, "The Constraints of Justice and Gower's 'Lawyerly Habit of Mind';" Richard Firth Green, "A Poet at Work: John Gower's Revisions to the 'Tale of Rosiphilee'"), concluding with the editor's "Personal Tribute to R. F. Yeager" and a full Bibliography of R. F. Yeager's writings [EK. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Carlson's essay is difficult to summarize. His own attempt, in his published abstract, reads as follows: "The English writer John Gower (d. 1408) fashioned parts of his Latin poem on the peasant revolt of 1381 out of materials taken from Ovid: topics from the post-relegation verse and 'Heroides' colour a long section shaped by the matter of Achaemenides from the 'Metamorphoses' and concluded with the matter of Carmentis from the 'Fasti'. The analysis establishes the quality of Gower's knowledge of the Ovidian corpus and his skill in deploying references to Ovid for his own literary-political purpose" (293). In essence, the article provides an extended set of footnotes to Book I of the VC. Carlson identifies line-by-line (and sometimes word-by-word) Gower's Ovidian borrowings from several works, most from "Tristia" and "Ex Ponto," and shows how he adapted them to suit his description of the Peasants' Revolt. Anyone studying, or even planning to read, the "Visio" would do well to begin with this essay. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R. Published Carlson, David R. "A Fourteenth-Century Anglo-Latin Ovidian: The 'Liber Exulis' in John Gower's 1381 'Visio Anglie' ('Vox Clamantis' I.1359-1592)." Classica et Mediaevalia 61 (2010): 293-335. Gower Subject Vox Clamatis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Fourteenth-Century Anglo-Latin Ovidian: The 'Liber Exulis' in John Gower's 1381 'Visio Anglie' ('Vox Clamantis' I.1359-1592). Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Jose's abstract is as follows: "This thesis discusses presentations of madness in medieval literature, and the ways in which these presentations are affected by (and effect) ideas of gender. It includes a discussion of madness as it is commonly presented in classical literature and medical texts, as well as an examination of demonic possession (which shares many of the same characteristics of madness) in medieval exempla. These chapters are followed by a detailed look at the uses of madness in Malory's "Morte Darthur," Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and in two autobiographical accounts of madness, the "Book of Margery Kempe" and Hoccleve's "Series." The experience of madness can both subvert and reinforce gender roles. Madness is commonly seen as an invasion of the self, which, in a culture which commonly identifies masculinity with bodily intactness, can prove problematic for male sufferers. Equally, madness, in prompting violent, ungoverned behaviour, can undermine traditional definitions of femininity. These rules can, however, be reversed. Malory's "Morte Darthur" presents a version of masculinity which is actually enhanced by madness; equally divergent is Margery Kempe's largely positive account of madness as a catalyst for personal transformation. While there is a certain consistency in the literary treatment of madness--motifs and images are repeated across genres--the way in which these images are used can alter radically. There is no single model of madness in medieval literature: rather, it is always fluid. Madness, like gender, remains open to interpretation." Chapter 5, pp. 180-218, is on Gower--CA primarily, with occasional reference to VC. She summarizes her argument thusly: "There is no one unifying pattern of madness in the 'Confessio Amantis,' as we have seen with other authors: rather, madness occurs in a number of different, but interconnected, ways. Gower, unique among the authors I examine, uses madness primarily as a political metaphor. However, this use quickly becomes intertwined with those other connotations of madness: bestiality, unrestrained sexuality, gender slippage. If the 'Confessio Amantis' is a hybrid text, part confession, part mirror for princes, part collection of exempla, then Gower's uses of madness are a fitting match for this hybridity" (180). [RFY. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Jose, Laura. Published Jose, Laura. "Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval Literature." Ph.D. diss. Durham University, 2010. Supervisor: Corinne Saunders. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/217/ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The authors provide a distant reading via digital humanities which they claim provides a fresh perspective on a familiar text, and argue for the potentially productive readings made possible by putting texts through such computationally assisted analysis. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor McShane, Kara L., and Alvin Grissom II. Published McShane, Kara L. McShane, and Alvin Grissom II. "Gower as Data: Exploring the Application of Machine Learning to Gower's Middle English Corpus." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower as Data: Exploring the Application of Machine Learning to Gower's Middle English Corpus. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Schutz focuses on the role of statuary in CA, suggesting that only words are stable signs and highlighting the paradox of the instability of the statue as sign. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schutz, Andrea. Published Schutz, Andrea. "Standing in the Dark: Sloth and Stability, Paralysis and Perseverance in Book IV of "Confessio Amantis. " Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Standing in the Dark: Sloth and Stability, Paralysis and Perseverance in Book IV of "Confessio Amantis. " Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Wolfer engages Gower's revision of Narcissus in "Confessio Amantis" via queer temporality, suggesting "surquiderie" is itself a time of queer temporality and demonstrating how Narcissus disrupts the historiography of heteronormativity. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wolfer, Lacey M. Published Wolfer, Lacey M. "Narcissus in Queer Time." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Narcissus in Queer Time. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rogers explores how readers' assumption of Gower's old age impacts our understanding of his works, but rather than focusing on Gower's appearance, Rogers attends to the rhetorical positioning of Gower's voice as old, arguing for Gower's use of his old voice as a type of authority that conveys wisdom and sound advice. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rogers, Will. Published Rogers, Will. "One Voice, Ancient and Resigned." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource One Voice, Ancient and Resigned. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bertolet argues for Gower's concern with darkness and deceit in regard to Avarice, demonstrating the various ways in which we might interpret blindness and illustrating the economic repercussions of Covetousness in the economic settings of fourteenth-century England. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E. Published Bertolet, Craig E. "Dark Money: Gower, Echo, and 'Blinde Avarice'." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dark Money: Gower, Echo, and "Blinde Avarice." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ladd addresses what he sees as Gower's shift in CA from the overt estates satire of his earlier works into a more general critique of humankind's susceptibility to "the sins of materialism and avarice" by exploring examples in numerous tales to conclude that Gower demonstrates how economic interactions must be "part of how we all get along." [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ladd, Roger A. Published Ladd, Roger A. "'Als wel the lord as the schepherde, He broghte hem alle in good accord': Harmonious Materialism in the Confessio Amantis." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Als wel the lord as the schepherde, He broghte hem alle in good accord:: Harmonious Materialism in the "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Coleman examines Gower's use of images in his works, asserting that he likely designed them himself. She focuses specifically on the famous archer illustration from the beginning of "Vox Clamantis," suggesting Gower engages a number of fourteenth-century motifs to underscore the arguments he presents in the text of VC. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coleman, Joyce. Published Coleman, Joyce. "Global Gower: The Archer Aiming at the World." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Global Gower: The Archer Aiming at the World. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This issue of Accessus is made up of shorter essays focusing on various works of John Gower. These essays were developed from conference presentations on panels sponsored by The Gower Project or The John Gower Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2018-19 and at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language Association in 2019. "Accessus" editors note in their introduction that "Authors were invited to submit moderately expanded versions of their presentations (along with bibliography and footnotes) for conversion into the more durable and transmittable form that electronic publication offers." Given the format, in place of the full summaries normally provided for each essay, a brief synopsis is supplied. Search for "Accessus 5.2 (2019)" [without the quotation marks]. Published "Gower Shorts." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Author/Editor Author/Editor Salisbury, Eve, and Georgiana Donavin. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Shorts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Zweers "aims to provide a more complete insight into Gower's narrative construction of the 'Confessio' and the manuscript version of the 'Pantheon' that Gower most likely used as his guide." Beyond the "obvious debt" in Gower's reference to this text, Zweers points out the "strong thematic and stylistic similarities to Godfrey's work throughout Book VIII." Attempting to overcome any resistance to claims of Gower's use of "Pantheon," Zweers traces the critical reception of this textual connection as well as the reception history of "Pantheon." Gower acknowledges Godfrey's "auctoritas" at the beginning of the "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre," claims Zweers, before explaining how this tale about incest actually was crucial to ending CA through comparison and source study. Moving from this comparison, Zweers shows further thematic relationships between "Pantheon" and Book VIII of CA. She argues that it is a more fitting source for CA than the more commonly recognized source, "Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri." Zweers then systematically dissects Gower's text to show its indebtedness to Godfrey's "Pantheon." [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Zweers, Thari L. Published Zweers, Thari L. "Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon and John Gower's Confessio Amantis: The Story of Apollonius Retold." Accessus 5.1 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Godfrey of Viterbo's "Pantheon" and John Gower's "Confessio Amantis": The Story of Apollonius Retold Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Deschamps' influence upon his English contemporaries lay not in their direct borrowing or quotation, Yeager demonstrates, but more generally, in providing an example of how to escape the dominant model for lyric poetry set by Machaut. Metrically, Deschamps made popular the decasyllabic line, eschewed by Machaut in his shorter poems which, even when not sung, were still closely tied in his mind to their musical origins. This "littérarisation" of the lyric (75)--the separation of the written poem from its musical setting--opened the way for a wide broadening of themes, including the many occasional poems among Deschamps' ballades, which provided the inspiration for poems such as Chaucer's "Adam Scriveyn" and "To His Purse," which, along with at least one copy of "Truth," also follows Deschamps' example in the addition of an envoy. Gower, writing in French, is keenly aware of the Englishness of his audience. In the "Traitié," he apologizes for his lack of skill in French, and in condemning adultery, which he associates with the French, he has a predecessor in Deschamps, "dont les ballades adoptent un ton moral proche du sien" (whose ballades adopt a moral tone close to his). In the "Cinkante Balades," written in response to the French "Livre des cent balades," he follows Deschamps' formal example in his regular use of an envoy. Yeager uses as another point of comparison the fifteen poems marked with a "Ch" in the Pennsylvania "chansonnier" (Philadelphia, Van Pelt Library, Codex 902, olim MS French 15). He gives much too early a date for the manuscript (70), and while he does not accept Wimsatt's suggestion that the "Ch" stands for Chaucer, he does assume that it is meant to identify a single poet for all 15, which is not at all certain, and that the poet must have been English, for which there is no real evidence, either linguistic or otherwise; but this little bit of confusion does not affect his argument on either Chaucer or Gower. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R.F. "Influences de Deschamps sur ses contemporains Anglais, Chaucer et Gower." In Le Rayonnement de la cour des premiers Valois à l'époque d'Eustache Deschamps. Ed. Miren Lacassagne. (Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2017). Pp. 69-79, 183-91. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amantz Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Influences de Deschamps sur ses contemporains Anglais, Chaucer et Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Yandell focusses on a rarely discussed tale, that of "Ahab and Micaiah" from Book VII, as an illustration of how Gower's use of Biblical tales in the CA "could blur the lines between court poet and prophetic advisor, and between secular and spiritual courts," offering him "opportunities for subversion" both to support the king's decisions . . . and challenge the justice behind his actions (without exposing himself to treasonous punishments)" (153). Noting that the story was infrequently mentioned in medieval texts, Yandell concludes that Gower included it for a purpose: "in part as a way of showing that the decisions of a proper ruler, like God, are always justified, even in situations where the method of achieving justice might be questionable" and also to show that rulers in need of advice should seek "good answers only in those willing to come forward and speak boldly" (160). For "the reigning Richard II and Henry IV, [that figure] is Gower himself" (160). Thus the tale is "subversive on many levels," as is the CA itself, which "provides public support of Richard and Henry as a way of helping to ensure patronage from the throne, but at the same time it has the power to reach a wide audience with a message that questions the dangerous aspects of policies from the throne" (164). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yandell, Stephen. Published Yandell, Stephen. "Bearers of Punishment and Reward: Ahab's Prophets in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Enarratio: Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 16 (2009): 153-65. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bearers of Punishment and Reward: Ahab's Prophets in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "From the late fourteenth through the fifteenth century, Middle English writers experimented with new ways of imagining and representing women's lives and experiences," Williams asserts. "Two especially significant aspects of that experimentation were the coining of a number of new gendered terms, including 'womanhood' and 'femininity,' and the refashioning of others already in use, such as 'motherhood.' This book suggests that Middle English writers used these words . . . to signal moments where the writers are . . . exploring new ideas about femininity" (3). "Womanhood" she finds "particularly important, both because it directly invokes the conceptual problem of what defines women collectively . . . and because it was used so widely and in such interesting ways in the late Middle Ages" beginning with appearances in the work of Chaucer and Gower (3). Chapter 3 ("Beastly Women and Womanly Men"), 51-85, is devoted to the "Confessio Amantis," which she finds "crucial to the development of womanhood, providing a version that is at least as influential as Chaucer's for later writers" (51). "Gower constructs womanhood as analogous to both manhood and beastliness" and because it is "characterized by observable signifiers," identities can change, and also "be learned or feigned." Hence, "Gowerian gender is performative" (51); and "one must be able to interpret those signals accurately. This is the challenge that the frame story presents to Amans" (52). Genius' goal, in Williams' view, is to "teach Amans how to treat women," showing him their vulnerabilities by presenting "the effects of sin on female victims," an approach "that values women as worthy not only of pity but also of a respect and consideration that would have recognized and honored their virtue . . . . The epithet 'moral Gower' . . . remains apt in reference to Gower's portrayal of women" (52). The rest of the chapter is divided into three parts: the first on "'beastly women,' female characters who either seem to be or literally become beasts," the second on "'womanly men,' men who adopt feminine roles or characteristics" (53), and the third on the character of Amans--how he develops, or fails to. Under "beastly women" Williams examines the Loathly Lady from the "Tale of Florent" (where, she asserts, "Gower's exploration of womanhood begins" [54]), and the transformations of Philomena and Procne, Cornix, and Calistona. Gower innovates by depicting the effects of sin on women, and "underscores their significance in purely human terms" (58-9), though at the same time, through Genius' depictions of the maidenhead as a woman's "treasure"--which, like treasure, can belong to others (a husband, a father), raises "disquieting" issues he leaves unresolved (61-62). In the continuation of Calistona's love for her infant son even after her transformation into a bear Williams finds another aspect of womanhood for Gower: "it involves specific emotions" and "persists in observable ways: not in appearance, but actions" (64). Under "womanly men," Williams considers the tales of Achilles and Deidamia, Sardanapalus, and Iphis, in disagreement with Diane Watt, as examples not of "transgressive genders" but as narratives that "reveal that any person might show evidence of womanhood or manhood, because those conditions are identified by appearance" (65). While this applies particularly well to Achilles and Sardanapalus, who "choose their identities," Iphis, who "has an identity imposed upon him/her," poses a more complex case (70), which Williams interestingly resolves by positing that desire, "like clothing and actions," is learned behavior (72). In the third section, "'Mi ladi, which a woman is', argues that Amans' problem is not his lady's lack of love for him, but rather her failure to conform to the model of the lady-love made available in chivalric stories. He falls into the same traps as Tereus, "in his desire to violate his lady" (beastliness), and Sardanapalus, "in his inability to allow reason to overcome love" (womanliness). (74). It takes the "shock" of Venus' revelation of his age and impotence to bring Amans to see the error of his ways, in the vision of lovers he has while swooning. "In this vision, Amans . . . is able to censure male misbehavior, sympathize with female victims, and recognize female virtue" (84). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Williams, Tara. Published Williams, Tara. Inventing Womanhood: Gender and Language in Later Middle English Writing. Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2011. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Inventing Womanhood: Gender and Language in Later Middle English Writing. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Sylvester seeks to identify the roots of rape fantasies and the appeal of rape narratives, offering a "reader-response" analysis of the tales of Lucretia in Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women," Gower's "Confessio Amantis" (Book VII), and Christine de Pizan's "Le Livre de la Cité des Dames," attending in particular to how the versions reflect notions derived from "romance and romantic texts" of "female masochism that is erotic, rather than psychological," (116), and how they deal with "the idea of female pleasure in enforced sex" in the Middle Ages and modern society. All three texts, Sylvester tells us, "acknowledge the possibility of an erotic response to these rape narratives," and because they do, she sets out to assess "how eroticism is inscribed within or erased from these texts" and to "examine the kinds of conditioning and experiences that might allow readers to experience them as erotic" (120). All three versions present male "competition about wifely virtue" (128), although the topic is displaced in de Pizan. It is "emphasized most strongly" in Gower's version, and "we may see in it . . . the working out of masculine hierarchies, with women's sexuality as the space across which power relations move" (129). De Pizan's displacement, however, "refuses to offer the reader the pleasure of narrative" by disconnecting the rape from "falling in love" (132), a connection made in both male-authored texts, and a parallel to the love-leading-to-sexual encounter trope of romance. Furthermore, only in de Pizan's version is Lucretia's suicide presented as an "unambiguous counter-example" to "refute the suggestion that women want to be raped," while "Lucretia's conscious decision to submit to the rape in the source texts [in order to save her good name] appears to have suggested to Chaucer and Gower an acquiescence that could be constructed as having led to enjoyment, and so, in their texts, Lucretia faints rather than actively submit to her rapist" (133). "The well-documented fantasy of rape," Sylvester concludes, "may well be derived from a culturally dominant set of beliefs about passivity or lack of female desire announced in conventional depictions of male and female sexual roles" (135). Rape narratives "may function for the woman reader as the correlative of the erotic desire for the annihilation of self . . . perceived as antipathetic to a feminist project . . . yet paradoxically . . . [they] may work to liberate female desire from the bounds of a dominant representation of sexuality enacted as a struggle for power which offers a reductive and limiting articulation of the possibilities of sexual pleasure" (136). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sylvester, Louise. Published Sylvester, Louise. "Reading Narratives of Rape: The Story of Lucretia in Chaucer, Gower and Christine de Pizan." Leeds Studies in English 31 (2000): 115-44. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Reading Narratives of Rape: The Story of Lucretia in Chaucer, Gower and Christine de Pizan. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The question of Gower's legal training and practice is Sobecki's point of departure, from which he challenges long-held assumptions about the nature of Gower's early relationship with Chaucer and lays groundwork for substantial new ideas about Chaucer's life and literary activities in Southwark, the original audience of the "Canterbury Tales," and the inspiration for the "General Prologue." That Chaucer wrote for a "Southwark audience," (645) and that the GP is modeled (at least in part) on the historical "Harry Bailey's check-roll of the poll tax reassessment of 1381" (653) are significant claims, but I focus here on Sobecki's concerns with Gower, particularly his argument that Gower was a trained, practicing lawyer. Anchoring this argument about Gower's legal standing, Sobecki revisits the Septvauns affair in 1365-69, from which he deduces that Gower may have "worked at the Court of Chancery" (640) at the time, leaving the nature of that work unspecified as indeed it must be since we know little of the early history of the legal procedures of the nascent institution. As others have done before, Sobecki cites (and reproduces) the fifteenth-century miniature from the 1460s that depicts the Court of Chancery, assuming it to be evidence of legal garb in the previous century. The miniature serves as backdrop to Sobecki's interpretation of the reference to striped sleeves in "Mirour de l'Omme" (21.772-75), reading the reference as feigned deference to legal hierarchies. Saying he wore only "la raye mance" ("striped sleeves"--not the red and blue of the cleric), the narrator of MO "inserts his status" as secular lawyer, Sobecki maintains, "into a professional hierarchy that places the canon law at its pinnacle," an example of "the paradoxical idiom of aspirational humility, so common in retractions and other medieval instances of simulated deference." That the "compliment [to clerical canon lawyers] . . . is feigned" is "confirmed" by the narrator's insistence that he knows "little Latin and little French" in the midst of a French poem of "almost twenty-five thousand lines" (633). These claims, it seems to me, beg stronger engagement with questions of the relation between Gower and his narrator, which Sobecki touches upon only lightly, and he only nods at the fact that other professionals wore striped garb. Similarly, he supports his claim that "gowns matter to Gower" (634), with two comments where, again, the narrator of MO "bewails the abuse of professional robes" when speaking of "those who wear the garb of law" (635). Offering additional, "circumstantial evidence" to associate Gower and his works with the Court of Chancery," Sobecki continues, more certain than most scholars on this topic: "I would argue that Gower was not only a trained lawyer, but . . . was also linked to Chancery and . . . to the court's developing equity side, in particular" (635-36). He then offers "new evidence" for his claim: four "previously unknown legal documents from the Court of Common pleas" (636) dating from 1396 and 1399 that refer to Gower. Three of them record that, in actions related to debts owed him, Gower sued "in propria persona," a phrase "used when someone appeared in court in person" (636), that is, without a representing attorney; the fourth shows that in one of these actions Gower used an unnamed attorney temporarily, to whom he paid (or intended to pay) one pound. Sobecki does not demonstrate--and nowhere claims--that only trained lawyers appeared "in propria persona" in late-medieval England, so it seems to me that the new documents, valuable as they are on their own as newly discovered life records, do not evince that formal legal training was necessary for Gower to present his own pleas. Our knowledge about such training and practice at the time is limited, as are details about the relations among legal training, bureaucratic clerking, and similar activities in the Chancery and elsewhere. Furthermore, there are at least six other known documents (five also from the Court of Common Pleas) in which an attorney appears for Gower (see pp. 11-12 and 17-18 of Martha Carlin's "Chronology of John Gower's Life Records" in Rigby and Echard's Historians on Gower, 2019); so, if nothing else, a lawyer represented him more often than he represented himself. Sobecki significantly expands the base of evidence that Gower had experience with several sorts of legal proceedings, but the jury is still out, so to speak, on whether or not he can be, or should be, considered a career lawyer. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sobecki, Sebastian. Published Sobecki, Sebastian. "A Southwark Tale: Gower, the 1381 Poll Tax, and Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales'." Speculum 92 (2017): 630-60. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Southwark Tale: Gower, the 1381 Poll Tax, and Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Probably the best place to begin Sierra's essay is with the last two sentences, which state (more or less) its point, and also provide a taste of its style: "This is why the Portuguese translators use the Confessio's Latin frame but do not explicitly translate it. Their translation shows that the authority of a work is not derived from its meaning or relationship to a tradition but to its ability to be reproduced, and so their work portrays the Confessio's Latin frame only in so far as it confirms the logic present in Gower's English--a textual logic that does not simply wish to narrate 'authorial' truth from some abstract meaning but which also seeks to imbue the process of narrative reproducibility with the authority of utterance itself" (450). What he apparently means by this is worked out in an elaborate comparison of the Vulgate version (which he calls "Jerome's 'Vulgata'") of the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar with Gower's and with selected passages from the Portuguese translation of the CA (435-48): the Portuguese translator(s)--Sierra prefers the plural--took the Latin apparatus for part of the poem, and the poem as a compilation, not as an "authorial" product, which gave them permission to adopt an "authorial" approach to translation themselves. They adapted what Gower wrote, that is, to their own way of reading the poem, as well as into their own language. The Castilian translation, in some fashion, fades from attention not far into the essay. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sierra, Juan David. Published Sierra, Juan David. "Readers as Authors: Reproducing Authority in the Iberian Translations of John Gower's Confessio Amantis." eHumanista 22 (2012): 429-53. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Readers as Authors: Reproducing Authority in the Iberian Translations of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Examining the choric figure of John Gower in William Shakespeare and George Wilkins's 'Pericles,' this essay recuperates the funereal accoutrements often associated with dead poets in order to demonstrate their significance to late medieval and early modern notions of authorship" (212), Schreyer tells us near the beginning of his essay. He goes on to imagine an early modern production of "Pericles" in which John Gower as Chorus rises from a stage-tomb decorated to look like the poet's tomb in St. Saviour's church, reaching for the copy of "Confessio Amantis" (the source of the play) while delivering his opening monologue. Backgrounds to this imagined dramatization include the observation that "In the sixteenth century, Gower's social status was . . . questioned and debated, and was only resolved through recourse to his tomb monument" (213), followed by supporting references to John Leland, John Bale, and John Stow, evidence that "[m]edieval tomb effigies thus underpin early modern--and indeed modern--notions of authorship and biography in very material ways." By way of Ben Jonson's dismissive citation of "Pericles" as a "mouldy tale" (quoted by Schreyer) and exploration of the denotations of "mold," Schreyer asserts that the "significance of mold therefore lies both in its materiality and in the temporal obstinacy that arises from it: as both decayed remains and fecund soil, a locus of death and birth, mold leavens the authority of the past with the promise of the future" (214)--in this context, the authority of literary tradition in the production of new art. Much of the rest of the essay broadens the application of this nexus of tomb, mold-as-decay-and-as-fecundity, and the pastness and productivity of literature, including discussion, not only of "Pericles," but also of speaking images in Ovid's "Tristia" and on "Benedetto da Maiano's 1490 monument to Giotto in Florence Cathedral" (218); the portrait of Chaucer atop his son's tomb in Thomas Speght's 1598 and 1602 editions of Chaucer's "Works" and the title pages of these editions; Shakespeare's Sonnets 55 and 74; John Weever's "Ancient Funerall Monuments" of 1631; and the title page and frontispiece of the 1679 edition of the works of Edmund Spenser and Spenser's comments on Chaucer and his tomb in "Faerie Queene" 4.2.32–33. Wide-ranging and firmly anchored in studies of the significance of monuments, tombs, and their associations with literature in the classical revival of English humanism, Schreyer's essay stretches to include the rust of armorial bearings as a kind of mold, "the metallic form of corrosion and decay--that is to say, mold" (226), when discussing the armor of Pericles' father. Echoes between "wombs" and "tombs" in "Pericles" enable him to discover in the play's theme of incest a parallel concern with "authorial incest--the recycling of literary material from author to author" (229), leading to his closing claim: "this essay ends where many studies of "Pericles" begin: with the question of its shared authorship. Whether or not Shakespeare collaborated with George Wilkins on the text, the play finds its author--its authority--in the tomb of John Gower" (230). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schreyer, Kurt A. Published Schreyer, Kurt A. "Moldy Pericles." Exemplaria 29 (2017): 210-33. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Moldy "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Readers who enjoy deep dives into etymology or nautical diction will take pleasure in Sayers' essay on lexical and technical backgrounds to Gower's use in "Confessio Amantis" V.7048 of "love," meaning "luff." His study is brief, but rich: after describing appropriate data and commentary in dictionaries and editions, Sayers proposes that "the Old Norse lexeme 'úfr' [a kind of sail-pin] is the ultimate source of 'luff' and congeners" (137), tracing the word through unattested French forms to attested "le lof," and surmising that nautical "[t]echnological evolutions, now difficult to trace, must have accompanied this refocus in vocabulary" before and after the word appeared in Gower. Gower's usage occurs as a metaphor in the context of commentary on the sacrilegious exchange of a love token in church. Sayers translates and explains the lines as follows: "'So close to the wind do they [i.e., the lovers] luff that it is as if to say, she shall not forget that I have obtained this token of her.' Gower's church-going lovers are engaged in close sailing, not 'dangerously' in the sense of exposing their suits to disaster [as usually explained], but in an expeditious manner, trying to win advantage from difficult circumstances--the headwind of church protocol, the coolness of the lady" (138). Sayers missed Alexandra Hennessy Olsen's 1986 comments on the punning of "luff" and "love" in this context, perhaps because "John Gower Newsletter" bibliographers missed it too--until this issue. See Olsen, "The Literary Impact of the Pun in Middle English Literature." In Geardagum: Essays on Old and Middle English 7 (1986): 17-36. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sayers, William. Published Sayers, William. "Gower's 'So nyh the weder thei wol love' (Confessio Amantis, 5, 7048)." ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews 28 (2015): 135-39. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's "So nyh the weder thei wol love" ("Confessio Amantis," 5, 7048). Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rosenfeld offers a new way of seeing the sin of envy as particularly useful in understanding the "Confessio Amantis." Citing Chaucer's "Parson's Tale," the "Fasciculus Morum," and "On the Seven Deadly Sins," she explains how envy in medieval penitential writing is distinct from other sins because it is an "inwardly experienced sin that is also necessarily social" (84), and because it is neither "directed toward the pursuit of pleasure" nor is pleasure its "instigating cause" (85) as it is with other sins. Rather, "envy is marked by a viciousness that inheres in a disposition of antipathy toward a neighbor's experience of happiness and sorrow. Envy thus demands a shift in morality from a focus on the discipline of desire, the seeking after 'true' pleasures, to a focus on one's proper relationship to the painful and joyful experiences of others." This shift is "one of the motivating concerns" of Gower's poem, Rosenfeld argues, exploring how envy is "a central problem" (86) of the CA and how the sin is remedied through compassion, pity, or charity that is the means to achieve the common good. Tales from Book II, of course, are important here--Polyphemus "betrays a viciousness beyond a desire for personal profit" (88) when he kills Acis in envy, for example, and in the "Tale of the Travelers and the Angel" the "unique viciousness" of the sin "is marked not by misplaced desire but by an opposing affective reaction to the pleasures and pains of others, no matter the specific goods involved" (90). As a form of charity and the remedy of envy, compassion "involves mimetic identification with the pain and pleasure of others," while "envy is marked by both failed and successful mimesis" (90), Rosenfeld tells us, helping to align several other tales with her thesis: "Amphitrion's feigning the voice of Geta" (91), the brass trumpet of Boniface's usurpation of Celestine, and the "imitated voices and counterfeit communication" (92) in the "Tale of Constance" all manifest envy in or through distorted mimesis, while the account of Nebuchadnezzar and the "Tale of Three Questions" (both in Book I) are "interested in the process by which people shift from dismissal of others because of perceived difference to recognition of likeness" (93) that engages the "golden rule" (92) and effects compassion. Genius offers the "Tale of Constantine and Sylvester" to illustrate "Charité / Which is the moder of Pité" (II.3173-74), a tale which "carefully unpacks the moment in which compassion is felt" (95), when Constantine, awakened by the lamentation of the mothers and children to be sacrificed for his sake, recognizes the likeness of all humans and leads eventually to a "Christian empire through love's defeat of envy" (97). This does not, Rosenfeld observes, resolve all the problems of worldly distortion of proper ethical values; Constantine's elite social status can be seen to compromise the moral value of his compassion, and Gower's allusion to the "Donation of Constantine" (97) makes clear that the temporal church compromises the spiritual community. Yet, the very operation of exemplarity depends upon likeness across human social and economic boundaries, Rosenfeld tells us, much as does compassion, and in this way, Gower shows in form and theme that "the ethical subject must desire the common good, and must first understand what it means to have things in 'common' rather than first to understand what is good" (99). Moreover, Rosenfeld concludes, "For Gower, charity is the recognition that one's relationship to others should not be determined by relative possessions, but by shared emotion borne of the realization that each has only one real earthly possession--life itself" (100). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rosenfeld, Jessica. Published Rosenfeld, Jessica. "Compassionate Conversions: Gower's Confessio Amantis and the Problem of Envy." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012): 83-105. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Compassionate Conversions: Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and the Problem of Envy. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ronberg follows C. A. Luttrell (1958) in studying the scribal hand(s) of Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter V.2.8 (388), which contains the unique "Gest Historiale of the Destruction of Troy," and Manchester, Chetham Library, MS A.7.38 (6696), a copy of the "Confessio Amantis." He makes two points: 1) in which he disagrees with Luttrell, offering "linguistic evidence" that the two hands in the Hunter MS (a cursive and a bookhand) belong to "different scribes"; and 2)--of interest to Gowerians--in which he agrees with Luttrell that the cursive hand of Hunter and that of the Chetham CA are by the same man: "Thomas Chetham, a landowner who lived at Nuthurst in South Lancashire and who copied the texts mentioned above during the first quarter of the sixteenth century" (463). Ronberg argues from linguistic evidence in both cases (where Luttrell was concerned with paleography), and, discussing common dialectical features of the two manuscripts, he shows that their "spelling features, and their proportional distribution" (467) confirm Luttrell's identification of Chetham and the dates of the manuscripts. N.B.: Like Luttrell, Ronberg cites the Chetham manuscript of the CA as A.6.11 rather than A.7.38, following the error in Macaulay. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ronberg, Gert. Published Ronberg, Gert. "Two North-West Midland Manuscripts Revisited." Neophilologus 67 (1983): 463-67. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Two North-West Midland Manuscripts Revisited. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Pratt traces the development "of the Pyramus and Thisbe material . . . from its Ovidian origins via medieval Latin rhetorical exercises, adaptations in French, German, and Dutch and its eventual inclusion in late medieval story collections, notably Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women' and Boccaccio's 'De mulieribus Claris'," considering along the way Gower's version in "Confessio Amantis" III.1331ff., briefly comparing it with the Christine de Pizan's tale as a moralized exemplum of foolish haste in love--noting Gower's "innovative assertion" that the lovers "make the hole in the wall themselves" (275)--and contrasting it with Dirc Potter's account which exemplifies good love. Pratt reports Kathryn McKinley's claim (2011) that Gower removed the tragi-comic or bathetic features of Ovid's original by following the version in the "Ovide moralisé"; she does not address the manuscript contexts of Gower's version, as she does with most of the others she discusses. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pratt, Karen. Published Pratt, Karen. "The Dynamics of the European Short Narrative in its Manuscript Context: The Case of Pyramus and Thisbe." In The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript: Text Collections from a European Perspective. Eds. Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter. (Göttingen: V&R Academic, 2017). Pp. 257-85. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Dynamics of the European Short Narrative in its Manuscript Context: The Case of Pyramus and Thisbe. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Reading "Kingis Quair" as a bridge between Scottish and English poetry and as a self-conscious poem about "the very act of writing of the poem" (19), Petrina examines the work's interplay of autobiography and literary tradition, discussing aspects of James I of Scotland's life--particularly his imprisonment and education in Lancastrian England--and the placement of the poem in the largely Chaucerian context of the only manuscript where it occurs: Oxford, Bodleian MS Arch. Selden B.24. Along the way, Petrina describes James's debts to Chaucer, with passing mention of Gower, and analyzes the dedication to these predecessors in the final stanza of the "Quair" (lines 1373-79), stating that "these lines should be read not as generic praise, but as a clear description of the two poets' main qualities" (18)--Gower as a moral poet and Chaucer as James's "teacher of 'ars poetica'"--going on to cite Lydgate and Hoccleve as evidence that "in fact, 'moralitee' and Gower never seem far apart" in fifteenth-century commentary "however damning this may sound" (19). Petrina's treatment of Gower is peripheral (at times, parenthetical) to her treatment of Chaucer's influence on the "Quair" and its reception. She concludes, "'The Kingis Quair' was probably first read in the same years in which, as king of Scotland, James was attempting a peaceful coexistence with his English neighbours; in such a context it becomes a testimony of the reception in Scotland of English writing, as well as of the King's English, here re-presented as Chaucer's (and Gower's) English" (20). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Petrina, Alessandra. Published Petrina, Alessandra. "'My Maisteris Dere': The Acknowledgement of Authority in The Kingis Quair." Scottish Studies Review 7.1 (2006): 9-23. ISSN: 1475-7737. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "My Maisteris Dere": The Acknowledgement of Authority in "The Kingis Quair." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The "virtual coterie" that Lydgate constructs in his "Pilgrimage of the Life of Man," Perry argues, comprises the people named or alluded to in the poem--Chaucer, Guillaume de Deguileville, the Virgin Mary, and Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury--the people who as source, inspiration, or patron had agency in producing the work, lending it validity or authority and, in turn, enabling Lydgate to exert his own kind of agency to give his patron advice and to shape literary tradition at the same time. Outlining the concept and coining the term, Perry describes virtual coteries as the lists of names given in a poem, often in a prologue or dedication: "a record of distributed agency that details what a poet, a patron, or a source does to make a poem." Virtual coteries are "rhetorical performances, poetic displays that associate different individuals . . . . living and dead, real and fictional, local and distant," and allow for "a complex mediation between writer and patron." In the case of Lydgate's "Pilgrimage," the coterie allows Lydgate to advise Salisbury about the war in France and to influence "the Chaucerian tradition as it is being constructed in the fifteenth century" (671). Much of the "complex mediation" Perry explores in the "Pilgrimage" depends upon the fact that Salisbury was husband to Chaucer's granddaughter, Alice, and it is hard to imagine too many other poets being able to construct a virtual coterie of quite this sort or in quite this way, a limitation, perhaps, in more general application of the concept, despite its usefulness for describing Lydgate's roles as advisor to his patron Salisbury and as "Chaucerian" poet. Gower occupies an odd place in Perry's argument and perhaps in Lydgate's coterie, as Perry tells us: it is "unclear whether Gower is a member of this or any other of Lydgate's virtual coteries. Lydgate never mentions Gower [although he does in "Fall of Princes" 9.3412] and it is unclear whether Lydgate's audience, specifically Salisbury here, would have recognized Gower's technique in Lydgate's hands" (695). Yet, Perry argues, "In Praise of Peace" [IPP] is a major thematic and stylistic influence on Lydgate's "Pilgrimage": as Gower "praises the nobility while critiquing their actions at the same time" (689), so does Lydgate, and the younger poet adapts the "formal device of dual address" (695) modeled in Gower's IPP. "Lydgate's aims are Gower's," Perry tells us, "the earlier poet's pacifism an inspiration to the later one at a different time in the same war" (695). Praise and advice are a familiar combination in the mirrors of princes tradition (especially those addressed to a patron), and it is not unusual to find a writer addressing particular and universal audiences simultaneously. Moreover, Perry may be stretching things to call a dual audience a "formal device," especially since he acknowledges that Lydgate's technique only "resembles" Gower's, indeed "inverts" it: "Gower's dual mode of address speaks for a class, Lydgate's for a coterie" (694). Some verbal echoes would help to establish Perry's case for IPP as a source of the "Pilgrimage," although his argument that Lydgate "silenced Gower" and thereby "bolsters Chaucer's positon in literary history, while diminishing Gower's" (695) is a new take on an important issue. Perry's analysis of reciprocity between patronage and poetry is valuable--discussing the virtual coterie of Lydgate's "Title and Pedigree of Henry VI" as well as that of the "Pilgrimage"--and his discussion of Gower's IPP adds dimension to what Robert R. Edwards has called the "Trace of Gower" in Lydgate (South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 [2015]: 156-70; see eJGN 35.1) while clarifying Lydgate's virtual coteries as one facet of the Chaucerian tradition. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Perry, R. D. Published Perry, R. D. "Lydgate's Virtual Coteries: Chaucer's Family and Gower's Pacifism in the Fifteenth Century." Speculum 93 (2018): 669-98. Gower Subject In Praise of Peace Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Lydgate's Virtual Coteries: Chaucer's Family and Gower's Pacifism in the Fifteenth Century. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Peck explores notions of moral worthiness and penitential vigilance expressed in late-medieval vernacular literature, arguing that they developed out of earlier knightly ideals and practices, laid out by Richard W. Kaeuper in "Holy Warrior" (2009). Treating Harry Bailly and his relation to the Parson in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" most extensively, Peck also draws on Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde, and other works by Chretién de Troyes, Dante, Langland, and Gower, offering commentary on knights and mercantile trade in "Mirour de l'Omme" (349-50) and, in the same work, the need expressed for "vigilant analysis of how we see and don't see" as part of the penitential diagnosis of sin (355). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A. "Chivalry and the Wise Watchman: A Study of Patience, Penance, and the Homeward Journey in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde." In Prowess, Piety, and Public Order in Medieval Society: Studies in Honor of Richard W. Kaeuper. Ed. Craig M. Nakashian and Daniel P. Franke. (Boston: Brill, 2017). Pp. 344-67. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chivalry and the Wise Watchman: A Study of Patience, Penance, and the Homeward Journey in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" and "Troilus and Criseyde." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Per Olsen's argument, most of the critical response to Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" has been overly sympathetic to Troilus, forgiving his faults, while anachronistically hostile to Criseyde and Diomede. To recapture a more authentic, fourteenth-century view of the three characters, Olsen maintains, we can turn to their portrayal in the works of John Gower, where Troilus erred from his first sight of Criseyde (4), and Diomede was not without honor. The works of Gower provide us with a more nuanced view of the famous love triangle. Troilus, while given credit in the Vox Clamantis as faithful unto death, according to the Confessio Amantis was guilty of "sacrilege" due to the setting of his first attraction to Criseyde--a religious service (4). Never does Gower refer to Criseyde as a prostitute, as does Robert Henryson in "Testament of Cresseid," Olsen notes; rather, by leaving her "lief" (Troilus) to love Diomede, a "levere," she "changed lovers out of a genuine preference for the second man" (5). In the VC, Gower cites the serial seducer Jason, never Diomede, as archetype of the unfaithful male (5). In fact, Olsen asserts, there is no textual proof in any version of the story that Diomede had a lover before Criseyde, or that he ended his relationship with her (8). Crucial to Olsen's argument is the appearance of all three characters, more or less together, in the "Lovers' Paradise" of CA Book VIII (6). All of the company, including Diomede, are classed as "gentil folk" (6). By this evidence, "both men would still lay claim to Criseyde after death and . . . Criseyde would still find it difficult to choose between them" (7). According to Olsen, Diomede's life course should be understood by the French expression "il s'est range / he has put himself in order," which refers to a man who has settled down to a stable domestic life after sowing his youthful oats (8-9). Gower's portrayal of Diomede is thus "less puritanically English" than the later tradition, as exemplified by Henryson, and thus more in harmony with the bilingual court culture of Richard II (9). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey. Published Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey. "In Defense of Diomede: 'Moral Gower' and Troilus and Criseyde." In Geardagum: Essays on Old and Middle English 8 (1987): 1-12. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In Defense of Diomede: "Moral Gower" and "Troilus and Criseyde." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey. Published Olsen, Alexandra Hennessey. "The Literary Impact of the Pun in Middle English Literature." In Geardagum: Essays on Old and Middle English 7 (1986): 17-36. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Review Despite the more general import of its title, this article is almost entirely concerned with puns in the "Confessio Amantis," both in their own right, and as a "framework for the discussion of puns in medieval texts in general" (21), and Ricardian poetry in particular (18). Olsen begins by noting the deficiencies in previous scholarship that her study is meant to address: the mere presence of puns has been under-recognized in Ricardian poetry, as well as the potential "literary artistry" of the pun (17), as well as the sophisticated literary artistry of Gower (18). The skillful play on "foal/fool" at CA VIII.2407--"Olde grisel is no fole"--is her first example to the contrary. As a "grisel/gray horse," Amans is no longer a "foal," and thus, as echoed by the pun, he is no longer eligible to play the "fool" (18-19). The pun on "beste/beste" ("best" and "beast") was well established in Middle English, as witnessed by its appearance in the anonymous lyric "Foweles in the Frith" (19). Per Olsen, Gower uses it to resonate with his theme in "The Tale of Florent" (CA I.1740-41), where the hideous crone has the semblance of a "beast" (23), but in a triumph of "truth/troth" over mere "perception," she turns out to be the "beste" of women and speaker of the "truth" that Florent most needs to hear (23). Olsen proceeds to review the "pun theory" of earlier critics, allowing her to distinguish between the "simple pun" (22), a homonym with two or more meanings, both of which fit the syntax and significance of the context, and more complex types of puns, some aimed at more subliminal appreciation by the reader (19-23). All of these types she finds to be skillfully deployed in the CA, as they enhance the larger themes of their context within the single tale, the book, and the poem as a whole (22). In "The Tale of Acteon," using a common English pun also prominent in Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess," Acteon's willful "mislok"--a misdeed of the "Herte/heart"--has him changed into a "herte/hart," with fatal consequences (23-24). In a more complex play on words, Genius describes the sin of sacrilegious lovers with the warning "so nyh the weder thei wol love" (CA V.7048). As explained by G. C. Macaulay, this is a nautical metaphor meaning "so near the wind [so out of bounds] will they luff [steer the boat]," with the meaning "love" ruled out in Middle English by the rhyme with "glove." However, per Olsen, the near-homonym does awaken the moral association with misplaced "love," as well as the "voyage of life" as a topos connecting the poem as a whole (25), perhaps without the reader's full awareness of the double meaning. Olsen proceeds to analyze the subtle artistry of puns and near-puns in the CA, including "bote/bot/remedy/boat" in "Appollonius" (VIII.639), "salve/salve/salve/ greeting" (26), "povere/pouer" (in Langland as well as Gower, 27), more puns in "Florent" ( on "clepeth," "Mone," and "bridel," 27-28), wordplay throughout Book IV (especially on Slowthe and "spiede/speed, success," 28-30), and "wise/wise" throughout the poem (30-31). These help to make the CA "a complex network of themes and associations" that is "more than the sum of its parts on both narrative and linguistic levels" (31). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Literary Impact of the Pun in Middle English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review N.B.: This study is in Japanese: "Hi'ninshō yōhō no shūsoku katei ni okeru ichi danmen." Eigo Seinen. It surveys the use of verbs of dreaming "meten" and "dremen" in the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Langland. The verbs appeared with both dative (impersonal construction) and nominative (personal construction) subjects in the late fourteenth century, although the impersonal construction had started to disappear. First, the survey shows that Chaucer and Langland use both constructions, and Gower uses only the personal construction. Syntactically, the verbs tend to be used impersonally with a clausal complement (Type 1) or with no complement in a parenthetical expression like "as me mette" (Type 2), while used personally with a nominal one (Type 3). Next, dealing with Chaucer's examples, the study surveys the use of the two constructions in context. Sometimes co-occurring with the impersonal "thinken," Types 1 and 2 are used when a dream is described even though the speaker is uncertain about its veracity: the impersonal construction shows the speaker's uncertainty. In contrast, Type 2 is used when the focus of utterance is placed on the act of dreaming. Thus, the paper concludes that even in the midst of the transition, each construction functions differently. [English summary provided by Professor Ohno. Copyright. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ohno, Hideshi. Published Ohno, Hideshi. "A Synchronic Analysis of Transition from the Impersonal to Personal Construction." The Rising Generation, 153/2 (2007): 110-13. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Synchronic Analysis of Transition from the Impersonal to Personal Construction. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nolan's argument is complicated, nuanced, and consequently quite difficult to do it justice in a brief summary. Her focus is "on the relationship of historical thought to literary form as a way of assessing what aspects of historicist discourse and practice remain critically energetic and analytically central to medieval literary study" (63). Working with three examples--Augustine's discovery of a "giant's tooth" in the "City of God," passages from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria," and Gower's image, at the beginning of Book II of the "Vox Clamantis," of his creative process as honey gathered from many flowers, or shells found on the beach, an image taken verbatim from Ovid (70)--she lays out as necessary an understanding of the past observed not merely backwards from the present, nor as if past and present were the same, but as an object of study both itself and in relation to the present as well as part of it. Her description of how this relates to Gower also captures much of her larger argument: "When Gower . . . appropriates Ovid's art, he does so as a way of reflecting on his own poetic practice. Like the Romans who gather shells, extract what's beautiful in them, and transform that extraction into a symbol of power, Gower gathers words from his predecessors, detaches them from their contexts, and forces them to make meaning in a new way. This account of Gower's poetics, as a form of imperialism, wrought under the sign of deference to the very classical "auctores" whose words he has gathered and reused, fundamentally rewrites the standard narrative of Gower's history-writing in the "Vox Clamantis." It has long been thought that the version of the fourteenth century found in the "Vox" is so ideologically driven, so wedded to a conservative vision of medieval society (the hierarchy of the three estates), that it utterly lacks nuance, self-reflection, and the capacity to accept social change . . . . The example of the gathered shells thus illustrates the way in which Gower determinedly sustains a tension between deference to Latin authority (here, Ovid) and the display of poetic skill embodied in the fearless abandon with which he redeploys classical words and images while ruthlessly exploiting both their past and present meanings. The brilliance of this particular display lies in the fact that Gower has chosen a passage from the "Ars Amatoria" whose Ovidian meaning constitutes a critique of its Gowerian use: Ovid deploys the gathering of shells to illustrate the triviality of modern forms of imperial expression, from the color purple to well-groomed ladies. If Gower aligns himself and his own gathering of words with these Roman practices, he must also accept the critique sedimented in the line he has adopted. By doing so, Gower forges a poetic 'middle way'--a practice of engaging the past that treats it with care, but without kid gloves. This middle way is a mode of using the past while allowing it to speak freely: Gower may manipulate Ovid's poetry for his own ends, but he retains the exact wording of Ovid's verse about shells" (81-82). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura. Published Nolan, Maura. "Historicism after Historicism." In The Post-Historical Middle Ages. Eds. Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. Pp. 63-85. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Historicism after Historicism. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Book VII of the "Confessio Amantis" draws upon Brunetto Latini's "Li Livres dou Trésor" for its discussion of the divisions of knowledge, but whereas Latini organizes knowledge into theory, practice, and logic, Gower's division is theory, practice, and rhetoric. Newman's essay focuses upon this difference and argues that, for Gower, logic is subordinate to rhetoric because "logic has the same situatedness in human relations, and thus makes the same ethical claims on practitioners traditionally ascribed to rhetoric" (38). For Newman, Gower's view of logic is that it "is never simply an abstract intellectual activity or formal operation that produces stable meanings which exist independent of the discursive community in which it is practiced" (44). This approach to logic as inherently contextual, and not intrinsically truthful or "trewe and plein" (CA 7.1734) is especially problematic for Gower because logic's position as rhetorical is not necessarily apparent, which undermines its utility in legal, political, and theological arenas. As evidence, Newman analyzes several specific and subtle instances in the CA of syntactical ambiguity, especially passages employing double and triple negatives, that appear to undermine logic's authority. Newman's close readings are meticulous and provocative and rely upon subtle differences in the possible syntactical functions of specific words and constructions. In the final section of this essay, Newman suggests that Gower may have subordinated logic to rhetoric in order to "cast considerable doubt on the idea that logic might offer any more moral guidance than rhetoric" (51). Since logic is rhetorical, and therefore unstable, it may be one cause, he suggests somewhat speculatively, of the divisions in the Church Gower addresses in the CA (and elsewhere), including the schism. In support, Newman draws attention to parallels between the discussion of logic in Book 7 and the discussion of the schism in CA 1.1370-1374. [BWG. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Newman, Jonathan M. Published Newman, Jonathan M. "The Rhetoric of Logic in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' Book 7." Medievalia et Humanistica 38 (2012): 37-57. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Rhetoric of Logic in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis" Book 7. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Meindl begins by asserting that Gower in Book V of the VC reconfigures the estates of fourteenth-century English society to include clergy, commons, and governing class. He presents a clear outline of these groups early in the essay as a helpful guide for the reader, before demonstrating the changes Gower makes in the commons, starting with Gower's definition of "milites" to include the gentry rather than just knights, following suit with each category. He asserts that Gower's critique of romantic love in respect to "milites" has everything to do with the gentry's inability to produce male heirs. Meindl closely analyzes passages from Book V to demonstrate Gower's critiques of each part of the commons. When Gower moves his critique to merchants, Meindl assures us the "urbs" to which he refers is indeed London, and further points out that this location is most appropriate for Gower's critique, given its content--usurious dealings, profiting at the expense of others' losses, ruinous loans, etc. In Meindl's view, Gower also addresses the agricultural crisis in this section. As Gower closes Book V, he reveals an awareness of "the danger of renewing ancient political quarrels," which Gower assuages through his reminder that "salvation, not terrestrial power and prosperity, is the goal of human existence, which, when conducted in the spirit of Christian love, can transpire in the spirit of peace most conducive to the achievement of that goal." [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Meindl, Robert J. Published Meindl, Robert J. "The Community of the Realm: Gower's Account of the Commons in Book V of the 'Vox Clamantis,." Accessus 6 (2020): n.p. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Community of the Realm: Gower's Account of the Commons in Book V of the "Vox Clamantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Miyashita examines the choric role assigned to Gower in Shakespeare's "Pericles" and argues that he differs markedly from other Shakespearean choruses in that he is endowed with a distinct personality. Although Gower describes the primary purpose of his storytelling as to give pleasure to the audience in his opening speech, Shakespeare deliberately preserves his identity as "moral Gower" by having him constantly moralize over the action he presents. Miyashita demonstrates, however, that, instead of providing the audience with "necessary and trustworthy information" (p. 98) as the choruses do in Shakespeare's other plays, Gower's comments only reveal discrepancies between the events unfolding on stage and his evaluation of them. His moralization thus "works antithetically to the audience's reception of the play," but precisely because his moral judgments are proven to be subjective and therefore limited, the audience is given "an opportunity for retrospection" at the end of the play and encouraged to "reconsider" its "true significance" (107). This essay originally appeared in Japanese in The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences in 2003. See Yayoi Miyashita, "Pericles ni okeru Chorus, Gower no hataraki," Hokkaidō Daigaku Bungaku-bu Kiyō/The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences110 (July 2003): 113-28. [YK. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Miyashita, Yayoi. Published Miyashita, Yayoi. "Gower, the Chorus, as a Fictional Character in Pericles." Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University 117 (2005): 89-108. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, the Chorus, as a Fictional Character in "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The three manuscripts Luttrell refers to in his title are London, British Museum, MS Harley 2250 which includes the unique text of "St Erkenwald"; Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter V.2.8 (388), of the unique "Gest Historiale of the Destruction of Troy"; and Manchester, Chetham Library, MS A.7.38 (6696), of the "Confessio Amantis." He offers substantial evidence of the "date and localisation" (39) of each and then goes on to describe the implications of this information for understanding the "state of alliterative poetry in the Mersey region in the sixteenth century" (48). Gowerians, however, will be largely interested in his identification of the copyist of both the Chetham manuscript and the cursive portion of Hunter manuscript as Thomas Chetham (c. 1490-1546), grandson of the Thomas Chetham suggested by Macaulay. Luttrell's paleographical evidence establishes that the hand of the two manuscripts is the same, and the same as that of household documents "among the Clowes deeds" (43) in the John Rylands Library. Paper-stock evidence from the Hunter manuscript eliminates consideration of the elder Thomas Chetham because he died before the paper was produced, and a series of rental rolls in the hand of the younger Chetham indicate three datable phases of his hand, enabling Luttrell to specify the copying date of the Chetham "Confessio" as "apparently written between 1533 and 1537" (46), and presumably executed at Nuthurst where the Chethams resided in South Lancashire, Luttrell explains, as is indicated in the signatures at the end of each of the literary manuscripts. N.B.: Throughout, Luttrell cites the Chetham manuscript of the CA as A.6.11 rather than A.7.38, following the error in Macaulay. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Luttrell, C. A. Published Luttrell, C. A. "Three North-West Midland Manuscripts." Neophilologus 42 (1958): 39-50. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Three North-West Midland Manuscripts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1958 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Knapp proposes an overall assessment of Gower's work, paying particular attention to what he calls its "mechanical allegory"--a concept he borrows from Coleridge, who opposed it as a poetic type to "a poetics based upon the symbol," i.e., Romanticism as we have come to know it. Such mechanical allegory, to quote Coleridge, was "but a translation of abstract notions into a picture-language which is itself nothing but an abstraction from objects of the senses." Knapp then "considers what drew Gower to the mechanical side of things," arguing that Coleridge's notion is "central to several of [Gower's] most interesting solutions to problems of poetic representation." He looks at the "Mirour de l'Omme," the "Vox Clamantis," and the "Confessio Amantis" to observe how Gower's "mechanical allegory" functions in each. The M) he finds "exemplifies the significance of naming in the poetic project, along with its so-called voicing," pointing to the repetitions of "je te resemble" preceding descriptions of Sin (e.g., ll. 9949, 9961, 9973) as evidence, in that this naming moment "is clearly meant to be a climactic one." It is, however, "entirely devoid of narrative content," showing us instead "what we might call 'a drama of naming'" [emphasis his]. Gower turns to hand similarly a non/narratorial "je" (an example of what A.C. Spearing's termed "autography") to create not a "speaking subject" but a "rhetorical device for bundling together the rather miscellaneous catalogue form of the 'dits'." Such a "je," like the "drama" of naming fits Coleridge's notion of the "mechanical" because each "foregrounds the lack of organic connection between abstraction and image, and instead revels in the drama of the poet's act of naming." Knapp turns to what he calls the "'voicing' of the poem," seeking to explain the MO's "tripartite structure" in terms of the shift from the "je" of the first section to the "vox populi" in the second. (He never addresses the third, Marian section.) The VC he finds, somewhat controversially, also tripartite, taking the "Cronica Tripertita" to be, not a poem composed separately, but as an intended third section of a single VC--a kind of "eighth book," one might say. Thus, Knapp sees Gower "sandwiching . . . the estates satire material . . . between two explicitly historical narratives," which "must suggest an intent here to tie the satire very closely to actual historical reality." Asking why this should be, Knapp notices that this historical reality, particularly in the "Visio," is ekphrastic to a degree uncommon in Gower's work: his transformation of the rebelling peasants into animals "creates a world essentially without speech, a pure vision of movement and destruction." Such a wordless world "renders the agency of the poet null"--and produces a "mechanical allegory" which facilitates "Gower's project in this work, which is precisely to attack a historical event of agency without language or reason in the interests of establishing the primacy of the voice of ethical satire at the center of the work." As for the CA: "the grafting of the theological discourse of sin/ethics onto 'fin amor' . . . is also organized around a central representational difficulty: . . . how to represent the 'impairing of the world' that is crucial to the historical dimension of Gower's diagnostic scheme in the Prologue." Knapp focusses on sculpture as a medium of discussion, arguing that Gower (unlike Chaucer) rarely presents images two-dimensionally, preferring the three-dimensional. This dissimilarity with Chaucer Knapp explains as "two different semantic fields" surrounding "image," with Gower reading it theologically, "nearly as a synonym for 'icon'" (Knapp's emphasis), "honored in orthodox practice and attacked by the Lollards." He then examines various statues appearing in the CA: the account of the pagan gods in Book V, Nectanabus' use of the wax image to seduce Olympias in Book VI, finding Nectanabus an "anti-Pygmalion, one who sculpts not to create something of surprising vitality but rather something that is made in order to melt away," and ultimately the Man of Metal in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar--perhaps the best (in the sense of most obvious) example of "mechanical allegory." In the destruction of the Man of Metal, Knapp especially, but also in all of Gower's statues, "a strange projected temporality" that helps him read the CA as presenting "an object world caught between the quick and the dead." The CA then insists "that the entropic drift of history can never be eluded." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Knapp, Ethan. Published Knapp, Ethan. "John Gower's Allegories." In Oxford Handbooks Online (2017): n.p. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935338.013.59 Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Allegories. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Johnston's essay is a sophisticated analysis of the motif of incest and its relations with literary form and literary tradition in Shakespeare's (and George Wilkin's) "Pericles," but it has almost nothing to say about the life or poetry of John Gower: the "Gower" of his title is the choric figure of the play, a complicated device: "Perhaps the least dramatic and at the same time the most explicitly medieval of Shakespeare's innovations in the play" (385). Johnston discusses at some length Chaucer's widely-accepted, putative allusion to Gower in the "Man of Law's Prologue," but not the poet Gower or his works--not even his "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre"--except to state that this account in the "Confessio Amantis" "served as Shakespeare's principal source" (385), that the Chorus speaks in the "very metre the historical Gower" used in CA (386), and that Gower, like Chaucer, tells a tale of Constance in a frame narrative (394), discussing only Chaucer's version. Johnston does comment very briefly on the relation between Gower's and Shakespeare's respective versions of the incest riddle of the story, saying that the riddling form in Shakespeare "constitutes a presence through insistently foregrounding a form of absence" (402), and arguing that Chaucer is, analogously, an absent presence in the play: "Behind Shakespeare's depiction of Gower there always looms the invisible figure of Chaucer" (396). Gower, it might be said, is present but absent. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Johnston, Andrew James. Published Johnston, Andrew James. "Sailing the Seas of Literary History: Gower, Chaucer, and the Problem of Incest in Shakespeare's 'Pericles'." Poetica: Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 41.3-4 (2009): 381-407. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sailing the Seas of Literary History: Gower, Chaucer, and the Problem of Incest in Shakespeare's "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Janecek posits that Gower's consistent use of masculine pronouns in "Iphis and Iante" in reference to Iphis creates a "subversive trans narrative that revolts against cisnormative conceptions of transness." Gower's tale "challenges the role of trauma in shaping not only queer identity, but specifically trans identity." Because Gower's tale lacks the trauma present in Ovid's original, we may read this as a trans narrative rather than an erasure of lesbian identity. Janecek differentiates how gender works for Iphis in both versions of the tale: in Ovid's version, gender is a vehicle to act on desire whereas in Gower it operates irrespective of desire. Rather than label characters in a text, queer theory aims "to analyze social and historical forces and cues that encourage queer readings." Janecek argues that the key difference between Ovid's and Gower's depictions of Iphis is reducible to the relationship between identity and body. For Ovid, gender is discovered through the body; for Gower, gender is an internal part of one's nature. In Gower's version, Iphis is not an incomplete man; rather, the transformation that he undergoes confirms his masculine identity. As Janecek puts it, "Gower's Iphis is born a son, accepted as a son, and in the end, his core identity becomes confirmed." Janecek continues then to engage M. W. Bychowski's work on this same tale at some length, referencing definitions from the "Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" as well as Judith Butler's "Undoing Gender." Janecek argues against Bychowski's argument that Iphis needs to exhibit gender dysphoria to be diagnosed as trans and to then achieve any sense of agency, concluding that Gower's tale indeed emphasizes Iphis's agency in expressing his identity as a trans child without trauma. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Janecek, C. Published Janecek, C. "Undiagnosing Iphis: How the Lack of Trauma in John Gower's 'Iphis And Iante' Reinforces a Subversive Trans Narrative." Accessus 5.1 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Undiagnosing Iphis: How the Lack of Trauma in John Gower's "Iphis And Iante" Reinforces a Subversive Trans Narrative. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review As made clear by the collection's title, essays here are focused on teaching practices. Houlik-Ritchey thus places her remarks within this frame. Gower's tale "upholds Christianity and Paganism as ethically superior to Judaism based on each religious creed's putative interpretation of human responsibility to one's neighbors" (102). Her lesson "models how a theoretical perspective such as neighbor theory can crack open the seemingly smooth surface of a text's construction to reveal a rough terrain of reader expectations, authorial ambivalences, elisions, and contradictions" (103). Using Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents" as a beginning point, Houlik-Ritchey identifies the "neighbor" as "'faceless,' by which [theorists] mean that the neighbor is no single, predictable person or identity category; rather, the neighbor is the 'next person,' whoever that may turn out to be" (104). "The lesson advances by delving into the scriptural passages that Freud references, precisely to make visible the complex religious history embedded within and around the well-known phrase 'Love thy neighbor as thyself'" (105). Bringing in the essential passages from Jewish and Christian scripture [Lev. 19:18, 33-34; Lk. 10:25-37], and commentaries from Origen and Augustine, she shows that Gower takes the Jew's position from "a narrow interpretation of Leviticus 19:18" and the Pagan's from Luke 6:31, the "golden rule," and asks why does Gower use a pagan and not a Christian in the tale? (111) Her answer(s) are complex, but trace an etymological path for the students, via examinations of what the tale means by "love" and "felawe," from a "supersessionist" Gower to something less easily defined--perhaps, as she says, "pre-sessionist" (110). She points out how the tale of the "Jew and the Pagan" can then become a basis for discussing the "Prioress's Tale," concluding that "A neighborly reading elucidates not only the process by which each tale condemns a fictional Jewish ethics in favor of a supposedly more wide-reaching Christian (or proto-Christian Pagan) ethics but also foregrounds the adroit ways that Gower and Chaucer expose that very condemnation as itself ethically suspect" (115). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Houlik-Ritchey, Emily. Published Houlik-Ritchey, Emily. "Love Thy Neighbor, Love Thy Fellow: Teaching Gower's Representation of the Unethical Jew." In Jews in Medieval England: Teaching Representations of the Other. Eds. Miriamne Ara Krummel and Tyson Pugh. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Pp. 101-15. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Love Thy Neighbor, Love Thy Fellow: Teaching Gower's Representation of the Unethical Jew. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Hoeniger argues for appreciation of Shakespeare's "Pericles" as an experiment in placing drama in tension with story-telling, one that succeeds better on the stage than on the page, and one that casts the Chorus, John Gower, as a moralistic, episodic story-teller whose style functions as a foil to Shakespeare's own dramaturgy. In passing, Hoeniger mentions that Shakespeare used Gower's "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre" from "Confessio Amantis" as a source, citing it once, and asserting the "singular subservience" of Shakespeare's play to the "order of Gower's narrative and his characters" (465). Hoeniger does not engage the intertextual relations of the two works at any length, but concentrates on the "quaint, archaizing, moralizing lines" (463) of the Chorus and on the episodic nature of the story "unsuited to dramatic adaptation" (478) in order to argue that "Pericles" is startlingly innovative and very effective on stage because the Chorus' style is counterpointed by Shakespeare's. Acknowledging traditional concerns with collaboration, revision, and/or First-Quarto memorial reconstruction in "Pericles" studies, Hoeniger attributes at least some of the well-known unevenness of the play to the "impression" that the Chorus "controls the presentation of the whole play" (464) while this impression, Hoeniger maintains, actually serves Shakespeare's dramatic effectiveness through contrast. Hoeniger's argument recurrently depends upon impressions, those of Shakespeare's audience who, for example, "must have been bemused by the naïve simplicity of Gower's outlook and art" (474), and his own, as when rhymes "turn . . . conventional morals into tags that Gower would wish us to remember, tags that strike us as naive in their simplicity and patness, as do his own" (469). Hoeniger turns to Chaucer when seeking precedent for Shakespeare's depiction of "grossly inferior" (478) art in his play, citing "The Tale of Sir Thopas" for comparison and describing Chaucer's burlesque of tail-rhyme romance. The comparison, unfortunately, reinforces an impression Hoeniger himself creates (although not stating it directly): that Shakespeare may have thought similarly little of Gower's own art--an impression countered in, for example, Richard Hillman's "Shakespeare's Gower and Gower's Shakespeare" (eJGN 38.1) and Bart van Es's "Late Shakespeare and the Middle Ages" (eJGN 38.2). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hoeniger, F. David. Published Hoeniger, F. David. "Gower and Shakespeare in 'Pericles'." Shakespeare Quarterly 33 (1982): 461-79. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and Shakespeare in "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Harrison summarizes the plot and emphases of Ovid's account of Narcissus and Echo in "Metamorphoses" and those of six "fully developed renditions of the tale" (324): the twelfth-century Old French lay of Narcissus, the version in Guillaume de Lorris's portion of the "Roman de la Rose," the account at the end of Robert of Blois's "Floris et Liriope," the section in "Ovide Moralisé," Gower's separate accounts of the "misadventure" of Narcissus in Book I of "Confessio Amantis" and Echo's "encounter" (333) with Juno in Book V, and the sixteenth-century French play, "Jeu de Narcisse." Harrison concentrates on how and where the post-Ovidian versions vary from Ovid and observes their particularities, with recurrent comments on gender. The summaries are descriptive rather than analytical, but Harrison does observe in her conclusion that, even though the post-Ovidian narratives of Echo "occasion very little overt misogyny," she is "[r]arely . . . an explicit role model for women" (340). Discussing Gower's "bifurcated" (335) version, Harrison says that each "exemplum has its own distinct moral, and they are connected only by one common image"--the bell image at 1.2391 and 5.4640--and a "Latin side note" (333), which Harrison quotes, untranslated and undiscussed, in a footnote. She calls the bell image "arresting because it is the only explicit link" between Gower's two stories (334). His account of Narcissus, Harrison remarks, cautions against "excessive presumptive pride" (333), while the story of Echo is, more expansively, "addressed to men, not women, and it is supportive of woman's claim to monogamous fidelty [sic] in her spouse. The villain of the piece is herself a woman, discovered and punished by another woman who has been duped, and both are hardly positive feminine figures" (335). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Harrison, Ann Tukey. Published Harrison, Ann Tukey. "Echo and Her Medieval Sisters." Centennial Review 26 (1982): 324-40. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Echo and Her Medieval Sisters. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Exploring why Chaucer set both the Clerk's and the Merchant's tales in Lombardy, Hardman uses Gower's "Mirour de l'Omme" 23233-59 to help show that "knowledge of the tyrants of Lombardy" (172) was widespread, and that both Chaucer and Gower in "Confessio Amantis" VII.3118-19 set tyranny in opposition to pity. Hardman also cites Gower's "large-scale attack on financial abuses through the Lombards" (177) in MO 25432ff. and CA II.2100ff., evidence that the "tyrants of Lombardy seem to have had strong imaginative potential" (178) for Gower as well as for Chaucer. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hardman, Phillipa. Published Hardman, Phillipa. "Chaucer's Tyrants of Lombardy." Review of English Studies 31.122 (1980): 172-78. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Confession Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer's Tyrants of Lombardy. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1980 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In her first paragraph, Echard sets out the subsequent course of her argument with characteristic clarity: "This essay considers the development and significance of [Gower's] Latin voice. It focusses first on two short Latin poems, "Est amor in glosa" and "De lucis scrutinio," arguing that in these Gower explores the limits of poetic language in an explicitly Latinate tradition. It next turns to his Latin "Vox Clamantis" and his Middle English "Confessio Amantis," showing that the Latin poem is more likely to turn to the vocative to admonish, condemn, or express outrage, while the English poem is more likely to employ the vocative in moments of pathos. It concludes by considering "Rex celi deus," "O recolende bone," and "In Praise of Peace," poems addressed to King Henry IV, and argues that in them the resources of Latin and English come together to craft a uniquely multilingual, multipositioned speaker who is at once intimate and detached, warm advisor and stern critic, truly suited to function as the voice of England" (291). Among the many insightful observations in this article are these: "Gower's Latin is best understood as acting in constant relation to his vernaculars, because he is, fundamentally, a trilingual poet. His trilingualism makes him all the more aware of the failures of every language, including Latin" (292). Both "Est amor" and "De lucis scrutinio" are "self-consciously concerned with poetic technique . . . deploying repetition and variation with considerable deliberation and flare" (299); but "As in 'Est amor,' it is possible to see ['De lucis''] stance as simultaneously invested in, and uncertain about, the display of poetic skill; in each case, it brings the speaker near to the desired goal but must finally, it seems, be laid aside" (300). Placing "Gower's Latin alongside his English, to show the development of what [she] calls the Gowerian 'voxative,' the voice that, despite Gower's concerns about the limits of poetry, nevertheless seeks to speak in the public arena" (300). "Gower presents himself in Latin as the voice of one crying, and in English as the voice of England" (302), "Address to a king is clearly a particular focal point of vocative structures in the Latin work" (308). While "the sequence in some . . . manuscripts suggests a kind of deliberate, progressive structure of admonition, record, and advice . . . the unpredictability of manuscript culture can undermine even a carefully orchestrated organizational plan" (308). "If 'O' can signal, particularly in Latin, the admonitory voice, then we might wonder if under these 'O's' of praise [in "Rex celi deus"] there is also some warning; that is, Gower also plays with the multiple meanings of words . . . . I am suggesting he is also playing with the multiple meanings/effects/affects of structures" (310). The Trentham manuscript [London, BL MS Additional 59495], while appearing free from Gower's "admonitory voice," does in fact "channel that voice even in a collection that must be understood in the context of patronage and precarious politics, . . . by merging the resources of English and Latin" (311). The evidence for this last statement is to be found in "In Praise of Peace": "Where once Latin tilted towards admonition and outrage, and English towards lament and carefully suggestive exemplarity, the linguistic and formal layering here offers a new voice, a uniquely multilingual, multipositioned speaker who is at once intimate and detached, warm advisor and stern critic" (314). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân. Published Echard, Siân. "How Gower Found His "Vox": Latin and John Gower's Poetics." Journal of Medieval Latin 26 (2016): 291-314. Gower Subject Minor Latin Poetry Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource How Gower Found His "Vox": Latin and John Gower's Poetics. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gowerians need no introduction to G. C, Macaulay's four-volume edition of Gower's works, but most know little about the man who produced it. Edwards remedies this to the extent possible by combining an account of Macaulay's academic and scholarly life with appreciative commentary on the "character and intellect" that his edition reveals and the "motive and method" (248) that underlie it, particularly the two volumes dedicated to the "Confessio Amantis." Edwards expresses justified chagrin that, despite the wide range and importance of Macaulay's accomplishments (detailed by Edwards), his death was "marked by a single obituary" and he "does not appear in either the "Dictionary of National Biography" or the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" (247). Extensive sleuthing enables Edwards to compile a brisk narrative of Macaulay's family, education, teaching, and scholarly activities, all of it punctuated by noteworthy, sometimes surprising, information. Turning to Macaulay's Gower edition, Edwards makes clear that, although Macaulay discovered the unique manuscript of "Mirour de l'Omme," it was editing the CA that was his driving interest. Edwards focuses on the nature and significant challenges of editing the work, commending Macaulay's location and descriptions of manuscripts of CA--his "remarkable feat of enumerative bibliography"--and the importance of his understanding "that a description of a manuscript in an edition serves a different purpose from a catalogue description" (254). Although Macaulay uses the term "recensions" (Edwards clarifies as "broad textual groupings," 255) in categorizing the forty-two CA manuscripts that he identified, some of his remarks seem to presage, Edwards suggests, more recent arguments about the "limitations of recension as an editorial method" (258). Even though his collations are not exhaustive, Macaulay was an accurate transcriber; he was a "conservative editor," but his edition "is not a critical edition as the term is now generally understood" (259). Edwards identifies and helpfully corrects misunderstandings by scholars of Macaulay's claims, while clarifying that the "textual authority" of the edition "has remained largely unchallenged" (260). This section of the essay is uncharacteristically bumpy, perhaps due to a light editorial hand or hasty revision. For example, footnotes 37 and 43 are confused (in reversed ibid order), and Peter Nicholson is referred to five times in three pages (257-59) by first name and surname as if previously unmentioned--reprimanded for misrepresenting Macaulay and then praised as the "most astute of Gower's textual critics" (257) and "one of the most searching of Macaulay's critics" (259). Edwards closes on an upbeat, identifying two positive reviews from 1901 and 1902 of Macaulay's edition, "previously unremarked by Gower scholarship" (260), both by the poet and literary critic Edward Thomas. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, A. S. G. Published Edwards, A. S. G. "George Campbell Macaulay and the Clarendon Edition of Gower." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 247-61. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource George Campbell Macaulay and the Clarendon Edition of Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Kobayashi clarifies the Tudor reception of Gower, arguing that William Thynne included Gower's "In Praise of Peace"--and identified as Gower's--in his edition of Chaucer's "Workes" (1532) at least in part because the poem expressed the humanist ideal of universal peace as "cherished and promulgated by Erasmus and his English friends" (246), a circle that included Thynne's putative collaborator Brian Tuke, Richard Pace, Thomas More, and William Leland. In the two decades preceding Thynne's edition in 1532--the same publication year as Thomas Berthelette's edition of "Confessio Amantis", with its own humanist presentation, as Kobayashi notes--European peace was promoted as a stay against the expansionism of the Ottoman Turks, and Anglo-French peace was as crucial to such efforts in the early sixteenth century as it was when Gower penned PP more than 100 years earlier (for dating, see David Watt's essay in this volume). Kobayashi identifies parallels between the poem and various humanist orations and letters of the time--Erasmus' own letter to Henry VIII celebrating the Treaty of London, "[a]lso known as the Treaty of Universal Peace" (238), and Richard Pace's published oration on the Treaty which shares mirror-for-princes motifs, themes, and imagery with Gower's poem. Letters written by More--who, with Tuke, negotiated a truce between England, France and the Holy Roman Empire "in the late 1520s" (243)--"testify to the powerful influence that the ideal of universal peace," Kobayashi observes, and a "vestige of that humanist ideal can be discerned" as late as Leland's 1546 poem on the Peace of Campe (244). Leland may well have been directly influenced, Kobayashi argues, by Pace's oration, and he certainly admired Gower's poem, as Kobayashi shows. He knew Berthelette, whom he believed to have had a hand in Thynne's edition, a likely possibility, "given the fact that [Berthelette] lent to Godfray [Thynne's publisher] the woodcut border used on the title page" of Thynne's Chaucer (234).We have no direct evidence of why Thynne included Gower's "In Praise of Peace" in Chaucer's "Workes," but Kobayashi makes clear that Gower, as the "author of an English 'laudation pacis'," is "transformed into a humanist 'orator'" (246) when Thynne first prints the poem, seemingly as an expression of the humanist ideal. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kobayashi, Yoshiko. Published Kobayashi, Yoshiko. "In Praise of European Peace: Gower's Verse Epistle in Thynne's 1532 Edition of Chaucer's Workes." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 231-46. Gower Subject In Praise of Peace Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource In Praise of European Peace: Gower's Verse Epistle in Thynne's 1532 Edition of Chaucer's "Workes." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Boffey sets out to situate Thomas Berthelette's 1532 "Confessio Amantis" in the "landscape of authorial promotion" (221) of early English printing, concentrating especially on the paratextual materials of the printing of English poetry. She surveys the "options" available "to an early printer who wanted to foreground an author as a distinctive presence" (222)--title pages, prefatory material, woodcuts--observing, however, that in the "design of books containing the works of English poets . . . these practices were employed somewhat sporadically" (223), especially in cases of "substantial, well-known works" by Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, which printers felt, perhaps, "needed no introduction" because these venerable works "evidently had a reputation of their own in which authorship was somehow rolled up without needing to be explicit" (224). By the 1520s, however, "living" poets "were beginning to be treated rather differently" (224-25), with works by Skelton, for example, being "'branded'" (Boffey's emphasis) "with variations on a generic scholar woodcut," and the names of other writers featuring much more prominently. Analogous "interesting billing" (225) of authorship accompanies early sixteenth-century printings of works by Stephen Hawes, Alexander Barclay, and William Neville, Boffey tells us, as she exemplifies these practices and the "interest in authorship and agency discernible" (in Barclay and Robert Copland), an interest that "appears to have been part of a more general concern with textual matters, a concern evident in Berthelette's prefatory discussion" in his CA (227). Boffey comments on the little-discussed "Castell of Pleasure" by William Neville, printed by both Henry Pepwell (1518) and Wynken de Worde (1530), focusing on the frame to the dream vision in which there is a dialogue between "Thauctour" and "lymprimeur," who is identified in the frame as Robert Copwell--"intermittently a printer himself [who] also translated and edited a number of works for other printers." The dialogue pertains to "the topic of literary composition" (226), as Boffey puts it, and to the need for the author to defend his work as a gentle pastime. These and other detailed analyses enable Boffey to argue that attention to texts and authors in "large-scale testimonials to an interest in English verse" such as Berthelette's CA (and Thynne's "Workes" of Chaucer) is "not new" in 1532 but a development out of the interests of "networks" of "personnel involved in the printing of English works of poetry." Such agents worked together to compete with "continental printings" of vernacular and classical authors (229), and their interests in making English poets available "involved them in considering the changing forms of the language and the different states in which the texts had survived." Further, their "reading and researches brought [the] poets to the fore as authors, to be prominently named, celebrated, and sometimes pictured in printed forms" (220). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Boffey, Julia. Published Boffey, Julia. "English Poets in Print: Advertising Authorship from Caxton to Berthelette." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed BookFas. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 219-30. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Poets in Print: Advertising Authorship from Caxton to Berthe. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gastle's essay offers a close view of the unusual features of one copy of William Caxton's 1483 "Confessio Amantis"--the copy held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Incunabula 532.5. Gastle summarizes the ownership history of the volume, describes its "distinctive features" (203), particularly its binding and readers' marks, and explores it as "a unique window into fifteenth-century politics and culture" (204). The volume is one of "handful" of extant examples of "original Caxton bindings" (203; in 1961, William Wells identified eight; see 203n9), and the materials used to reinforce this binding include four pieces of a papal indulgence which together "constitute almost the entirety" (204) of the indulgence printed by Caxton in 1481. Commissioned by papal nuncio Giovanni dei Gigli, this indulgence survives in only four known copies (all found in bindings), although Caxton printed another indulgence commissioned by Gigli in 1489. Other information about Gigli, especially the fact that the nuncio wrote a Latin epithalamium "in celebration of the engagement of Henry VII to Elizabeth of York" (206), enables Gastle to align, tentatively, the "business relationship between Caxton and Giovanni" with their shared "desire to promote literary history in England" (207). Other binding fragments include "one damaged and worn leaf" (207) on which are found two "mysterious cut-out images" (217) that "seem to have originated in Caxton's shop." The posture and gesture of one figure suggests that it is "lecturing or stating something declaratively," Gastle says, and he posits that "[i]f the figure was meant to represent a character" in the CA, Genius "would be the likely candidate" (209), even though how and why the leaf ended up in the volume's binding is unclear. Gastle treats several signatures--John Crofton, John Kynaston, Thomas Genway (?), and John Leche--found in the volume with cautious speculation, and he discusses judiciously its seven-line quotation of the opening lines of the "The Nutbrown Maid," clarifying the popularity of the early Tudor poem, and editing the lines against the reconstructed version of the poem published by William A Ringler, Jr. The lines are found in the UNC volume in the context of the CA version of the "Tale of Constance," leading Gastle to comment on possible relations between the poem and the Tale, both concerned with female adversity. Finally, Gastle quotes the two lines in Spanish found in the volume, connecting their reference to the port town of Bermeo in the Bay of Biscay with Spanish/English trade before the onset of the Anglo-Spanish War (1585) and with the translations of CA into Portuguese and Spanish. Detailed, and informed, Gastle's essay closes with the hope that "future scholarship may explore the possibilities" (217) raised here. They are rich possibilities, clearly illustrated in a series of five figures. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gastle, Brian W. Published Gastle, Brian W. "A Caxton Confessio: Readers and Users from Westminster to Chapel Hill." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 201-17. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Caxton "Confessio": Readers and Users from Westminster to Chapel Hill. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nafde identifies the features of Oxford, Bodleian MS Hatton 51 that derive from its printed exemplar, William Caxton's 1483 edition of the "Confessio Amantis" (STC 12142), exemplifying the interrelations of manuscript and print production in the late fifteenth century. While it is generally recognized that printers sought to imitate the look of manuscript pages, Nafde shows that the imitation could and did run the other way, at times very precisely. She identifies small errors that are obvious blunders in Caxton but reproduced in Hatton nonetheless, and discusses at greater length larger features such as Caxton's innovative table of contents and his Prologue, both reproduced by the Hatton scribe carefully. The table of contents includes locational folio numbers which necessitated that the scribe imitate Caxton's foliation throughout--an unusual feature in manuscripts. In reproducing Caxton's Prologue, Nafde tells us, the Hatton scribe appropriates one of the printer's "primary marketing techniques" (196)--his first-person claim of originality and uniqueness--which the scribe paradoxically reproduces without clarification, eliding the differences between printer and scribe. Tellingly, the scribe altered very few details of Caxton's presentation--slight adjustments to foliation for accuracy--and these alterations actually make the manuscript seem to "outdo its print exemplar" (194), Nafde asserts, in using features of early print. However, the scribe "also took advantage of the possibilities afforded by manuscript production," when he rubricated and decorated as he went along instead of awaiting post-print "hand-finishing" (198) as Caxton's technology required. In these ways, the Hatton manuscript exemplifies that "scribal practices were not just co-existing with print but being altered by it." The scribe, she tells us, "reproduced the look of the printed page . . . in order to bring the styles and practices of print to his manuscript" (190) in "an amalgamation of manuscript and print practices" . . . . that blurs the distinctions between the two forms of books, [and] tak[es] advantage of the shifting market for books" (200). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nafde, Aditi. Published Nafde, Aditi. "Gower from Print to Manuscript: Copying Caxton in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 51." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 189-200. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower from Print to Manuscript: Copying Caxton in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 51. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020