12 100 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 In his review in JGN 22.1 (2003) of Echard's 2001 essay "Dialogues and Monologues: Manuscript Representations of the Conversation in the Confessio Amantis," Peter Nicholson observed the critic's "long-term study of the effect of MS design and layout upon reading and reception." That long-term study is extended here once again, by Echard's examinations of representations of conversation in William Caxton and Thomas Berthelette's editions as well as those found in various manuscripts, and by her lengthier analysis of how manuscripts and early printed editions of CA represent--or obscure--Gower's "multilingual enterprise" (181), particularly the "unique . . . insistence on the integral role of Latin to his English enterprise" (185) evident in the Latin glosses and commentary of CA. Generally, Echard argues, "features of Gower's oeuvre were often muted, redirected, or lost entirely, when the poet's work encountered the strictures and expectations of early print" (171), attributing these fall-offs to the limited flexibility of early print or to the printer's goals in promoting English. As Echard shows, the bi-lingulism and tri-lingualism of some Gower manuscripts is overt, even emphasized, in a "whole range of ways"--rubrication, placement of glosses, location in compilations, prefaces and colophons, etc.--and "Gower's original audience, immersed in manuscript culture, was primed to navigate these meaningful 'ordinationes'." Limitations in early print technology (single fonts and difficulties in two-color printing, for example) contributed to the "visual-linguistic flattening in Caxton's design" (181), while Berthelette, promoting Gower as an "English" poet, rearranged the opening of CA and, in effect, "diffuses its bilingual claim" (184). The "dialogic design" of CA--the conversational exchange between Amans and Genius--is graphically evident in print layout as well as in the manuscripts, but Caxton's table of contents "serves to frame" the work "as a collection of stories rather than as a dialogue" (186), reshaping its fundamental structure and in doing so muting aspects of Amans' character. Berthelette's table forecasts for the reader "not just . . . a collection of stories" . . . but an . . . encyclopedia," and it "reflects print's more radical reshaping of Gower's end matter" (187), again deemphasizing Gower's multilingualism in favor of English only. Media alter messages, and early print "could not compete with the complexity and beauty of a medieval manuscript page" (188), Echard argues, and she supports her discussion neatly with five reproductions of pages from the manuscripts and books. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân. Published Echard, Siân. "Gower between Manuscript and Print." 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. 169-88. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations 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 Gower between Manuscript and Print. 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 In his monumental edition of Gower's works, G. C. Macaulay argued largely on prosodic grounds that the English lyric, "Passe forþe þou pilgryme"--attributed to Gower by John Shirley in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 59--was not by Gower. In this essay, Connolly challenges the disattribution by affirming the reliability of Shirley's attributions, by critiquing Macaulay's stylistic concerns, and by examining the "environment" (163) in which Macaulay made his decision, specifically discussions of the lyric by German scholars undertaken near the time when Macaulay published his edition. Connolly is expert on Shirley, and she justifiably refers to her own work in maintaining Shirley's reliability. Yet, her other arguments are less powerful, and they do not lead to any conviction--hers or mine--that the poem is by Gower, only that the "question of the authenticity" of the lyric "deserves renewed and urgent attention" (166), which it indeed does. It is a powerful lyric, in the tradition of Chaucer's "Truth" as Connolly points out, and included by Shirley in a compilation of related pieces, otherwise all by John Lydgate, as Connolly also records, commenting "were the poem not so clearly labelled as Gower's" by Shirley, "it could pass for one of Lydgate's" (154). Connolly usefully edits the thirty-five line poem in its entirety, helping to bring it back from the obscurity into which Macaulay's treatment helped to cast it, and she discusses all three manuscript witnesses to its text, along the way confronting and rejecting John Stow's attribution of the lyric to Benedict Burgh in British Library, MS Additional 29729, later than Shirley's by some 100 years. I do not think, however, that the poem is Gower's, nor that Connolly's surmises about "how far Macaulay may have been influenced by . . . German scholars" of the time (164) undermines the editor's opinion about attribution. As for metrical concerns, Connolly claims the "disturbance to regular scansion" (162) in the lyric--regularity being so characteristic of Gower--is due to Shirley's "South West Midlands" dialect conflicting with Gower's East Midlands dialect, but she does not provide enough evidence to help me reject Macaulay's claim, as she records, that "It is almost impossible that these verses can have been written by Gower" (155; Macaulay II, clxxiii). I am grateful to be introduced to "Passe forþe" and, with Connolly, would very much like to know who wrote it. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Connolly, Margaret. Published Connolly, Margaret. "John Shirley and John 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. 153-66. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 John Shirley and 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 The value of Watt's essay for the study of Gower manuscripts lies in its suggestion that the "terminus ad quem" of London, British Library, Additional MS 59495 ("olim" the Trentham MS) should be extended to "at least late 1400 if not 1401" (151) and that much of the entire manuscript (which includes "Cinkante Balades" and several of Gower's Latin lyrics) "offers a meditation on the king's responsibility to address schism and heresy without excessive violence" (150), signaled by the emphasis on pity at the end of "In Praise of Peace" that "primes readers to look for [pity] throughout the rest" of the manuscript (146). Watt's dating of the manuscript relies on his claim that when Gower wrote the final stanza of "In Praise of Peace" he "had Manuel II in mind" (132), referring to Greek Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus who visited the English court in late 1400 to seek support for war against the Ottoman Turks. This plausible, although unprovable, claim depends upon Watt's extension of the MED definition of "mescreantz" (PP 268) to include not only pagans and infidels but also heretics and schismatics, and it leads to Watt's "argument . . . that Gower includes Manuel II"--Greek Orthodox rather than Roman Catholic--"among the 'other princes cristene all'" (PP 380) whom Gower enjoins to "Sette ek the rightful Pope upon his stalle" (PP 383), appealing for, as Watt puts it, an "end to the Great Schism as well as the Western Schism" (137). Watt supports his reading with analysis of the "final exemplum" of "In Praise of Peace," the tale of Emperor Constantine's conversion, an analysis based on Watt's "assumption that readers . . . would likely know the version of Constantine's conversion story that Gower tells" in Book II of "Confessio Amantis" and "chooses not to tell at all" (139) in "In Praise of Peace." Differences between the two versions, Watt tells us, "assert that mercy [pity] and piety are better than a bloodbath . . . . a particularly urgent argument at a time when the emperor [Manuel] himself had come to seek help in the wake of Nicopolis" (140) where crusaders had been routed. Watt contrasts Gower's aversion to crusade in the "Praise of Peace" version of the Constantine tale with the more bellicose views of Philippe de Mézières and those of Adam Usk, two writers Watt uses to clarify the context of Gower's views throughout his essay, which he closes with a survey of the theme of pity in the Trentham manuscript and a brief account of the English payment to Manuel II. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watt, David. Published Watt, David. "'Mescreantz,' Schism, and the Plight of Constantinople: Evidence for Dating and Reading London, British Library, Additional MS 59495." 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. 131-51. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies In Praise of Peace Cinkante Ballade Minor Latin Poetry 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 "Mescreantz,'"Schism, and the Plight of Constantinople: Evidence for Dating and Reading London, British Library, Additional MS 59495. 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 In this essay Pérez-Fernández assesses examples of variation in the paratextual materials of the manuscripts of the Portuguese and Castilian translations of Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Madrid, Real Biblioteca MS II-3088 and Madrid, Biblioteca del Escorial g-II-19. She focuses on the translations of the Latin summaries (generally thought to have been written by Gower) that preface the narratives of CA and on the table of content written in Castilian but found in each Iberian manuscript. Pérez-Fernández discusses details of these materials, contributing to what is already known about their transmission, and offering perspective on their cultural contexts. Some variations, she shows, "can be understood as a desire to cater to the concerns of the new Iberian audience" (119-20)--mention of Spain, for example, not found in the Latin original, or specific emphasis on the "wisdom" ("sabedoria") of Alphonse X, "commonly known as Alphonse the Wise" (120). Conversely, when the table of contents in MS Real Biblioteca omits reference to the wisdom of Alphonse, Pérez-Fernández surmises, it may reflect the "complicated relationship between the Trastamara rulers and Alphonse's legitimate and illegitimate heirs" (121). Other details invite "us to reconsider the relation of the Portuguese and the Castilian manuscripts both from a textual and a translatological point of view" (125): the tabulator's sensitivity to capital letters and spaces, for example, shows that he "used the Portuguese text itself to create the new entries where there was no summary available," an act of "conscientious labor of adaptation and improvement" (126). Details drawn from "external sources"--e.g., Tristan's origins in "leonjs" (Leonis) and Isolde's "brunda" (blonde) hair--indicate familiarity with the "Castilian version of the story, and not with the Castilian-Aragonese" and "help us draw a more defined portrait of the scribes and translators." Pérez-Fernández tallies, she tells us, "some of the most notable examples of deviations in the paratexts of the Iberian manuscripts" of CA in order to "reveal the processes of textual transmission and reception" of the work (129). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pérez-Fernández, Tamara. Published Pérez-Fernández, Tamara. "Paratextual Deviations: The Transmission and Translation of Gower's Confessio Amantis in the Iberian Peninsula." 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. 113-30. 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 Paratextual Deviations: The Transmission and Translation of Gower's "Confessio Amantis" in the Iberian Peninsula. 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 Gerber describes her undertaking as follows: "This essay proposes that, in the process of using geographical locations to ground his narratives, Gower appropriates a skeptical tradition dating back to antiquity while also contributing a new sense of mythological meaning. As a result, Gower's comparatively limited interest in physical geography yields a relatively sophisticated interest in textual geography, resulting in exegetical approaches that generate multivalent readings of the historical events depicted within the 'Confessio' and the 'Vox Clamantis'" (90). Central to this undertaking is Gerber's discussion of the four Gower-as-archer-shooting-at-the-world illustrations that illuminate manuscripts of VC; she focuses specifically on the depicted worlds as versions of the "mappaemundi" that combine five-climate-zone and T-O (or "orbis terrarium") designs in different ways. The depictions are beautifully reproduced. Gerber analyzes details of three of the four orbs (the fourth is a near duplicate), arguing that their differences "illustrate the fluidity of geographical topics in the Middle Ages" and, in something of a leap, asserting that "the image of the terrestrial target introduces . . . the treatment of malleable geo-historical subjects" in VC (106). Earlier in the essay, Gerber cites Gower's reference to "Mappemounde" in CA 7.530 and argues that "Gower's uses of geographical references when constructing the historical narratives [in CA] indicates some awareness of the euhemeristic approach" to mythology, as when he attributes the "deified qualities" (94) of wind-god Aeolus to the fact his home island of Sicily is windy (CA 5.967-80), or when he presents Pluto as having a childhood and swearing by the rivers of hell in CA 5.1108-10--examples of how Gower follows euhemerists "to interpret ancient texts as literal ones" (93). Geography often figures in euhemeristic literalizations of myths as history, Gerber argues, and this "geo-historical exegetics" (91; quotation marks in original) is the common thread in her discussions of passages from CA, the archer illustrations, and passages from the VC. Gerber's essay is ambitious, introducing a new heuristic for Gower's geographical references and arguing that a skeptical yet flexible exegetical imagination underlies this heuristic. Yet this very capaciousness leads to some fuzziness--a key concept in her statement of goals above, "textual geography" [90], is never defined--, some conceptual leaps haunt her dense prose, and some avoidable errors lurk. For example, "vertical" should be "horizontal" twice in the discussion of the Laud "mappa mundi," where, also, it is air, not water, above the terrestrial building that, Gerber asserts tendentiously, "likely represents the Tower of London" (105). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gerber, Amanda J. Published Gerber, Amanda J. "Earthly Gower: Transforming Geographical Texts and Images in the Confessio Amantis and Vox Clamantis Manuscripts." 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. 89-112. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Vox Clamantis 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 Earthly Gower: Transforming Geographical Texts and Images in the "Confessio Amantis" and "Vox Clamantis" Manuscripts 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 Taylor argues that Gower's "The Tale of the Two Coffers" (CA 5.2273-2390) engages at least two concerns that underlie much of the "Confessio Amantis" and possibly underlie its revision: ethical choice and the relation of outward signs to inner reality--what Taylor calls "referential integrity" (78). She contrasts the tale with analogous accounts in Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" and Boccaccio's "Decameron" to show that Gower's stark plot poses "a nonsensical parody of ethical choice" (78) and that its two externally identical casks with differing contents present the "hapless courtiers" (80) with a pair of signs that are impossible to distinguish rationally. Mention of fortune in Gower's account and the "shadowy evocation of grace" (78) help to raise questions about the king's test as well as the courtiers' choice, and enable Taylor to align details of the tale with Wycliffite arguments about the apprehension of truth, material possession, and their relations with secular dominium, or lordship. She suggests that "the work of the tale is to figure out how Gower's understanding of kingly authority and just rule differs from the emergent [and politically dangerous] Wycliffite discourse of dominium" (84) in which only "unknowable grace" (85) makes it possible to recognize and thereby choose to follow true dominium. Further, the "tense equipoise of sympathy and critique--toward both courtiers and king--registers an uneasiness with partisanship of any kind, especially when it comes to claims of grace-based right to rule" (85-86). The tale, Taylor tells us, "pointedly implicates Richard" (86) and is concerned with issues that "later became the backbone of the case against Richard's tyranny," even though the terms the tale "uses to explore them are almost pointedly non-partisan" (87). Nevertheless, the "discomfort" the tale "registers with the exercise of dominion" enables Taylor to posit an innovative "explanation of the Henrician revisions" to the CA: "the possibility that the revised recension ending [of CA] articulates not so much a vision of ideal dominium as an uneasy "ex post facto" philosophical justification of Gower's shift in allegiance" from Richard to Henry (87-88). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Taylor, Karla. Published Taylor, Karla. "What Lies Beneath." 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. 71-88. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 What Lies Beneath. 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 Epstein opens his essay by pointing out that Gowerians have widely accepted that changes made between the first and third recensions of CA (a putative second recension being discredited) reflect changes in Gower's view of royal authority from absolutist (Ricardian) to constitutionalist (Lancastrian). He questions neither the recensions nor their sequencing, but argues that their differences "might best be understood not as the conflict between absolutism and constitutionalism, but rather as the tension between 'divine' and 'sacred' [elsewhere 'sacral'] kingship" (61), a distinction he derives from the combined studies of anthropologists Marshall Sahlins and David Graeber, "On Kings" (2017). Sacral kingship, according to Sahlins and Graeber in Epstein's summation, is "the original principle of kingship in all societies," characterized by an understanding of the king as "meta-human" rather than "god-like," distinguished by the "key-concept" of the "stranger-king" (59), and sacralized through ritual in order to maintain the king's separateness from his people while "containing the power of the king." Further, the sovereignty of the king and the sovereignty of the people "share an ontogeny" (60) producing an ongoing tension, sometimes manifest in carnivalesque versions of regicide. After explaining Sahlins and Graeber's theory of kingship as an "anthropological phenomenon" (58) in this way, Epstein applies it to portions of CA, reading the exempla of Book 7, for example, as concerned with the limiting of kingship: "not about the power of the king but rather about the containment of the latent claims of divine kingship" (64), and, to take another example, observing that Henry, even in the third recension (Prologue and end of Book 8), is "not . . . a prospective king," but a figure of "divinely ordained knighthood that can restrict the power of the king" (67). When Richard is "banished from the third recension," as Epstein puts it, he is replaced not by Henry, but by an "'Engelond' that emerges in the imaginative absence of Richard II"--a "corporate resistance to royal authority, sacral in reaction to claims of divinity, emerging as sovereign statehood" (68), and, just possibly, a "modern moment--the supplanting of a sacral king by the state apparatus originally invented to contain him" (70). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Epstein, Robert. Published Epstein, Robert. "A State above All Other: The Recensions of Confessio Amantis and the Anthropology of Sovereignty." 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. 55-70. 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 State above All Other: The Recensions of "Confessio Amantis" and the Anthropology of Sovereignty. 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 Batkie locates "moral Gower" in the version of the poet's verse chronicle "Cronica Tripertita" found in MS Hatton 92, rather than (or in addition to) in Chaucer's reference in "Troilus and Criseyde" 5.1856. The only extant manuscript version of CrT found unattached to the "Vox Clamantis," the Hatton CrT is accompanied "compilationally" by various kinds of moral materials--axioms, proverbs, fables, parables, exempla, etc.--and Gower's poem is presented in a way that it "resonates with the strongly exemplaric and moralizing agenda of the collection as a whole" (36). Marginal references to Gower and to the VC near the opening of the Hatton CrT--marginalia added to the text in a sixteenth-century hand as Batkie observes--are occasion to explore the exemplarity of CrT for readers aware of the absent-but-present VC. Batkie then concentrates on the prologues and openings of the Hatton CrT and the CrT found in All Souls 98 (Macaulay's base text), showing that Hatton "re-ordered pieces of the opening of the text" (48) in ways that "favors exemplarity over chronicle" (49), in effect, emphasizing a moral Gower rather than a political one, even when the VC is not present. Her arguments are complicated, involving attention to several instances of "ghostly" (37) absent presence, to temporal slipperiness, and to negotiations "between the permanent and the ephemeral, between what remains behind and what disappears in time" (43). Such concerns, she maintains, define "the parameters by which Gower understands his chronicle form" (44), casting "history as exemplarity," a "relationship" which the "scribes and readers of MS Hatton 92 take . . . to heart and capitalize on" (45), bringing the CrT "in line with the other texts of the manuscript," perhaps compelling similar readings of the other, shorter Latin poems by Gower in the manuscript, and perhaps "preempt[ing] some readings of Gower's work even as it opens up others" (52). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Batkie, Stephanie L/ Published Batkie, Stephanie L. "Looking for Richard: Finding "Moral Gower" in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 92." 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. 33-53. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Cronica Tripertita Vox Clamantis Minor Latin Poetry 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 Looking for Richard: Finding "Moral Gower" in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 92. 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 Scase takes on a fundamental question of Gower textual scholarship: why is the text of "Confessio Amantis" in some important manuscripts of such high quality, unusually consistent in grammar and orthography at a time when scribal dialects so often affected copying? Why didn't meddlesome scribes "meddle" (16) with the text of CA as they did with other texts? Traditional explanations reply that Gower must have somehow supervised the scribes directly, perhaps through a particular scriptorium or network. Scase's innovative explanation is meter: Gower's extraordinarily regular metrical verse "'depends' upon variant forms" (20; original emphasis), an unusual variety of linguistic forms--orthographical, morphological, and dialectical--and in order to maintain that meter, scribes had to reproduce the linguistic forms carefully, copying, in effect, "litteratim" or letter by letter, because meter demanded it. Verse less metrically regular than Gower's allowed for greater meddling, although rhymed verse tellingly, Scase observes, had long encouraged scribes to reproduce unfamiliar dialect forms to maintain rhyme pairs; similarly, perhaps by extension, she argues, Gower's scribes reproduced his orthography, morphology, and dialect to reproduce his meter with considerable success. By way of demonstration, Scase examines a sample passage (CA 1.203-34) from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 3, showing how closely metrical regularity depends upon varied uses of final --"e," other inflectional endings, infinitive forms, elisions, optional nasals, etc., and effectively "'required' intensive literatim reproduction" (22; original emphasis). She comments further on how and where Fairfax corrections in the text reflect sensitivity to meter, and then analyzes the sample passage in three more CA manuscripts (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Bodley 902, 294, and 693), adding nuance to her argument about meter, linguistic variety, and careful copying, and generalizing, for example, that Bodley 902 and 294 "comprise literatim output when it is important for meter, but not when it is unnecessary" (24) while Bodley 693 and Fairfax 3 share this "general aim and practice" but differ in "details of implementation and in the degree of skill they displayed in doing so" (24-25). Scase analyzes other passages from CA that were copied by the "five Trinity Gower scribes" in Trinity College, MS R.3.2 (Scribes A, B, C, D, and E, labeled by A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes), further evincing the relations between meter and Gowerian linguistic forms. She opens her arguments out to broader application by noting attention to meter in manuscripts of non-Gowerian, less regular metrical poetry copied by these scribes, especially Scribes D and E. In this way, Scase suggests that a "dynamic process" was underway, undertaken by a group of perhaps "networked" scribes, probably based in London, engaged in "trying to improve their outputs" (31). Sensitivity to rhyme led scribes to imitate dialectical forms in the rhyme-pairs; then, sensitivity to strict meter led to dialectical forms elsewhere in the verse lines, and accurate copying was set on course. The opening and closing notes in Scase's essay indicate that the essay is part of a larger project on interconnected developments of verse and copying in late-medieval England, and she here gives Gower an important place in these developments. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Scase, Wendy. Published Scase, Wendy. "John Gower's Scribes and Literatim Copying." 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. 13-31. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual 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 John Gower's Scribes and Literatim Copying. 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 volume is comprised of fourteen essays selected by the editors from the papers presented at the joint meeting held at Durham University, 2017, of the Fifteenth Biennial Conference of the Early Book Society and the IV International Congress of the John Gower Society. Each essay is a revised and expanded version of the "briefer, orally delivered" version, transformed into a "print-worthy" chapter of "value and distinction" (2), and summarized by the editors. Together, the editors tell us in their Introduction (1-10), the essays "showcase fertile diversity," offer substantially new research, and promise to stimulate "further collaborative study" by "scholars of Gower's poetry and book history" (10). Several of the essays are, as the editors put it, "granular examinations" (8): Batkie and Nafde both focus on a single manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 92); Watt, on British Library, Additional MS 39495; and Gastle, on a single copy of a print edition (the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill copy of Caxton's "Confessio Amantis"). Others target wider concerns: Scase shows how Gower's regular meter can be seen to account for the consistency of scribal presentation of his English language. Boffey explores the idea of authorship in early printings of Gower and their paratexts, and Kobayashi addresses Tudor humanism as a feature of Gower's reception. Gerber, Pérez-Fernandez, and Echard also attend to paratextual matters--what they show and what they can tell us. Epstein and Taylor consider the thematic-political issue of sovereignty or lordship and its implications for the dating of Gower's poetry and his revisions. Connolly challenges Macaulay's excision of an excellent lyric from Gower's corpus, and Edwards shows that Macaulay's edition monumentalized the poet, but not the editor. The volume includes a substantial bibliography of primary and secondary sources (pp. 263-88) and a comprehensive index (pp. 289-303). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Driver, Martha, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Published Driver, Martha, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. xvii, 303 pp.; 19 illus. ISBN 9781843843539. Gower Subject BackgroundS and General Criticism Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. 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 Published Dauphant, Clotilde. "Frontières d'un genre aux frontières d'une langue: ballades typiques et atypiques d'Eustache Deschamps, John Gower et Geoffrey Chaucer. In Le Rayonnement de la cour des premiers Valois à époque d'Eustache Deschamps. Ed. Miren Lacassagne. Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2017. Pp. 81-94. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amantz Marietz Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Author/Editor Author/Editor Dauphant, Clotilde. Review Each of the defining features of the ballade--the number of stanzas, the use of the refrain, the presence of an envoy, the patterns of rhyme--was in fact subject to variation, Dauphant points out. Deschamps, in his "Art de dictier," helped fix the form as it was practiced towards the end of the 14th century, while also, there and in his own practice, encouraging the new breadth of subject matter and the development of a "style personnel" by taking advantage of the "élasticité" of the form (82). Gower figures prominently among her examples. His "Cinkante Balades" are notable first of all for their "pauvreté formelle" (85), all in decasyllables, with only two stanza forms, one of seven lines, one of eight. She finds further evidence of conscious formal planning in the choice to include exactly 50 ballades (not counting the ninth, which is instead a five-stanza "chanson royale," or the final unnumbered poem) and in a pattern of 5's and 3's that is based, however, on Dauphant's misapprehension that the two "dedicatory ballades" that precede the collection are also five-stanza "chanson royales" (85-86) (one has three stanzas, the other four). One "irrégularité" that she finds "involontaire," and by that she means unconscious on Gower's part, has to do with his lack of concern for the difference between masculine and feminine rhymes, rhyming "Pantasilée" with "couché," for instance, and having an unusually large number of ballades with exclusively masculine rhymes, contrary to Deschamps' advice and to the preference of most other poets to mix masculine and feminine rhymes in the same stanza. Other "irregularities" in both Gower and Chaucer she attributes to a "choix esthétique réflechi," a deliberate aesthetic choice (87). Ballades 13, 14, 16, and 17, for instance, all lack a refrain. By grouping them together, they create a counter-pattern that has the effect of drawing greater attention to the refrain of 15, which in context stands out as the exception. And unlike 15, these four are all concerned with the narrator's suffering in love. The absence of a refrain may itself be expressive of that which he lacks. Beginning with Deschamps, there was also considerable variation in the use of the envoy, some of which Dauphant describes, including Chaucer in her discussion, but her only comment on Gower, apart from the fact that he uses the envoy on all but one of his ballades, is that his choice of rhymes--"bcbc"--echoes the last four lines of his 8-line stanza but not of the 7-line stanza, which ends in a couplet. But she does suggest that Gower is inspired by the envoy's function to attach a final stanza--an "envoy" to the collection as a whole at the conclusion of both the CB and his "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz." [PN. 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 Frontières d'un genre aux frontières d'une langue: ballades typiques et atypiques d'Eustache Deschamps, John Gower et Geoffrey Chaucer. 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 It is generally known that the "Visio" of the "Vox Clamantis" and the "Cronica Tripertita" were combined with an earlier shorter version of VC, and Carlson makes the case in this essay that an early, independent version of the "Epistola ad Regem" was also added and currently comprises "the imposed chapters 8-18 of the received book 6" of VC (VI.581-1200), described by Carlson as "some remnant (at least) of a once separate piece of writing--a coherent 'speculum principis' cast in epistolary form." The suggestion that an early "Epistola" was added to an early VC is not a new one; it was broached, though inconclusively, by John Fisher, for example, as Carlson reports. Yet, Carlson offers strong supporting arguments for the case while reviewing the structure and rhetoric of the passage as internal evidence for the claim, exploring the "quasi-internal evidence of the transmitted prose headings" (295) that clarify a self-standing structure (295). He also offers as a kind of external evidence John Bale's lists of Gowerian works found in his manuscript notebook "Index Britanniae Scriptorum" and his "Scriptorum Illustrium Catalogus," where, as Carlson puts it, "Bale sometimes reports having seen writings and kinds of manuscripts of Gower that do not now survive" (298). Bale reports in his "Catalogus," for example, the incipit line from a work he lists as "De eodem de Herico," a line which Carlson locates both in the "Epistola" of VC and in an independent 56-line poem by Gower, leading Carlson to compare closely the two versions and show, among other things, that the "Epistola" "embedded" in the VC "underwent revision, at some point or some several points, to better fit" into the larger poem (304). A second example, Bale's quotation of the incipit to what he labels Gower's "De regimine principum"--"O deus immense, sub quo dominator"--is a near match with that of an independent Gowerian poem of 104 lines. No version of this incipit, Carlson makes clear, is found in either the "Epistola" or the VC at large, but he also makes clear that there is a relation between a prose heading that accompanies the independent poem in one manuscript and several features of VC, raising the possibility that an early version of the "Epistola" can be "supposed to have begun with a prayer--something like the surviving 'O deus immense'" (306). Tracing another of Bale's incipit lines from Gower to its source in Peter Riga's "Aurora," Carlson locates the line in the "Epistola" section of VC and, again through close comparison, shows that Gower reworked Riga's original to a new purpose, for which "Bale's evidence" indicates circulation "as a separate poem" (309). Carlson characterizes the reworking he describes as a "standard, school-boyish exercise in Latin verse composition" (308), evidence in support of a general hypothesis that when such "scholastic exercises" are found in the VC they may be regarded as "the remains of originally independent shorter poems" (309). Carlson considers it a "plausible supposition" that Gower produced such "adaptations earlier rather than later in his career as a Latin poet" and proceeds to offer further plausible "supporting evidence" (310) by comparing Bale's listings, Riga's "Aurora," and related material--again from the "Epistola" section of VC. The material in this section eulogizes Edward, the Black Prince, in ways that Carlson finds similar to a eulogy for Edward III ("Epitaphium Edwardi tertii," 1377) and that, he claims carefully, "may be an embedded fragment of a once independent eulogy of the Black Prince, written at the time of his death" (312) in 1376. He offers a version of what this independent eulogy might have looked like, reconstructed from lines in the "Epistola" that praise the Black Prince and that echo the language and imagery of praise in the "Aurora," albeit largely reordered. We are not encouraged to accept Carlson's reconstruction as a new piece of Gower's Latin verse, but to accept it as a model of how Gower may have adapted an early Latin poem in the making of the "Epistola," itself revised when incorporated into the VC. And this is what Carlson ultimately offers: an approximate chronology and sequenced reconstruction of Gower's habits as a Latin poet--first, school-boyish exercises that adapt traditional material; next, modification of these exercises into what (following Fisher) Carlson calls "laureate" (317), occasional poems; and finally, further adaptation of these poems for incorporation into the capacious project of the VC. In the final section of this intricate argument (314-17), Carlson sets his hypotheses against social practices and political events of Gower's lifetime to offer a provisional history of Gower's habits with his Latin poetry. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R. Published Carlson, David R. "Gower's Early Latin Poetry: Text-Genetic Hypotheses of an Epistola ad Regem (ca. 1377-1380) from the Evidence of John Bale." Mediaeval Studies 65 (2003): 293-317. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Minor Latin Poetry 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 Gower's Early Latin Poetry: Text-Genetic Hypotheses of an "Epistola ad Regem "(ca. 1377-1380) from the Evidence of John Bale. 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 Caie is primarily concerned with Chaucer, although he briefly treats several other writers as well (Langland, Marie de France, Boccaccio, e.g.) by way of describing how access to manuscripts, with marginalia, better replicates the medieval reading experience than modern editions. He follows Minnis in distinguishing the notion of "auctor" from "compilator," finding Chaucer more of the former and Gower the latter. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Caie, Graham. Published Caie, Graham. "New Corn from Old Fields": The "Auctor" and "Compilator" in Fourteenth-Century English Literature. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 47 (2003): 59-71. 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 "New Corn from Old Fields": The "Auctor" and "Compilator" in Fourteenth-Century English Literature. 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 Byrd describes four instances in early English literature where the phrase "blanche fever," or a variant, occurs--Gower's CA VI.39, Chaucer's TC 1.916; "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale "41, and William Caxton's translation of Raoul le Févre, "The History of Jason." Setting out to explore the "importance of blanche fever and its relation to courtly love" (57), Byrd does not distinguish blanche fever ("fevers whyte" in "Cuckoo") from other forms or stages of love sickness, and he tallies familiar symptoms of chills (sometimes alternating with high temperatures), sleeplessness, thirst, loss of reason, and growing pale. He mentions that the English phrase derives from French usage (pp. 57 and 63), and aligns blanche fever with another term associated with love-sickness--"access" or "accesse"--observing that the two have "the same symptoms," that they "are obviously related," and that "poets used the two terms interchangeably to refer to love-sickness in the courtly love system" (62). He also equates blanche fever with "the grene sekeness" without discussing the latter phrase, treating them as a single disease which "like any sickness . . . has definite symptoms" (64), once again leaving blanche fever indistinct. Byrd does observe that "Gower's thirstiness," which characterizes blanche fever in CA VI.236-43, is "caused by Love-Drunkenness, a vice which belongs to Gluttony" (59), the topic of Book VI. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Byrd, David G. Published Byrd, David G. "Blanche Fever: The Grene Sekeness." Ball State University Forum 19.3 (1978): 56-64. Gower Subject 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 Blanche Fever: The Grene Sekeness. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 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 Bullón-Fernández asserts that the MO explores gender, sex, and language leading to deeper implications than critics have thus far realized. She argues, "Gower develops an authorial voice and a poetics that in its embrace of male and female can be identified as queer." Bullón-Fernández first points us to an early passage in the poem (lines 1021-32) to show us Gower's invocation of the figure of the hermaphrodite, making "intersexuality more than a trope." The intersexual nature of the sins, Bullón-Fernández adds, presents a category crisis that further reflects on Gower's authorial persona, his poem, and his poetics. Gower uses queer language in his confession, acknowledging previous poetry that was "gender ambiguous or queer." Bullón-Fernández calls this an "authorial self-disciplining process," but she is careful to distinguish this as distancing rather than rejection. That is, when Gower "re-invents" himself, he still relies on "queer associations and queer ambiguities." To demonstrate this argument, Bullón-Fernández focuses on queer "indeterminaciones" in the poem--both language and gender--through a close reading of the depiction of Satan and the temptation of Eve, which illuminates the intersexual sins. These queer indeterminacies then provoke queer desires, claims Bullón-Fernández, specifically in the figure of Wantonness. She adds that the sins' associations with gender ambiguity are in addition to language and deception, which in turn links all three. Bullón-Fernández then suggests that the figure of Wantoness "introduces the specter of sodomy." Finally, Bullón-Fernández addresses Gower's confession at the end of MO and how his poetic approach to the Life of the Virgin Mary "suggests that he does not ultimately renounce [queer courtly language and practices associated with it] but reorients them, developing a different kind of queer poetics." She sees two types of fear expressed in his confession: gender anxiety and sodomy anxiety. Then, in the "Life of the Virgin Mary," Bullón-Fernández demonstrates how Gower queers divine figures, concluding that he strives to unify male and female. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María. Published Bullón-Fernández, María. Gower's Queer Poetics in the "Mirour de l'Omme." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 6 (2020): n.p. 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 Gower's Queer Poetics in the "Mirour de l'Omme." 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 Beginning with the relations (and differences) between chronological time and verb tense, Bauer's "tudien" categorizes the general deployment of the latter in the works of Chaucer and Gower. The approach is thoroughly structural (rather than even generative) and focuses on fundamental oppositions: the present tense as opposed to the preterit and both as opposed to the perfect. For Gower, Bauer draws on the CA--which is as much to say as he does not comparatively analyze the poet's Latin and French syntax. The Chaucer examples largely come from the CT, TC, "Legend of Good Women," and "Book of the Duchess." Bauer's focus is very localized--generally at the clause level, rarely at the sentence level, and never at the level of an utterance or narrative. While "Studien" make occasional nods to English syntactic history, Chaucer's and Gower's usages are very much treated in isolation, with no claims for larger significances in English language history or syntactic study. In this way, Bauer demonstrates the flexibility of tense usage by Chaucer and Gower, both of whom are fond of the "historical present." He equally shows the syntactic (and hence semantic) significance of a variety of common conjunctions: "er," "whilom," "since," "tofore," etc. As a structuralist, Bauer sees tense usage above all as expressing a point of reference: when, temporally, can one action be situated in relation to another? If an action is narrated in the preterit, then, a prior action will occur in the perfect. In this, of course, Chaucer's and Gower's language--Middle English in general--is much the same as Present Day English, with the very significant exception that usage studies of the latter are more capacious in the kinds of data they use. The point-of-reference distinctions may hold with English creoles or non-standard varieties, for example, but the lexis and syntax used to express them differs considerably from those of Standard English. [TWM. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bauer, Gero. Published Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1970. Gower Subject 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 Studien zum System und Gebrauch der "Tempora" in der Sprache Chaucers und Gowers. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970 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 study examines four scenes of monarchic instruction in late-fourteenth-century England in light of the "mirror for princes" tradition. It suggests that these texts reflect a political climate in Ricardian England that simultaneously promoted the ethic of the necessity of advising the king while sometimes punishing voices of political dissent. Ricardian writers negotiated this tension by employing techniques of representation, structure, and camouflage that would allow them to articulate advice in a politically safe manner. Chapter 1 examines the Prologue to the B-text of William Langland's 'Piers Plowman,' whose scene of monarchic instruction serves as a formal paradigm for the test of this study. Here, Langland articulates a vision of limited monarchy in a scene that camouflages the instruction to the Visio King by placing in the mouths of three seemingly contrary interlocutors, a lunatic, an angel, and a goliard. The chapter argues that this trio of speeches is actually unified and shows how Langland represents the King as a student who knows to accept wise counsel. Chapter 2 explores similar scenes in Book 7 of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' It shows how Gower creates a series of layers that separates the poet from the political speech voiced by his characters. Using two biblical scenes of instruction, Gower rewrites the narratives of Ahab and Rehoboam to illustrate (negatively) the importance of wise counsel. Chapter 3 finds a similar dynamic at work in the final section of the seemingly apolitical 'Cleanness.' It argues that the 'Cleanness'-poet was fully aware of the political valance of the stories of Zedekiah, Nebuchadnezzar, and Belshazzar and suggests that two discourses, the political and the homiletic, are at work here. The poet's rewriting of these stories, which includes subtle references to medieval England, allows them to be read as positive and negative examples of royal counseling. Chapter 4 examines the dynamic of advice-giving from the royal perspective. It argues that Richard II designed his tomb in Westminster Abbey as a political monument that responds to concerns voiced by contemporary literary texts and itself attempts to function as a political mirror. A close reading of the epitaph shows how that text participates in the genre of 'Fürstenspiegel'." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stallcup, Stephen Burr. Published Stallcup, Stephen Burr. "Counseling the King: Scenes of Monarchic Instruction in the Age of Richard II." Ph.D. Diss. Princeton University 2000. DAI 61(1): 172-73. 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 Counseling the King: Scenes of Monarchic Instruction in the Age of Richard II. 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 "In this study, 'satire' is not used in any modern sense, but in the classical and mediaeval sense: satire is a specific body of poetry founded in ancient Rome and developed in Western Christendom during the Middle Ages. Indeed, much recent scholarship on Roman satire has rightly taken pains to distinguish between the formal satire of the Roman poets Lucilius, Horace, Persius, and Juvenal on the one hand, and, on the other hand, that variety of post-Renaissance literature named 'satire' for want of a more appropriate literary category. That distinction is preserved here, for it is an objective of this study to investigate, without reference to twentieth-century literary prejudices, the nature of satire in the Middle Ages. There is a fundamental justification for this approach. We are familiar with the boundaries and conventions of classical, renaissance, and modern literary genres thanks to the assiduity of generations of scholars; but little corresponding work has been undertaken on mediaeval literary genres. Once it is known what mediaeval scholars and writers understood by the noun 'satura' ('satire,' sometimes spelt 'satira' or 'satyra') and the adjective 'satiricus' ('satirical;' used as a substantive to mean 'satirist'), it will be possible to identify mediaeval satirical works. Once sufficient mediaeval satires have been identified, it will be possible to form an estimate of the mediaeval satirical tradition. None of this can be achieved by applying modern generic definitions to mediaeval literature. My purpose in the following pages is threefold. First, by investigating the way in which the classical satires of Horace, Persius, and Juvenal were studied in the schools during the Middle Ages, I hope to reconstruct the mediaeval definition of satire. Second, I propose to identify and classify works which, by reference to prevailing contemporary critical theory, can be shown to be the true mediaeval successors to Roman satire. Third, I intend to apply the findings to the works of three major English poets writing in the second half of the fourteenth century: Gower, Langland, and Chaucer." (Abstract shortened by UMI.) [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Miller, Paul Scott. Published Miller, Paul Scott. "The Mediaeval Literary Theory of Satire and Its Relevance to the Works of Gower, Langland, and Chaucer." Ph.D. Diss. Queen's University, Belfast 1982. DAI 51(4): 1222A. 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 The Mediaeval Literary Theory of Satire and Its Relevance to the Works of Gower, Langland, and Chaucer. 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 "The exemplum is the basic unit of the 'Confessio Amantis,' since each of Gower's tales in the poem is presented as a moral story, but in order to understand the role of the exemplum in the work it is necessary to know the history of the form and its varied uses. For that reason, this study of the 'Confessio Amantis' traces the development of the exemplum from classical literature to Gower's time and proceeds to an analysis of certain major tales in the 'Confessio Amantis' to show that Gower often used rhetorical figures in adapting his exempla from original sources. An important result of the rhetorical analysis of certain tales is the discovery that, in writing his exempla, Gower utilized rhetorical figures to enhance the morality of the tale, i.e., to make good and evil more obvious in each exemplum. There is, however, a wider significance to the exemplum in the 'Confessio Amantis,' and that significance is found by comparing Gower's collection of exempla with three other collections: the exempla gathered by Jacques de Vitry, the collection of moral tales by Etienne de Bourbon, and the 'Speculum Morale' by Vincent of Beauvais. Each of these collections contains numerous exempla which are, with the exception of Jacques' tales, subsumed under various divisions of the seven deadly sins. A comparison of Gower's poem with the three Latin collections shows that Gower arranged the subdivisions of each of the main sins in a much more imaginative way than the French monks did, and an analysis of the two main parts of the 'Confessio Amantis,' Books I-IV and V-VIII, shows how the structure of Gower's work differs from the three other works mentioned as well as differing from Robert Mannyng's 'Handlyng Synne,' whose exempla are also abstracted in this study. Thus, by approaching Gower as an exemplarist and by comparing him with other exemplarists, some of the genuine significance and artistry of the 'Confessio Amantis' becomes evident, just as it also becomes evident that John Gower was a far more clever and talented poet than centuries of misreading have allowed him to be." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor McNally, Joseph Augustine. Published McNally, Joseph Augustine. "The Exemplum in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Ph.D. Diss. University of South Carolina 1982. DAI 43(4): 1154A. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis 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 The Exemplum in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." 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 "A comparison of the Chaucer-Gower analogues in the light of their sources and analogues reveals differences between the poets' stances toward 'auctoritee' in matters of moral reasoning, epistemology, and poetics. Gower's preoccupation with social ills, expressed in his Prologue to the 'Confessio Amantis,' influences his reshaping of his sources. He uses the stories of Thisbe, Dido, Lucrece, Philomela, Ariadne, Medea, and Phyllis as exempla of the seven deadly sins intended to serve as remedies for the lovesick Amans and, implicitly, for a sick society. In Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women' these stories are exempla of saints of love betrayed by men. Because the exemplum as a form frustrates Chaucer's expressed concern with truth, he tells these stories with ambiguity, humor, and irony. While Gower continued to use the exemplum, Chaucer turned to the 'Canterbury Tales' which freed him from presenting a predetermined moral from a single narrative point of view. Gower's version of the "loathly lady" story, the 'Tale of Florent,' is narrated by Genius, merely a persona for Gower himself, and serves as an example of obedience in love, emphasizing the knight's exemplary 'trowthe.' Chaucer tailors the story to fit the Wife of Bath so as to make the tale Alice's wish fulfillment, a burlesque of courtly romance conventions, and a satire of the tricky rhetoric of manipulative preaching. Gower tells the 'Tale of Appius and Virginia' as an exemplum of how a ruler should practice chastity. Following tradition, his version implies that death is better than loss of chastity, even if it means a father killing his own daughter. In Chaucer's 'Physician's Tale,' a juxtaposition of incongruities such as the Physician's cold-blooded inappropriate moral and the Host's compassion for Virginia raises questions about the traditional 'moralitas' and the real lesson of the tale. Chaucer, feeling conflict between his own experience and the teaching of 'auctoritee,' equivocates by juxtaposing incongruities and encouraging questions in the mind of the reader, while Gower is mainly concerned with maintaining auctoritee, the conventional ethos. Gower is more concerned with Order, Chaucer with Justice and Truth." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lundberg, Marlene Helen Cooreman. Published Lundberg, Marlene Helen Cooreman. "The Chaucer-Gower Analogues: A Study in Literary Technique." Ph.D. Diss. Indiana University 1981. DAI 42(9): 3993A. 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 Chaucer-Gower Analogues: A Study in Literary Technique. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 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 "Heaven has always fascinated man. Expressions of the heavenly ideal are so varied that no examination would be possible were it not for an unusual occurrence in England of the fourteenth century. Four poets of extraordinary ability and similar backgrounds wrote extensively of heaven. Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the 'Pearl' poet were deeply concerned about the state of the Church, aware of the nature of man, and steadfast in their hope of heaven. Inspired by their environment, in which virtually every influence reflected a preoccupation with the heavenly motif, the four poets consistently declare the reality of heaven's existence. Basing their accounts primarily on Biblical evidence, they depict heaven as a remote kingdom, inaccessible to man, yet infinitely desirable. The four poets agree, moreover, that heaven influences earth. They relate accounts of heavenly beings' visitations to warn, punish, rescue, or comfort earthly inhabitants. They describe the astrological and elemental forces of heaven that influence the world of men. Indeed, the very language of the poets reflects the prevalence of the heavenly theme. In benedictions and invocations, the poets themselves address heaven. In their narratives, saints implore heaven's blessings and sinners swear by its might. To lovely creatures, locales, and circumstances, the poets ascribe the heavenly attributes of beauty, joy, and perdurability. Comparing the poets' views with the voices of the Church in the fourteenth century reveals that the poets are entirely orthodox. Their writings agree that the ultimate goal of human endeavor is the attainment of heaven. They accept the traditional notions that one enters the heavenly kingdom through obedience to God's laws, virtuous behavior, the sacraments of the Church, or the grace of God. To see heresy in their writings or deny the poets their rightful calling by portraying them as reformers is both inappropriate and misleading. For they wrote, not to motivate man, but to understand him. Realizing the importance of the direction and intensity of one's aspirations, they offer a consistent vision: the goal of life is infinite perfection." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lawes, Rochie Whittington. Published Lawes, Rochie Whittington. "The Heaven of Fourteenth-Century English Poets: An Examination of the Paradisaical References in the English Works of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the 'Pearl' Poet." Ph.D. Diss. University of Mississippi 1984. DAI 45(4): 1111A. 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 Heaven of Fourteenth-Century English Poets: An Examination of the Paradisaical References in the English Works of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the "Pearl" Poet. 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 "This dissertation has two purposes: to uncover a critique of chivalry in a twelfth-century roman antique, Benoît de Sainte-Maure's 'Roman de Troie,' and to assess its implications for two fourteenth-century English poems, Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' The first chapter of this thesis examines the 'Roman de Troie' in light of the cultural environment of Henry II's court, where the aristocracy and the secular clergy collaborated to promote knightly duties and virtues. While purporting to endorse this ideological project, Benoît simultaneously questions it by exposing not only the egotism, aggression, and violence that underlie knightly activities but also the discursive strategies of concealment and suppression deployed in elevating knighthood. Benoît's critical inquiry into chivalry is conducted largely in two ways. First, he uses female characters as a site from which to criticize the oppressive mechanisms whereby the chivalric class maintains the status quo. Second, he points to the incompatibility of knightly conduct with good government by emphasizing the individualistic nature of knights' pursuit of honor and revenge. The subsequent two chapters of this thesis demonstrate that these two methods were adopted by Chaucer and Gower respectively. While basing his 'Troilus' primarily on Boccaccio's 'Filostrato,' Chaucer occasionally alluded to the Briseida story in the 'Roman de Troie' to amplify Criseyde's role as a victim of chivalric society and to highlight through her experience the Trojan nobility's preoccupation with class solidarity and war effort. Gower, on the other hand, chose to translate those episodes in the Roman which problematize the chivalric principles of honor and revenge ("Ring Namplus and the Greeks," "Athemas and Demephon," "Orestes," "Telaphus and Teucer," "Jason and Medea," "Paris and Helen," "Ulysses and Telegonus"). Gower used these tales to reflect on the nobility's self-interested exercise of armed force and the threat it poses to civil order and justice. Although Chaucer and Gower responded to different aspects of Benoît's critique of chivalry, they were united in that they both developed the borrowings from the Roman into an implicit commentary on the Hundred Years War and its consequences for the late fourteenth-century English society." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kobayashi, Yoshiko. Published Kobayashi, Yoshiko. "Chivalry, Power, and Justice in Three Medieval Romances." Ph.D. Diss. Cornell University 1997. DAI 58(8): 3144. 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 Chivalry, Power, and Justice in Three Medieval Romances. 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 "The difficulties generated by appeals to "kynde" in medieval English literature are usually attributed to a supposed equivocalness at the heart of medieval conceptions of 'natura.' Medieval rhetoric allows, however, for an equivocation that, as a holding together of two distinct ideas under one name, is a method of knowing truth instead of a logical blunder. The word 'natura,' accordingly, balances two conceptions of nature under one term to reveal man's essential condition as a creature caught between the nature inherited from his creation in God's image and the nature inherited from the Fall. This 'equivocation of kynde' holds two messages. Most obviously, the individual Christian must not confuse the inclinations of his fallen nature with the pull of his true essence. One's cares to identify the sense in which one is using the term and to attempt to restore "nature" are unerring measures of one's spiritual condition. Nature's equivocation also paradoxically functions to insist on the difficulty of such a restoration. The movement to break down the separation of man's fallen 'kynde' from its divine heritage is likely, in a fallen world, to be fraught with disasters of his own making. This ability of the concept of 'kynde. to unfold a central paradox of medieval Christianity provides poets with two persistent motifs and narrative strategies. First, medieval writers constantly create characters who separate the natural inclinations from the desire to return to the divine. The audience is expected to correct such abuses. Secondly, the equivocation's insistence on the difficulty of returning to one's proper nature encourages medieval poets to construct situations that deliberately mislead the audience into accepting an improper view of the natural. Should such a misleading occur, the audience is forced to acknowledge its own complicity in the fallen world. After examining the manner in which Augustine establishes 'natura' as an equivocal concept and the consistent way the later middle ages reflect his doctrine, my essay uses Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' as examples of the fruitful ways that medieval artists used the equivocation of 'kynde' to structure their poems." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hiscoe, David Winthrop. Published Hiscoe, David Winthrop. "'Equivocations of Kynde': The Medieval Tradition of Nature and Its Use in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Ph.D. Diss. Duke University 1983. DAI 44(5): 1447A-1448A. 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 "Equivocations of Kynde": The Medieval Tradition of Nature and Its Use in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" and Gower's "Confessio Amantis." 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 "Kant and Goethe distinguish allegory from symbol by associating allegory with rational abstraction and symbol with the attempt to grasp the divine. By applying this understanding of allegory to the allegorical works in the period when Aristotle dominated philosophical thought, we can correlate the development of allegorical literature to the development of Aristotelian thought. The analysis suggests that the allegorists studied were grappling with the problem of how to wrest a description of the divine from philosophical language, a problem which, as Derrida observes, involves moving beyond "the limits of philosophy." The early optimism of the Chartrian philosophers about the ability of universals to assist the mind in understanding the divine is reflected in the 'De planctu naturae.' In 'Floire et Blancheflor' and Guillaume de Lorris' section of the 'Roman de la Rose' we find an increasing skepticism about the divinity of rational processes of abstraction. Jean de Meun's section of the 'Roman de la Rose' anatomizes the absolute failure of philosophical reason to express the divine. In the 'Confessio Amantis,' Gower argues that the teachings of Aristotle provide a rational model for governing the state. In Book II of Spenser's 'Faerie Queene,' Guyon is presented as a reader of allegorical emblems who must learn to ground his interpretations in natural forms. In Book III, Spenser attempts to use imagination to overcome the limits of reason. Ultimately, however, he reformulates the doctrine of the 'golden chain' from a rational cosmological doctrine to an ethical doctrine in which golden chains represent interpersonal relationships, rather than cosmological bonds. In the 'Mutabilitie Cantos,' Spenser explores the manner in which the divine perspective is achieved by understanding the moral limitations of the rational principles governing nature." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Heise, William Earnshaw. Published Heise, William Earnshaw. "Aristotle and the Allegorical Aesthetic: Poetry and the Limits of Philosophy from Alan of Lille to Edmund Spenser." Ph.D. Diss. University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana 1996. DAI 57(11): 4725. 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 Aristotle and the Allegorical Aesthetic: Poetry and the Limits of Philosophy from Alan of Lille to Edmund Spenser. 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 "This dissertation analyzes the actions and attitudes of characters in several fourteenth-century English works as those characters seek to define themselves and their places in the world; during personal and social crises, those characters turn inward either to examine their consciences or to embrace their fantasies. The thesis of this study is that by dramatizing the inadequate reactions to crisis of limited human characters, these poems and plays attempt to provoke more discerning self-examination in the individuals who compose their audiences. These Middle English works are more ironic than didactic, focussing one irony on the characters' failures of self-knowledge and thus appealing to a detached, critical audience, yet focussing another irony on the reader, whose circumstances parallel the characters' but who recognizes his own imperfection only after he has passed uncharitable judgment. The first chapter traces the reflections of historical crisis in fourteenth-century English literature, also turning to St. Augustine's 'On the Trinity' and to Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy' in order to establish the contrast between self-serving and self-searching that recurs as well in many Middle English works. Three specific poems develop this contrast through related metaphors: Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' sets sorcery and fantasy (two ways of exercising mind over matter) against the healthier transformations effected by confession; Langland's 'Piers Plowman' dramatizes the differences between literal and spiritual definitions of labor and pilgrimage; and Chaucer's 'Canon's Yeoman's Tale' contrasts alchemy with self-examination and confession, which effect internal metamorphoses. . . ." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Haman, Mark Stefan. Published Haman, Mark Stefan. "The Introspective and Egocentric Quests of Character and Audience: Modes of Self-Definition in the York Corpus Christi Cycle and in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale." Ph. D. Diss. University of Rochester 1982. DAI 42(10): 4444A. 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 Introspective and Egocentric Quests of Character and Audience: Modes of Self-Definition in the York Corpus Christi Cycle and in Chaucer's Merchant's Tale. 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 "This dissertation will examine John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' and illustrate the poem's dominant political theme. In addition, it will suggest the manner by which this political theme is structured through the use of a joined biblical and historical paradigm, and relate the political theme and structure to the courtly and penitential themes which have previously received a large share of attention in Gower studies." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Grant, Kenneth B. Published Grant, Kenneth B. "Kingship in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Ph.D. Diss. Marquette University, 1980. DAI 40: 5045A. 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 Kingship in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." 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 "Since the medieval frame narrative originated in Arabia, works in this tradition reflect, in structure and method, Arabic aesthetic principles often opposed to Greek principles of organic unity, symmetry, and completeness. Some notable features of this aesthetic are looseness of structure, autonomy of parts, open-endedness, and the use of external organizing devices such as a controlling narrator or a pervading travel or wisdom theme. The eighth-century 'Panchatantra,' the first significant frame narrative, has a loosely designed, logically incomplete Arabic frame tenuously tied to tightly plotted and intricately organized Indian boxing tales. Consistently patterned on the Arabic aesthetic, the 'Panchatantra' served as a model for the twelfth-century Spanish 'Disciplina Clericalis' of Petrus Alfonsi, which acted as a major transitional work, funneling elements of content and structure to European vernacular writers. Later Western frame narratives perpetuated basic Arabic features but also contained features which are ultimately Greek. The 'Decameron' shows the growing tension between Eastern and Western pressures. It has a tighter structure than earlier frame narratives, with its apparently symmetrical ten-by-ten mode of organization, but analysis reveals the traditional randomness and open-endedness. In the 'Confessio Amantis,' Gower adapts the frame narrative to a Western allegorical purpose; despite the seemingly tight structure of the 'Confessio,' open-endedness and other Arabic features are prominent. Various other medieval Western frame narratives, including the Western versions of the 'Seven Sages' and 'El Conde Lucanor,' likewise synthesize elements of East and West. The culminating work in the genre, the 'Canterbury Tales,' shows its Arabic roots in its method of narration, its reliance on external organizing devices, and its open-endedness, but it is shaped as well by classical and Christian elements. Chaucer manipulates features from both East and West in a sophisticated manner, fully exploiting the dynamic opposing forces that had evolved in the genre. [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gittes, Katharine Slater. Published Gittes, Katharine Slater. "The Frame Narrative: History and Theory." Ph.D. Diss. University of California San Diego 1983. DAI 44.12: 1444A. Gower Subject Coinfessio 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 Frame Narrative: History and Theory. 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 "The figure of Medea has undergone many thematic transformations since its first appearance in the epic poems and dramas of ancient Greece. In Hesiod, Medea is a type of fairytale princess. In Euripides, she is a vengeful woman whose wrath inspires the greatest of enormities, the slaughter of her own children. Apollonius portrays a young Medea struggling valiantly, but fruitlessly against a divinely inspired passion. The Latin poets and philosophers depict Medea as titanic, frightening, often a criminal. In Ovid's 'Metamorphoses,' Medea degenerates into a blind destructive force. In the twelfth century 'Roman de Troie,' Medea undergoes a remarkable transformation when she is placed in the context of 'fin' amor.' Here she is a positive, life-sustaining figure motivated to perform helpful deeds by her noble passion. In medieval literature, the fortunes of the figure of Medea follow the writers' attitude toward secular love. When the medieval poet approves of 'fin' amor,' Medea is portrayed positively. However, when secular passion is denigrated in favor of divine love, Medea is characterized as a type of wilfull, destructive woman, at the mercy of her unrestrained lust. In the French prose versions of the 'Roman de Troie,' Guido delle Colonne's 'Historia Destructionis Troiae,' and Boccaccio's 'De Mulieribus Claris,' such a negative Medea may be found. However, in Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women' and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,' Medea is portrayed as a saint of secular love for her unstinting fidelity to Jason. At the hands of Chaucer and Gower, Medea receives her most radical transformation, sanctification in the context of 'fin'amor'." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Feimer, Joel Nicholas. Published Feimer, Joel Nicholas. "The Figure of Medea in Medieval Literature: A Thematic Metamorphosis." Ph.D. Diss. City University of New York 1983. DAI 44(10): 3057A. 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 Figure of Medea in Medieval Literature: A Thematic Metamorphosis. 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 "The Introduction begins by taking note of John Gower's unusually sympathetic attitude toward women in the 'Confessio Amantis.' It poses the question: was Gower unique in taking such a favorable approach to women, or does he belong to a profeminist current in the didactic literature of the later Middle Ages? The dissertation proposes to focus on one group of texts which were certainly known to Gower, i.e., the popular manuals of religious instruction, particularly Frere Laurent's 'Somme le Roi' and its derivatives. Chapter Two examines the attitude toward women in the religious manuals, with the purpose of discovering whether these treatises contributed to the sexual attitudes of the 'Confessio Amantis.' It is determined that the approach to women in the manuals is very sympathetic. Women are directly addressed as the fellow Christians and spiritual equals of men; the devout soul is regarded as feminine, and feminine traits are presented as admirable qualities of the Christian life; the Virgin Mary is explicitly described as the most exemplary human being who ever lived, and other examples of good women receive respectful attention; matrimony and marital sex are held in great esteem, and ascetic disgust for the body is held at a minimum. Although the existence of bad women is recognized by the manuals, these characters are regarded as examples of sins to avoid and not as typical representatives of women as a class. Chapter Three examines the approach to women in the 'Confessio Amantis' and determines that it has been extensively influenced by the mutual tradition. For every sympathetic view of women in the manuals, significant parallels are discovered in the Confessio.' In addition, the chapter presents extended analyses of four Gowerian short stories, showing in each case how the poet made skillful use of various sources and presented a more favorable view of women than any source. Chapter Four continues by examining one of the finest stories in the 'Confessio,' 'The Tale of King, Wine, Woman, and Truth.' Chapter Five concludes that there is indeed a profeminist current in the didactic lieterature of the later Middle Ages as represented by the manuals and Gower, and it proposes suggestions for further research." [eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke,Linda Barney. Published Burke, Linda Barney. Women in the Medieval Manuals of Religious Instruction and John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Ph.D. Diss. Columbia University. Dissertation Abstracts International 42.12 (1982): 5114A. 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 Women in the Medieval Manuals of Religious Instruction and John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." 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 Conrad van Dijk frames his essay with two postmodern theorists, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida, and their arguments for the relationship between law and the exception to the law. From this context, he then discusses how two Middle English poets, William Langland and John Gower, present and understand the exception to the law in their poetry. van Dijk goes on to examine how these poets present a premodern understanding of the law and its exception, especially how the exception exists in relation to politics, philosophy, and faith (3). van Dijk explains the benefit of a postmodern reading of these authors: "Indeed, a postmodern reading of Langland clarifies how 'Piers Plowman' fails to resolve the tension between law and nature. It also reveals that John Gower is much more eager to provide a solution" (3-4). He adds, "Gower's work ["Confessio Amantis"] makes an ideal testing ground for how we might reconcile our own theoretical interest in the notion of necessity with an appreciation of historical alterity" (4). In "Piers Plowman," van Dijk concerns himself with the refrain throughout the poem: "redde quod debes." Need is a matter of nature (kynde) rather than law, he concludes (12). For Gower, van Dijk asserts that "the exception in terms of law determines much of his poetic output," but the need that Gower addresses is not economic--it is sexual (18). The basic human need for Gower is Cupid's law--love (23). van Dijk argues, "Gower's solution, then, is to make need the defining feature of love (the exception becomes the rule), and so it is only natural that when need subsides, so does love" (31). After returning to Derrida and Agamben, van Dijk concludes that our "postmodern awareness" of the exception in relation to the law might actually help us better understand "the alterity (the exceptionality) of medieval texts" (40). [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor van Dijk, Conrad J. Published van Dijk, Conrad J. "Nede hath no law": The State of Exception in Gower and Langland. Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 2.2 (2015): 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 "Nede hath no law": The State of Exception in Gower and Langland. 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 Trivellini considers four frame-tale "re-mediations" of the Philomela story derived ultimately from Ovid's "Metamorphoses": Margaret Atwood's "Nightingale" in "The Tent" (2006), George Pettie's in "A Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure" (1576), Chaucer's in Legend of Good Women, and Gower's in Book V of "Confessio Amantis," focusing on how analysis of "the 'mise en discours' of the narrative material" (n.p.; quoted from the English abstract, also included in French) reveals "elaborate forms of discursivity that serve a wide range of generic purposes" (99). Concerned more with reception theory than with source study or with the individual works, Trivellini discusses the medieval works last and briefly, focusing on Chaucer's aesthetic concerns and on Gower's ethical ones, describing the "self-aware game with his readers" (96) that she finds in Chaucer's elliptical treatment of the narrative and the pragmatic approach to ethics and the "psychological realism" (97) evident in Gower's relatively vivid characterizations and his emphasis on the generative nature of speech acts. The abused sisters speak more, and more vividly, in Gower than in Chaucer, Trivellini maintains, and Tereüs's punishment is emphatically verbal--ongoing defamation rather than the death (and eating) of his child. To Trevellini, this emphasis on the ethical nature of language underlies much of CA: the "combination of intimate confession and didactic explanation in the exchanges between Genius and Amans finds a parallel in the tale of Philomela, specifically in the sisters' speeches and Genius's detailed explanation of their metamorphoses" (97).] [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Trivellini, Samanta. Published Trivellini, Samanta. "The Myth of Philomela from Margaret Atwood to . . . Chaucer: Contexts and Theoretical Perspectives." Interférences Litteraires / Literaire Interferenties 17 (2015): 85-99. Available at http://www.interferenceslitteraires.be. Last accessed November 9, 2020. 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 Myth of Philomela from Margaret Atwood to . . . Chaucer: Contexts and Theoretical Perspectives. 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 Scanlon offers a fine-grained analysis of sexuality in Alain de Lille's "De planctu Naturae," deconstructing the grammatical figures used to refer to the "unspeakable" (and unnamed) sin of sodomy in the work, examining recurrent phallic metaphors (hammer and pen), aligning Alain's work with developments in canon law, confronting Genius's status as a priest, maintaining that the work is orthodox, and arguing that its orthodoxy is "the product of its transgressive figurations" (222). Ironically, perhaps queerly, Scanlon shows, the work depends upon transgression--grammatical, rhetorical, and figural--while it excommunicates those who transgress; at the same time, it communicates "the pleasure of the power in regulation" (226). Like modern efforts to control homoeroticism, the excommunication of sodomists in Alain, Scanlon concludes, reveals that "sexual regulation is a species of desire" (242). At the beginning of his essay, Scanlon comments briefly on the "Roman de la rose" and Gower's "Confessio Amantis," where, as in Alain, Genius is a priestly figure who "marks a series of moments where a single, specific practice of a single, if central, institution confronts a broad area of sexual behavior"--"taboos" of sodomy, adultery, and incest respectively in the three works. These confrontations "point quite emphatically to the dependence of these taboos on artificially constructed regulatory structures that are historically variable in the extreme" (214-15), although Scanlon does not specify where or how the pointing occurs or which structures he has in mind. The "very textuality," Scanlon continues, "of these metaphorical confrontations between taboo and institutional form suggest [sic] that sexual regulation is itself characteristically discursive," and, as such, counter evidence to the modern "proposition that medieval culture was disinterested in sex." (215), True as far as they go, these claims could be made more clearly, and they are a minor sidelight in Scanlon's larger argument. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Scanlon, Larry. Published Scanlon, Larry. "Speaking the Unspeakable: Alain de Lille, Sexual Regulation and the Priesthood of Genius." Romanic Review 86.2 (1995): 213-42. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Aanlogues, 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 Speaking the Unspeakable: Alain de Lille, Sexual Regulation and the Priesthood of Genius. 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 Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager identify three purposes of their essay: first, "to consider Berthelette's Gower afresh and to suggest several ways in which his two editions" of "Confessio Amantis," 1532 and 1554, "at once reflect their times and reveal Berthelette's unusual subtlety both as a designer of books and as a probable Roman Catholic opposed to Henry's break with the Roman Church"; second, to describe a copy of the 1554 edition previously "unknown to scholars," purchased from private ownership in 2017 by the Rossell Hope Robbins Library at the University of Rochester; and third, to investigate evidence of reading of the Robbins copy (signatures and bookplates, marginalia, and underlinings) that may indicate it is a "potentially 'Catholic book'" (113-14)--a fuzzy notion in this context that the authors duly acknowledge as such by enclosing the phrase in parentheses throughout the essay. What it meant to be Catholic in 1532, two years before Henry's break with Rome, differed from what it meant in 1554 after Mary had reinstated Catholicism in England, even though the small changes Berthelette made between his two editions can perhaps be seen to reflect the nuances evolving in religious discourses of the period as well as the bibliographical and historical contexts that Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager identify. Berthelette himself may well have been Catholic in one sense or another; Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager provide several "circumstantial clues" (130) that he was, although they then hazard circularity in their larger argument by suggesting that "the best evidence [of him being Roman Catholic] may in fact be the two editions he produced" of CA (130). Being Catholic also differed later in the sixteenth and in the seventeenth centuries when readers left their marks in the Robbins Library volume, and Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager identify two prominent owners of the Robbins volume, Sir Martin Bowes, goldsmith, director of the London mint and Lord Mayor, and Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord High Treasurer under Charles II, as Catholic, providing brief biographies and assessing how and why the volume may have appealed to them. In short, the phrase "Catholic book" may be useful in book history only as a catch-much term, much less useful than are the more specific information and interpretations offered here. The essay provides detailed analytic data about the Robbins volume; useful perspective on Berthelette's humanist, religious, political, and financial concerns in producing his two editions; a comparison of aspects of Berthelette's 1532 edition with those of William Thynne's "Workes of Chaucer" published only months earlier (particularly their title pages and biographical information); a suggestive reading of Berthelette's account of the tablet near Gower's tomb; and an engaging account of how one book may have been planned, produced, intended, used, and treasured over several hundred years. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana. Yeager, R. F. Published Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, and R. F. Yeager. "Catholic (?) Printer, Catholic (?) Owners: The Robbins Library Berthelette Confessio Amantis (1554)." Journal of the Early Book Society 22 (2019): 114-48; 8 b&w figs. 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 Catholic (?) Printer, Catholic (?) Owners: The Robbins Library Berthelette "Confessio Amantis" (1554). 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 Falk surveys commentary on Gower's knowledge of medieval sciences and magic, particularly astronomy and astrology, accepting traditional arguments that in Book VII of "Confessio Amantis" Gower was widely influenced by "encyclopaedic sources" such as the pseudo-Aristotelian "Secretum secretorum" and Brunetto Latini's "Li Livres dou Tresor," but exploring further Gower's familiarity with "lesser known sources" (491), particularly two texts: the "Benedictum sit nomen Domini," an example of the "broad corpus of Latin writings which may be called Alchandreana" (504), and the "Tractatus Enoch," a text as much concerned with magic as science. Both texts have been previously identified in discussions of Gower's sources, but Falk studies details shared between CA and these texts in order to explore the "true level of Gower's scientific expertise" (514), observing the poet's relative lack of interest in scientific instruments, his relatively precise use of numbers, and his interest in "diagrammatic illustrations," which "may have drawn the poet's eye down" to scientific texts (525). Falk thinks that the "Benedictum" is the source of Gower's lists of stars in CA, but similarities with the "Benedictum" do not allow us to gauge Gower's "theoretical understanding" of lunar mansions, and his "conflation of signs and constellations" indicate that he in part misunderstood his source (515). Gower's use of the "Tractatus Enoch," Falk tells us, helps to explain citations of Nectanabus and Hermes in CA and perhaps indicates Gower's familiarity with "image magic"--a "fashionable genre of learned magic" (521) related to astronomy. Drawing on the "Tractatus" or something like it, Gower "included "elements of both astrology and image magic in his account of astronomy" in CA, but he also distinguished "between the people who practise" these skills, thereby, Falk explains, treading a "reasonably straight and careful path" between valid science and immoral practice (524), while pursuing the goal of educating his readers. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Falk, Seb. Published Falk, Seb. "Natural Sciences." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 491-525. 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 Natural Sciences. 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 Bennett's opens with a succinct and accurate summary of what his essay accomplishes: "This chapter reassesses Gower's views on Richard's reign by examining the poet's writings in the context of his background in Kent, his social circle and political connections, the politics of Richard's reign, and contemporary perceptions of his rule. Key issues here are Gower's role as mentor to royalty in his letter to Richard in "Vox Clamantis" ["Epistola ad regem"]; the dating of the critical comments about the king which Gower added to this text; Gower's stance in relation to the cause of the Appellants in 1387-88; the dating and significance of the changes which Gower made to the "Confessio Amantis," particularly the change of the dedication from Richard to Henry; the date[s] of the composition of the three parts of the "Cronica Tripertita," in which Gower wrote an account of Richard's misrule, his tyranny and overthrow; and the misleading nature of modern representations of Gower as a 'Lancastrian propagandist'" (425). Bennett accomplishes all this and more with impressive specificity and detail; he offers clear and subtle descriptions of political events, fresh perspectives on aspects of Gower's life and literature, and persuasive arguments for revising the traditional dating of his works. He clarifies the importance of Gower's affiliations with Sir John Cobham and Arnold Savage and his loyalty to the Lords Appellant; he argues that Gower's works reflect consistent attitudes and studied choices--at least when choice was possible available amidst the shifting loci of political power that held sway during events that led up to and through Richard's deposition. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bennett, Michael. Published Bennett, Michael. "Gower, Richard II and Henry IV." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 425-88. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis 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 Gower, Richard II and Henry IV. 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 Rigby replaces the traditional distinction between absolutist and constitutional theories of kingship with a parallel but a somewhat more discursive distinction between "royal" and "political" kingship theories (394). Exploring "the nature of Gower's political views" (383) in light of this spectrum, Rigby surveys the fundamental concern in Gower's works with the necessity of moral virtue in a king, and clarifies notions of just governmental action in late-medieval England, particularly focused on ideas of tyranny, treason, uses of violence, the proper role of counsel, and the voice of the people. Rigby reviews recurrent, even persistent, tensions between the forms of political theory and instances of political action during Gower's life and in his works, and he rejects arguments that Gower was inconsistent or opportunistic when shifting loyalty to Henry after Richard's deposition. The "poet's view that divine providence could employ human agency to strike down evil tyrants," Rigby argues, "had always possessed the potential to be used in support of a 'political' conception of the king's relationship with his subjects." After the deposition and particularly in "Cronica Tripertita," Gower drew upon this "potential" and he "welcomed the fact that Henry Bolingbroke had replaced Richard II on the throne . . . as part of the workings of divine providence." In Rigby's argument, the "tractability of Gower's political principles and language" (424) is of a piece with the subtleties of late-medieval political theory and the flexibility of their applications, obviating censure of the poet as an opportunist. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rigby, Stephen H. Published Rigby, Stephen H. "Political Theory." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 381-424. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower 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 Political Theory. 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 Explaining that questions of Richard II's status as a boy and as a man were central to politics of late-medieval England, Fletcher assesses Gower's views on related political concerns through examination of his diction. Using computer analysis (textométrie) of Gower's masculine lexicon ("man," "manly," "manhood," etc.), Fletcher explores Gower's emphases in light of wider Middle English usage and then examines nuances of the denotations and connotations of the terms (especially "manhood") in Book I of "Confessio Amantis" and in the "Tale of Horestes," locating it in the structural "trajectory" (371) of Book III. Mining the narratives of Book I, Fletcher shows that Gower asserts "the superiority of moral virtue over the social dictates of manhood" (369), and although Gower does not link the "Tale of Horestes" to Richard's struggles in the 1380s, it "could have," Fletcher says, "provided Gower with a means of defending Richard in the last two years of his reign" (374). Revisions to CA and especially the "Cronica Tripertita," Fletcher argues, attribute Richard's deposition to his lack of the "fundamental qualities of manhood" (376)--moral vigor and justice--but they leave unclear how Gower's approved "kind of manhood . . . might be applied to concrete social and political practice" (378). Fletcher concludes that the "complexity" of the "framing structures" of CA and the "sheer variety" of its narrative materials enabled Gower both "to support and to condemn precisely the same line of action" (378). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fletcher, Christopher. Published Fletcher, Christopher. "Masculinity." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 351-78. Gower Subject Biography of Gower 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 Masculinity. 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 Lewis's essay contributes to ongoing efforts to rewrite women into English literary history, exploring Gower's depictions of women in "Confessio Amantis" and female reception of the poem and related works. "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox Clamantis," Lewis tells us, offer "essentially one-dimensional illustrations" of aspects of "patriarchal or misogynistic discourse" (324), while women in CA are often "intelligent, astute and active in their own and others' interests" (327). Lewis aligns several female characters in CA (Petronella, Thais, and various queens, including Medea) with St. Katherine of Alexandria, the popular cult of whom Lewis documented in a book-length study published in 2000. St. Katherine's popularity enables Lewis to aver that female readers of CA "would have spotted the similarities between her virtues and intelligence" (331) and those of Gower's characters. Lewis attends particularly to how Gower's characters may have appealed to women of elite status, particularly Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Elizabeth Woodville, and Margaret Beaufort--women "who played a role in later medieval English politics" (350) and whose literary interests have been well documented through their ownership of or associations with manuscripts of CA and similar texts. In this way, Lewis includes CA in a "wider 'syllabus' of political and courtly instruction owned by high status women" (346) of the fifteenth century. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lewis, Katherine J. Published Lewis, Katherine J. "Women and Power." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 323-50. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and LIterary Relations Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis 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 Women and Power. 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 Röhrkasten traces the development of antifraternal criticism that rose in the University of Paris in the 1250s, came into sharp focus in 1255 in William of St. Amour's "De periculus novissimorum temporum," and gained a wider public in England in the 1350s when Richard FitzRalph's public preaching in London provoked a fiery outbreak of criticism centered on the "reopening of the question of Christ's poverty" (307). Internal debates within the Franciscan order (Conventuals versus Spirituals) and contentions between orders, Röhrkasten makes clear, contributed over time to a growing conflagration and he describes other flashpoints as well, laying the groundwork for an exhaustive survey of Gower's antifraternal comments in "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox Clamantis--a "formidable array of arguments against the mendicants" (314). The sheer capaciousness and inclusivity of this array, Röhrkasten tells us, leads to "disorderly presentation and lack of focus or direction for reform." Gower's "colourful collage of accusations" offers "a rather simplistic message": originally good, the mendicant orders "have deteriorated and become dangerous; they should reform and become good again" (317). Closing his survey with a description of mendicant presence in late-medieval England, Röhrkasten comments on possibilities and likelihoods of Gower's personal familiarity with friars and their communities. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Röhrkasten, Jens. Published Röhrkasten, Jens. "The Friars." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 291-320. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) 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 Friars. 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 Heale opens his essay by noting the "paradox" that "Gower's writings about monasticism . . . cohere closely with the anticlerical discourses" of his day even though details of his "later life" and preparations for death "imply a strong regard for monastic practices and prayers" (271). Heale's paradox becomes an "apparent contradiction" that "cannot be readily reconciled" (287) near the end of his essay, where he observes that the "significance" of Gower's "monastic associations to his literary career is likely to remain enigmatic" (289). In short, Heale does not explain how or to what extent details of Gower's life affected his view of the regular clergy, but he does much to clarify how Gower's critiques of monastic life in MO and VC align with--and differ from--traditional estates satire and the critiques of his contemporaries. Generally, Gower echoes the "ubiquitous clichés" of estates satires, Heale explains, but the poet sometimes uses conventions in "a skilful and subtle manner" (280), adorning VC, for example, with some effective puns and "striking images" (277) and placing notable emphasis on monastic "waywardness" (276) not found in other writers. Gower was like Chaucer and Langland in leveling sharp criticism at monastic gluttony and lavish dress, Heale observes, but his focus on "social-climbing" is relatively unusual (281), his "lack of interest in female monasticism" is "distinct" (280), and he expressed little concern about monastic treatment of the poor. Unlike Wyclif, Gower "stopped short of advocating disendowment" of monasteries (284). He singled out "senior obedientiaries," while displaying "sympathy . . . with more junior inmates of religious houses" and showing "some understanding of the internal dynamics of monastic life" (286) beyond traditional complaints. Apart from disclosing such emphases, however, Heale is cautious about his framing concern, concluding that it "remains questionable whether Gower's writings on the religious orders can be used to shed light on his life and literature career "(289), [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Heale, Martin. Published Heale, Martin. "Monastic Life." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 271-89. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis 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 Monastic Life 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 Lepine engages questions of Gower's religious orthodoxy by exploring what his depictions of and comments on the papacy, episcopate, and higher and lower clergies owe to the "stereotypes of medieval estates satire tradition," gauging how "radical was Gower in his criticisms of the Church" (244). Reviewing the scholarship and describing the historical context, Lepine finds that Gower's "examination of" the Church in MO and in VC "closely follows the structure and conventions of estates satire" (247); he is "particularly close to traditional estates satire" when discussing the "episcopate and the beneficed clergy" (248), even though his "knowledge of the higher clergy came in part from personal experience" (252), described by Lepine. Two groups that Gower criticizes, "unbeneficed priests and scholars," appear infrequently in estates satire, so he adapts "the genre to the conditions of his own time"(254) and, for the expanding "university-educated clergy" he "engages with contemporary reality" to update his views. Gower's "critique of the papacy," Lepine says, is "significantly more radical" (258), but--unlike John Wyclif--he stopped short of challenging the spiritual power of the papal office; he was "very far from being a Wycliffite" (265) in accepting Purgatory, prayers for the dead, indulgences, transubstantiation, the Latin Bible, and more. He "did not use his often scathing criticisms of the clergy to make a fundamental attack on the Church" and so "it is difficult" to place Gower's work within a late fourteenth-century 'new-anticlericalism'" (267). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lepine, David. Published Lepine, David. "The Papacy, Secular Clergy and Lollardy." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 243-69. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) 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 Papacy, Secular Clergy and Lollardy. 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 Musson describes the "legal profession" in Gower's lifetime, including the growth of various courts and proceedings. He explains the ambiguities and ranges of application of the labels "men of law," "gents de ley," "sergeant of the law," etc., and reviews evidence of Gower's purported legal training (including the sartorial evidence of the "striped sleeve"--"raye mance"--mentioned in MO 21772–5), concluding that there is "no unequivocal evidence which definitively confirms his status as a lawyer" (226) and that the "contention that he was a Chancery lawyer remains extremely conjectural" (229). Nevertheless, Gower's works display "familiarity with legal terminology and aspects of substantive law" (226), Musson explains, offering several examples of nuanced legal terminology missed by translators or critics of Gower's poetry. Further, Musson observes that Gower's knowledge at times extends beyond common law to canon law and Roman civic law, and, more importantly, that "his poetry engages in detail with issues relating to the conduct and role of men of law in the contemporary administration of justice" (229). Gower criticized legal rhetoric, obfuscatory language, and abuses of judicial power. In particular, Musson argues, Gower castigates the opportunistic "social climbing of men of law," made possible because of the rising "consumer demand for lawyers" and "new opportunities to purchase land" in the wake of outbreaks of the plague (237). Yet Gower "offered no practical reforms," Musson says, "other than a tax on lawyers' profits," relying essentially on the "personal integrity of men of law" (238). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Musson, Andrew. Published Musson, Anthony. "Men of Law." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 213-39. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower 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 Men of Law. 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 Davis focuses on the "post-Black Death commercial environment" (192) of the 1370s in England, summarizing the impact of the plague, the concerns of the Good Parliament of 1376, and the "role of John Northampton, who emerged as the standard bearer of civic complaints in the 1370s" (193), exploring how "some 400 lines" of Gower's "Mirour de l'Omme" offered "a conservative, popular programme for market reform, one in which conventional paradigms were weaved together with some of the pressing issues of his day" (193), particularly "issues of prices, quality, coin and the common good" (198). Gower's "specific iteration of sweet wines," for example (MO 26089–100), engages concerns that underlie the impeachment of three London merchants in the Good Parliament, Davis tells us, and his reference to the twenty-four "soldoiers" ("hirelings" of Fraud; MO 25957–68) connects with the Council of Aldermen, "a body of twenty-four individuals who were facing immense criticism at the time Gower was writing" (205–6). Elsewhere, Davis's claims tend to be general rather than specific, as when he observes that Northampton's "appeal to morality cut across sectional divides just as Gower's had" (208) or when he links the growing trend in London for harsh, public punishment of commercial deception to Gower's "strident language about punishment" (211) of dishonest bakers (MO 26173–96). Nonetheless, Davis marshals a range of details and perspectives that establish a "context for Gower's discussion of trade" (211). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Davis, James. Published Davis, James. "Towns and Trade." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 191-212. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 Towns and Trade. 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 Bailey describes the Black Death, Labor reforms, and the "Great Revolt of 1381," casting into relief the complexity of the traditional third estate and describing Gower's failure or unwillingness to acknowledge this complexity. The poet's works, Bailey shows, "convey little sense of engagement" with the "live issues" of "labour and poverty," expressing instead "nostalgia" for a lost golden age (182) and persistently lumping all laborers as pejorative "rustici" (172), "furious beasts" (184), or similar denigrations. Bailey explains the "chronic shortage of workers" and the "rising expectations and aspirations of lower orders," resulting from the national outbreaks of plague. Legal and political efforts to curb the mobility of workers and perceived idleness failed, generally, leading in intricate ways to the "varied and complex movement" (188) of the Uprising of 1381 which itself prompted a "debate that grappled with issues (such as justice and labour)" (190). Bailey charts opinions, actions, and reactions in parliamentary records, legal proceedings, and social commentaries, characterizing Gower's attitudes as reductive, with his depiction of the third estate in VC as "over-simplified and narrow" (187), although not unique. More generally, Bailey asserts, Gower was "a social conservative even by the standards of his own age," one who did not engage the "evolving debates on labour and poverty" (190). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bailey, Mark. Published Bailey, Mark. "The Peasants and the Great Revolt." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 167-90. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 Peasants and the Great Revolt. 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 Green gauges Gower's attitudes toward late-medieval English aristocratic actions and ideals. He describes socio-economic events that disturbed the traditional social hierarchy of the time, efforts to bolster that hierarchy, and Gower's reactions to the events and outcomes, comparing them recurrently with those of his literary contemporaries. He finds Gower's views on the aristocracy to be complex, ambiguous, and, at times, inconsistent. Summarizing the upheavals that followed from the Black Death and the French wars, Green comments that in "Mirour de l'Omme" Gower "decried revolt" even while he "shared the rebels disappointment with the impotence of the aristocracy" (147). In light of the development of a professional military and the subsequent reshaping of chivalry and its "cultural currency" (151), Green observes a "number of tensions in Gower's writing" (152). The poet, for example, cautions knights against seeking fame, but urges them to seek honor; his poems include a "range of views" on the "legitimacy of war," while his attitudes towards love in chivalry are "somewhat fluid" (159); his "position with regard to crusading, as with broader knightly duties, is not unambiguous" (161). The poet "abhorred violence for the most part," Green says, but he also praised those who "took up arms for the right reasons and with an awareness of the need of restraint" (164). Green discerns no "single, simplistic perspective on the subjects of chivalry and nobility" in Gower's works, but observes "a general direction of moral travel" (165) toward necessary but unspecific reform. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Green, David. Published Green, David. "Nobility and Chivalry." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 141-65. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 Nobility and Chivalry. 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 Rigby describes each of Gower's major works and dates them and their revisions in light of references (overt and covert) to historical and political events, manuscript evidence, and scholarly discussion. "Mirour de l'Omme" is "difficult to date precisely" (124), although likely completed in whole or in part before the death of Edward III in 1377. "Vox Clamantis," particularly the "Visio" and Book 6, went through a "number of stages of composition" (126), largely in response to the 1381 Uprising and fluctuations in the reign of Richard II. "Confessio Amantis" was similarly revised over a lengthy period, and various revisions reflect the complications of Gower's Lancastrian associations and his relationship with Chaucer. G. C. Macaulay's theory of three recensions of CA has "remained extremely influential" (130), but "it may be best to conclude that we are actually confronted with one basic version . . . with two different dedications" (133). In any case, the CA manuscripts have been "central to debates about how the texts of Gower's works were produced" (135), and, although Gower's political affiliations before 1399 are not absolutely clear-cut, Rigby tells us, a number of poems were likely written after the deposition of Richard: "Rex Celi Deus," "O Recolende," "H. Aquile Pullus," "In Praise of Peace," and "Cronica Tripertita." Even in these, however, questions remain about relations between Gower's "moral and social outlook" and the impact of the deposition (138). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rigby. Stephen H. Published Rigby, Stephen H. "Gower's Works." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp.121-38. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 Gower's Works. 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 Carlin's discursive biography of Gower follows her list of life records which document the poet's legal and economic activities, enabling her to deduce his income as it varied over his lifetime, locate his residences and when he might have lived in them, and describe in "brief profiles" (pp. 62-79) his various associates and friends. She also explores at some length what can be deduced from Gower's tomb, his marriage to Agnes Groundolf, and his final "Testament." Notably, Carlin disagrees with previous biographers who consider Gower's marriage to be one of chaste convenience--old-age care, if you will--arguing that Gower's poem "Est Amor," his "Testament," Agnes's surname, and archival records of her activities after Gower's death indicate something more personal. Carlin also corrects discussions of Gower's tomb, describing accounts and errors of its reconstruction and placement in Southwark Cathedral (then St, Mary Ovary) and correcting earlier descriptions of his effigy. At the heart of Carlin's discussion, however, are the records themselves; she notes recurrently what they can tell us and what they cannot, punctuating her discussion with "perhaps," "probably," and "may be." Gower, she deduces generally, was a money lender as well as an investor in property, uninvolved as an agent for others, while he enlisted them in his own activities. The "archival record," she concludes, is "curiously lacking in evidence of conventional obligations and service, personal friendships [Chaucer excepted], family relationships [Agnes excepted], collegial ties, and confraternal or parochial affiliations" (109). A closing Appendix includes Carlin's transcriptions of two Latin Hustings deeds of 1366, and English translations of the lawsuit "Feriby v. Gower et al" (Guildford, 1394), and Gower's final "Testament." [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlin, Martha. Published Carlin, Martha. "Gower's Life." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 22-120. Gower Subject 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 Gower's Life. 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 Carlin lists in chronological order the known Gower life records, including at least one not previously cited by scholars (10 March 1368; p. 7). She describes in calendar fashion the topic and nature of each record, identifies archival sources, and, where appropriate, cites critical discussions. The list is keyed to Carlin's expansive essay that follows in this volume ("Gower's Life," pp. 22-120), and the list indicates by asterisk or double asterisk records that mention a John Gower who may not be the poet, offering brief explanations. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlin, Martha. Published Carlin, Martha. "Chronology of Gower's Life Records." In Historians on John Gower. Ed. Stephen H. Rigby, with Siân Echard (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 3-21. Gower Subject 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 Chronology of Gower's Life Records. 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 Rigby, Echard, and a team of twelve contributors explore Gower's "artistic refraction of contemporary affairs" (xxii), reading his poetry "in the context of his life [and] . . . the intellectual culture of the social, religious, and political controversies of his day" (xxiii), particularly the upheavals that hit England most directly: plague, the Uprising of 1381, Lollardy, the challenges of the Lords Appellant, and the deposition of Richard II. The tradition of estates satire and the framework of political ideology are recurrent concerns, as are relations with contemporary poets, especially Chaucer and Langland, and the relative chronology of Gower's works, his revisions of them, and contemporary events. The fourteen essays (plus a calendar of life records) are informed by consistent awareness of parallels between Gower's works, on the one hand, and chronicles and documentary records on the other, accompanied by careful attention to previous scholarship, judicious cross-referencing between the essays, a comprehensive index, and illustrative figures in color and black and white. The John Gower that emerges from the essays is not an unfamiliar one--a traditionalist moral poet--but one that is more nuanced and more ambivalent in his outlooks, perhaps, than is usually observed. His trilingualism is more taken for granted than directly explored, with sustained attention to "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," "Cronica Tripertia," and the "minor" poems as well as "Confessio Amantis," the long-time favorite of critics. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rigby, Stephen H., ed., with Siân Echard. Published Rigby, Stephen H., ed., with Siân Echard. Historians on John Gower. Publications of the John Gower Society. Volume XII. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019. ISBN 97818433845379. 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 Historians on John Gower. 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 Focusing on depictions of shipwrecks, Richmond examines "how the littoral space of the seashore is cast as a source of perilous and problematic material bounty" (316) in four Middle English romances: "Sir Amadace," "Emaré," Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale," and Gower's "Tale of Constance" from Book II of CA. He first explores the Middle English semantics of "wrek" and "wrak,"and shows that in medieval English legal and historical records "shipwrecked property was a site of contested claims" (316). Similar contestation appears in the romances in various ways, recurrently depicting the "mercenary motivations of a notably English shore-dweller" (328). In "Amadace," the rights of the living are in conflict with those of the dead; in "Emaré," the eponymous protagonist and her marvelous gown represent survival and treasure in a single figure. Chaucer's version of Custance's shipwreck in Northumberland, Richmond tells us, emphasizes the "human cost behind this wreck" (329)--cost both to Custance and to the constable who seeks treasure from her ship. Notably, Richmond does not comment on Gower's version of this episode, perhaps because Constance's landing does not involve a wreck in Gower. He does discuss, however, the landing of Gower's Constance and her son in the realm of Theloüs (along with the analogous landing in Chaucer), even though Gower does not mention a shipwreck here either (Chaucer's mention is, at best, slight). Both versions of the tale include a threat of rape in this episode, which Richmond assesses as a "particularly disturbing and violent iteration" of the motif of the "vulnerability of crews washed up in foreign lands" and the "pillaging" of wrecks (329), a claim that cannot be made convincingly of Gower's tale since there is no mention of either wreck or pillage. Even less convincing is Richmond's further claim that the "perverted spirit of capitalist competition" proves to be the "downfall" of Theloüs's steward, even when the claim is qualified by acknowledgement that the "will of God" operates here. It is fair to say that Gower's scene "illustrates the dangerous position of stranded ships" but it is harder to find in it a shipwreck, much less a collocation of rape and pillage, or a depiction of "the dangerous consequences of blindly pursing the salvaging desire and anxiety over commercial competition" (331). Generally, Richmond's argument is persuasive and/or provocative, but it runs aground here. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Richmond, Andrew M. Published Richmond, Andrew M. "'The broken schippus he ther fonde': Shipwrecks and the Human Costs of Investment Capital in Middle English Romance." Neophilologus 99 (2015): 315-33. 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 broken schippus he ther fonde": Shipwrecks and the Human Costs of Investment Capital in Middle English Romance. 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 Rayborn's observations on Gower come as part of a chapter entitled "England: The Turbulent 14th Century, and the Writings of Chaucer, Langland and Gower." Raymond's commentary on fourteenth-century English antifraternalism, part of his broader survey, summarizes the ravages of the Black Death and connects plague, estates satire, and antifraternal writing by English literary authors. In a separate chapter he discusses critiques of the friars by Matthew Paris, Richard FitzRalph, and John Wyclif. His treatment of Chaucer includes comments on the "General Prologue" description of the Friar and the satiric elements of the "Summoner's Tale," noting concerns with glossing in the latter and connections with The Roman de la Rose. Describing and summarizing "Piers Plowman," he observes associations between friars, Antichrist, and "apocalypticism" (133), and comments on relations between critique and reform. His section on Gower is his briefest, including in four pages (pp. 130-33) a short biography and descriptions of MO, VC, and CA. He emphasizes the typicality of Gower's "attacks and accusations" against the mendicants without providing details, and suggests that such assaults accumulate in VC "to the point of tedium" (133). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rayborn, Tim. Published Rayborn, Tim. "England: The Turbulent 14th Century, and the Writings of Chaucer, Langland and Gower." In Against the Friars: Antifraternalism in Medieval France and England. (Jefferson, N. C.: McFarland, 2014), pp. 117-33. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis 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 England: The Turbulent 14th Century, and the Writings of Chaucer, Langland and Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 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 Jenni Nuttall's essay "charts the development of the lenvoy (or envoy) in English courtly verse in the fifteenth century, looking in particular at the poetry of Hoccleve and Lydgate" (35). Engaging Jonathan Culler's work on lyric, she concludes, "Form is thus an alluring fabrication of meaningfulness. Such self-generated authority is inculcated rhyme by rhyme, metrical line by metrical line, stanza by stanza" (35). For Nuttall's purposes, such self-authorization occurs in the envoy or lenvoy; furthermore, these textual apparatus serve as lines of communication between authors, readers, et al. (36). Chaucer and Gower establish the Middle English lenvoy. Nuttall asserts, "The lenvoy's flexible functions made this technical term of poetics usefully malleable, and Middle English authors and their scribes thus expand usage of the term beyond its strict definition as an optional element of a ballade" (37). Nuttall, at this point of her essay, shifts her focus to the new purposes for which Hoccleve and Lydgate will use the lenvoy. She considers how this structure uses the humility topos with conspicuous skill. Nuttall expands on Robert Meyer-Lee's discussion of such topoi, adding that they may serve as "affirmation of poetic license and self-authorization" and a "newly emerging license of form" (39, 40). After examining specific uses of the lenvoy in both Hoccleve and Lydgate (especially "Fall of Princes"), Nuttall provocatively concludes that the lenvoy might be a "significant location from which we might excavate Middle English literary theory and poetics" (45).] [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nuttall, Jenni. Published Nuttall, Jenni. "Lydgate and the Lenvoy." Exemplaria 30.1 (2018): 35-48. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion 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 Lydgate and the Lenvoy. 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 Nolan's abstract to her article conceivably provides the most succinct summary of what she has done: "This paper traces the emergence of style in English writing from the fourteenth century to the sixteenth century, performing textual analysis at both the macro and micro level by using computer software (Voyant; Stylo for R; AntConc) in tandem with traditional close reading. Two major databases were deployed: first, a collection of 279 Middle English digital texts. . . and second, the Middle English Glossarial Database created by Professor Larry D. Benson, which includes lemmatized texts of Chaucer and Gower's English corpora. The results show that the literary sense of 'style' is introduced to the English literary tradition by Chaucer, by way of Petrarch, and then more fully explored by Lydgate, especially in his "Fall of Princes." Using stylometry software (Stylo for R by M.Eder), the essay shows in a series of graphs how Chaucer and Gower's style are distinct from one another, using principal components analysis, cluster analysis, a bootstrap consensus tree, and network analysis; these graphs also show a clear distinction between Chaucer's verse and his prose . . . . the difference between Chaucer and Gower is related to these writers' explicit gestures toward 'high style' (Chaucer) and the 'plain style' (Gower). The final section of the paper . . . [shows] that Lydgate pioneered the notion of a writer's personal style, in contradistinction to the rhetorical levels of style (high and low) to which Chaucer and Gower refer" (33-34). It should be noted, parenthetically, that by relying on Benson's Glossarial Database for all of her examples, Nolan's conclusions apply only to the "Confessio Amantis"; Gower's French and Latin poetry, which exhibit a variety of styles, both "high" and "plain," are excluded from her study, with the exception of a brief mention in fn. 27 (49). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura. Published Nolan, Maura. "The Invention of Style." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 41 (2019): 33-71, A1-A12. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 Invention of Style. 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 The manuscript in which Mooney finds Hoccleve's hand is London, British Library, MS Egerton 913: "an incomplete copy, perhaps better classified as a fragment, containing in its present state only the Prologue and the first 1709 lines of Book I" (225). The text is copied in single-column, undecorated, on cheap paper, by three scribes. The first scribe ("Scribe A"), whom Mooney argues is Hoccleve, "is responsible for the greatest part of this copying: 1,835 lines of English plus the Latin verses and summaries in his portions of the manuscript, while Scribes B and C are responsible for only 205 and 777 lines of the English text, respectively, besides the Latin in their portions" (226). In claiming this copying for Hoccleve, Mooney disagrees directly with John Burrow and Ian Doyle, who note similarities to Hoccleve's hand elsewhere, but conclude that BL MS Egerton 913 is "certainly not by him" (229). Citing Doyle's later "mellowed" view in "private communication," and in support of her identification, Mooney provides a detailed analysis of the significant letter-forms (230-33). More speculatively, she offers three provocative hypotheses: 1) that Hoccleve, for a time in possession of an exemplar, "began to make a copy to keep as an exemplar for himself to make further copies to offer his patrons, resulting in the hastily copied Egerton fragment, principally written by himself, with the second hand filling the gap left by his copying from a faulty exemplar and the third adding a third quire (perhaps originally more) to carry on the copying" (233). 2) that the Egerton fragment, with its Ricardian opening, was copied from the same exemplar as Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.2, a manuscript lacking the Prologue and some lines following, which heretofore alone was agreed to contain Hoccleve's work; and 3) therefore "answers Macaulay's doubts about the wording of the Preface [sic] that would originally have stood at the beginning of Trinity" (234). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mooney, Linne R. Published Mooney, Linne R. "Thomas Hoccleve in Another 'Confessio Amantis' Manuscript." Journal of the Early Book Society 22 (2019): 225-38. 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 Thomas Hoccleve in Another "Confessio Amantis" Manuscript. 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 Meindl does a large service to Gower studies in this article, translating the first three chapters of the sixth book of the "Vox Clamantis," offering commentary that aims "to demonstrate the depth and extent of Gower's knowledge of the law and the way in which that knowledge deepens his text" (1). Meindl makes it clear that his point is not to suggest Gower himself was a lawyer; rather, he asserts that Gower clearly had "an extensive . . . knowledge of legal matters and the law in its several late fourteenth-century expressions . . . and is eager to use that knowledge in a wide variety of literary contexts, whether first-person commentary as in the 'Mirour de l'Omme' and 'Vox clamantis,' or exemplary narrative as in the 'Confessio amantis' (2). After providing the translations and commentaries on the first three chapters of Book VI of the VC, Meindl concludes that Gower is not critical of lawyers per se, but rather that "Gower sees the danger with the law originating in the sinful nature of the men who administer it and who through their avaricious misconduct seek to augment their worldly advantages by its improper appropriation and application" (59). Meindl reminds us that, for Gower, the law is ultimately derived from God. This belief drives Gower's exploration of avaricious lawyers (what Meindl translates as "shysters"), finding their conduct to be exceptionally reprehensible. Meindl concludes, "the poet will make clear that legal practitioners who subvert the law to their own avaricious purposes forfeit its protections and condemn themselves before the bar of final judgment" (60). [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Meindl, Robert. Published Meindl, Robert. "Semper Venalis: Gower's Avaricious Lawyers." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 2.1 (2013): n.p. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Confessio Amantis 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 "Semper Venalis": Gower's Avaricious Lawyers. 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 After describing pilgrimage and voice-crying-in-the-wilderness social criticism as medieval modes of exile, Lee describes (in a chapter entitled "The Wretched Constance: Defining a Mens Exili") Gower's Tower/ship image from the Visio of "Vox Clamantis," where exile "becomes an essential part of the dreamer's experience" (19). For Lee's subsequent discussions of early modern literature, the dreamer's experiences serve as a "baseline or 'standard' discourse of exile" which entails "mens exili," i.e., the "cognitive steps undertaken by an exiled group or individual that manifests in the narratives they produce" and thereby influence or reflect the "category of national formation and nationalistic subjectivity" (21). To clarify "mens exili", (and using as a bridge Gower's image of a boat without rudder ["sine gubernaculo"], VC 1.Prologue, 20), Lee assesses in sequence Nicholas Trivet's, Gower's, and Chaucer's versions of the story of Constance where the protagonist, Lee tells us, becomes increasingly a figure devoid of agency, marginalized in her world, while becoming at the same time more "transformative," particularly associated with religious conversion. In Lee's reading, Gower's Constance is less educated than Trivet's and her agency is reduced through lack of direct speech. "Ironically," however, "Chaucer has Custance speak directly more than she does in Trivet and Gower combined," even though her "words further locate her in a subservient, powerless position" (26). Yet, as the agency of the Constance figure decreases from Trivet to Gower to Chaucer and her "marginalization" (26) increases, her "transformational" (22) impact on religion in her society rises, Lee maintains, suggestively linking the exile's role to Lollard/Wycliffite concerns, the topic of Lee's following chapter, subtitled "A Wycliffite Mind of Exile." [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lee, J, Seth. Published Lee, J. Seth. "The Wretched Constance: Defining a 'Mens Exili'." In The Discourse of Exile in Early Modern English Literature. (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 15–33. 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 Wretched Constance: Defining a "Mens Exili." 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 Lawton here challenges the apparent critical consensus that fifteenth-century poets were not as good as their fourteenth-century forbears, or were, in a word, "dull" (761). In contrast, he argues that "the fifteenth century authoritatively consolidates the public voice and role of English poetry" (762), and that the "dullness" of his title is not that attributed to the period by critics, but rather the consistent use of a humility topos by poets presenting themselves as dull or otherwise lacking. This move Lawton traces to Boethius, but in the period attributes it first to Chaucer, where it has a playfulness mostly lost when handled by his successors. Briefly exploring, as a first example, Hoccleve's "dull" self-presentation in "Regement of Princes," Lawton finds him a student of Chaucer, although a passage in which Hoccleve addresses the burning of Lollards comes across to him as an "an unprompted Gowerian intervention by a poet into current affairs and public policy" (764). Learned Chaucerian technique of professing authorial incapacity nevertheless insulates Hoccleve from direct social critique. Lawton then presents an example from Lydgate's "Fall of Princes" using age as a similar protection, then moving on to the common trope of poets declaring themselves lesser than, first, Gower and Chaucer, and by century's end also including Lydgate. Examples considered include Osbern Bokenham, George Ashby, and John Shirley, all of whom Lawton sees as in large part following Lydgate's model. Lawton characterizes a "strong, non-Chaucerian, moral undertow" (768) in many of these poets' works, and presents in some depth Alexander Barclay's translation of the "Ship of Fools" as an example. All of these poets following Lydgate Lawton characterizes as "a culture" (771). To characterize that culture, he examines work of George Ashby, which he considers "an anthology of fifteenth-century public discourse" (772). Lawton resists writing off Ashby as "conventional or commonplace" (773), but instead suggests focusing on these works in their broader cultural context "devoted to the search for Wisdom in the Biblical sense" (775). The tone he uncovers is evident in what he takes to be fifteenth-century taste in Chaucer: rather different from our own, foregrounding works that are less popular now, including "'Troilus,' 'Melibeus,' the Clerk's Tale, The Monk's Tale, 'Boece,' The Knight's Tale and the Parson's Tale," so that "the Chaucer of the fifteenth century is unusually austere" (780). Lawton observes that "fifteenth-century writing is to a great extent the literature of public servants" (788), which managed to be "courageous and hard-hitting" but also "socially acceptable" (789). The humility topos of dullness allows for that duality by insulating the poet from censure, a maneuver which Lawton sees ultimately as "the social mask of a Renaissance poet" (791). He then concludes with reference to Jürgen Habermas and Terry Eagleton, allowing him to theorize this body of work in terms more familiar to a 1987 audience. Overall this essay covers significant ground, and while subsequent readings of this period and these poets may not always share Lawton's overarching sense of a commonality between fifteenth-century poets, this essay has supported a significant amount of further work on the period. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lawton, David. Published Lawton, David. "Dullness and the Fifteenth Century." ELH 54.4 (1987): 761-99. 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 Dullness and the Fifteenth Century. 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 Review Sarah L. Higley's essay explains the process by which she recreated three of Gower's tales from the "Confessio Amantis" ("The Travelers and the Angel," "Canace and Machaire," and "Florent") in Second Life, an online virtual world that uses avatars and allows users, within certain limits, to create space and to express their characters' selves through art, accessories, etc. Higley makes the argument that this project engages the very medieval urge of retelling and compiling: "I argue that the medieval collaboration of author, scribe, illuminator, and reader, along with the penchant for gathering stories and adapting them, is reflected by filming in a multiply-occupied virtual world like Second Life that exhibits its users' recyclable creations. The artistic spaces I find there provide analogues not only for the spaces through which Gower's characters wander, but also for the symbolic iconography that informs Gower's work" (9-10). In great detail, Higley explains to readers the inner workings of Second Life and machinima, noting especially its strengths of collaboration and community. She even notes that the limitations of the medium--"its limited range of animations and facial expressions" (16)--actually help her to "resemble the multi-media qualities of a medieval illuminated manuscript" (16). Noting the specific difficulties presented in rendering Gower's Middle English in the virtual world, Higley then explains and reflects upon her process of recreating each of the three tales in Second Life. She concludes of her machinima, "These are not virtual voices. They speak across boundaries. Gower speaks to us across time, just as Ovid and other ancients spoke to Gower. Making this machinima was my attempt to speak for Gower, not just to Gower scholars but to viewers who could become familiar with his work and the vitality of Middle English language and literature" (56). [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Higley, Sarah L. Published Higley, Sarah L. "'For it Acordeth Noght to Kinde': Remediating Gower's Confessio Amantis in Machinima." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 2.1 (2015): n.p. Gower Subject 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 "For it Acordeth Noght to Kinde": Remediating Gower's "Confessio Amantis" in Machinima. 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 Chaucer, in Hanning's view, invented a "lapsarian poetics" for the "Canterbury Tales"--a poetics of shared humanity and subversion of literary authority--by "[r]esponding resistantly" to the "discourse of penance" as thundered down on the sinful estates of society in the poetic voice of Gower (31). In his first section, Hanning quotes the author-persona of "Troilus and Criseyde"--"Myn auctour shal I folwen, if I konne"--to argue that pre-CT, Chaucer experienced a sense of "anxiety and shortfall" (32) as an author "following" the greats of the past in both senses of the term, as he is late in time and possibly not measuring up to their example. Chaucer, however, announces his liberation from previous "worries about following" (33) through his "implicit rebuke" of Gower in the "Man of Law's Prologue," (38), which Hanning understands as a signal that Chaucer has "fallen away" from the older poet as a model even while "following" him in time. The Man of Law appropriates "an oft-told tale," a work of no authority, which he will perform with embellishments to compete with his fellow story-tellers in serving an agenda of far more "social eloquence" (30) than moral reform. At times, appropriation may shade over into counterfeiting, a moral danger addressed through the villainous deceptions portrayed in the "Man of Law's Tale" (37-38). To define what Chaucer was reacting against in the CT Tales, Hanning proceeds to outline the "penitential poetic" (40) as he sees it practiced by Gower, beginning with the sacrament of penance as mandated by the Fourth Lateran Council and explained to priest and penitent in manuals of confession that were produced to support it. The priest was instructed to inquire about the personal circumstances of the sinner, which led to discussion on the besetting sins of particular estates of society, including women, and to the genre of estates satire in literature. Especially post-Lateran IV, the father-confessor functioned as a preacher and a "quasi-prophetic voice" of authority (42). In the "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox Clamantis," Gower assumed the role of preacher and prophet by calling for the sacrament of penance and aiming his estates criticism from a position of superiority and detachment, as seen in the famous manuscript illumination of the poet standing somewhere in space and shooting an arrow at the world (46). Gowerian discourse dealt in "binaries" (45): edenic past versus corrupt present; sins versus their opposing virtues. For example, as prescribed in the VC, the solution to wrath gone out of control in the Rising of 1381 is that the English people will practice caritas (44). In his final section, Hanning produces a series of examples from the CT to support his view on Chaucer's poetic of resistance to the "penitential poetic" of Gower. Instead of a binary past and present, we have a personal "then and now" of April pilgrimage and remembering some time later (47). In the "General Prologue," the poet describes his fellow pilgrims, including their estate-based vices, with a "synthesis of ideology and personal response" and from the perspective of a boon companion, not a preacher making judgment in binaries (48-50). Even the Parson must establish his "bona fides" as a fellow pilgrim and receive permission to preach a "tale" on penance (51). The Wife of Bath and the Pardoner appropriate the discourse of confession in their Prologues as they flaunt their subversion of Pauline and Fourth Lateran norms on priestly (male) authority and the penitential mandate for consistency in thought, word, and deed (52-56). Their "lapsarian" confessions serve to push back against an authoritative social discourse that would "marginalize them and punish them for who they are" (57). The Wife proves herself to be a potent literary begetter as other storytellers respond to her--"follow" her--in socially eloquent competition. By his resistant "following" of Gower's poetic with its fierce estates satire, Chaucer transformed the decorous, all upper-class storytellers of Boccaccio's "Decameron" with "wonderful innovation" in the CT (58). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hanning, R. W. Published Hanning, R. W. "'And Countrefete the Speche of Every Man / He Koude, Whan He Sholde Telle a Tale': Toward a Lapsarian Poetics for The Canterbury Tales." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21 (1999): 29-58. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Influence and Later Allusion Sources, Analogues, and Literary elations 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 "And Countrefete the Speche of Every Man / He Koude, Whan He Sholde Telle a Tale": Toward a Lapsarian Poetics for "The Canterbury Tales." 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 This brief article compares Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" with three Middle English analogues: Gower's "Tale of Florent" in the "Confessio Amantis," "The Marriage of Sir Gawayne," and "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell." In Gower's version, and the two other analogues, the central male character agrees to marry the loathly lady as a condition of her revealing the secret to him, and all three men--more or less happily--carry out their side of the bargain without disputing it. In Chaucer's version, the nameless knight accepts the lady's offer of help without prior knowledge that marriage to her will be the "quid pro quo." Once he has been saved, and she demands that he pay up, the knight denies ever consenting to the union and tries to argue his way out of it, but he is ultimately forced to marry her. The theme of coerced marriage is especially suited to the Wife of Bath as narrator, as she has experienced five marriages where verbal abuse and physical brutality were experienced on both sides. The Wife is unable to imagine marriage except as a contest "in which one spouse must forcefully struggle to dominate the other" (241). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] 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 (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 Drawing obliquely on Andrew Galloway's assertion that medieval "social thought was often framed in terms of an economy of need," Gastle examines what must have been Gower's anxiety as a practicing poet in a time when writing poems wasn't an established profession. Gastle frames his argument in economic terms: does a poem qualify as a legitimate artifact of labor? His answer: "The construction of an economic or fiscal identity within his poetry allows Gower to define a new role for poetic work in the changing economies of medieval England; in short, Gower needs 'economy' and mercantile or commercial tropes in order to define his own poetic identity" (128). The essay thus extends Gastle's previous work on Gower's uses of business terminology. In this context, Gastle reads the meeting on the Thames with Richard II and the king's request for "som newe thinge" as a commission to labor--in essence, a business transaction which thereby valorizes the poetic work that becomes the "Confessio Amantis." Gastle bolsters his broader claim with a detailed analysis of Gower's tale "The Trump of Death" in Book I, arguing by way of "lucus a non lucendo" that the King who abases himself before two beggarly pilgrims, is condemned by his court and brother for doing so, and punishes his brother by way of instructing him in humility is actually acting not out of strength but rather out of a particular need (pace Galloway): "The King is interested in using the pilgrims to establish his economic authority as well as his temporal authority, under the guise of his own act of humility" (136). For Gastle, the King temporarily takes on the role of the "other," the impoverished, to show that all have value; simultaneously, by recognizing what he is not, he re-establishes himself as ruler. Gastle equates this process to Gower's acceptance of the commission to produce a good for Richard, ostensibly expecting payment of some kind, as recognition on Gower's part that no "skill or profession is too important, too elevated, or too sacrosanct to be paid for"--which, in Gower's view would be "tantamount to saying that it has no value" (138). Thus, Gastle concludes, Gower's "interaction with economic and mercantile issues . . . are necessary to his project of defining poetic identity and labor" (139). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gastle, Brian. Published Gastle, Brian. "The Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature. Ed. Craig E. Bertolet and Robert Epstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 127-42. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis 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 Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower's Confessio Amantis. 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 Gardiner broaches an interesting logical puzzle: how does one identify the recension of a copy of the CA that lacks the passages in the Prologue and Book VIII that are usually used for that purpose? The manuscript in question, Columbia University Library Plimpton MS 265 (referred to by Gardiner as the "Plimpton Gower"), is "defective at both ends" (107), and so the dedication in the Prologue and the Chaucer material in Book VIII usually relied upon to diagnose recensions are unavailable. Her approach in the absence of these passages is to delve into secondary passages associated with the different recensions. Extended comparison of a number of passages in Book V lead her to conclude that that portion of the poem cannot be second recension, and she sees similar evidence that this manuscript "does not transpose lines 556-965" of Book VI (109), or include three variant passages of Book VII, further ruling out the second recension. The absence of lines commonly found in third recension manuscripts, but not in Plimpton (110), eliminates that recension as well. Overall, her logic is direct and sound, and her argument quite detailed. That said, her argument entirely accepts the concept of three distinct recensions, and thus may not be as useful to scholars who share more recent questions about that model of organizing the manuscript history of the CA. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gardiner, Eileen. Published Gardiner, Eileen. "The Recension of the Confessio Amantis in the Plimpton Gower." Manuscripta 25.2 (1981): 107-112. 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 The Recension of the Confessio Amantis in the Plimpton Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 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 Ganim explores the different forms of medieval cosmopolitanism, reaching the conclusion that both cosmopolitanism and anti-cosmopolitanism could and did exist at once in many situations in the Middle Ages. This, he suggests, is a useful reminder to not misunderstand these aspects of the Middle Ages as monolithic. Ganim examines the presentation of the Middle Ages in three post-Cold War texts: the film "Destiny" (1999), the novel "Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree" (1993), and the novel "Dictionary of the Khazars" (1984). He asserts, "They represent a turn towards the Middle Ages after the Cold War, and they do so in the context of how we should accommodate differences within and between cultures, and how human rights can be extended, defended, or negotiated in those different cultures" (7). The fictionalized Middle Ages represented in these texts depict "the Middle Ages as uncertain, as complex and divided as the present," not as a paradise "but a continual double of the present" (10-11). Ganim proceeds to offer a history of medieval cosmopolitan thought, explaining that medieval political thought was less concerned with exterior forces than with managing internal affairs: "it never quite gets around to thinking about the other" (14). Ganim then discusses the beginning stages and current moment of work on medieval cosmopolitanism before providing his own readings of "Troilus and Criseyde," "Confessio Amantis," and "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville." Ganim suggests that Gower, in the Prologue to CA, "consistently argues away difference," opting instead to advocate for the eventual unity at the end of time, even as he seems to deny the possibility of ultimate unity because of the "innate divisions within each human" (23). Ganim concludes that medieval political thought made no distinction between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism: "Thus, individual writers and thinkers in the Middle Ages could be both xenophobic and cosmopolitan, both curious and closeminded, either at particular points in their careers or, more typically, within the same text" (25).] [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ganim, John. Published Ganim, John. "Cosmopolitanism and Medievalism." Exemplaria; 2010; 22(1): 5-27. 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 Cosmopolitanism and Medievalism. 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 Cole's essay has two primary thrusts. In the first, after acknowledging that "Chaucer borrows from Gower" in various places, he sets out to demonstrate that in the "Legend of Good Women" at least "Gower copies Chaucer in a fashion similar both to how medieval readers often gloss texts in their focus on keywords and how scribes literally copy Chaucer often by rewriting his text, reordering his syntax, opting for easier readings, and quashing poetic effects" (47). Thus the major effort of this half of his essay is to show that 1) Gower's narratives of Pyramus and Thisbe and Cleopatra, on which he grounds his claims, are borrowed from Chaucer's tellings, since the same, or similar, words occur centrally in each other's versions; 2) words jotted by readers in the margins of manuscripts to locate ideas or discussion for future reference provide evidence of a period-specific manner of reading by "keywords" and "patterns" that Cole finds characteristically "medieval"; 3) when scribes "quashed" Chaucer's "poetic effects" by rewriting him more simply the result mirrors Gower's "copying" of Chaucer. In order to achieve #1, Cole posits that "LGW was an ongoing project for the poet, which can sustain an early date before the composition of Tr[oilus]" (59, fn.35)--i.e., prior to "the late1380s," (58) when possibly Gower began the CA (58). To achieve #2--a claim that he says illuminates the "shared 'pattern' (emphasis Cole's), whereby the story is formed around certain key terms clustered within coincident passages" (52)--Cole first cites as evidence the occurrence in both Gower's and Chaucer's narration of Thisbe and Pyramus the "key terms" "'Thisbe,' 'Priamus,' 'nyght,' 'tre' (in Chaucer) and 'Tisbee,' 'Piramus,' 'nihtes,' 'tree' (in Gower)" (52). For Cole, these words in both versions indicate that Gower was reading Chaucer (and not the other way around) "medievally," picking up patterns built around "key words" that he later replicated in the CA: "highlighting only the main points as if they were signposts--only taking in the key terms, in the manner of glossing and annotation, and then building poetry around those extractions" (53). The result is #3, "quashed poetry: "Gower reduces narrative details, simplifies them, and . . . inclines toward a simpler presentation, indeed a 'simplicior lectio,' that preserves key terms and narrative details only found in Chaucer" (53). That the reverse might have been happening fails to engage Cole's interest; neither does he suggest how either poet might have told the story of Pyramus and Thisbe without mentioning Pyramus, Thisbe, or the night, or a tree. The latter half of Cole's essay is devoted to unravelling what Chaucer meant by "moral Gower" in the closing lines of TC. "My claim," he says, "is that Chaucer coins the phrase 'moral Gower' as a way to evoke the more familiar locution 'ethicus Ovidius,' thus characterizing Gower's habits of reading and adapting or 'correcting' sources" (56). By way of arguing this, he asserts that the so-called "quarrel" between Chaucer and Gower supposedly initiated with the Prologue to the "Man of Law's Tale" (which Cole recognizes (59) as dependent upon Gower's "Tale of Constance") is really a good-humored disagreement about how to read Ovid, framing his case with a nod to Kosofsky Sedgwick: "Ovid is the important source text over which, it seems, both poets enact their rivalry. Which is to say, the rivalry is not between two poets; rather, it is about what is 'between' [Cole's emphasis] them, literally: Ovid" (60). The unspecified implication of Gower's Ovid as "ethicus" is that Chaucer's is then something else, something more . . . romantic? poetic? complex? aesthetically pleasing? To his credit, Cole does not fill in the blank, but concludes with an idea more interesting: "Hence the 'moral Gower': moral, because his handling of Ovid is not Chaucer's but is executed just as much within the Chaucerian frame. Likewise, Chaucer's own legends inevitably emerge within the Gowerian frame. Each does what the other will not do, but each is necessary to understanding the work of the other" (62). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cole, Andrew. Published Cole, Andrew. "John Gower Copies Geoffrey Chaucer." Chaucer Review 52 (2017): 46-65. 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 John Gower Copies Geoffrey Chaucer. 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 Cady states the major contention of her monograph early: "The focus of this book is on how dominant Western theories about the intrinsic nature of money and value are intimately tied to its beliefs about gender and gender difference. Put another way, gender ideology does not simply inform notions of money and value, it actually forms them. The roots of this isomorphic relationship can be traced to the late Middle Ages" (2). In support of this claim, she examines four works: the "Squire of Low Degree," Lydgate's "Fabula Duorum Mercatorum," Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale," and, from the "Confessio Amantis," the "Tale of Midas," in her third chapter, entitled "Midas's Touch: Common Property and Erotic economies in Book 5 of the Confessio Amantis." In point of fact, her remit is a whit broader, to compass the initial 746 lines of Book V. Having established that Aristotle in his "Politics" designated women as property and that "in the realm of a heterosexual economy, owners are male and property is female," she follows the development of this idea in the work of Tertullian, Augustine, and Aquinas as they wrestle with whether holding property privately is sinful. All eventually conclude that private property is a lamentable but necessary result of the Fall (90-96). Medieval jurisprudence translates the problem of ownership into legal terms (she cites John of Paris and John Fortescue), establishing that "labor is an investment that gives one the right to own a particular good" (96). All of this is preamble to her understanding of Gower's "complex and seemingly contradictory approach to avarice and the synergies and tensions between fiscal and erotic economies" (86) in Book V. The problem Amans faces in Book V--his wish for exclusive possession of his lady, which seems at first glance to dance on the knife-edge of Avarice, and likely make him culpable--has struck readers as a serious dilemma, given the obvious alternative: sharing her with the "'press' of men" that always surrounds her (98). Amans, however, takes a narrow view, denying any tinge of avarice, since he says he cares so little for gold, but only for his lady. Cady points out, however, that Amans "very quickly begins to fantasize about possessing his lover in language that echoes Genius's earlier depiction of avaricious enclosure and its tactile pleasures" (100). "Tactile pleasures" becomes key to Cady's analysis of the "Tale of Midas," for obvious reasons. (This analysis brings her to comment briefly on the tales of Tantalus, "Vulcan, Mars, and Venus," and "The King and His Steward's Wife"). Midas's joy in handling gold recalls Gower's description of the miser--a figure Amans treats in a questionably uncritical manner: "Amans's envy that a miser is able 'to grope and fiele al aboute" his "tresor" [a word Cady has linked to a woman's virginity (100)] whenever he wishes is decidedly disturbing, and hints at the dark violence bubbling underneath this erotic economy" (101). But for Cady Midas himself is less creepy than usurious--that is, by making gold without labor, but just with his touch, he "is perverting both the laws of nature and the laws of economy" (107). It has occurred to Amans, Cady notes, that his lady might be a usurer, in that she accrues benefits, i.e., his love, without labor (111-13)--an observation that requires her to range much farther than the 746 lines she staked out when she began. What she claims Amans "is articulating is a theory of give and take, a principle of exchange, that is at play whether one is talking about fiduciary or erotic matters" (112). This for Cady is the key to Gower's complicated Book V: Amans's love-service is treated as a form of labor that both in contemporary jurisprudence and natural law should earn reward--a reward that, ultimately, is woman's valorization. Her "tresor" has "no value if hoarded" (122); rather her worth derives from her sharing it, but only with one man. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cady, Diane. Published Cady, Diane. The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. ISBN 978-3-030-26260-0 978-3-030-26261-7. 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 Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Butterfield, Ardis. Published Butterfield, Ardis. "Afterwords: Forms of Death." Exemplaria 27 (2015): 167-82. Review Ardis Butterfield links John Gower's use of the ballade sequence to Guillaume de Machaut's innovative use of the same genre, especially considering how each poet uses language. Butterfield begins with Derrida's and Bakhtin's definitions of genre to bring us into her argument that Gower and Machaut using genre in much the same way, centuries earlier. Comparing Gower's "Cinkante Balades" to Machaut's "Voir Dit," Butterfield explains she will try to determine the differences between each poet's French and, for Gower, how his French relates to his English (170). Butterfield briefly cites Julia Kristeva, "in a spirit of retro-fashionability," on intertextuality, to come to the conclusion that "all discourse presupposes another discourse"--propelling Butterfield into an examination of cliché (172). Specifically, by way of illustration, she cites Gower's use of French cliché (providing lists of them in her article) to argue that such use demonstrates his mastery of the French language (175). Butterfield then compares aspects of the CB with Machaut's "Voir Dit." Within this "closed system of medieval French courtly language," Butterfield asserts that "Gower is making specific reference to the 'Voir Dit,' and seeking to engage with some of Machaut's aims, structures, and linguistic devices as he invents his own work" (177-78). Furthermore, in a coda on cliché, Butterfield suggests we might consider Gower's " Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz" as "a response to the 'Confessio amantis' . . . and hence a decision by Gower to trump the Englished erotic discourse with French preaching on adultery" (180). She concludes (quoting Frank Kermode's "The Sense of an Ending"): "In shaping our ends, the formula, the fixed form is a vital tool for living, a daily death, and a generic practice that meets our 'permanent need to live by the pattern rather than the fact'(11)" (180). [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and LIterary Relations Language and Word Studies Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants 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 Afterwords: Forms of Death. 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 Burrow looks at authorial self-depictions in a selection of late fourteenth-century poets, including--at various lengths--Langland, Cynewulf, Laʒamon, Thomas Malory, Thomas Hoccleve, and William Dunbar. Chaucer and Gower are, however, his greater focus. As a starting point, he looks at the "autobiographical" passage of William Langland's "Piers Plowman" (62), identifying it as the genre of "petition," specifically on the other's behalf. His overall argument is that this genre underlies references in works of this period that are read as "autobiography" since, in his view the latter is not ultimately a late-medieval genre. Chaucer and Gower move the petition form away from overt requests for material support to more subtle poetic ends. Burrow notes that the petitionary self-identification of Amans as John Gower in "Confessio Amantis," Book VIII is entirely part of the fictive frame--an advance on the generic type. Rather than Gower the poet petitioning a reader, Gower the character is petitioning Venus, another character (69). Burrow finds that, in contrast to Hoccleve or others, a petitionary mode was not especially common in Chaucer's work. He sees authorial petitions in "Fortune," "The Complaint of Chaucer to his Purse, and "Lenvoy to Scogan," This last he labels "a real petition" (70), with the understanding that its vagueness would be understood by the actual Scogan. Burrow argues that Chaucer is balancing that actual petition with a complicated byplay similar to Gower's "senex amans" move in the CA. Burrow then looks for the petition type more fictively in the "House of Fame," "Legend of Good Women," and occasionally in the "Canterbury Tales." He sees scenes like Chaucer's petition to Queen Alceste in the prologue to the "Legend of Good Women" as a fictive version of a "court scene of complaint and petition" (72), ultimately creating a focus on the author's humility and self-deprecation. Ultimately Burrow concludes that fictive depictions of petition by Gower and Chaucer "display a certain playfulness" (75) on the part of Ricardian poets. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burrow, John A. Published Burrow, John A. "The Poet as Petitioner." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 61-75. 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 Poet as Petitioner. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 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 relates the medieval sacrament of confession, and the manuals created to support it, to the emergence of true literary characters in late medieval fiction. Braswell's main focus is Ricardian (late fourteenth-century English) poetry, including the "Confessio Amantis. As mandatory auricular confession took root in European culture following the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), "the sinner" became "a complex individual who could both understand and articulate his feelings and actions . . . [he could also] convincingly change . . . " (40). Essential to character development in fiction was an interlocutor, not necessarily a priest, who questions the sinner to discover her personal situation and guide her inner progress. First, Braswell outlines the profusion of instructional manuals for priest and penitent on how to make a good confession. These include examples of dialogue in the first person, with the priest asking questions and sometimes answering with instruction on points unclear to the penitent. The confessor invariably started off with questions on the deadly sin of pride, as it was first important to break down the sinner's "self"--only as a penitent-in-progress does the sinner have a character, not after a full confession. By giving detail on the many branches of sin, the manuals encourage the priest to engage the penitent in "a moral psychodrama" allowing for "a variety of plots" (43) as every sin had a unique array of characteristics. Over time, this concern for interiority and motive gave rise to character development in literature (46-47). Turning to the four great Ricardian poets, Braswell explains how the priest-figure who elicits character development needn't be a priest, nor is the confessant necessarily contrite. In "Piers Plowman," the personified Seven Deadly Sins confess defiantly, as does Lady Meed to a corrupt friar. Among the Ricardians, Gower in CA follows most closely the sacramental question-and-answer process as set forth in the manuals. Like a true penitent, Amans changes character in the course of his confession: "Earlier, he had asked his confessor to shrive him so that 'ther schal nothing be left behinde.' Having lost his sinful nature, he has lost his personality as well. He begins as an egotistical sinner and ends as a humble old man" (50). While auricular confession was abolished by the reformation in England, the "sinner as a literary character" lived on into the English Renaissance, especially in tragic theater (52). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Braswell, Mary Flowers. Published Braswell, Mary Flowers. "Poet and Sinner: Literary Characterization and the Mentality of the Late Middle Ages." Fifteenth-Century Studies 10 (1984): 39-56. 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 Poet and Sinner: Literary Characterization and the Mentality of the Late Middle Ages. 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 "This book has a broad historical remit and its theoretical affiliations are likewise diverse," Blud notes in her introductory chapter (13). Essentially, the volume's title identifies her two areas of concern: by "the unspeakable" she means both a combination of the apophatic--the concept of the inexpressibility of the Divine, borrowed from Eastern Orthodox and mystical traditions--and "the suppression of same-sex eroticism" (3). The latter concern, with particular focus on women's same-sex desire, occupies most of the book, the theoretical grounding of which "crystallise[s] around the legacy of Foucault and Lacan's work on silence, language, and power" (13), punctuated throughout with appropriate ideas drawn from Giorgio Agamben, Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous, Julia Kristeva, Karma Lochrie, and Diane Watt. Her interest in Gower is confined to two tales in the Confessio Amantis: "Iphis and Iante" from Book IV and "Tereus" from Book V. Of the former, she says "The tale serves as an example of how female same-sex desire in medieval writing can be denied or undeclared, both in the text and by its readers. It is presented as both natural and unnatural, as both problematic and unproblematic; it is not punished, but nor [sic] is it permitted to go uncorrected" (89). Blud acknowledges that "the same-sex female couple . . . are not said to engage specifically in unspeakable acts [but] this union 'is' [emphasis hers] deemed to be untenable by the narrative and by nature (or 'kinde'). For Gower and for Cupid, it is a relation that should not be preserved and cannot be written unproblematically" (89). She cites the Latin gloss "in which Iphis is troubled by an inability to fulfil her desire" as "presenting a different story" from the English (90), apparently finding in "Set cum Yphis debitum sue coniugi unde soluere non habuit" indication of Iphis's intentions alongside her inability. She finds Ianthe's desire for Iphis provoked by the latter's presenting as male, noting that "the transformation seems to valorize the phallocentric discourse and access a missing phallus that will make the relationship intelligible" (92). For Blud, the tale is thus "a test case for Gower's (a)morality; in this framework, the 'Confessio' is particularly interested in 'transgressive' gendered identities, and not simply negative exemplars" (92). The central message of the "Tale of Tereus," Blud observes, is that "Tereus's performative bodily inscription of unspeakability on Philomela fails to silence her" (152). For much of her interpretation Blud relies on Watt's reading of Gower's version as an effort to "reinstate women as the real victims of rape, and to counter the misogyny so common in this sort of narrative" (157). She contrasts Gower's version more or less favorably with Chaucer's in the "Legend of Good Women," citing Chaucer's own suspect past as suggested by the Cecily Chaumpaigne case (157-58). Unlike Chaucer's, "Gower's account of Tereus's crime engages with its challenges to masculinity, rather than femininity. Here the narrative exposes . . . the boundary-crossing excess of rape" (158). Gower, in Blud's view, is "judicious" in his "treatment of the revenge scenario Chaucer omits [i.e., serving Itys to Tereus]" (159). Gower negotiates "infanticide, cannibalism, and metamorphosis" as well as--throughout the tale--rape and incest to present in its closing scenes the emasculation and diminution of Tereus, " . . . thus made less than natural, less than a king, less than a man . . . unceremoniously cut off by the intervention of the gods, who transform him into a bird" (164). And pointedly a silent one: for Blud (leveraging Cixous here), it is significant that Gower--again unlike Chaucer--describes the "voices" of the sisters transformed into birds, but by making Tereus a lapwing, a bird with no song, (171) he depicts a silence that speaks volumes. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Blud, Victoria. Published Blud, Victoria. The Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. ISBN 9781843844686. 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 Unspeakable, Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Literature 1000-1400. 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 In the chapter entitled "Chaucer, Gower, and Barbarian History: 'The Man of Law's Tale' and the Prologue to Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'," Birns argues, as part of his wider set of claims about uses of late antique European history by medieval and Renaissance writers, that Gower and Chaucer both drew on "barbarian history" as source material and as "a mirror for their own times" (44): Chaucer using Paul the Deacon in his "Man of Law's Tale," and Gower using Otto of Freising to extend into the near past the four-empire image from the book of Daniel in the Prologue to the Confessio Amantis. Birns claims that "It is likely that Otto's 'Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus' was the principal source for the historical portions" (44) of the Prologue to CA, although the claim is largely unsubstantiated, relying on a rather loose connection between 5.19 of Otto's "Historia" and lines 739–45 of Gower's Prologue, and partially undercut by Birns's observation that the poetic account by Godfrey of Viterbo (who Gower cites in his tale of Apollonius) may well be an alternative source. Birns's comments on the "translatio" of Rome as the Holy Roman Empire in Gower's time and place are more apt, as are his observations about Gower's moral anxieties concerning the "way history was going" (52) in his own time and about the "pastness of the past" (54), but they are undercut by obscurity: "beneath Gower's recuperative veneer there is an entropic dynamism-within-decay that cannot keep history boxed in one direction" (48). Similar problems haunt Birns's discussion of Chaucer's tale, although his efforts to avoid a simplistic view of history are commendable as he pursues a nuanced "historical consciousness" of medieval and Renaissance writers who were influenced by earlier historiography. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Buirns, Nicholas. Published Birns, Nicholas. Barbarian Memory: The Legacy of Early Medieval History in Early Modern Literature. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 44-59. Gower Subject Confessio Amanti 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 Barbarian Memory: The Legacy of Early Medieval History in Early Modern Literature. 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 Bertolet's interpretative base is the emergence of a cash-based economy in the late fourteenth century, and its conflicted relationship with the still-dominant oath-and-labor-based economy characteristic of feudalism. This serves as the lens through which he reads Gower's tale of a king whose illness can only be cured by intercourse with a woman; his steward who, charged by the king to bring him a woman willing to share his bed for £100 in gold, provides his own wife to the king, seeking the gold only for himself, and the wife who, however reluctantly, performs so much to the king's satisfaction that he marries her after banishing the steward for his greed, as one who has his "oghne astat reviled" (152). Bertolet recognizes that the tale "on the surface" examines "the injustice of prostituting one's own wife," but, in an analysis that draws on contemporary economic theory, Aristotle's "Politics" and "Ethics," Aquinas' commentary on the latter, and Nicole Oresme's "De moneta," argues that "Gower's reason for telling this story is much more sophisticated than this and . . . follows his general plan of exploring how the cash-based commercial economy affects feudal relationships" (144). The king and the woman are shown to be blameless under both cash- and labor-based economies, since "the king is in health with a wife and the potential for heirs. The new queen has earned her position as queen with her value appreciated" (153) and the steward, who "has done no honest labor . . . receives no commensurate reward" (154). Thus "the two economic systems stay distinct, even if the steward attempted to blur them" (154). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig. Published Bertolet, Craig. "'Money Earned, Money Won': The Problem of Labor Pricing in Gower's 'Tale of the King and the Steward's Wife'." In Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature. Ed. Craig E. Bertolet and Robert Epstein (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 143-56. 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 "Money Earned, Money Won": The Problem of Labor Pricing in Gower's "Tale of the King and the Steward's Wife." 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Alvar, Elena, Antonio Ocaña Cortijo and Manuela Faccon, eds. Published Alvar, Elena, Antonio Ocaña Cortijo and Manuela Faccon, eds. Confessio Amantis: Literatura moral y materia amorosa en Inglaterra y la Península Ibérica (siglos XIV-XV). Confessio Amantis, John Gower; Confissão do Amante (Robret Payn tr.) ; Confysión del Amante (Juan de Cuenca tr.). Edición trilingüe. 2 vols. (San Millán de la Cogolla: Cilengua, 2018). Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review "Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue": Since 1990, when Elena Alvar published her edition of the "Confysion del Amante," the Castilian translation of the "Confessio Amantis," the study of the "Iberian Gower" has experienced a significant boost, first as a result of the discovery of the manuscript with Portuguese translation in 1995, then with the editions of some of its books by Antonio Cortijo and others by Manuela Faccon, and with the celebration of the Third International Gower Congress in Spain in 2011. This trilingual edition of the text is a much-awaited new peak of that progression. Not only does it bring together the partial editions in a single and uniform publication, but its introduction succeeds as well in collecting and updating what is known about the Portuguese and Castilian medieval versions of the CA, their manuscripts, the translators and the translations, and the literary context in which they were produced, with a particular emphasis on the latter. Without question, these are all invaluable resources for researchers interested in the study of the Iberian CAs, or in the larger manuscript history of Gower's poem. The parallel disposition of Middle English, medieval Portuguese and medieval Castilian throughout the two volumes is, in that regard, priceless for anyone wishing to study the texts comparatively. The editors use Macaulay's edition for the Middle English text, and Elena Alvar's for the Castilian (without her paleographical notations, and modernizing some graphical aspects); in the case of the Portuguese text, the partial editions by Cortijo and Faccon are used, also with a slightly modernized spelling, capitalization and punctuation, in order--as the editors note--to enhance the intelligibility of the Iberian texts for modern readers. While this is certainly achieved, the challenges posed by the parallel edition of three texts--one of them in verse--have been less successfully resolved. Even in two substantial volumes the layout results in a very packed page of tiny print. Although to some degree visual aids of tables/charts separating the texts and their sections are helpful, headings fail to provide any reference to individual Books of the poem--a decision that makes following the text quite a laborious task. Nevertheless, this trilingual edition represents a significant milestone for Gower studies, and its availability for readers and researchers of Gower and his reception is most welcome. [ASH. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1.] 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 Confessio Amantis: Literatura moral y materia amorosa en Inglaterra y la Península Ibérica (siglos XIV-XV). Confessio Amantis, John Gower; Confissão do Amante (Robret Payn tr.) ; Confysión del Amante (Juan de Cuenca tr.). Edición trilingüe. 2 vols. 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 This essay is virtually identical to the previously published essay of the same title (In "Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c.1100-c.1500. }Ed. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn and Collette, Caroline and Kowaleski, Maryanne and Mooney, Linne R and Putter, Ad and Trotter, David. (York: York Medieval Press, 2009, pp. 135-45.) In it, Yeager sums up the most important of his earlier work on Gower's use of French and adds some new details, particularly on the "Traitié." MO, he believes, was written in two stages: the largest part of the work was composed in French on the model of Henry of Lancaster's "Livre des Seyntz Medicines" and for the same aristocratic audience; the concluding prayer to Mary, however, was added to make the work more suitable for the Austin canons of St Mary Overeys with whom Gower had taken up residence after 1378. CB is the later of Gower's two ballade collections as evidenced by its use of an envoy, and conceived as a response to the popular "Livre des Cent Ballades," it was addressed to an audience of "French chevalier poets" (142) of the sort with whom the future Henry IV associated during the early 1390s. The "Traitié" is the earlier composition. As evidence of its readership, Yeager reconsiders the identity of the "Quixley" who names himself as the author of the English translation in BL MS Stowe 951. Rather than the small landowner chosen by MacCracken, Yeager offers instead a Robert de Quixley, prior of Nostell Priory, near York, between 1393 and 1427. Nostell was also house of Austin canons, suggesting both the nature of Gower's original readership – identical to that which Yeager proposes for the completed MO--and the means of transmission to the translator. The very fact of the translation also attests to the decline in the use of French after 1399. Yeager notes that Gower's only known composition in French after Henry's accession is the pair of ballades that preface the CB in the sole surviving manuscript, dedicating the collection to the new king, and there, his reference to the Latin verses that follow the two ballades as being in "perfit langage" is itself a comment on the status of French and Gower's choice to use either English or Latin for all of the work he composed during the final decade of his life. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R. F. "John Gower's French and His Readers." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John and Yeager, R. F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 304-14. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 John Gower's French and His Readers. 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 Beidler's essay expands on the paper of the same title Beidler delivered in London in 2008, at the inaugural Gower Society Congress. His focus is "the striking image of a man hiding like an owl after he marries an ugly old bride" (p. 105) which Gower and Chaucer both include. Chaucer borrows this image from Gower ("Gower's tale both preceded and influenced Chaucer's," p. 108) but, Beidler argues, "Gower and Chaucer make quite different uses of the owl similes in their tales and . . . the simile is more organically integrated by Gower than by Chaucer" (p. 108). Gower compares Florent to an owl that travels by night in order not to be seen with his unattractive bride (p. 110). Florent's shame is of a piece with his entire character as Gower limns it, Beidler shows. "For Florent, it is all a question of hiding his wife--by banishment to an island, by cover of night, by closed doors, by clothing--so that 'noman' can see how he has aligned himself with so ugly a bride. Significantly, the two are wedded not in the daytime, as was typical for a wedding, but 'in the nyht' [CA I.366] (p. 112). Beidler also notes the analogous significance of Florent's choice: for a man so motivated primarily by reputation, to have the world think his wife hideous would be a frightful fate indeed. Chaucer's nameless rapist-knight is "never once . . . said to be concerned about his worldly fame or his reputation among others" (p.114). Moreover, because Chaucer's Loathly Lady accompanies the knight to Arthur's court, to claim her promise when her answer prevails--unlike her counterpart who waits for Florent to return--there is no question of keeping the marriage a secret. "Chaucer's knight's hiding like an owl, then, has nothing to do with concealing either his bride or his marriage . . . . Rather . . . [he] hides like an owl for no other reason than that he wants to avoid having to look at his ugly bride between his morning wedding and the approaching night when he must pay his marital debt to her" (pp. 114-15). Beidler concludes that, because "owls by nature hide during the day to avoid being seen . . . not . . . to avoid having to look at their wives" (p. 115), the simile is less naturally adapted by Chaucer from Gower's more fully complementary original. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beidler, Peter G. Published Peter G. Beidler. "Chaucer's Canterbury Comedies: Origins and Originality. Seattle, WA: Coffeetown Press, 2011. Pp 105-15. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion 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 Owl Similies in the Tale of Florent and the Wife of Bath's Tale. 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 Smith makes two important observations about the orthographical tradition of CA MSS: first, that the distinctive language of the archetype was preserved far more strongly than one would expect or that happened in contemporary copies of CT, a fact he attributes to the status as "auctoritas" that Gower seems to have enjoyed; and second, that there was only slight influence from the "Chancery" forms that were to become the basis of the written standard. In the last part of his essay he takes up the question of the textual transmission of CA, and observes that the MSS of the groups that Macaulay labelled "first recension, unrevised," "first recension, intermediate," and "second recension (b)" seem to derive from an exemplar with a number of North-West Midlands features. His suggestions on how this situation arose appear to accept Macaulay's explanation of the order of appearance of these groups. In fact, his observations are consistent with other evidence that Macaulay got the order wrong, and that the groups he thought were first in origin were actually those furthest removed both in time and place from the poet himself. The Appendix to this essay contains a valuable list of the MSS of CA with notes on the language forms of each. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, Jeremy J. Published Smith, Jeremy J. "Spelling and Tradition in Fifteenth-century Copies of Gower's Confessio Amantis" In M. L. Samuels, and J. J. Smith, The English of Chaucer and His Contemporaries." Aberdeen: The University Press,1988. Pp. 96-113. 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 Spelling and Tradition in Fifteenth-century Copies of Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 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 careful evidence and fine-grained arguments of Yeager's essay have the potential to help reshape understanding of "the shifting views and allegiances of Gower, the man" (34), particularly those that pertain to Thomas Arundel, his putative ownership of Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98, the Latin prose heading and the "Epistola" to Arundel that today open the manuscript, Gower's "Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia," and Gower's motives, intentions, and timing in composing and revising some of the contents of works included in the manuscript. Yeager opens by questioning the traditional understanding of All Souls MS 98 as a manuscript presented to Arundel and, by extension, evidence of Gower's "fulsome commitment" to Arundel and "ardent support" of Henry's usurpation (14). He reviews and confirms Malcolm Parkes' arguments that the manuscript was not an "authorial product" but "posthumously assembled by scribes" (17), affirming that the "Epistola" was not included in the All Souls MS 98 until nearly a century after Gower's death. Moreover, Yeager shows that the decoration of the manuscript, the "extensive emendations over erasures" in the All Souls version of the "Epistola," and the Latin prose heading or preface together suggest "strongly that the common conception of All Souls MS 98 is mistaken" (19). The emendations, in particular, indicate that the "Epistola" must have existed in two recensions at least, the All Souls version being a revision, prompting Yeager to raise questions about when and for what purpose the pre-revision "Epistola" was composed originally. He looks to the Latin prose preface and contextualizing history for reasons to believe that Gower composed the "Epistola" initially when Arundel was first appointed Archbishop of Canterbury by Richard II, specifically designed to accompany :Viciorum pestilencia," a "new, showcase poem in 1397" (31). Characteristic of the argument in many ways is Yeager's explanation of a revision of an allusion to the Sermon on the Mount in the "Epistola" where, when describing the hiding of candlelight, Gower replaced the familiar and scriptural "sub modio" (under a basket) with "sub cincere" (under ashes), an indication, Yeager maintains, of Gower's new sense of a threat of "auto da fé," prompted by Arundel's "De heretic comburendo" and the "thirteen anti-Lollard Constitutions" of 1407 (25). The All Souls "Epistola," then, is less a "fulsome commitment" to Arundel than a propitiation of the archbishop who in his "second Canterbury tenure" was a "different, more dangerous man" in "different, far more dangerous times" (28), someone whom Gower may have had cause to fear because he had himself criticized the prelacy earlier in his career. Yeager's arguments do not depend wholly upon a single, revised word, of course, but this kind of subtlety characterizes his fresh and provocative way of looking at material in All Souls MS 98, material viewed in relation to the seriatim political climates in which it was produced, revised, and compiled. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Minor Latin Poetry Manuscripts and Textual Studies Published Yeager, R. F. "Gower's 'Epistle to Archbishop Arundel': The Evidence of Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98." In Manuscript and Print in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Professor Julia Boffey. Ed. Tamara Atkin and Jaclyn Rajsic (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019), pp. 13-34. 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/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Title A name given to the resource Gower's 'Epistle to Archbishop Arundel': The Evidence of Oxford, All Souls College, MS 98. 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 Ward sets out to show that neither Gower's inclusion of the "Religions of the World" section nor his discussion of rape and virginity in Book V, on Avarice, are digressions, as G.C. Macaulay (and many others) have believed, but rather that his "repudiations of Venus and rape in a discussion of avarice are appropriate and, indeed, necessary to his purpose in the "Confessio Amantis." The identification of avarice and fornication as idolatry in the Apostle Paul's warning to the Colossians and to the Ephesians . . . not only explains Genius's disavowal of the non-Christian gods, but is also essential both to the expansion of rapine to rape and the praise of virginity in contrast to Venus's lechery in book 5 of the 'Confessio Amantis'" (404). In a manner unique to the CA ("No other penitential work . . . links avarice, idolatry, and fornication together in such a sustained manner"), Gower "expands avarice from its limited definition as the desire to covet gold" which "ultimately leads the reader to understand idolatry as a practice that consists of treating gold, a lover, or a god as an idol. This progression works out the connection Paul makes in . . . Ephesians and Colossians: that fornicators and the avaricious are idolaters" (405). Ward asserts that in Paul's view, fornication, "with rape as the ultimate illicit act of sexual violation, is also revealed to be a rapacious form of avarice" (406). Gower presents Amans as "a sincere, even naïve, lover who respects the individual autonomy of his lady and her virtue"--in short, the opposite of the idolatrous, avaricious fornicator bent on "taking away another's possession or virtue" (406)--i.e., how Gower moves from avarice-inspired rapine to rape. Ward demonstrates the capaciousness of Gower's view of avarice by considering its social/legal damage (406-9), the profound social rot of adultery (409-11), the linkages of avarice with the Pauline conception of idolatry (411-14), and "Rape as stealing virtue and the debate about Venus" (414-22). Ward concludes that "by linking discussions of avarice, idolatry, and fornication in book 5, Gower relates the legal realities of "raptus" to penitential discourse. During a time of such great change in attitudes about the good and goods, Gower reiterates Paul's condemnation of the avaricious and fornicators to distinguish them from the legitimate lovers who engage in "kinde" love within the bounds of reason and virtue. Furthermore, he elucidates the dangers that avarice poses to communal flourishing and one's relationship with God" (422). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ward, Jessica. Published Ward, Jessica. "Avarice, Idolatry, and Fornication: The Connection between Genius's Discussions about Religion and Virginity in Book 5 of John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Studies in Philology 116 (2019): 401-22. 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 Avarice, Idolatry, and Fornication: The Connection between Genius's Discussions about Religion and Virginity in Book 5 of John Gower's "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 Author/Editor Author/Editor van Es, Bart. Published van Es, Bart. "Late Shakespeare and the Middle Ages." In Medieval Shakespeare: Pasts and Presents. Ed. Ruth Morse, Helen Cooper, and Peter Holland. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 37-51. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Review Noting that in Shakespeare's late plays "'romance' no longer blends [as it did in earlier plays] but instead becomes conspicuous," van Es takes up "the conspicuous presence of archaic ways of being and telling," linking it to "the emergence of the cultural category of 'the Middle Ages' in the early seventeenth century" (37). "Pericles" presents a case-in-point. For van Es, the character of Gower is largely misread by contemporary critics. Observing that Thomas Berthelette's edition of the "Confessio Amantis" would have been Shakespeare's source text for "Pericles," he employs Tim Machan's characterization of Gower in that edition as a "humanist" (JGN 17.2) to offset the self-consciously medieval gestures (e.g., the tournament, the dumb shows) inserted into the play but not found in Shakespeare's "Confessio" text (38-41). Van Es points out that this "Tudor" Gower was considered a father of English poetry and a refiner or the language (43), but by 1607, the date of "Pericles," he had become comic. What happened? Apparently, Cervantes, who "made the medieval narrator a figure of fun" (46). Shakespeare's collaborator on "Pericles," George Wilkins, was "in the vanguard of the movement of early seventeenth-century playwrights who responded to Cervantes: Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Nathan Field, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher" (47). "Ancient Gower's" character in "Pericles," in van Es's view, "can be tracked with precision to the years 1605 to 1607. Shakespeare's oeuvre sits astride this temporal fault line, so that the late plays become at once more modern and more medieval than those that came before" (51). N.B.: van Es remarks on Gower's "shift from a Yorkist to the Lancastrian camp" (42), apparently confusing Richard III with Richard II. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Late Shakespeare and the Middle Ages. 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 Urban advocates for renewed attention to how we edit Gower's "Confessio Amantis," suggesting that "queer editing" would permit the numerous extant manuscripts to exist simultaneously without privileging one over another: "'Confessio Amantis' and its manuscript corpus actively encourage the co-existence of heterogeneous voices and identities, a co-existence that in turn leads to an urge to reproduce the text in ways that allow for this heterogeneity to inform our encounters with the text" (304). To discuss how to accomplish such editing, Urban engages the concept of queer temporalities, particularly as espoused in the work of Elizabeth Freeman, Carolyn Dinshaw, and Jack Halberstam. Urban suggests that the different manuscripts of Gower's CA witness different temporal moments and that "Gower's poem 'itself' contains these kinds of time frame and temporal systems" (305; emphasis original). These queer temporalities present "the potential to produce unusual encounters with Gower's poem" (305). Urban posits that only when combined do all of the extant manuscripts of the CA create the whole poem (306). He nonetheless acknowledges that the majority of variances are isolated to the poem's prologue. Thus, Urban focuses on the frame narrative of the CA. Focusing on the gloss in the prologue of MS Ashmole 35, Urban explores what queer editing could mean for the CA--in particular its prologue. In this manuscript's iteration of the CA, Urban identifies "aberrant witnesses"--inconsistencies in glosses both Latin and Middle English--in MS Ashmole 35. "The poem's multi-temporal identity facilitates the development of a series of queer temporalities as the poem progresses, in which the past and/or the future disrupt the present, and the present disrupts both the past and the future" (308). He claims this "instability" makes the poem seem "positively queer" (310). Following his discussion of these inconsistencies in Ashmole 35, Urban concludes by restating his claim of the heterogeneity of the CA and its ability to produce multiple meanings. He then advocates for an editorial approach that "emphasizes variants and heterogeneity" (315), which he suggests we may accomplish in the digital sphere. [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Urban, Malte. Published Urban, Malte. "Gower Out of Time and Place." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9 (2018), 303-17. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 Gower Out of Time and Place. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Stadolnik, Joe. Published Stadolnik, Joe. "Gower's Bedside Manner." New Medieval Literatures 17 (2017): 150-74. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Stadolnik demonstrates through multiple citations from a range of medieval medical writers including Walter of Cantilupe, John of Arderne, Arnald of Villanova, and the penitential author Laurent d'Orléans ("Somme le Roi"), that "Clerical and lay discourses of confession articulated a form of dialogic examination that proceeded as measured and discerning talk of spiritual disease, and was thus akin to the inquisitive method of a skilled doctor" (151). This method incorporated "good and honest tales . . . to provoke laughter, tales of the Bible, and tragedies" that "share equal status as rudiments of useful medical narration" (165). For Stadolnik, it is this connection of medical and Confessional talk that provides Gower with the frame structure of the "Confessio Amantis": "Amans professes to suffer from lovesickness. Venus soon refers him to Genius . . . to confess" (151). Thus, "Amans's lovesickness attracts Venus's concerned--and explicitly medical--attentions" (165). Stadolnik likens Gower to a "confabulator," one who "must inform his practice with a familiar kind of expert discernment, answerable to both literary sensibility and pragmatic, medical savoir-faire. The confabulator must be a deft versifier who can tailor verse forms to the occasion, and employ rhetorical strategies of decoration and amplification to good effect." (167) Gower's frame follows these sightlines but, in order to extend the curative effects of the fiction to his readers, he develops "a genre concept of its own which specifies to readers how to use the text" (169). It is a "genre" Gower adapted from what Stadolnik (quoting Julie Orlemanski) takes as common readerly "habitus" in the Middle Ages, i.e., "florilegia, collections of exempla, and miscellaneous manuscript compilations which invite 'eclectic performances of reading'" (170). Since the confabulator is under no constraint to shape his narrations beyond a moment-to-moment need, and since such disconnected "performances of reading" were what medieval readers were used to, "Readers are invited not to read [the CA] from the beginning to . . . end but to ransack it for the literary experience they want, or need, or both." (171). Presumably this is curative; in any event, "In this way [Gower] recommends himself as a confabulator to princes . . . and for those of his readers who are mere subjects, he encourages a readerly practice that can simulate expertly that eclectic practice of confabulation" (174). 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 Bedside Manner. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, Bruce R. Published Smith, Bruce R. "Shakespeare's Middle Ages." In Medieval Shakespeare: Pasts and Presents. Ed. Ruth Morse, Helen Cooper, and Peter Holland. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 19-36. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Biography of Gower Review With a certain aptness, given that Smith's essay opens the volume, he takes the notion of "middle" as his point of departure, pointing out how much of Shakespeare's London was medieval, and further that more or less mid-way between the Globe and London city proper stood St. Saviour's Church, with its prominent tomb of John Gower (includes photo, 20). Gower's tomb becomes a reference point, Smith suggests, for what he views as Shakespeare's "medieval" imagination: that is, a "whole-body model of perception" derived from "Aristotle and Galen; more immediately, Aquinas" (28-29): "We can witness the importance of the middle, the domain of imagination and passion, by pausing before Gower's tomb" (29). A description of the decoration follows, leading to: "The imaginative space created here in stone, pigment and gilding is the visual equivalent of the imaginative space created through words in Gower's 'Mirour de l'Omme,' or 'Speculum Meditantis,' written in French . . . ." (29) Noting that on the tomb the MO volume is "the middle of the 'Confessio Amantis' (in English) on the bottom and 'Vox clamantis' (in Latin) on the top." (29) Smith asks: "Is there a hierarchy of languages here, as there is a hierarchy of architectural spaces and states of being? Does the French of fourteenth-century high culture occupy a middle ground between the homeliness of English and the divinity of Latin?" (29) Smith suggests that answering such questions about what Gower expected from his tomb requires a "whole-body model of perception" that must be applied to understanding how Shakespeare understood theatrical space and guided his shaping of plays: "The most important of the implications for the Aristotelian/Galenic model of perception . . . was this: rational judgment [by which Smith means that of Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke 27-28] does not trump kinaesthetic experience. For me, that is the continuity that connects Shakespeare most forcefully with the so-called Middle Ages" (31). He concludes by applying this observation to "the middle plays," examining three very briefly ("Twelfth Night," "King Lear," "Antony and Cleopatra"), and "Hamlet" in greater (but still cursory) depth (31-33). He returns to Gower's tomb to note the "two angel heads that receive the vaulted ribs of Gower's tomb." (33). Although damaged by iconoclasts, "the imaginative surrounds [of the heads] were . . . still intact and gave onlookers an imaginative cue for encountering a vanished past that 'ancient Gower' in 'Pericles' suggests was not yet firmly distinguished from Classical antiquity" (33). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Shakespeare's Middle Ages. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Shutters, Lynn. Published Shutters, Lynn. "Confronting Venus: Classical Pagans and Their Christian Readers in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Chaucer Review 48 (2013): 38-65. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Shutters seeks to explain why "Amans/Gower" seems reluctant to abandon his pursuit of love at the conclusion of the "Confessio," treating "his conversion to a Christian life . . . [as] less a free choice than a forced exile." Gower appears to "risk undermining his poem's ethical program when it would seem far simpler to make the authorial persona reject Venus" (38). Her argument is a complex one, and difficult to summarize briefly. In essence, she follows Winthrop Wetherbee's model of contrasted "worlds" of Rome and Troy (JGN 27.1), the former of which for Gower (quoting Shutters) "embodies concepts of social and political cohesion, and . . . sacrifice [of] personal interests for the common good" which "represents cultural cohesion . . . [and] . . . historical cohesion" while the latter, "through its focus on individual, erotic pursuits represents a decontextualized mode of relating to the classical past" (48). Shutters argues that "the discontinuity between the two cities is in fact necessary for a continuous history between virtuous pagans and Christians to emerge" (48). "Gower establishes continuity between Roman and fourteenth-century British values by associating Rome with secular political virtue and Christianity" as can be seen in Gower's treatment of "Julius Caesar, the Emperors Maximin and Constantine, and the consuls Gaius Fabricius and Carmidotirus" and also "the Holy Roman Emperor Conrad, who demonstrates the continuity of Roman virtue between the pagan and Christian eras" (49). Counter-examples Arrons, Claudius, and Mundus are punished, which "illustrates the degree to which Rome is disassociated from it" (i.e., "destructive, individual erotic desire") (49-50). While Gower's Rome is set in historical relation to England, Troy isn't: rather, "historical discontinuity and decontextualization characterize Troy." When, infrequently, Gower "does locate Trojan lovers within a longer historical trajectory, that trajectory is tragic" (50). Gower's model is Guido delle Colonne's "Historia destructionis Troiae," "in which . . . secular history does not proceed toward imperial glory (the Virgilian tradition)"--nor toward England, either (50). Shutters applies the Roman/Trojan contrast to "characters and stories not specifically connected to these cities": thus "non-Romans, such as Alexander the Great and Aristotle in Book 7 can adhere to Roman values and find a place in a continuous model of history connecting pagans and Christians" while others who "embody the historically decontextualized, individual eroticism" of Troy--of which her primary example is Venus--are only "contextualized into a larger history demonstrating the transitoriness and deleterious effects . . . [of] the attractions of Venus" (51). In Book 5's "Religions of the World" section, Gower presents the Greeks as responsible for the elevation of human beings to gods (the Romans merely followed along), and through Genius' denigration of Venus as one such (particularly louche) elevated human "Gower clears the way for a different concept of pagan antiquity, one that is associated with virtuous male pagans who represent positive understanding of nature, such as reason and charity" (51). He thus employs "gender, politics, ethics and religion to sort the pagan past." (51) Yet in his bifurcation of religious and secular histories, Shutters asserts, Gower "is not fully successful"--as he himself seems to have known. (52) Classical materials come with "prior meanings" that can escape even Gower's authorial control. He thus "writes himself into something of a quandary" which he seeks to evade by having Venus reject him in Book VIII, rather than the other way around, as one would expect of a devout Christian (53). There Venus does not behave as expected: she "historically contextualizes" him by showing him his aged state, and thus his unsuitability for love, demonstrating "her own agency by defying Amans' and Genius' previous depictions" of her. (53-6). While a "fantasy," this Venus nonetheless "complicates the relationship between ethics and history in the poem" because "due to a deep-seated homology between individual, human age and historical time, 'Gower' the old man is also 'Gower' the representative of the Christian era." (56) His reluctance to leave Venus' service implicates Gower's awareness of a similar reluctance on the part of Christian intellectuals, and conflicts with reader expectations of a Christian repudiation--one that Shutters, relying on Walter Benn Michaels, deems an "ideological choice"--by Amans/Gower of his misguided affections. Instead, Shutters argues, Venus' handling of the Gower persona renders his exit from the court of love a matter of "identity": as an old man (and not incidentally, an old man who represents Christianity) "he simply doesn't belong" there (56-60). As Shutters has it, the ethical choice is denied the Gower persona, in a sense, by his contextualization in his own history. It is only when, in the poem's closing, Gower the poet reasserts himself, and plumps for ideology, that he affirms the expected: "Christian love is right, erotic love is wrong, and one must choose between them" (62). "The final lines of the poem . . . emphasize the superiority of Christian love" (64). But, Shutters concludes, arriving at this goal has been difficult: "Disengaging from the classical past might seem like an easy solution to the problems that pagan antiquity posed to medieval authors, yet the ending of the 'Confessio' suggests that figuring out how and why medieval Christians did not relate to pagan antiquity was as complex as figuring out how and why they did" (65). ]RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Confronting Venus: Classical Pagans and Their Christian Readers in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Runstedler, Curtis. Published Runstedler, Curtis. "John Gower's Alchemical Afterlife in Elias Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652)." Neophilologus 104 (2020): 263-81. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Runstedler explores "the ways in which Gower's alchemy was received by early modern readers in literary and alchemical traditions." He describes Gower's presentation of alchemy in Book IV of the "Confessio Amantis" and Elias Ashmole's commentary on Book IV in "Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum," focusing on the philosophical and moral emphases of the practice in both works, and arguing that Ashmole decontextualizes Book IV, reproduces some sixteenth-century notions of Gower, and, as a result, misinterprets Gower as an "alchemical master." Runstedler outlines the withering of Gower's poetic reputation in the sixteenth century, identifies similarities between Gower's views on alchemy and Thomas Norton's in the "Ordinall of Alchemy" (1477), and maintains that Ashmole's work reflects Gower's high reputation as a practicing alchemist and as Chaucer's Master" (Eliaas's term) and "mentor" (Runstedler's) in the science. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 John Gower's Alchemical Afterlife in Elias Ashmole's "Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum" (1652). 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 McKinley, Kathryn. Published McKinley, Kathryn. "The View from the Tower: Revisiting Gower, 1381, and Vox Clamantis, Book 1." Mediaevalia 29 (2008): 31-52. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower Review McKinley's essay includes three connected arguments: 1) Guillaume de Deguileville's "Pélerinage de vie Humaine" is a source of the tower scene in the dream-vision of Book 1 of "Vox Clamantis," sections 17-19, where the narrator, fleeing from the Rising of 1381, takes refuge in a ship (representing the Tower of London) threatened by a storm that represents the Rising; 2) in this scene, the multidimensional first-person narrator--a member of the gentry--confesses his own responsibility for the storm, representing in some way, McKinley says, aristocratic responsibility for the Rising, perhaps Richard II's own responsibility; 3) as a result, the scene reflects the earliest "beginnings of Gower's attribution of blame to the upper classes for the problems associated with the Rising" (p. 34), well before the 1390s when his accusations of such blame are usually dated. McKinley acknowledges that Gower's use of Guillaume's "Pélerinage" in the scene is only "probable" (37) and that their shared symbols are "quite common" (33), although she does not note that Eric Stockton long before connected the scene with the conventions of "The Ship of Religion," specifically Guillaume's "Pélerinage de l'Ame" ("The Major Latin Works of John Gower" 1962:366 n1 and pp. 16-17). McKinley uses Stockton's translation, but seems to miss or ignore this detail, while following Stockton's identifications of many echoes from Ovid. The penitential stance of Gower's narrator is clear, however, whether or not it derives from either of Guillaume's works or derives, more loosely, from a Ship of Religion topos, or the ubiquitous allegorical device of a narrator's lament or Confession. Whether the narrator represents Gower, the Self, a particular class, the body politic, the king, or all of these is impossible to determine, but McKinley emphasizes the king and the upper classes, maintaining that the Confession can be seen to reflect Gower's "growing disapproval of Richard's kingship" (34) as early as 1386, the date usually assigned to the composition of Book 1 of the "Vox." [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 View from the Tower: Revisiting Gower, 1381, and "Vox Clamantis," Book 1. 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 Magnani, Roberta, and Diane Watt. Published Magnani, Roberta, and Diane Watt. "On the Edge: Chaucer and Gower's Queer Glosses." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9 (2018), 269-88. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower Review Magnani and Watt revisit the supposed rivalry between Gower and Chaucer, evidenced in the introduction to Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale" and Gower's "Tale of Canace and Machaire" and "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre," to focus on what reading these texts in conversation can tell us about the relationships between authority and interpretation. They argue, "Gower, Chaucer, and indeed some of their readers (as revealed through the Latin glossing of Gower's and Chaucer's vernacular texts) are acutely aware of the risks, and sometimes the pleasures, of misprision or queer (mis-) interpretation" (270). Magnani and Watt suggest that "masculine and patrilineal" are "inadequate interpretive frameworks" for discussing the deviant sexuality in Chaucer's and Gower's tales, due to "the presence of the queer" (271). They examine MS Fairfax 3 in particular, claiming that a "queer gap" exists between "what 'is not' said" and "what 'is' said" in the "Tale of Constance" (273; emphasis original). Magnani and Watt identify gender inconsistencies arising between the Middle English tale and the Latin gloss, such as the Latin personification "invidia" (feminine) and the examples of Envy in Middle English that include both men and women. These "queer gaps . . . punctuate a narrative very much concerned with ideals and distortions of masculinity and femininity, and with the fluidity, rather than fixity, of hermeneutics" (274). Magnani and Watt also demonstrate the differences between manuscripts to emphasize the "queer fissure" of female agency opened in MS Fairfax 3 (which includes glosses) as opposed to MS Bodley 902 (which does not include glosses), adding that these "queer fissures" allow polyvalent rather than fixed meanings for Constance's story (279). After discussing Chaucer's versions of this tale, Magnani and Watt conclude, "the queer disjunctions between the Latin glosses and the vernacular text indicate an unstable hermeneutics in which meaning is not constant" (285). [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 On the Edge: Chaucer and Gower's Queer Glosses. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Hsy, Jonatahn. Published Hsy, Jonathan. "Linguistic Entrapment: Interlanguage, Bivernacularity, and Life across Tongues." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9 (2018), 196-208. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Using the work of Alexandre Baril and José Esteban Muñoz, Hsy addresses how it feels "to be a multi-lingual author who is never 'at home' in any one language," specifically in the works of John Gower and Charles d'Orléans (196). Hsy begins by making the case for using contemporary theory to read medieval literature in order to consider "nonbinary social positioning" (196). Medieval multilingual authors' poetry demonstrates their experience of what Baril calls a "rhetoric of embodied entrapment" or "a feeling of 'wrong-bodness'" (198). To illustrate this argument, Hsy introduces a key term, "interlanguage," which he describes as "a phenomenon typically defined as the 'interference' of the system of rules of one language when using another language'" (198). Hsy discusses the effects of "interlanguage" on Gower's and d'Orléans's bivernacular poetry in relation to Anglophone and Francophone subjectivities. For Gower in particular, Hsy argues that we see "interlanguage" most clearly at work in his "intersex" personifications--that is, when Gower mixes grammatical and descriptive gender. In the "Mirour de l'Omme" in particular, Hsy identifies Gower's play with gender personifications as underscoring his attempt to make French more English. Hsy goes so far as to claim, "Gower puts French in 'English drag'" (201). Hsy clarifies, "Gower's 'franglais' offers a styled superimposing of features of L1 (the so-called 'natural gender' system in English) and L2 (a binary paradigm of grammatical gender in French), and his writing demonstrates both the artistic and the cognitive effects of language transfer" (202). Through such "translingual rhetorical craft," both Gower and d'Orléans trouble cultural binaries, creating "dynamically trans allegorical figures" (206). [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Linguistic Entrapment: Interlanguage, Bivernacularity, and Life across Tongues. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Hsy, Jonathan. Published Hsy, Jonathan. "Close Listening: Talking Books, Blind Readers and Medieval Worldbuilding." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 7 (2016): 181-92. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Biography of Gower Review Hsy addresses the medievalism of Bruce Holsinger's "The Invention of Fire," in which John Gower stars as detective/protagonist. Hsy brings together disability and literary scholarship in his discussion of Gower's works and Holsinger's. For Hsy, Holsinger's depiction of protagonist Gower's failing sight in the novels and the multi-modal ways in which one can access these novels reflect on poet Gower's eventual blindness and the tension surrounding assistive technologies in the fourteenth century. Vision in Holsinger's narrative, argues Hsy, serves "as a rhetorical conceit and tool for thought" (186). Hsy then shifts his attention to the audiobook version of Holsinger's text, asserting that is "an opportunity to attend to the story differently" and that, as a result, "the book's sonic artistry became its salient feature." (188) Listening to the audiobook, Hsy writes, "revealed how a text and the performing body become mutually constitutive through a technological surface." (190) This conflation of text and body corresponds to Gower's experience as a blind poet, experiencing the written word through the voice of another. At this point, Hsy discusses fourteenth-century assistive technology: eyeglasses. Eyeglasses, Hsy reminds us, "provoked anxious and unprecedented meditations on the relationship between impaired masculinity and perceived notions of intellectual capacity" (190). The cultural associations with these devices made their users uneasy, and Holsinger's novel reflects this unease when he has protagonist Gower refer to them as "crutches." For Hsy, the character Gower's response typifies disability theorist Robert McRuer's concept of "spectral disability": "Gower interprets the spectacles as a prosthetic device or assistive technology that delays an inevitable specter of disability" (190). Hsy's discussion of "multi-modal textual consumption," then, reflects doubly on Gower. In Holsinger's book, we experience a fictional account of what the poet Gower's struggle with failing vision may have been like, and if we listen to "An Invention of Fire," perhaps then we are closer to how the poet Gower would have experienced texts in his later years. [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Close Listening: Talking Books, Blind Readers and Medieval Worldbuilding. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Fonzo, Kimberly. Published Fonzo, Kimberly. "Richard II's Publicly Prophesied Deposition in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Modern Philology 114 (2016): 1-17. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review Fonzo reprises the question of why so many manuscripts of the "Confessio Amantis" produced after the deposition of Richard II present the first recension of the poem, dedicated to Richard, rather than the later versions dedicated to Henry. She locates her answer in Gower's self-stylization as a prophetic poet, a persona he used in "Vox Clamantis" and revived late in his career with the "Prophesy of the Eagle," for example, but which, Fonzo maintains, was also found in (or imposed upon) the CA and promoted by the Lancastrians after Richard was deposed: Gower's commentary on kingship in the CA was regarded, with tendentious hindsight, as prophecy or prediction of "Richard's imminent downfall" (8). Fonzo reviews the manuscript evidence for the prevalence of the first recension, links it with Derek Pearsall's notion of "standard" manuscripts of the CA, and argues that the Lancastrians promoted the version dedicated to Richard as part of their broader program of presenting Richard's rule as corrupted by youthful counsel, fated for failure, and worthy of usurpation. Drawing her material largely from CA Book VII, Fonzo shows that Gower's narratives of, for example, "Ahab and Machaiah," "David and Saul," and even the account of Gower's meeting Richard on the Thames could be, and seemingly were, read retrospectively as prophetic critiques of Richard's rule and predictions of his downfall rather than the way Gower probably intended them initially, that is, as "vox populi" reminders of a king's proper agency. After the deposition, Gower "cultivated a poetic voice that was more emphatically prophetic and critical of Richard II" (15), and the CA was read accordingly as justification of the usurpation, foreseen and inevitable. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Richard II's Publicly Prophesied Deposition in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Flannery, Mary C. Published Flannery, Mary C. "Gower's Blushing Bird, Philomela's Transforming Face." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 8 (2017), 35-50. ISSN 2040-5960; 2040-5979. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Flannery's essay considers "what happens when a blushing human is transformed into an animal" (36). Flannery focuses on Philomela's concern about others' ability to see her shame through her blushing face even after she has undergone her transformation into a nightingale. Flannery argues that Gower's "Tale of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela" (in CA, V) "expands upon the theme of avian transformation in order to show how Philomela's ultimate nightingale form offers her an escape from the social and emotional consequences of her rape." (37) Through such expansion, Philomela is the locus of human and animal emotional experience. Flannery then discusses the depiction of animal emotion and expression in the Middle Ages, demonstrating that animals, particularly birds, may share in the emotional range of humans. Flannery illustrates Philomela's "proleptic birdiness" (40), which blurs her human and animal characteristics before and after her transformation. Gower's tale "realizes the avian potential she already possessed" (40). Metamorphosis for Gower was an opportunity for him to investigate the emotional impact caused by it as much as the ways in which the transformation reflects character. Flannery suggests Philomela's loss of her human face allows her to hide her blush, the social signifier of the rape she has experienced, which prevents her from reliving this trauma when others would see perceive her blushing. Gower's retelling of this myth, Flannery concludes, transforms it into "a story about the relationship between faces (Philomela's human face, Philomela's avian face) and 'face,' that which Philomela has lost so completely that her 'schame . . . mai noght be lassed,' even if no man will now be able to tell (V.5953)" (48). [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Gower's Blushing Bird, Philomela's Transforming Face. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Benson, C. David. Published Benson, C. David. Imagined Romes: The Ancient City and Its Stories in Middle English Literature. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Benson sets out to answer the question, "how did Middle English poets imagine the city of ancient Rome?" (1) His book is an attempt "to understand how each poet [John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Lydgate] makes use of the ancient city and its stories, reshaping and reimagining them for his own purposes." (7) "Gower," Benson states, "presents Rome as a model of civic governance--not because its leaders were always good, but because the wider community of Rome had the capacity to correct bad leaders and come together to repair damage done to the city." (8) Benson turns to consider Gower in his third chapter, "Civic Romans in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,'" noting that "Gower, Chaucer, Langland and Lydgate all focus on people rather than places, on ancient Romans rather than on the fabric of the city." (59) Gower's Rome is "almost always the ancient pagan city;" he "says little about its early Christian martyrs and has only a limited interest in the medieval city." (60) In general Benson's views very closely follow Winthrop Wetherbee's notion that central to Gower's idea of what Wetherbee has termed the "Rome world" (JGN 27.1) is "wise governance." Consequently, Benson claims that "Gower takes two general civic lessons from the ancient city: (1) leaders are strongest when they govern in harmony with the larger community, and (2) a good city is one that is able to sustain itself and its values even when a leader fails." (60) Benson develops these ideas in brief studies of "Mundus and Paulina," the "Policie" section of Book VII, wherein he highlights Maximin, Gaius Fabricius, Constantine, Trajan, Antonius, Pompey, the "Tale of Julius and the Poor Knight," the "Tale of the Emperor and the Masons," "Lucrece," and "Appius and Virginia" (63-74). In Constantine, especially (and interestingly) while he is a pagan ("Constantine and Sylvester") more than after his conversion, Benson finds a model for Gower's idea of a good ruler: "In addition to being a man of pity, the Confessio's pagan Constantine also practices three of the four points of policy that Genius in Book 7 says are required of a good ruler: truth . . . justice . . . and largesse." (75) Not surprisingly, Benson finds Gower's antithesis to Constantine in Boniface VIII, whose tale is told in Book II (77-78), and points out that Gower's critique of the Church of his time offered in the Prologue exhibits his belief that Boniface's corruption extended past his fall. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Imagined Romes: The Ancient City and Its Stories in Middle English Literature. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Allen-Goss, Lucy. Published Allen-Goss, Lucy. "Queerly Productive: Women and Collaboration in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 6." postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 9 (2018), 334-48. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review Allen-Goss, focusing primarily on the fragmentary "Tale of Tereus" in the Findern manuscript, argues, "female queer desire is potentially hyper-productive, with each female body simultaneously an inscribable surface and a prosthetic pen/penis that can inscribe" (334). The Findern manuscript's compilational strategies "privilege a distinctly queer mode of female textual practice," Allen-Goss claims, and she identifies the placement of the names Elizabeth Cotton and Elizabeth Francis as a memorial to "female-female collaboration" within this manuscript (335). Allen-Goss uses Anna Klosowska's "Queer Love in the Middle Ages" to inform her queer reading of female collaboration on the feminized page as well as work by Anne Laskaya that posits the potential of "female interactions with books in terms of queer erotics" (336). Allen-Goss suggests that women writing is a form of "pleasuring" the female page (337). The competing hands of men are just that--competing--while women's competing hands suggest female queer desire. Allen-Goss focuses on the story of Philomena in Gower's CA in the Findern manuscript that is "widely marked by textual recombinations, excisions, and reassemblies . . . as being particularly typical of women's manuscript culture" (338). In Findern, the "Tale of Tereus" begins when Tereus realizes he has just eaten Itys, and Allen-Goss calls Philomena's speech after she has been violated by Tereus "penetrative." Because this tale is removed from the prologue of the CA in Findern, Allen-Goss suggests, "Philomena is placed at the origin point of a new and female tradition of textual interpretation, her words mediated through female authorities" (341). The omissions in this manuscript version create a female-centric experience of this tale that excludes male authority. When considered in the context of the texts that follow Gower's in the Findern manuscript, especially Chaucer's "Parliament of Fowles," Philomena's song is for women, and, according to Allen-Goss, the "queer erotic" of this lyric is echoed in the female collaboration of the manuscript between Cotton and Francis (343-44).] [JS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] 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 Queerly Productive: Women and Collaboration in Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 1. 6. 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 Turville-Petre considers Burrow's "four Ricardian poets" from the perspective of their "claim to be national poets, two of them explicitly [i.e., Chaucer and Gower] and the third [Langland] implicitly" (276). The poet of "Pearl" is more problematic in this regard, and hence the subject of Turville-Petre's examination. He finds in Cambridge, University Library MS Mm. V.14, copied by the scribe Richard Frampton and containing a "Siege of Jerusalem" clearly made in London for a wealthy client of the sort that purchased such manuscripts of Gower's poetry (284-85), suggestive evidence that alliterative poetry such as "Pearl" might have found an audience at the center of the nation no less than Gower's, Chaucer's, and Langland's.[RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society] Author/Editor Author/Editor Turville-Petre, Thorlac. Published Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. "Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp.276-94. 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 The "Pearl"-Poet in his "Fayre Regioun." 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 Morse cites a number of recent studies of Gower (including works by Middleton, Yeager, Scanlon, and Spearing) in her survey of critical work on the Ricardian period that appeared following the publication of Burrow's ground-breaking study in 1971. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Morse, Charlotte. Published Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. "Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. 316-44. 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 From Ricardian Poetry to Ricardian Studies. 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 Medcalf cites Venus' instruction in Confessio Amantis 8.2955* that Chaucer write his own "testament of love" as "the only probable evidence of a contemporary's having read" Usk's poem of that name. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Medcalf, Stephen. Published Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. "Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. 222-53. 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 World and Heart of Thomas Usk. 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 A.G. Rigg cites Gower at least once on almost every page in his survey of the role and status of Anglo-Latin during the last half of the fourteenth century, focusing on the Ricardian era in particular. "In this period," he writes, "we begin to see clearly the trends that would later lead to both the demise of Latin as a medium for creative writing and its protection as a unique manifestation of classical civilization" (p. 122). His essay is an engaging supplement both to his own "History of Anglo-Latin Literature (1066-1422)" and to J. A. Burrow's "Ricardian Poetry," as he describes how Latin writers were like or unlike contemporary writers in English, using the features that Burrow defined as characteristic of the Ricardian age. Along the way, he makes many useful observations about how Gower was like or unlike other contemporary writers in Latin. To use a small example, Gower's use of the enclitic "que" for "et," which stands out so prominently for those more accustomed to classical Latin, is, Riggs asserts, entirely typical of his age (p. 133); and on a larger matter, he notes that the most typical subject matter of late 14th-century Latin poetry is "historical" (as opposed to classical, Biblical, or devotional), the only exceptions being a few of Gower's own short poems. In the last part of his essay, he juxtaposes three different examples of such historical writing, Thomas Barry's "Battle of Otterburn" (a straightforward factual account in verse), Gower's CrT (in which the poet "has entirely manipulated history for his poetic and political agenda," p. 138), and the "Visio" in Book 1 of VC, "the most striking example of the use of contemporary history . . . for literary purposes" (pp. 138-39), presenting a vision that "more than any other dream-vision I know, mirrors the common experience of a bad dream" (p. 139). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rigg, A. G. Published Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. "Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. 121-41. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Cronica Tripertita 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 Anglo-Latin in the Ricardian Age. 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 Butterfield offers a subtle and well-informed examination of the inter-penetration of French and English literary culture during the Ricardian period, emphasizing the mutuality of cultural influences that was a natural product of the close family ties between royal and aristocratic houses in contrast to a common tendency (among Anglophone writers) to emphasize the distinctness of the English from the French. In a brief consideration of the puy as an example of cultural imitation, Butterfield dismisses the suggestion of Gower's association as far-fetched since there is no evidence of continuity much beyond 1300; and in her discussion of the practice of quoting already existing refrains in new compositions she cites CB 25. In the final part of her essay she gives more direct attention to Gower as one whose works are "supremely poised between linguistic cultures" (p. 107). She compares CB 37 to a ballade of Guillaume Machaut, not to establish borrowing, though an argument for at least indirect influence would not be difficult to make, but to demonstrate how thoroughly at home Gower is in contemporary French poetic idiom, contrary to the judgment of those who have seen either a discontinuity with French courtly writing or a reaction against it in Gower's work. She also gives brief consideration to Traitie as a conclusion to CA, which it follows in 8 of the 10 MSS in which it is preserved. There is more than a single paradox to the relation, Butterfield points out, as Gower turns to more love poetry immediately after renouncing any further writing about love, and as he draws upon the authority of French to offer a very un-French defense of married love, creating an instability that is typical of the "endemic restlessness" of Gower's poetic career and his constant habit of setting up "oblique contrasts between different kinds of cultural perspectives" (p. 120). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Butterfield, Ardis. Published Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. "Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. 82-120. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants 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 French Culture and the Ricardian Court. 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 In the lengthy narrative poem "Confessio Amantis" by John Gower (c.1330-1408), the poet of later medieval England, delight and education are termed as "lust" and "lore" respectively. The poem speaks of the "middel weie", meaning that the poet intends to keep a balance of lust and lore in the poem. This dissertation aims to demonstrate that the principle of the "lust" and "lore" balance is revealed throughout the poem. Using this as a foundation this study explores the authorship of the poet Gower in later medieval England and his CA. To date little significant attention has been paid to CA in Chinese academia. The issue of the "lust" and the "lore" in the poem has been in previous research mostly studied from the perspective of formal criticism. On the other hand, some scholars have approached the poem from the perspective of interest in an authorial intention dispute concerning whether the moral allegorical implications in the poem outweigh amoral narration in it. This study intends to take a more comprehensive view by focusing on its love narration, confessional narration, and advice narration, as well as its language and style, and adopts the method of poetic textual analysis in its historical context in order to carry out an examination of the "lust" and "lore" dichotomy in the poem. It is demonstrated that the principle of the "lust" and "lore" balance is followed throughout CA. In the love narration, the amoral "lust" and the rational "lore" reach a balance in terms of the effectiveness of expression with the assistance of the revelations of the lover's disguise. In the confessional narration, tales introduced as exempla are subject to the Seven Deadly Sins, but with the expressiveness of the tales, the "lust" of the tales and the "lore" of the Seven Deadly Sins reach a balance in terms of subjectivity; In the advice narration, the "lore" of the factually possible advice to the king is conveyed in the euphemistic way of delivering advice, by which the "lust" is revealed. The balance of the "lust" and "lore" is reached at the point of the difficulty in judging the practicality of the advice for a king as a genre of a Mirror for Princes. In addition, the language of the poem in the sense of its poetic form inclines to be in unified: this presents a formal and aesthetical "lust". The form of language and the "plain" style, which is enriched by the patriotic "lore", accommodate each other, consequently achieving a balance. The dissertation demonstrates that the lust and lore in the poem not only reflects the style and meaning of the poem, but also reveals an encyclopaedic method of composition. The poet uses literary fictitiousness and imaginativeness to make the poem understandable and attractive, and he also makes the poem morally enlightening to satisfy social demands. While reaching the goal of conveying the themes, the principle of the lust and lore balance in the poem helps to extend the vision, to create an interesting reading experience, and to enrich nuances relating to the literariness and morality of the work. Since the poem interacts with other texts, works, and perception of reality in the course of its thematic expression, the encyclopaedic way of composing by combining fiction and real events are the reasons for the balance of lust and lore in the poem. In conclusion, the dissertation indicates that the poet John Gower aims to convey a balance of "lust" and "lore". As a new style of work in his literary output, CA provides evidence for Gower's ability to write a secular work that also contains aesthetic qualities. The ethical and moral themes in the poem present critical views of the poet, reaffirming the "moral Gower" impression left by his previous works. The authorship of Gower as a poet is highlighted by the synthesis managed between the delightful "lust" and educating "lore" balance, so that Gower constantly keeps the narrative in an educating mode but not dull, and the tales catching but not misleading in conveying different themes. Delight and education are shared by other contemporary poets such as Geoffrey Chaucer, while the conservative balance of "lust" and "lore" by Gower is his major contribution to the literature of the period. [Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wu, Xiaoling. Published Wu, Xiaoling. "A Study of the 'Lust' and the 'Lore' in 'Confessio Amantis'." Diss. Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, 2019. Directed by Professor Hong Shen. (*N.B.: This dissertation is written 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 A Study of the "Lust" and the "Lore" in "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 The complex twelve-line stanza form or strophe of Mirour de l'Omme (aabaabbbabba) is acknowledged to be modeled on that of Hélinand de Froidmont's "Vers de al Mort," a poem to which Gower refers and quotes briefly in MO. Breaking new ground, Yeager argues that the poem is one Gower knew well, "in full, not in excerpt" (132), probably from a yet-to-be-discovered manuscript of Cistercian origin. According to Yeager, Gower's very choice to write MO in French, despite the official discouragement of French in the Statute of Pleading, had much to do with the "Mort," since the poem and its verse form "retained synonymity" in late fourteenth-century England with the "moral urgency of repentance and redirection of living" (133), a synonymity established by Yeager's commentary on the two other "known English examples" (121) of excerpts from the "Mort"--Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby MS 86 and Maidstone (Kent) Museum MS A.1. However, Yeager argues, Gower "pushes far past" (121) these other two examples, using Hélinand's poem as his "guiding principle" (122) in formulating MO, exploring and developing shared themes and techniques, particularly Holy Fear and the rhetorical dimensions of strophe clustering, direct speech, and indirect speech. Yeager acknowledges as a matter of course the vital importance of other source material in MO, especially Frère Laurent's "Somme le Roi," but he demonstrates that Gower adopted and adapted the "distinctive, arresting poetic 'voice'" (126) of Hélinand's poem and its powerful strophe in creating his own French masterpiece. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, Robert F. Published Yeager, Robert F. "The 'Strophe d'Hélinand' and John Gower." Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes / Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies 36, no 2 (2018): 115-33. ISSN: 2115-6360 Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) 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 The "Strophe d'Hélinand" and John Gower. 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 This paper addresses a scholarly lacuna identified by Thomas Cable (1998: 39), who has complained of the "lack of phonological and metrical concern in studies whose subject was Gower." Werthmüller begins by assuming that, in the bulk of Gower's English verse, grammatically-determined rhythm (here referred to as "linguistic stress") aligns with metre. She then analyses a range of forms to show how Gower deploys both Germanic and Romance patterns of emphasis within his iambic measure. Especially useful in this regard are a pair of tables (pp.429-450). In the first, Werthmüller lists a set of words that she considers tended to be stressed on the second syllable in Gower's English (e.g. "desese," "merveille," "fortune," "nature," etc.), in the manner of French, contrasting with a second set of forms where Germanic-style stress on the first syllable seems commonly to have been used, even when the forms in question are etymologically derived from French (e.g. "vertu," "meschief," "tresoun"). It is interesting that all these usages seem to have been prototypical rather than invariable; "merveille," for instance, seems to have received stress on the second element in 84.6% of tokens, but that still leaves 15.4% of occurrences with stress on the first syllable, while "conseil," by contrast, was front-stressed in 75.7% of occasions, but stressed on the second syllable in 24.3% of tokens. And the form "peril," a fairly common noun in the CA, seems to have stressed equally frequently (50:50) in both ways. Some contrasts are drawn with Chaucer's practice, e.g. with "batailles," where Gower it seems tends to stress the second element whereas Chaucer prototypically emphasises the first syllable. The author also makes some suggestive comments on Gower's conservative retention of –e (which she contrasts with perceived greater Chaucerian apocope), and on the appearance--albeit fairly limited--of prototypically "low-stress" words, e.g. "the," in positions where, metrically, strong stress might be expected. The paper is largely descriptive in its orientation, and, rather controversially, sets aside issues of poetic motivation for rhythmical variation against the metrical norm. It is avowedly a preliminary piece of work, flagging at the end the need for further research of this kind across the whole range of Middle English poetry: "It is my view that the serious scrutinisation of the interaction of metre/phonology on the one hand, and syntax on the other, can ensue only after this task had been at least partially completed by scholars of M[iddle] E[nglish]" (434). Reference: Cable, Thomas 1998. "Metrical similarities between Gower and certain sixteenth-century poets," in Robert F. Yeager (ed.), Re-visioning Gower (Asheville: Pegasus), 39-48. [JJS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. Published Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. "John Gower's Germanic and Romance English (A Phonological/Metrical Analysis)." Tanulmányok Nyelvtudományi Doktori Iskola, ed. Bárdosi Vilmos (Budapest: Eötvös Loránd University, 2012), 419-36. ISBN: 9789632843605. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Language and Word 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 John Gower's Germanic and Romance English (A Phonological/Metrical Analysis). 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 Werthmüller seeks to "highlight some hitherto neglected details about the presence, but mostly about the absence of the -e" (179) in word-finally positioned monosyllabic adjectives in Middle English. Her analysis focuses on the CA, accessed through Macaulay's edition. The "Canterbury Tales" are used as a point of comparison. In addition to scansion, the study makes use of grammatical (adjectival inflection) and lexical (etymology, word-formation) evidence. Based on her critical scrutiny of potential instances of the apocope (omission) of the unstressed final-e in adjective + noun structures, Werthmüller finds that this feature, "and especially unconditioned [purely metrical] apocope, is virtually non-existent in the Confessio" (188). Hence, "Gower's grammar and metre is highly regular . . . even more regular than has been considered" (195). The findings include useful observations on distinguishing premodifying adjectives from adjective-noun compounds (such as the compound trew man, 192–194). Werthmüller concludes with the observation that "[v]ery little linguistic interest has been expressed so far towards Gower" (195). She emphasizes that "[i]t would be highly important to give him the linguistic attention that his contribution to the English language and literature deserves." (195). The lines of the CA discussed in the study comprise Macaulay's I. 680, 2479; II. 295, 660, 2341; III. 300, 301, 889, 900, 2346; IV. 2064; V. 1323-1324, 2877, 3009, 4627, 6155, 7391; VI. 707, 1501, 2049, 4702, 4791, 4976; VII.1640, 2560. [MP. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. Published Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. "Final -e in Gower's and Chaucer's Monosyllabic Premodifying Adjectives: A Grammatical/Metrical Analysis." In Approaches to Middle English: Variation, Contact and Change, ed. Juan Camillo Conde-Silvestre and Javier Calle-Martín (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2015), 179-97. ISBN: 9783631655153. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Language and Word 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 Final -e in Gower's and Chaucer's Monosyllabic Premodifying Adjectives: A Grammatical/Metrical Analysis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015