13 100 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 Watson notes that "examples of counseling women . . . abound in the Confessio Amantis" and that "it should not surprise us that a number of powerful women owned copies of Gower's poem" (160). One of these (as Kate D. Harris discovered in 1993) was Jacquetta of Luxembourg, widow of John, Duke of Bedford, wife of Richard Woodville, and mother-in-law to Edward IV. Harris pointed to Jacquetta's signature and motto three times inscribed in the margins (see plates in Watson at 163-64) as evidence that she owned, and apparently read at least in part, Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 307. Watson speculates on when and why Jacquetta inscribed the manuscript. A signature at the foot of a column on fol. 141r that includes a dramatic shift of fortune suggests to Watson the fall of the Lancastrians and the rise of the Yorkists, and prompts her to muse: "It may have been at this moment of uncertainty that Jacquetta marked [this] passage in the Confessio Amantis" (165).] [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watson, Sarah Wilma. Published Watson, Sarah Wilma. "Another Woman Reader of John Gower's Confessio Amantis: Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 307." Journal of the Early Book Society 21 (2018): 159-70. ISSN 1525-6790 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 Another Woman Reader of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Cambridge, Pembroke College MS 307. 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 Stoyanoff writes: "In Book V of John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Genius's extended discussion of Covetousness demonstrates how this subtype of Avarice leads to the ruin of the networks of collectives that make up society. Interestingly, the process by which Covetousness damages the collectives that make up these networks looks a lot like the neoliberalism that has come to dominate a number of governments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Gower's tales trace the spread of this sin from the top of society to the bottom; from the highly public to the intimately personal. In all scenarios, Covetousness is a force of destruction rather than one of good, altering and, in the end, ultimately destroying the social bonds that once existed between the actors involved. Using Actor-Network Theory, I argue that Gower presents his readers with the dire consequences of misunderstanding the structure of and collectives in society when Covetousness governs one's actions--when the market overtakes the moral. The negative effects of Covetousness in the tales within this section of Book 5 reveal the dependence of each perpetrator of Covetousness on a collective of actors that includes material objects rather than monolithic social structures. Furthermore, Gower's critique of Covetousness in showing us its dissolution of the bonds and relationships that make up society both foreshadows the rise and lasting negative impact of neoliberalism." [Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stoyanoff, Jeffrey G. Published Stoyanoff, Jeffery G. "Covetousness in Book V of Confessio Amantis: A Medieval Precursor to Neoliberalism." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 4 (2018). Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/accessus/vol4/iss1/2 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 Covetousness in Book V of "Confessio Amantis": A Medieval Precursor to Neoliberalism. 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 Stone's title hardly does justice, either to the wide ground his essay covers, or to the significant erudition underlying it. (Nor can a summary of this brevity account for so rich a ramble.) For Stone, "the negotiation of the [Western] Schism is one of, if not 'the,' major through line [sic] uniting Gower's 'oeuvre.' Likewise, we might wonder if Gower's views of kingship were a function of the church rather than the other way around" (243). He concentrates primarily on the CA and to a lesser degree, "In Praise of Peace," while occasionally glancing at the MO. His argument proceeds in three parts. In the first he discusses "Gower's most extended discussion of the Schism: the Confessio Prologue's account of the 'statu cleri'" (209-10)--the spiritual state of the clergy under the Avignon "antipape" Clement IV. In the second he connects "this discussion of the crisis to the last two tales of Book II: the 'Tale of Boniface' and the 'Tale of Constantine and Sylvester'" (210). These, he argues, show Gower's view of the Schism "as a crisis of representation, a question of institutional and personal bodies through which Gower explores the political theologies of the papal bodies at the centre of the crisis" (210). In the third, he argues that charity, "Gower's putative solution to the Schism" is "in fact . . . the root of the vices that caused the Schism" (210)--a position that erroneously suggests an awkward resemblance to Wyclif's views on ecclesiastical property and papal "dominium," as a comparison with the "Lollard Chronicle" demonstrates (210 and 235-7). Finally, in a section aptly named "Towards a Conclusion," Stone comments on Gower's "conciliar poetics" and empathy with constitutionalism, as evident in "In Praise of Peace." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stone, Zachary E. Published Stone, Zachary E.. "'Betwen tuo stoles': The Western Schism and the English Poetry of John Gower (1378-1417)." New Medieval Literatures 19 (2019): 205-43. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Betwen tuo stoles": The Western Schism and the English Poetry of John Gower (1378-1417). 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 Throughout a body of work that spans many years, A.C. Spearing has brought more clarity to elements of medieval narrative than anyone else. His expressed purpose here is to reconsider Gower's "Tale of Virginius and Virginia" and Chaucer's "Physician's Tale" alongside "modern interpretations of them, in the light of the relation between medieval narrative and modern narrative theory" (1, abstract). That being a task too large for a single essay, however substantial--Spearing has indeed more than one book on this subject--his discussion soon narrows to focus on identifying the narrator of the two tales. His particular "bête noire" is the "unreliable narrator," a concept "first formulated in 1961" (3). This, he emphasizes, developed as an element in "post-1700 novels and short stories" (3) and hence is inconceivable as a device employed by medieval writers like Gower and Chaucer: "it is not part of the regular equipment of medieval poets but rather an unhistorical projection by modern medievalists" (4). "Unhistorical" is a key word here, as Spearing makes plain, noting "we should be scrupulous in distinguishing, as far as we can, between what we see in medieval texts and what we believe medieval tellers and readers might have seen in them" (7). Indeed, Spearing argues that for Gower and Chaucer stories found in sources were "history," and so thought factual--what was reported actually happened. This was especially true of classical sources like Livy, who first tells of Virginius and his daughter (and whose version Gower probably knew and used); details of the "plot" found there could not be substantially altered, although they might be embellished or downplayed here and there. In an extended argument, Spearing asserts that the "narrative I" present in the "Physician's Tale" is not the Physician but Chaucer himself (17-33), and that in Gower's "Virginius and Virginia," where the first-person pronoun is not used, the narrator is not Genius, nor the fictional "Amans/Gower" who presumably narrates the frame tale of his experience, but can only be the poet: "the creator of this subjectless subjectivity is the reteller of the story, John Gower" (11) As Spearing sums it up, "My argument is only that neither [Gower's nor Chaucer's tale] benefits by being understood as told by an unreliable narrator, and my aim has been not just to offer one more interpretation of each work but to investigate some principles on which interpretation might be based." Central to those principles is the idea that "greater attention [should be shown] to medieval assumptions about the retelling of old stories" (34). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Spearing, A. C. Published Spearing, A.C. "Narration in Two Versions of 'Virginius and 'Virginia'." Chaucer Review 54 (2019): 1-34. ISSN: 0009-2002. 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 Narration in Two Versions of "Virginius and Virginia." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay analyzes the manner in which the marginalia in the CA were transferred to the extant manuscripts of the Iberian translations. Pérez-Fernández establishes that the key to understand this transmission is the cultural and intellectual context in which both the Portuguese and Castilian versions of the Gowerian poem were produced: the Latin apparatus of the original text, rather than being translated more literally, as is the case with the English poem, is "reduced to the minimum, whether omitted (in the case of the Latin verses) or translated into the vernacular (the rubrics)" (126). The fact that in Iberia in the late Middle Ages most translations were commissioned by noblemen with limited knowledge of Latin who gave some signs of discomfort with the marginalia from the medieval learned tradition leads Pérez-Fernández to propose that the near-absence of Latin verses (and most of the glosses) in the Portuguese and Castilian manuscripts of the CA was a strategy of adaptation to accommodate the needs of this new readership. [ASH. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peréz-Fernández, Tamara. Published Peréz-Fernández, Tamara. "From England to Iberia: The Transmission of Marginal Elements in the Iberian Translations of Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Text, Transmission, and Transformation in the European Middle Ages, 1000-1500, ed. Carrie Griffin and Emer Purcell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 119-40. ISBN: 9782503567402; 9782503567419. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations 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 From England to Iberia: The Transmission of Marginal Elements in the Iberian Translations of 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 Meindl writes: "The king's court is the final element in Gower's analysis of the law in Book VI of the Vox Clamantis prior to the 'speculum principis' that is the Book's climax. Having discussed the men of law, judges, sheriffs, jurors, and bailiffs in chapters one through six, the poet now finds fault in chapter seven with the various advisers who surround the king for the purpose of providing him useful counsel in governing the realm. They, too, are found wanting in an analysis of the current situation in England." [Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Meindl, Robert J. Published Meindl, Robert J. "The Failure of Counsel: Curial Corruption in Book VI of the Vox Clamantis." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 4 (2018): n.p. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/accessus/vol4/iss1/2 Gower Subject Vox Clmantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 Failure of Counsel: Curial Corruption in Book VI of the "Vox Clamantis." 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 Hillman argues that Shakespeare's "Pericles" was more widely influenced by the CA than is previously recognized. He acknowledges Gower's role as "an unusually sophisticated choric function" in the play and accepts the importance of Gower's story of Apollonius (CA book 8) as Shakespeare's primary source. Going further, he explores how and in what ways CA "[t]aken as a whole . . . strikingly furnishes" a precedent for Shakespeare's "use of love themes as a means of exploring larger issues of human spirituality and self-realization" (428). The "tortuous psychic voyage of Amans toward self-discovery" in CA, and the poem's affirmation that "proper behavior at least offers a chance of happiness, while nothing good can come of wickedness," Hillman agues, are echoed in the "pattern of suffering and redemption" (430) in Pericles. Both poem and play indicate the arbitrariness of fortune in human affairs, and Gower's presence in the play serves as a "safety net" (431) for Shakespeare's hero, reminding the audience of the drama that, like Gower's Amans, Shakespeare's Pericles transcends fortune through the gaining and proclamation of his fundamental identity. In each case, "selflessness is explicitly a condition of the renewal of self" (434) and a major step toward acceptance of morality and "reconciliation to the human condition" (435). In a nice turn of phrase, Hillman claims that Shakespeare summons Gower "not only as mouthpiece but also as muse" (437), and he aligns Gower's role in "Pericles" with that of Arion in CA. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hillman, Richard. Published Hillman, Richard. "Shakespeare's Gower and Gower' s Shakespeare: The Larger Debt of 'Pericles'." Shakespeare Quarterly 36 (1985): 427-37. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Gower and Gower' s Shakespeare: The Larger Debt of "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Galloway connects Gower to the English proto-humanists of the fifteenth century, albeit with qualifications, noting that "in many elements of substance he missed this take-off of the 'studia humanitatis' almost entirely" (436). Gower didn't know Plato, very little Statius or Virgil, and more--but not much--of Cicero. Ovid, however, is a different story: "Gower appropriated Ovid with unusual fidelity yet extraordinary freedom. At his most productive, he shows himself steeped in Ovid and up-to-date Ovidian commentators [i.e., the "Ovide Moralisé" and Bersuire's "Ovidius Moralizatus"] to a degree hard to parallel before the Renaissance, and rare thereafter" (438). Galloway tracks the trajectory of Gower's recourses to Ovid from the Ovidless MO to heavy reliance in the VC and a few of the balades to "a flowering of Ovidiana in the 'Confessio'," followed by "almost no mention in his final political poetry" (439). He sees this interest in Ovid driven by Gower's "legendary interest in ethics and 'morality'," although he came to it via "Ovidian materials"--i.e., "there is clear textual evidence that Gower's elaborations and framing were stimulated by the moralized, redacted, and summarized medieval Ovids he consulted" (439). The remainder of Galloway's essay specifically addresses, work by work, examples of Ovidian presence. He is particularly informative about Gower's uses of Bersuire (448-53). As Galloway sums it up, "The results show Gower responsible for a major transition in the intellectual as well as poetic uses of Ovid, a departure from using Ovid simply as a matrix for Christian allegory. Along with Ovid himself, the Ovidian commentators lead Gower not only into his best poetry, but also into his fullest participation in moral, social, literary, and political dialogue, though not always with the interlocutors and topics we might expect" (439). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Galloway, Andrew. Published Galloway, Andrew. "Gower's Ovids." In The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, vol. I: 800-1558, ed. Rita Copeland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 435-64. ISBN: 9780199587230; 9780199587230. 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 Gower's Ovids. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Galloway finds Gower and Chaucer deriving much from "the medieval academic interpretative frameworks and . . . previous literary uses--particularly in French--that shaped . . . late medieval poets' encounters with Ovid," and sees them "anticipating the Ovidian fixation of Renaissance English literature" (187). Gower "likely owned a collected "opera" Ovidii" and made greater use than Chaucer of the "Fasti" and "Heroides." The Confessio Amantis, with its Latin in verse and prose framing each tale, is "much in the style of Metamorphoses manuscripts" (188). He believes both used the "Ovide Moralisé," but only Gower ("on that turf more up to date") knew and used Bersuire's "Ovidius Moralizatus" (189). Both Chaucer and Gower, Galloway argues, fashioned themselves as poets on Ovid's poetic biography--albeit to different degrees and in different ways. Whereas Chaucer follows more often the repentant Ovid of the "Remedia Amoris" (191-92) and presents himself as "a belated heir to an oppressively vast written tradition in which history, 'fame,' and identity are bookish, discursively layered, and all-too-human constructions" (193), Gower--while sharing these traits somewhat--adapts his Ovid "in more intellectual, even 'humanist' forms" (193), and not from the beginning of his career. Ovid is absent from the MO, but Galloway detects Ovidian influence in various balades of the "Traitié pour les amantz marietz" and CB (193), which he treats as early work. Chaucer, in his view, was the "spark" for Gower's turn toward Ovid (193-94). As Gower's heavy use of the "Tristia" and "Ex Ponto" in the VC evinces, Gower's debt to Ovid quickly overtook Chaucer's (194-95). The CA "constitutes a major departure" from Gower's earlier work, its "didactic plan" being simultaneously the fiction of the Amans' love affair and also "the implicit 'higher' ethical points of John Gower the author." "This duality," Galloway asserts, "which skews and refracts moral inquiry, is especially notable in the Ovidian narratives" (196)--and he takes the tale of Hercules, Eolen, and Faunus from Book 5 as an example (196-97), noting especially how "Gower lingers on the tale's playful loosening of gender identity" (197). To this Galloway adds the interesting observation that "Gower's elaboration of the [pleasures of cross-dressing] seems part of his constant concern with protean changes in social identity," motivated perhaps by his own "novel identity as a learned layman"--which in turn "was probably relevant to his pervasively keen response to Ovidian transformation" (197). Ovid's absence from Gower's later work suggests to Galloway "how potent yet potentially troubling Gower found Ovid to be" (198). "Ovid was of no use to Gower when writing more strictly moral or, as later, earnest political poetry . . . . This must be reckoned one of the great costs of the 'revolution' of 1399" (198). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Galloway, Andrew. Published Galloway, Andrew. "Ovid in Chaucer and Gower." In A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid, ed. John F. Miller and Carole E. Newlands (Chichester: Blackwell, 2014), 187-201. ISBN: 9781444339673. 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 Ovid in Chaucer 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 "A central premise of this book," Drimmer writes, "is that the work of illumination both responds and contributes to the entry and circulation of new ideas about English literary authorship, political history, and book production in the fifteenth century" (4). Her boundaries are 1403-76, the earlier date corresponding to the earliest record of the formation into a single company of "text writers, limners, and 'other good people' who also bind and sell books"--what eventually became the Company of Stationers--and the latter the year Caxton first set up his press in London (24-5). The problem she describes that faced illustrators during this period was how to depict an English "author" when there was no established category for such an entity yet established (chapter 2, 53-84). The problem was especially difficult with Chaucer and Gower, and to a lesser degree Lydgate--the three writers she discusses as examples--because their works were much in demand, and they utilized fictive personae as central narrative techniques. (N.B.: Drimmer limits her discussion to manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis.) The problem--"a failure of cultural precedent to provide a bibliographic context for Gower's English innovations" (91)--as it relates to Gower is the focus of her third chapter. Drimmer sees the variant images of Amans/Gower as a young or old man as the result. Were the illuminators to provide an image of the "historical Gower, the 'auctor' of the extrinsic prologue (that is, the 'Prologus'), or the 'John Gower' who identifies himself in response to Venus' questioning at the end of the poem, the fictional persona introduced by the intrinsic prologue?" (93). Drimmer detects hesitancy, even anxiety, on the part of illuminators who strove to get things right, and argues that the here-to-fore undiscussed crossed hands (borrowed, she argues, from images of the Annunciation) in the various images of the lover-as-confessant derive from attempts to encompass "the poem's conflict, pushing the protagonist-poet's confrontation with death, sex, and authorship of the self into the foreground" (109). Ultimately the illuminators of Gower's CA manuscripts were forced into "conflating the identities of creator and creature, and in mobilizing allusions to the Virgin Annunciate, the humbled retainer, the dying devout, and the officious donor, illuminators endowed the author of the "Confessio Amantis" with a body whose most consistent characteristic is its subjection, its availability to the dictates of someone else" (112). Chapter 6 (189-223) is a close study of the illumination cycle of New York, Morgan Library and Museum MS M.126, produced "over sixty years after Gower's death . . . for Edward IV and his queen consort Elizabeth Woodville" in 1471 (189). This manuscript was part of a conscious plan by Edward to bolster his claim to rule "through the patronage of manuscripts and tapestries . . . with an almost exclusive focus on historical content (189). Hence "the pictorial cycle of the Morgan "Confessio" remains committed to a view of monarchic infallibility more radical than the respect for royal authority expressed in Gower's text" (192). She concludes: "Seen, in this respect, as a coherent work, the Morgan "Confessio" takes the political mission that Gower inculcated into his poem, written in the last decade of the fourteenth century, and revises it for the pressing needs and new political realities of the late fifteenth century court for which it was made" (223). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Drimmer, Sonja. Published Drimmer, Sonja. The Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403-1476. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). ISBN: 9780812250497; 9780812295382. 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 Art of Allusion: Illuminators and the Making of English Literature, 1403-1476. 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 Cook offers a summary of and commentary on Robert Greene's dream-vision, "Greenes Vision" (1592), paying significant attention to Greene's use of Gower and Chaucer as spokesmen for two views of poetry: Gower representing moral appeal and Chaucer, ludic delight. Greene's persona "turn[s] away from ludic Chaucerianism in favour of Gowerian reform" (54), but then the debate is rendered superfluous by the appearance of Solomon who has been listening in and who abjures both views for the sake of more pure wisdom, convincing Greene's persona to turn to theology. As Cook makes clear, the very existence of the work shows that Greene has not rejected literature, and the presence of Gower and Chaucer leads her to explore the poem's engagement with literary tradition, "multifaceted temporality" (54), nostalgia, and "the limits of nostalgia itself" (39). Along the way, Cook considers the peculiarity of the Gower "avatar" espousing "anti-Ovidianism" (53), the detailed visual portraits of Gower and Chaucer, and Greene's probable familiarity with the original fifteenth-century version of Gower's tomb. In "Greenes Vision," Chaucer and Gower each tell a prose tale about marital jealousy, and Gower's is, according to Cook, more like Greene's earlier works than like Gower's own. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cook, Megan L. Published Cook, Megan L. "Nostalgic Temporalities in Greenes Vision." Parergon 33, no. 2 (2016): 39-56. 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 Nostalgic Temporalities in "Greenes Vision." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review For Coley, "representing the spoken word within a poetic text was always an act charged with political potential" (5). Following this line of thought, and after dispensing with Macaulay's three recensions in favor of a poem of two versions, one Ricardian, the other Lancastrian, he makes three main points, about the "Confessio Amantis" in his fifth chapter, and sketches a fourth: 1) "Whereas the Ricardian version balances its references to speech and writing in a manner consonant with the remainder of the poem, the Lancastrian version emphasizes the written word to the exclusion of spoken language, suggesting a conscious and rather startling deemphasis of speech" (156). 2) The reason for this, Coley argues, appears especially in Book 7, in the discussion of Rhetorique, which Gower wrote ca. 1389 in order to model what a commanding king ought to sound like for a Richard struggling with public and private doubts about his masculinity and precarious authority (esp. 163-80). 3) With the usurpation, the anxiety of the new king changes to overcoming his illegitimacy. The Lancastrian strategy being to claim that Henry IV "recovered" the kingdom from the near-disaster of Richard's reign, Gower in his post-1399 version emphasizes the memorious nature of writing and of books, which function to recover the past for the present and future (180-89). The sketched fourth point is the suggestion, indirectly offered by way of concluding the chapter, that Gower made his Lancastrian changes during and shortly following Henry's coup (190). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coley, David K. Published Coley, David K. The Wheel of Language: Representing Speech in Middle English Poetry, 1377-1422 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012). Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Language and Word Studies Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Wheel of Language: Representing Speech in Middle English Poetry, 1377-1422 (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012). 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 By "pronomination" Burrow means the device "pronominatio," defined in the "Rhetorica ad Herennium" as "a device which designates, with a kind of alien cognomen, something which cannot be called by its own name" (trans. Burrow). Geoffrey of Vinsauf follows "Ad Herennium" in his "Poetria nova" and "Documentum de modo de arte dictandi et versificandi," similarly defining and classifying "pronominatio" a trope, along with metaphor, metonymy, and hyperbole--all cited as "more difficult" (because they require a knowledgeable reader) than similes, which "display their meanings openly and in literal terms" (142). The trope substitutes a famous (usually classical) name for another, e.g., referring to a brave soldier as "this Hector," making it clear that not the original, but another, is intended. In the "Poetria nova" Geoffrey builds upon "the Roman rhetorician's neat coupling of 'laudere' and 'laedere'" to point out that "pronominatio" can be used either to praise or blame (e.g., "this Paris" or "this Thersites")--and it can also be used "ironically and derisively . . . where there is no true likeness between the people in question: an ugly man may be ridiculed as 'Paris' or an artless speaker as 'Cicero'" (143). Although the bulk of Burrow's study focusses on Skelton, he also notes instances in Chaucer's practice, which often resemble Skelton's (143-44). "John Gower," however, "is a different case." Burrow finds "no pronominations at all anywhere in [the CA]" (144). They are there in the Latin verse, especially in the Visio section of the VC, from which Burrow cites a few examples in ll. 879 ff.--the entry of the mob into London ("Nova Troia"). (It is perhaps noteworthy that this article was published posthumously.) [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burrow, John. Published Burrow, John. "'Pronomination' in the Poetry of Chaucer, Gower, and Skelton." Medium Aevum 87 (2018): 142-52. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 "Pronomination" in the Poetry of Chaucer, Gower, and Skelton. 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 Burke argues that although the anonymous poem she translates and discusses neither influenced Gower nor was influenced by him, being composed after 1424, as one of the responses to Alain Chartier's "Belle dame sans mercy," it nonetheless should be seen "in context" (the term borrowed, in this sense, from Ardis Butterfield) with the "Confessio Amantis." Both are among "the riches of a common literary culture including, but not limited to, demonstrable 'borrowing' or direct influence from one text to another" (177). Burke makes a strong case for belated recognition, noting that the "Confession de la belle fille" had a fame substantially greater in its day than at present, as evidenced by some 45 extant manuscripts (197, n.14). Citing Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, Burke connects the French poem and the CA as representatives of "confessional poems" (183) that use "orthodox confession to a Christian priest" (182) for literary/fictional purposes. There are, she notes, significant differences, however: Gower "generally attempts to present the claims of an earthly love as in harmony with a Christian's obligation to follow the commandments of God" (184) while the "Belle fille" is "a frank parody of a Christian confession, where 'sins' against love equate to chastity in Christian terms, and a 'priest' commands his young female penitent to surrender her 'heart and body' not to God but to her lover's desire" (184). The closest the CA comes to this treatment is in "The Tale of Jephthah's Daughter," where the message is "lose your virginity now for tomorrow may be too late" (186) and more significantly in the "Tale of Rosiphelee" (both from Book 4, "Sloth," at 1565ff. and 1245ff., respectively), which carries the same message. Genius succeeds in linking such tales to an encomium of "procreation as a 'good' of marriage," but close examination, Burke claims, shows Gower's tone to be one of "mock religious parody" (186), not unlike that of the "Belle fille." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke, Linda. Published Burke, Linda. "'The Girl's Confession of Love': A Bilingual Edition and Translation of the Fifteenth-Century 'La Confession de la Belle Fille,' also Known as 'La Confession d'Amours,' with Introduction and Notes." Mediaevalistik 30 (2018 for 2017): 177-224. 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 Girl's Confession of Love": A Bilingual Edition and Translation of the Fifteenth-Century "La Confession de la Belle Fille," also Known as "La Confession d'Amours," with Introduction and Notes. 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 Aude quotes in her own translation George Ashby's statement in "The Active Policy of a Prince" that Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate were the "premiers poètes de cette nation" but unlike the latter two, Gower alone wrote in three languages. About Gower's "multilinguisme" she poses two questions: 1) What status and functions did Gower accord to each, both for himself and for his listener? 2) Are there intersections between "les trois 'principaux poèmes' de Gower," and if so, of what sort? (57-58). She provides a chronology and very brief assessment of the major works: MO, Traitié, CB, VC, CrT, "Poèmes latins," CA, and "In Praise of Peace" (59-61). Aude finds that Gower was "très attaché" to trilingual composition, citing "Eneidos Bucolis" (61-62). Contrary to arguments tying Gower's language choices to particular functions, e.g., Latin to political critique, Aude sees the boundaries between his language choices "fluid" ("floues") but with (in a nice turn of phrase) "les ponts nombreux" (62-64). This latter point she argues using charts ("Concordances thématiques") showing overlapping areas of social criticism, by class and occupation (64-69). Gower also knew his audience, she asserts, as they were largely also trilingual (69-70)--and this was important, since his purposes were to effect social and individual reform (71). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Aude, Mairey. Published Aude, Mairey. "John Gower ou le Multilinguisme en Action." Médiévales 68 (2015): 57-72. [N.B.: this article is in French.] Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower ou le Multilinguisme en Action, 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 From 1377 until his death, Gower wrote prolifically in Latin, especially to articulate his complex political views (341). His composite work VC (1377-81) has advice for the new King Richard II and also revisions expressing disillusionment with his rule (343-45). Highly intertextual, the VC has been explored as a "cento" as well as a work with a subtext calling out guilty persons in allusive terms (346-47). Written to justify the usurpation, the CrT is of course propaganda but also "heartfelt" (349) and skillfully composed (348-49). With their variety of topics, the short poems in Latin "resist uniform treatment" (349) but are increasingly acknowledged for their literary merit (349-50). Latin poetry and prose within the CA contribute to "the interplay of voices that is part of the Confessio's compositional strategy" (350). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Meindl, Robert J. Published Meindl, Robert J. "The Latin Works." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 341-54. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Cronica Tripertita Minor Latin Poetry 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 Latin Works. 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 Amid the "thematic continuity" across the Gowerian corpus (329), the CA is nonetheless "a new departure" (328). Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the Statue is retold in the VC unrelieved in all its apocalyptic horror, while in the CA, the same story is followed with the hopeful exemplum of Arion combined with "an allusion . . . to the peaceable kingdom in Isaiah 11:6" (329). The CA offers healing and redemption to the individual and society (330-36), with the reader "protreptic[ally]" sharing in the restorative process undergone by Amans (331, 336). Written for the new king Henry IV, "In Praise of Peace" continues the theme of healing, especially as a "salve" against the "pestilence" of war (337). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kobayashi, Yoshiko. Published Kobayashi, Yoshiko. "English Works." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 328-40. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace 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 English Works. 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 Surviving in a single manuscript, the 30,000 line MO describes . . . the Seven Deadly Sins and their corresponding virtues, applications of these Virtues and Vices to contemporary England, and . . . [in conclusion] recounts the life of the Virgin" (321). Dating and intended audience are uncertain, with all or most of the poem appearing to predate the Rising of 1381 (322). In a context of "sophisticated social commentary" (323), Gower supports fair trade as necessary for the common good (323-24), while excoriating fraudulent practices with an expert focus on London (324). Nowhere else in his oeuvre would the poet devote so much attention to mercantile theory (324). The Life of Mary provides the "Antidote of sin" (323). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E. Published Bertolet, Craig E. "The French Works: Mirour de l'Omme." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 321-27. 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 The French Works: Mirour de l'Omme. 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 Gower wrote two ballade sequences, both in French, the "Cinkante balades" and the "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz," eighteen ballades. The "cinkante" are mostly love poems in the voice of a man or a woman (312), while the "Traitié" ballades univocally excoriate infidelity in marriage (312-13). For both sequences, date of composition and source(s) have been debated, with recent scholarship noting the possible influence of Christine de Pizan (313, 316). Displaying its author's sophisticated command of the fourteenth-century French lyric tradition (314-15), the CB includes an encomium to the new King Henry IV (312). The "Traitié"--despite the reference in most MSS to Gower's impending marriage of 1398--has inspired a scholarly debate as to its original date and intended audience (315-17). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nicholson, Peter. Published Nicholson, Peter. "The French Works: The Ballades." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 312-20. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz 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 French Works: The Ballades. 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 Gower and Chaucer have long been cited in tandem as foundational English poets. Gastle reviews the documentation on their personal acquaintanceship (296-98), treating skeptically the inference that they quarreled (300). Much scholarship surrounds the major narratives they held in common--the "Loathly Lady," Constance, and the rapist Tereus (298-302), with their potential for "gendered readings" (301). Common themes are reviewed, especially the world in decay (302) and the need to advise their king, especially on peacemaking (304). Both were "champions of the vernacular" as authoritative (305), and both explored the potential of "multiple narrative voices" including women's (305-06). Both were pioneers in English versification, a potential area for digital analysis (306). Gower especially imbued the voices of women with "Arion's restorative music" (307). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gasyle, Brian. Published Gastle, Brian. "Gower and Chaucer." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 296-311. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower 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 Gower and 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 Compared to the MO and VC, the CA is a "different kind of visionary text" due to its engagement with romance (281). The dual purpose of the CA--pleasure and instruction--is reinforced by "inset tales" combining the narrative "memes" (281) of the genre with a "moral" and "exemplary" purpose (282-84). The shock of an "otherworldly encounter" (285) may dramatize a character's free choice (285), while "transformation" and "enchantment" may be "life-inspiring" or "devastating" (286). The "testing of virtue" provides a model for social reintegration (287-88). The conventional subject of love (281) is combined with a searching analysis of the emotional experiences and "agency" of women (288-89). These elements are melded in the capstone romance Apollonius of Tyre (289-92). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Saunders, Corinne. Published Saunders, Corinne. "Gower and Romance." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 281-95. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and Romance. 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 Gower claimed the status of an auctor at CA Prol.4, but exactly how did he engage with classical, pre-Christian "auctores," a major issue for his contemporaries as well? His classical learning was "uneven," often second-hand, and not up to humanistic par (268, 273). The VC is a patchwork of Ovidian passages lifted verbatim, a practice recently defended as "cento" (268-69). He knew well, and skillfully interpreted, the ethical teachings of Aristotle through later works of advice to rulers in the Stoic tradition, including Cicero's "De Officiis" (270-71). He seems not to have known Virgil or Statius (273). It was Ovid, whose works he knew virtually by heart, who inspired "Gower's literary reinvention" (275) and vast original achievement in the CA (274-76). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Galloway, Andrew. Published Galloway, Andrew. "Gower's Classicizing Vocations." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 266-80. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Gower's Classicizing Vocations. 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 The value of history, as expressed by Gower, has been the subject of evolving views (253). Traditional criticism sees moral instruction, as voiced by the poet role-playing a prophet in the major Latin poems (253-54). Apocalyptic decay is affirmed, yet human choice may do much to counteract it (254-256). Currently, "(new) historicist" criticism sees Gower's history more as a trove of "competing temporalities and modes of experience" (257). Larger historical precedent is fused with personal experience in the unfolding present, as when Gower recycles the voices of Ovid's suffering heroines in the first-person "Visio" (257). Historical exempla may have no clear lesson, forcing the reader to "triangulate" for meaning (258-59). Affect theory promises insight into individual "engagements with an always partly imagined past" (261). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nowlin, Steele. Published Nowlin, Steele. "Gower and the Forms of History." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 253-65. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and the Forms of History. 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 Irvin's article reviews the iterations of Gower's author-persona, finding a "voice . . . who is sometimes a narrator, and sometimes not" (237), and includes both Genius and Amans. For the CA, foundational traditions label Genius inconsistent, with the priest of love and moral instructor at odds (237), even wildly conflicted (245), while other critics find his moral voice both Christian and "coherent" (238-40, 244, 246). In a variation on the latter view, the CA gives voice to a real dialogue, but with Amans reconciled to Genius's instruction by the end of the poem (242). The poet spoke out as preacher-prophet in VC, assuming the more modest persona of philosopher in the Prologue to the CA (241), and a woman's voice in some "Balades" (247). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Irvin, Matthew W. Published Irvin, Matthew W. "Voices and Narrators." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 237-52. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis 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 Voices and Narrators. 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 its vast extent and high quality, Gower's trilingual output is unrivalled for an English poet (225). In contrast to earlier approaches, which separated languages and considered Gower's English poetry to be a stage in "the triumph of English" (226, 232-34), recent criticism sees his three languages as coequal and often engaged in "interplay" (227, 228), as in the CA, where English and Latin lines coexist in creative tension (227). Gower was a stylistic innovator both in Latin and French (227, 230), suggesting he saw an English future for both. Different languages often acted as "symbols" or "metonymies" for Gower, French for reconciliation (228), Latin for political "vitriol" (229), and English for a kind of "social resistance" (231), given its still-marginal status within his lifetime (232-34). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Machan, Tim William. Published Machan, Tim William. "Gower's Languages." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 225-36. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Languages. 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 Surviving in one manuscript apiece, the Castilian CA is based on the Portuguese translation once thought to be lost, but rediscovered in the 1990s (210). Portuguese translator Robert Payn belonged to Queen Philippa of Lancaster's entourage, suggesting she commissioned the work (212-14). Iberian readers may have valued the CA as a mirror for princes (used as a source by Philippa's son King Duarte), a redaction of ancient lore, and a trove of sentimental romance, which may have influenced the earliest Iberian examples of the genre (214-17). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pascual-Argente, Clara. Published Pascual-Argente, Clara. "Iberian Gower." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 210-221. Gower Subject 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 Iberian Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Through various tactics of authorial self-presentation, Gower largely controlled his own reception, even promoting his own work by the term "moral" also attached to him by Chaucer (197). In many testimonials following his death, Gower is cited as a canonical author generally linked with Chaucer, for example, in Bokenham's "Legendys of Hooly Wummen" (200). Manuscript culture gives evidence for an engaged readership, as shown by the creation of tables of contents, more illuminations, and excerpted versions, some possibly reflecting the interests of women (202-04). Early print editions are reviewed, several containing a dedication to Henry VIII (203-05). Early modern authors, including Shakespeare, found source material in Gower (205-06). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, Robert R. Published Edwards, Robert R. "Gower's Reception, 1400-1700." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 197-209. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion 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's Reception, 1400-1700. 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 The Middle English word "science," used frequently by Gower, means "learning," a concept that includes "advancements in empirical thought" (172). In this expansive overview, Peck reveals the omnipresence, for Gower, of medieval cognitive theory: how the three-lobed brain records sense impressions, then interprets them through intellect and memory, and how this theory leads to an understanding of individual perspective as the gateway to science (172, 174, 178). Thus, science may be true or false, and used or abused (173-75). Recurrently, Peck explains the often-ambiguous exempla of the CA as exercises in the cognitive labor necessary to discover right choices for a confusing world (175, 178-79, 182, 186, 187). Gower's scientific thought rests on the "triangle" of Aristotelian empiricism, Islamic science of cognition, and Christian Platonic idealism (175-76). The CA follows Boethius's DCP in its process of individual therapy through confession and dialogue (176-77). In his exempla, Gower presented men and women of science mostly sympathetically (179-80), especially Daniel, whose analytical method he honored by imitation (180-82). In CA Book VII, he followed Aristotle's anatomy of the sciences, as channeled by Brunetto Latini and the "Secreta Secretorum," with an emphasis on the ethical component of each (182-84), e.g., "Armonie" in music as paradigm for the "common profit" (184). Melding all these themes together, the CA concludes with "the science of selfhood" (187) as key to healing through "memory . . . emotion . . . cognition . . . [and] confession," especially important for the man who would be king (187-88). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A. "Gower and Science." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 172-96. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and Science. 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 Gower engaged with "business . . . merchants and trade" all across his corpus, but especially in the extended estates satire of the MO (158). Gower's economics are interwoven with his politics, as seen in his reference to the wool trade in "In Praise of Peace" (161-62). His critique of the estates is aimed at achieving social harmony through a hierarchical system that includes fair trade (162-63). In exempla using exchange terminology more broadly, Gower highlights the "moral risks" involved (163-64), such as "love" seeking its own advantage (165-66), and even defines his own poetry as a kind of merchandise (164). He referenced the economy of London in detail (164-65), as he wrote "specific and well-informed attacks" on mercantile abuses by the trade guilds and others (165). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ladd, Roger A. Published Ladd, Roger A. "Gower, Business, and Economy." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 158-71. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, Business, and Economy. 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 Gower "was a 'court man' for life" in both meanings of the term, the noble household and court of justice (150). Gower's sophisticated trilingual corpus "could have found a comfortable home" in any courtly context (151). Despite his insider status, however, Gower was prone to role-playing the prophet in the wilderness boldly calling out abuses (151-52). Through the characters of Amans and Genius, both projections of the author, he channels both the courtly "subject of rule" and "voice of authority" (152). The poet's view of kingship, especially the usurpation of 1399, has evoked a range of interpretations, with some critics claiming sycophancy, and others a nuanced constitutionalism requiring even kings to obey the law (153-54). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Giancarlo, Matthew. Published Giancarlo, Matthew. "Gower's Courts." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 150-57. 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 Gower's Courts. 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 The poet's "only documented residence is the house in the precinct of the Augustinian priory of St Mary Overey in Southwark" where he lived until his death (132). Carlin describes the rather working-class (137-38), noisy, and odoriferous district just south of the Thames (137-38). The bridge leading to London proper held a Great Gate adorned with the arms of King Richard II, Queen Anne, and Edward the Confessor (139). Gower may have moved into his residence as early as June 1385 (141). According to the lawsuit of 1394-95, he displaced the rightful tenant, one Feriby, and was forced to pay a fine, a case "not reflect[ing] well on his legal expertise" (142). Evidence is reviewed on the exact location of the house (142-44). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlin, Martha. Published Carlin, Martha. "Gower's Southwark." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 132-149. 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 Southwark. 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 Gower "seems to have been the first English literary author to create an illustration program for his work," and the first in English to use illustrations "which feature an author-persona as part of a story's action" (117). For the VC, he commissioned the picture of an archer shooting an arrow at the world, underscoring his self-conceived, Bible-based role as a preacher and prophet excoriating abuses (118-21). For the CA, he used the statue from the dream of Nebuchadnezzar to picture the world's decline (121), and the highly self-conscious image of the author as Amans confessing to Genius (124-26). Two late manuscripts have more illuminations, in one case alleged to especially feature women (126). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coleman, Joyce. Published Coleman, Joyce. "Illuminations in Gower's Manuscripts." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 117-131. 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 Illuminations in Gower's Manuscripts. 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 The CA survives in two Iberian manuscripts, one in Castilian and one in Portuguese. The Castilian version is based on the Portuguese translation once thought to be lost, but rediscovered in the 1990s (110-11). Scholars generally agree on dating the Castilian MS to the late fifteenth century (11-12). By merging the Latin and English CA into a continuous vernacular text, the original translator has crucially altered its meaning (112). The Portuguese MS, dated by the scribe to 1430 and copied in Ceuta, North Africa, offers a gold mine of evidence on the history of book ownership and dissemination (112-14). Manuscript history shows the Iberian CA to have been preserved in "learned, humanistic circles" (114). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana. Published Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana. "Iberian Manuscripts of Gower's Works." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 110-116. 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 Iberian Manuscripts of Gower's Works. 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 The Latin works--VC, CrT, and short poems--all survive in fairly numerous witnesses. Reviewing the manuscript catalogues, Batkie notes the evidence for a scriptorium overseen by Gower, as well as authorial revisions as late as the Henry Percy rebellion of 1402-05 (103-04). Under "Manuscript production and conditions," she notes the probability of "redactions" showing the poet's increasing disillusionment with Richard II, as well as a network of scribes if not a scriptorium (105-06). Moving on to discuss "how those [material] conditions generate new readings of the texts themselves" (106), she notes, for example, how the famous trilingual MS BL Add. 59495 may really express an evolving critique of Henry IV's bellicosity (107). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Batkie, Stephanie L. Published Batkie, Stephanie L. "Gower's Latin Manuscripts." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 102-09. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Vox Clamantis Cronica Tripertita 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 Gower's Latin Manuscripts. 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 The MO is preserved only in Cambridge University Library Additional MS 3035 [no date proposed], which must have been copied from a witness now lost as it is not a holograph (97-98). Likewise, the CB survives in a sole MS, the trilingual BL Add. 59495, dated 1399 (98). Gower may have personally worked on this MS; if so, he must have had a special purpose for assembling poems in three languages (99). The ballade sequence "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz" appears in thirteen MSS, including Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 3, the oldest to preserve the CA (99). The intended audience for the "Traitié" remains a subject of debate (99-100). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E. Published Bertolet, Craig E. "Gower's French Manuscripts." ." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 97-101. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) 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 Gower's French Manuscripts. 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 No manuscript of the CA can be dated earlier than 1399, the year of Henry IV's usurpation (91). Manuscripts containing the CA (forty-nine full MSS and nine fragments) show textual variants that have been used to support a theory of two or three authorial "recensions," as laudatory references to Richard II have been replaced by tributes to Henry Bolingbroke (91-93). More recently, the "recension" model has been questioned as unlikely on several grounds (93-94). The poet's only other work in English, "In Praise of Peace," survives in the pro-Henrician BL Add. MS 59495 (formerly MS Trentham, dated 1399) which may have been owned and even partially inscribed by Gower himself (95). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fredell, Joel. Published Fredell, Joel. "John Gower's Manuscripts in Middle English." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 91-96. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Manuscripts in Middle English. 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 Applying Bakhtinian theory, van Dijk defines law as a comprehensive "culture" allowing for contradiction and paradox, thus aligned with literature (75-77). Gower may have been some kind of lawyer, and he was certainly a litigant who knew the potential for "loopholes" in the legal practice of his time (78-79). Law was contiguous with justice in the Golden Age, but not always now (78). Despite this seeming pessimism, Gower held to a Christian "realist" view of the law as founded in nature, thus in love (80-82), although "love" is sometimes seen as problematic (82). Many times in the CA, exempla demonstrate the paradox that obedience to a just law really sets us free (83-84). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor van Dijk, Conrad. Published van Dijk, Conrad. "John Gower and the Law: Legal Theory and Practice." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 75-87. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower 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 and the Law: Legal Theory and Practice. 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 While staunchly orthodox, Gower's Christian faith is complex, like its counterpart today. Despite a generally Augustinian mindset, he never mentioned predestination (57). With few exceptions, he "privilege[es] the rational over the non-rational" (57), agreeing with Holcot that salvation is based on faith and good works (60). His sole foray into affective piety, the life of Mary in the MO, has the rational purpose of underscoring his "bedrock belief in the broad availability of human redemption" (61). He generally appealed to reason in refuting non-Christian faiths (61-66), allowing that misbelievers may repent and be saved (63), while more fanatically excoriating Lollardy as the devil's own work (68). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R .F. "Gower's Religions." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 56-74. 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 Gower's Religions. 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 CA Book 7, Gower produced the first treatise on rhetoric in the English language. Zarins highlights Gower's profound ambivalence toward rhetoric a gift from God to man alone (37), but also contrived, "unnatural" (37) and prone to abusive purposes, even goading to war (41). On rhetoric as a civilizing force, Gower appeals to Cicero, Horace, and the irenic harpist Arion (38-40). His use of rhetorical figures is skillfully varied across languages (42-47). The social classes, as well as women, have their special rhetorical gifts, to be used for good or ill (47-49), just as eloquence in general may be used or abused (49-50). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Zarins, Kim. Published Zarins, Kim. "Gower and Rhetoric." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 37-55. Gower Subject 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 Gower and Rhetoric. 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 Bullón-Fernández explicates the two foundational traditions in scholarship on Gower and gender, one claiming he is notably respectful to women, especially in the CA (22-23), and one finding women characters as misogynistically portrayed and marginalized to the "larger" concerns of men (23). Among her many examples of scholarship engaged with this complexity, Bullón-Fernández notes how rape in the CA is always the fault of the male (24), yet somehow gendered "effeminat" (25-26). She describes the manuscripts of the CA apparently commissioned by women and reflecting their influence (29), before calling for more research on the much less woman-friendly French and Latin poems (32-33). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María. Published Bullón-Fernández, María. "Gower and Gender." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 21-36. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and Gender. 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 Hsy starts off by reviewing three important "waves" in recent theoretical scholarship on Gower: the role of "ethics . . . modern identity-based politics, and an increase in scholarship that explores the author's varied linguistic and socioeconomic milieu" (10). He proceeds to discuss earlier theoretical approaches as well as Gower himself as a practitioner of literary "theorique" (12), including the fruitful potential of multilingual "divisioun" (14). In the longest section, "Gower's Corpus," Hsy shows how the poet anticipates "radical crip theory" (15) by pushing his debilitated body into stark and thematically charged "visibility" (15), as somewhat surprisingly discussed by a fifteenth century scribe (18). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hsy, Jonathan. Published Hsy, Jonathan. "Gower and Theory: Old Books, New Matters." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 9-20. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and Theory: Old Books, New Matters. 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 This collection of twenty-six review articles is designed to build upon Siân Echard's "A Companion to Gower" (2004). While not ignoring older studies, the chapter authors especially focus on scholarship of the past twenty to thirty years, with the reader directed to the "John Gower Bibliography Online" (4) as a complement to the substantial bibliography in the book. Each article "not only presents a narrative and a review of the most recent scholarship on its identified topic, but a look at possible avenues for future work in that area" (6). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Published Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017. ISBN 9781317043034 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 Routledge Research Companion to John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Runstedler sends the following description: "This thesis examines the role of alchemy in Middle English poetry from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England, particularly how these poems present themselves as exemplary narratives to raise moral points about human behaviour, fallibility, and alchemical experimentation. The introduction suggests the compatibility between the emergence of the vernacular exemplum and the development of alchemical practice and literature in late medieval England. I follow J. Allan Mitchell's 'ethics of exemplarity' for reading the alchemical poems in this study, extending his reading of Middle English poetry to understand the exemplary and ethical values of alchemy in poetry, which in turn helps the reader to understand the good of alchemical examples in medieval literature. Reading these alchemical poems as exemplary reassesses the role of alchemy in medieval literature and provides new ways of thinking about the exemplum as a literary framework or device in Middle English poems containing alchemy. The third chapter concentrates on John Gower's use of alchemy in the 'Confessio amantis,' in which it is presented as a model for ideal yet unattainable labour. Following R.F. Yeager's reading of Gower's 'new exemplum' in the 'Confessio amantis¸' I suggest that Gower's alchemical section follows this new, emerging style of vernacular exemplary writing and can also be read on its own as an exemplary narrative, which recognises alchemical failure as a post-lapsarian decline and a sign of human shortcomings." [Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Runstedler, Curtis T. Published Runstedler, Curtis T. Alchemy and Exemplary Narrative in Middle English Poetry. Ph.D. Diss. University of Durham, 2018. Open access at http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12593/ (accessed January 27, 2023). 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 Alchemy and Exemplary Narrative in Middle English Poetry. 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 In Chapter 4, "Interlude: Nebuchadnezzar's Dream," Zayaruznaya explores the idol made of gold, silver, bronze and steel from Nebuchadnezzar's Dream in Daniel 2. As Zayaruznaya explains in the introduction to this chapter: "A cultural history of Nebuchadnezzar's statue has yet to be written" [142]. Despite its brevity, this chapter takes important steps in that direction. Tracing the images of the statue from biblical commentaries through Dante and Deguileville, Zayaruznaya offers a concise account of the image's history that supplements Russell Peck's much earlier "John Gower and the Book of Daniel" (1989). The core of this chapter thoughtfully juxtaposes Gower's vision of the statue in the CA with both Vitry's "Cum statua/Hugo" and Machaut's "Remède de Fortune." Although Zayaruznaya declares that "[it] is not the aim of this study to establish any definite links between Gower and the musical works of Machaut and Vitry," [171] the specific parallels between Gower's poetry and the work of Machaut and Vitry are compelling. "Hugo," she argues, "is split--like Fortune, like the statue, like mortal man in Gower's scheme--between opposites. Like the world, he began good and got worse; like the statue, he stands divided" [171]. Likewise, she argues, regarding CA Pro.935 and lines 876-80 of the "Remède": "In addition to the borrowed theme of Fortune, the "Confessio amantis" is linked to the "Remède" by a rhetorical device": anaphora [168]. Zayaruznaya, Gower, Vitry, and Machaut's "interpretations stand aside from Italian and French poets who use it as a more positive and sometimes even a stable symbol. The decision to cast it in a negative light thus becomes exactly that: a decision, rather than a mechanical retelling of a Bible story," [172]. As scholars continue to expand critical understandings of Gower's relationship to his French peers, Zayaruznaya's contribution illuminates a particularly significant point of intersection and, perhaps, exchange. [ZS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Zayaruznaya, Anna. Published Zayaruznaya, Anna. The Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 142-72. ISBN 9781107039667. 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 Monstrous New Art: Divided Forms in the Late Medieval Motet. 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 Novak takes as her starting point what has "often been remarked, that typically for the Ricardian period in which he lived, John Gower's poetic style is essentially public, in the sense that it is written on behalf of what he calls the people, for their moral edification, their 'common profit,' and usually in the form of direct address to the nation as a whole or class by class" (311). Examples are drawn from the MO and the VC Books II-VII, to illustrate Gower's early employment of "vox populi, vox dei" is in a sense unqualified--but this, Novak argues, shifts dramatically with the Revolt of 1381, as evidenced by his presentation of the peasants turned into brutes, incapable of human language. This leads her to conclude that: "When Gower speaks with the voice of the people, he means people like himself: educated, owning land, namely the rising middle estates, who are worthy of counseling and passing judgment on the upper end of the hierarchy. He does not credit serfs and artisans with speaking in God's own voice, and there is no reason to believe that anyone in his time understood the proverb to include them" (322). For Novak, this exclusion of the lowest classes extends to Gower's denial to them of human speech: "Gower believes in the power of language to repair the ills of society, to compose peace. However, just as God denies wealth and freedom to the peasant class for the common good--because someone must work the land--Gower deprives them of language, which would prove too dangerous in their mouths" (322). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Novak, Sarah. Published Novak, Sarah. "Braying Peasants and the Poet as Prophet: Gower and the People in the Vox Clamantis." Études Anglaises 66 (2013): 311-22. ISSN 0014-195X. Rpt. in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 279-85. ISBN 9781410332592. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis 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 Braying Peasants and the Poet as Prophet: Gower and the People in the "Vox Clamantis." 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 As part of her broader, book-length study of archaism as a "barometer" of early modern English literary and national self-awareness, Munro examines representations of Chaucer, Gower, and their works in Renaissance poetry and drama. Chaucer receives much the lion's share of the attention here, with Munro remarking at one point on the "downward trajectory of Gower's reputation in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries" (91). Nevertheless, according to Munro, the "embodiment" of Gower in Shakespeare and Wilkins' "Pericles" was "one of the period's most sustained attempts to assert the value of the archaic style" (92), with the "imaginative antiquarianism" of the play challenging the "assumptions about archaism's obsolescence that are anxiously negotiated" in other works, particularly Book 4 of Spenser's "Faerie Queene," where Chaucer's "Squire's Tale" figures so largely, and "The Return from Parnassus," a Cambridge University play that, more directly than Spenser, confronts the "question of Chaucer's scurrility" (86). In its "fragments of a recreated Gowerian English," "Pericles" reanimates Middle English for its original audience, reinforced, Munro argues, by the medieval costuming of Gower as narrator and chorus. Moreover, the meter and style of Gower's choric comments on the dumb-shows in the play successfully emphasize "visual story-telling" and contribute to its "performative antiquarianism" that "foreground[s] the act of the recuperation of the past" (95). William Cartwright's play "The Ordinary" also "reanimates" Middle English (through the character of Robert Moth, the antiquarian) and thereby recuperates the past, but it does so in a more sardonic, less direct way than Shakespeare and Wilkins do with their characterization of Gower. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Munro, Lucy. Published Munro, Lucy. "Chaucer, Gower and the Anxiety of Obsolescence." In Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590-1674 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 69-104. 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 Chaucer, Gower and the Anxiety of Obsolescence. 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 Meindl and Riley present full Latin texts, followed by lucid translation into English, of "The Case of Sir William Septvans, 1366." They incorporate the five known documents associated with the case of Gower's obtaining the manor of Aldington Septvans via what have seemed to many rather shady dealings. The documents are: "Rotulus Parliamenti de anno Regni Regius Tertii quadragesimo" (Summary in French); The King's Writ (in Latin); Record of the Inquiry (in Latin); Evidence heard by the inquiry from the knights and respectable men of legal standing (in Latin); The decision of Parliament (in Latin). The volume thus does Gower studies a great service, by gathering in one place, and translating, disparate texts otherwise difficult to access, making them easily available. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Meindl, Robert J. and Mark T. Riley, eds. and trans., Published Meindl, Robert J. and Mark T. Riley, eds. and trans., A Latin Reader for the Study of Early English Law: with Introductions, Selections, Translations, Notes & Glossary. (St. Augustine, FL: Sophron Editor, 2017), pp. 585-605. 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 A Latin Reader for the Study of Early English Law: with Introductions, Selections, Translations, Notes & Glossary. 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 Higl is concerned to demonstrate that the preponderance of printed Chaucer works over those of Lydgate and Gower, usually perceived as by modern scholars as evidence of their relative popularity, was in fact caused primarily by early printers' assessments of their marketability. Because Chaucer had fewer ideological markers than either Gower or Lydgate, and wrote a greater number of middling-length poems that could be added to other works to create "new, improved" collections, "the canon of Chaucer and the idea of Chaucer himself proved malleable--not an uncommon quality of medieval works but something that marks Chaucer even in the early modern period. Chaucer was flexible, and he could be manipulated in order to match the 'sentence' of the nation and proved 'solaas' for consumers" (65). Lydgate and Gower were harder for profit-seeking printers to "manipulate"--to some degree because after Henry VIII broke with Rome they were identified with an out-of-fashion religiosity, and pre-humanistic views. Higl's major claim, however, is that Gower's work was more troublesome still for printers because he "simply did not have a varied corpus of English that could be published . . . . Language is the key, and for Gower, his command of three languages--Latin, French, and English--would prove to cause his downfall in the English tradition" (66). "The market forces at work in the sixteenth century would have made such an undertaking as publishing the works of Gower financially ridiculous" (67). Ultimately, then, for Higl, "though early moderns often placed Gower's name next to Chaucer's when tracing the English tradition, the name Gower coupled with his work could not effectively sell the importance of English since a majority of his corpus was in languages other than English" (68). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Higl, Andrew. Published Higl, Andrew. "Printing Power: Selling Lydgate, Gower, and Chaucer." Essays in Medieval Studies 23 (2006): 57-77. ISSN 1043-2213. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations 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 Printing Power: Selling Lydgate, Gower, and Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Brown sees the battle of Nicopolis in 1396, after which "almost 20,000 crusaders" were beheaded "by the Ottomans" and "many more were enslaved," as the termination of "the Crusade era and European chivalry" (179). Gower, he argues, "was probably among those who had known enough to see the massacre coming" (179) because "he had been present when Philipe [de Mézières . . . presented his "Epistre" to King Richard urging an alliance with Charles [VI of France] and the Avignon pope against the much stronger Ottomans on the other side of the world" (179-80). In Brown's view, the Prologue to the CA, ll. 240-49 represent "at least one dissenting murmur in the English court" against taking up the crusade that ended at Nicopolis (181). Gower's opposition to the 1396 effort is the more apparent in alterations he made to Trivet's original narrative that provided the source for the "Tale of Constance." Brown finds significant Gower's omission of Tiberius' agreement with the sultan and the detail of 11,000 Saracens slaughtered: for Gower, these "would have represented the kind of pro-Crusade rhetoric being spread through England and all of Europe by reactionary propagandists like Philipe of Mézières" (184). Trivet's original narrative, Brown argues, in the end of which "the West is fully converted, Christendom is united, and the East is crushed under the avenging might of Rome," so that "all of [Pope] Urban's dreams [would] have been realized" (186), was for Gower too much like the propaganda he both feared and rejected. Hence "Gower suppresses this rhetoric. 'Moral Gower' warns against pursuing an ideology that at the close of the fourteenth century was not only obsolete, but potentially suicidal" (188). Brown concludes that "at the very least, the example of Gower's 'Tale of Constance' suggests that we reconsider such canonical medieval poets not simply as artists composing in the protective isolation of Church and court, but as active participants embroiled in a sometimes desperate ideological struggle" (188). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Brwon, Harry J. Published Brown, Harry J. "'For Worldes Good': John Gower's 'Tale of Constance' and the End of the Crusades." In The Crusades: Other Experiences, Alternate Perspectives: Selected Proceedings from the 32nd Annual CEMERS Conference, ed. Khalil I. Semaan (Binghamton, NY: Global Academic Publishing, 2003), pp. 179-89. ISBN 9781586842512. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "For Worldes Good": John Gower's "Tale of Constance" and the End of the Crusades. 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 Bennett notes that "Though the status of John Gower as a squire of Kent is acknowledged, it has been generally assumed that the poet sold the manor at Aldington by Thurnham, his chief holding in Kent, in 1373, moving to Southwark shortly afterwards" (258). He clarifies the legal status of that transaction, which was not a sale but an enfeoffment to uses, which in fact allowed Gower all the privileges of ownership--including residential occupation--via a common sort of legal dodge. That Gower was "at home" in Kent in 1381 when the rebels swept through is evidenced by Bennett's discovery of "a plea of covenant [entered by Gower] against Walter Cookes, carpenter, requiring him to fulfil the terms of an indenture in which the latter agreed to construct 'de novo' a house at Aldington for Gower's use ['ad opus Iohannis'] and at his expense" (263). This document, if it "does not absolutely prove that Gower resided at Aldington, it demonstrates that in 1381, eight years after the grant of 1373, he still had a house there and was intent on rebuilding it for his use" (263). Bennett then analyses the "Visio," especially the first section which finds the authorial figure in the countryside, as a real-life narrative, if greatly transformed. The latter portion of the article devotes significant attention to the implications Gower's possible residence at Aldington has for, among other things, illuminating his circle of friends, and--through a strengthened connection with the Cobham family--his attitude in the "Cronica Tripertita" toward Richard II. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bennett, Michael. Published Bennett, Michael. "John Gower, Squire of Kent, the Peasants' Revolt, and the 'Visio Anglie'." Chaucer Review 53 (2018): 258-82. ISSN 0009-2002. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Vox Clamantis 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 John Gower, Squire of Kent, the Peasants' Revolt, and the "Visio Anglie." 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 Walsh, Brian. Published Walsh, Brian. "A Priestly Farewell": Gower's Tomb and Religious Change in "Pericles." Religion & Literature 45, no. 3 (2013): 81-113. ISSN 0888-3769 Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Biography of Gower Review Walsh casts his essay as a contribution to ongoing questions about sustained or residual Catholic attitudes and practices in post-Reformation England, arguing that the characterization of Gower in William Shakespeare and George Wilkins's "Pericles" contributes to the play's "Catholic-Protestant dialectic" (82), more specifically, its "syncretistic tendency" in depicting "old and new forms of worship" cast as, respectively, "sacramental" and "commemorative" mourning rituals (91-92). The "legacy" of Gower, Walsh argues, "encoded [early modern] England's medieval religious past," and the character Gower, presented as a revenant in the play, is an "avatar of the medieval" (93) that enabled "the fantasy" that Gower himself has left his tomb "and come down the street to the Globe," standing forth as "a figure for ongoing, even mobile appropriations of the religious past" (101). Walsh posits that the playwrights and their audience plausibly, even probably, were familiar with Gower's tomb, and he suggests the tomb should be considered a source for the play's dialectic of religious outlooks. He describes the state and status of the tomb in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, considers the discussions of it in Thomas Berthelette's edition of CA (a clear source of "Pericles") and in John Stow's "Survey of London," and emphasizes the fact that the tomb survived the sixteenth-century destruction of the chapel of St. John the Baptist's chapel that originally surrounded it. Constructed as a chantry for intercessory prayer, the tomb was never "wholly disenchanted" (100), Walsh tells us, and, in the play, the effigy was "animated" by a "living, breathing actor" (96), thereby effecting a bridge between past and present that is foregrounded by archaic speech, various details of Gower's choric commentary, and (one might add) costuming. Among various observations that Walsh makes about Gower's early modern reception is the detail that Gower appears as an "advertising hook" on the title page of George Wilkins's 1608 "novelization" of "Pericles" ("The Painfull Aduentures of Pericles . . ."), even though Gower never appears in this prose version, indicating that "Wilkins or his printer evidently expected possible customers to see Gower as inseparable from the story" (93). The title-page image, however, looks nothing like the tomb effigy. On the other hand, in supporting his claims about early modern familiarity with Gower's tomb, Walsh offers "a tantalizing bit of circumstantial evidence" (104) that Shakespeare knew the interior of St. Saviour's--an account of the burial of Edmund Shakespeare in 1607. Earlier in his essay, Walsh suggests in passing that Gower's tomb may also have influenced Paulina's tomb in Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale." [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] 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/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Title A name given to the resource "A Priestly Farewell": Gower's Tomb and Religious Change in "Pericles." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 Yeager seeks to defend "the generally unrecognized complexity" of Gower's "Traitiė" by drawing attention to "the remarkable polyvalences, the aesthetic and allusive confrontations of his balades, [and] their challenges, inspirational, formal and doctrinal" (p. 259). He focuses on the second ballade in the sequence, one of the six non-narrative poems that envelop the twelve more familiar exempla of failed marriages in numbers 6-17. The first stanza invokes (in line 4) the injunction in Genesis 9:1 to "increase and multiply and fill the earth," as well as (in line 6) Genesis 3:17, "with labor and toil . . . ," but it is structured around a distinction between spirit and flesh from Romans 8:14-16. From the same passage in Paul, Gower adopts the engendering power of the Spirit in order to establish the "paradoxical equivalent inequality" between flesh and spirit, their "commonality" of both purpose and dignity (264-65). The vocabulary that Gower uses deepens the resonance: the juxtaposition of "experience" and "contemplation" (lines 2-3) invokes the Active and Contemplative lives, and thus Christ's words to Martha in Luke 10:38-42; and hanging over the entire stanza is the polyvalence of "amour" (line 1), both physical and spiritual, embodied elsewhere, as in the CA, in the dual roles of Venus. The image of the soul contemplating God in lines 1-2 has a long line of illustrious antecedents. Gower also draws upon Augustine both for the unique properties of the soul and for his insistence upon "a role and a dignity for the body" (269). The larger argument of the "Traitiė" is that marriage "conjoins body and soul. . . . It is this humane wholeness that lies at the heart of the 'Traitiė' balades, prompting a definition of marriage not as legitimate only for offspring, and only if lacking in pleasure, as some austere theologians would have it, but rather as valid and joyful" (270). The value of Yeager's essay lies in its very willingness to take Gower's aims and intentions both as moralist and as poet fully seriously. There are some odd asides--the assertion that Machaut's ballades are "structured narratively" (261), for instance, and that Gower would likely not have written ballades without an envoy after 1390 (268). (Deschamps, Granson, and Christine de Pisan, among others, all continued to write ballades without envoys after that date.) There are also some questions about exactly what some of Gower's lines mean. "Labour" (line 6) probably does not refer to childbirth (as Yeager suggests, p. 265); such a sense does not occur in French, and in Middle English only contextually, and only later, according to the MED; and "providence" (line 8) isn't used as a general synonym for divine agency until much later (p. 263). Lines 8-12 offer more than one difficulty, including the awkward anacoluthon in line 12. Where Yeager has "From the spirit which does this, Providence cannot withhold a subsequent reward. This understanding is greater in the soul. . . . Than in the body engendered in its sons," I would read instead "He who makes provision for the soul cannot fail of subsequent reward. That understanding is greater in the soul . . . Than is the body, engendering its offspring." Gower's ballades contain many similar challenges, and finding the best way of translating them must itself be part of our discussion of the "Traitiė." [PN. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 37.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R. F. "Twenty-First Century Gower: The Theology of Marriage in John Gower's 'Traitiė' and the Turn toward French." In Thelma Fenster and Carolyn P. Collette, eds. The French of Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 257-71. Gower Subject Traitie pour Essampler les Amants Marietz 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 Twenty-First Century Gower: The Theology of Marriage in John Gower's "Traitiė" and the Turn toward French. 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 The prince's role as judge is a central concern of the "Fürstenspiegel" tradition, McGerr notes, but the three works in question in this essay "complicate the depiction of legal judgment by inscribing the poet into the process of judgment. . . . The author's persona is literally judged within the poem but figuratively authorizes a process of judgment for readers that links literary judgment to legal judgment. In particular, by exploring the relationship between reading and judging, these authors constructed poems that highlight the role of reading as a means of developing good judgment, whether by princes or by other readers whose self-government contributed to creating a just society" (167). The link between reading and judging has deeps roots in language, McGerr observes, in the common Latin root of both "legible" and "legislation," for instance, and in the multiple uses, in Old and Middle English, of "raedan" and "reden." Isidore of Seville declared that "lex a legendo vocata," and John of Salisbury, echoing Deuteronomy, insisted that rulers should read the law each day. In Dante, the link between reading and legal judgment is most explicit in the sphere of Justice in "Paradiso" 18-20, a passage that McGerr labels a "mirror for princes" in its concern for just rulership. Machaut's "Navarre" explores the relation between reading and judgment by framing the debate about suffering in love in legal terms and by ascribing to the King of Navarre "'reading' skills superior to those of the poet-narrator" (177). Gower's CA is linked to both earlier works in its linking of love and kingship, in its education of both the lover-narrator and the prince, and in its emphasis on the importance of law to good kingship. Citing Mitchell and others, McGerr notes Gower's use of exempla to provoke the reader to more perceptive reading. She adds a discussion of Gower's pervasive use of "rede" and its derivatives in contexts invoking reading, judging, and advising (many of which also require the reader's alert attention in order to discern the proper sense) and Genius' repeated references to the lesson to be found in "bokes." "The 'Confessio' suggests strongly that reading can serve as a means of inquiry and analysis that facilitates ethical judgment, for kings and others. Gower's poem presents a portrait of the prince as judge and therefore one for whom reading skills are essential; but, through the poet-protagonist's experience of the process of judgment within the narrative, the 'Confessio' also presents its advice about royal judgment indirectly, at the same time that it . . . offers all readers a mean of gaining greater skill in ethical judgment" (186). [PN. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 37.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor McGerr, Rosemarie. Published McGerr, Rosemarie. "The Judge as Reader, the Reader as Judge: Literary and Legal Judgment in Dante, Machaut, and Gower." In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 165-91. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Judge as Reader, the Reader as Judge: Literary and Legal Judgment in Dante, Machaut, and Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Drimmer focuses on the passage in Book I of CA in which Venus asks the narrator who he is. Most manuscripts, and all of the earliest ones, give the same reading for I.161: "I seid, 'A Caitif that lith hiere," as Macaulay prints it from F; but seven copies in Macaulay's group "1(c)" (which he labeled "unrevised" but which we now believe to be later than the group he called "revised") and the closely related MS B either omit the line entirely (in two cases, leaving a blank space but in the wrong position, following the rhyming line I.162 rather than before it) or present an alternative: "And I answerede wiþ drery [or 'ful myld'] chiere," or most remarkably, in two copies, identifying the narrator with the author, "Ma dame I sayde Iohn Gowere." Seven of these eight copies, Drimmer notes, figure among the fourteen manuscripts that contain miniatures showing the penitent narrator kneeling before Genius after I.202, in all but one case on the same page. The miniatures show the narrator either as an old man, consistent with the identity of the author, or as a youth, the persona that he adopts for the purposes of the confession, reflecting the same sort of indecision that might lie behind the alternative readings in I.161. Drimmer in fact argues provocatively that the various scribes' awareness of the image that would appear in most cases in the very next column may have been the reason for their hesitation to commit themselves to the reading in their exemplar. "Each scribe revised with the foreknowledge that whatever his revision was, an adjoining image that depicts the individual whose line of dialogue he inscribed would produce a moment of pictorial reckoning for which he would be held to account" (24). Instead of our viewing the illustrations as mere "translations" of the text, "these manuscripts demand that we resituate the position of the visual in our assessment of literary culture" (28). [PN. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 37.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Drimmer, Sonja. Published Drimmer, Sonja. "The Disorder of Operations: Illuminators, Scribes, and John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Lias 44 (2017): 5-28. ISSN : 2033-4753. E-ISSN : 2033-5016.{http://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=issue&journal_code=LIAS&issue=1&vol=44}. 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 The Disorder of Operations: Illuminators, Scribes, and John 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 Review Cornelius offers a crisp and cogent review of scholarship on Gower's "Visio Anglie" and advances a compelling argument about its ideological significance. He identifies three major strands of scholarly activity on the poem that Gower wrote about the Rising of 1381 and inserted as the first book of the "Vox Clamantis." One strand has focused on the "ideological work" that the poem performs in its account of the insurgency; another has advanced and refined our understanding of Gower's use of his biblical and classical sources; and a third has exploration of the literary indecorum of Gower's "vertiginous dream vision": its mishmash of sources and allusion, including vernacular elements; and its "surrealistic shifts in character, setting, and generic mode" (23-4). Cornelius builds on all three strands of scholarship and seeks to integrate them in ideological framework. It suggests, in relation to the third strand, not only how the "aggressively dehumanizing" presentation of the rebels served to delegitimise their grievances and demands but also how the "transgressions of literary decorum" express, "at the level of prosody, the offense committed by English labourers who forced their way into the homes and into the thoughts of their social superiors in June of 1381" (24). In relation to the second strand, he shows how "the storehouse of Latin poetry . . . figures in Gower's poem as the mental equipment necessary for a proper understanding of contemporary events" (24), privileging again the educated elite. It also "delivers a deeper mythography of power," in which the insurrection and its defeat are given added cultural resonance and set in a larger providential history (29). Drawing the threads together, Cornelius incorporates Andrew Galloway's insight that, in the last analysis, the poem is not about the rebels and their outrages but about "the moral condition of the dreamer-speaker" (27). The study ends by offering a subtler sense of the poem's ideological work. The poem not only delegitimises the political agency of the serfs and the lower orders generally but also excludes them, as lacking reason, from the moral community. The poem likewise seeks to reduce the force of the insurrection: from a revolt of the commons, to animal hordes, to tempest and storm, the rising is "shrunk into a matter of the governing class's conscience." For Gower, "it follows that the governing classes must be educated, encouraged, and supported, and even prodded toward correct living" (44). [MJB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 37.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Cornelius, Ian. Published Cornelius, Ian, "Gower and the Peasants' Revolt." Representations 131 (2015): 22-51. Gower Subject 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 Gower and the Peasants' Revolt. 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 Burke begins with the evidence that CA and Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women" originated with the same commission, from Anne of Bohemia, first wife of Richard II. Machaut's "Jugement dou roi de Navarre" is a recognized "paradigm" for LGW, and Burke sees CA as well both as a "creative reworking of the 'Navarre'" (195) and as a poem heavily marked by Anne's influence. The evidence for Anne's role is found not just in the similarity to LGW. She is not mentioned explicitly, but Burke notes that contemporary allusions to female patrons were "more likely to be coded" (196). The clearest allusion to Anne occurs in VIII.2470-75, beginning "The newe guise of Beauwme was there, / With sondri thinges wel devised." The "thinges" Burke takes as a possible reference to Machaut's "dits," noting that three of Anne's own relatives served as patrons to Machaut, and also that two others were both patrons of and putative collaborators with Froissart and that her family also included several other women who were prominent in the cultivation of the arts. Anne stepped into the same role upon her arrival in England, Burke suggests, quickly learning English, as evidenced by not only Chaucer's dedication of LGW but also Clanvowe's in his "Book of Cupid." Anne's presence in CA is felt in the prominence given to exemplary women, beginning with the reference to "Carmentis" in the Latin verses that head the Prologue and including the many tales of women who were virtuous in love and those who serve as examples of wise "wifely counsel." (Burke also detects an interesting "topical edge" in the "Tale of Albinus and Rosemund," which "implicitly recalls" the death of Anne's grandfather, John of Bohemia, at the hands of her late father-in-law, the Black Prince, at the battle of Crécy.) In their choice of many similar examples, Gower and Machaut both engage with the tradition of clerical misogyny, but in ways that reveal important differences between CA and "Navarre." Machaut, in defending his own earlier work, gives voice to the views that his poem finally opposes, while Gower merely takes women's virtues for granted, and unlike both Machaut and Chaucer, has no need to depict himself as defending women only "in deference to an authority beyond his control" (205). And where Machaut's poem ends with a judgment against the poet and the imposition of a penance in the form of new poems, Gower's persona is released from his subjection to love and reverts to his earlier style of writing. In doing so, he leaves writing of love to "him which hath of love his make" (*VIII.3078), suggesting that "yes, the 'Confessio' was originally created as a love poem to honor the great love between [Richard and Anne]. Beyond that, Gower expressed his expectation that further 'songes' and 'seyinges,' literary creations, will arise from their royal partnership" (207). [PN. Copyright. John Gower Society, eJGN 37.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke, Linda. Published Burke, Linda. "Bohemian Gower: 'Confessio Amantis,' Queen Anne, and Machaut's Judgment Poems." In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond. Ed. R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), p. 192-216. 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 Bohemian Gower: "Confessio Amantis," Queen Anne, and Machaut's Judgment Poems. 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 Beer's is the first (alphabetically) of three essays from Palmer and Kimmelman's collection of studies of the importance of Machaut's "Jugement dou roy de Behaigne" and "Jugement dou roy de Navarre" as models not just for the works of his immediate successors but also, more provocatively, for aspects of the modern novel. Both "Behaigne" and CA, Beer argues, like the earlier love-debate poetry from which both derive, are "centrally concerned with a conflict between idealism and pragmatism" (217) and "between two views of love: one that sees it as aligned with virtue, and one that sees it as aligned with immoral or amoral carnal desire" (218). And like such debate poetry, which typically leaves the final judgment to the reader, both poets make large concessions to both opposing views though finally tilting in favor of a more strictly orthodox moral position. In his discussion of "Behaigne," Beer insists on the priority given to the role of Reason, who dismisses all love as "charnel affection" (taking issue with the reviewer's account of the moral bearings of the poem), and he argues that Genius' final dismissal of love in Book 8 is anticipated by earlier assessments of the moral status of love during Amans' confession, though neither Joenesce (in "Behaigne") nor Amans is held to be completely in error. "Gower, like Machaut, offers the inevitable moral conclusion on love, but also acknowledges the appeal of the un-arbitrated 'jeu-parti' that allows us to believe that the debate--along with love, poetry, and the imaginative realm in which these things operate--can go on perpetually. What is at issue here is nothing less than the appeal of 'this lyves lust.' Machaut and Gower invest sympathetically in the idea that such worldly pleasure can be idealized and given enduring value, and the energy and persistence of this fantasy constitutes a significant part of these poems' appeal. It is a fantasy, nonetheless, because both poets also figure the attempt to align love with virtue as essentially futile. Both the 'Behaigne' and the 'Confessio' make this point clearly and conclusively: earthly love, they say, simply is carnal and sinful, and therefore can never can be an adequate substitute for, or (on its own) a sufficient means of attaining, any form of salvation" (237). [PN. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 37.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Beer, Lewis. Published Beer, Lewis. "Polarized Debates, Ambivalent Judgments: The 'Jugement Behaigne' and the 'Confessio Amantis'." In R Barton Palmer, and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 217-39. 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 Polarized Debates, Ambivalent Judgments: The "Jugement Behaigne" and the "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1967 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 analyzes the "ambiguous" nexus of the two principle threads running through the CA--love and confession--to argue that Gower's text confounds any critical reconciliation between them. Gower's formulation of the "unstable" yet "generative" nexus between love and confession intervenes into Foucault's understanding of medieval confession and sexuality. Foucault's formulation of subjectivity is dependent upon the erasure and forgetting of the self. In contrast, Gower's MO shows confessional subjectivity arising from an act of narration that produces confessional history--orienting the subject within time, relative to a revised (because confessed) past and an anticipated salvific future. In short, the confessing subject is established via the creation of its history. Batkie cannily illustrates how Amans's confessional activity takes up memory, forgetting, and history in generative but unstable ways. Amans's agency (to narrate, remember, forget) and his desire (for the beloved, for absolution) both produce and trouble him as subject. Gower forges a chiasmatic relationship between confession and love in which Amans's particular failures as a lover "can only become generative as a confessional exemplum" as Amans reads his inability to express his present desire in the amorous past" via his "remembered desire in the confessional present." His failures in love, in other words, become confessional successes, although amorous confession also leaves him "without history"--he does not formulate a confessional subjectivity embedded in a narrated past and an anticipated future. Rather, Amans's confessed narrative "cannot extend past [himself], or past the present tense." Even as narratives of love point only to the past, desire, through the confessional process, "is summonded, named, and extended." [EH-R. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Baktie, Stephanie L. Published Batkie, Stephanie L., "Loving Confession in the' Confessio Amantis'." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 39 (2017): 99-128. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Loving Confession in the "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 Munro, Lucy. Published Lucy Munro, Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590-1674 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 69-104. ISBN 978-1-107-04279-7 Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Review As part of her broader, book-length study of archaism as a "barometer" of early modern English literary and national self-awareness, Munro examines representations of Chaucer, Gower, and their works in Renaissance poetry and drama. Chaucer receives much the lion's share of the attention here, with Munro remarking at one point on the "downward trajectory of Gower's reputation in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries" (91). Nevertheless, according to Munro, the "embodiment" of Gower in Shakespeare and Wilkins' "Pericles" was "one of the period's most sustained attempts to assert the value of the archaic style" (92), with the "imaginative antiquarianism" of the play challenging the "assumptions about archaism's obsolescence that are anxiously negotiated" in other works, particularly Book 4 of Spenser's "Faerie Queene," where Chaucer's "Squire's Tale" figures so largely, and "The Return from Parnassus," a Cambridge University play that, more directly than Spenser, confronts the "question of Chaucer's scurrility" (86). In its "fragments of a recreated Gowerian English," "Pericles" reanimates Middle English for its original audience, reinforced, Munro argues, by the medieval costuming of Gower as narrator and chorus. Moreover, the meter and style of Gower's choric comments on the dumb-shows in the play successfully emphasize "visual story-telling" and contribute to its "performative antiquarianism" that "foreground[s] the act of the recuperation of the past" (95). William Cartwright's play "The Ordinary" also "reanimates" Middle English (through the character of Robert Moth, the antiquarian) and thereby recuperates the past, but it does so in a more sardonic, less direct way than Shakespeare and Wilkins do with their characterization of Gower. [MA]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer, Gower and the Anxiety of Obsolescence. 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 As readers of JGN will already know, Echard has been engaged in a long-term study of the effect of MS design and layout upon reading and reception. In this new essay, she examines the use of "speaker markers," the identifications of "Amans" and "Confessor" that appear in the margins or text at the beginning of their respective speeches, in the complete or nearly complete MSS of CA. These are "the most flexibly treated of all the framing elements" of the text, she observes (58), varying in number, in placement, and in appearance (all of which it would be impossible to deduce accurately from Macaulay's edition). Fairfax has 280 such markers by Echard's count, but a large number of MSS have far fewer, whether out of scribal neglect, because of conflict with other design elements on the page, or because of a different understanding of how the poem should be read. A small quantity of MSS includes a greater number, supplying the markers at appropriate places where Fairfax does not. In many MSS, it is clear that the markers function as a design element as well as reading aid, in which cases they may yield to other elements that have a greater impact upon the appearance of the page. On the other hand, some scribes are careful to include the markers, even in their expanded form, "Opponit Confessor" and "Respondet Amans," even when the resulting appearance is awkward. When they do occur, the markers are generally (but not always) written in red, making them especially prominent. In some MSS, however, they are written at the end of the verse line rather than in the white space of the margins, where they have significantly greater impact. In a small number of copies they are centered in the text column, a practice imitated by Caxton. As she considers the significance of these variations, Echard makes an interesting distinction between seeing the poem as a collection of stories and seeing it as a dialogue; and while the long Latin glosses to the tales that appear in the margins or the text column of most MSS draw attention to the narrative portion of the work, the speaker markers pull in the opposite direction, and in the MS that first got Echard interested in the difference, they align CA with the form of Boethius' "De Consolatione Philosophiae," a version of which is included, in the same format, in the same book. The use of the longer speaker markers emphasizes, in turn, the confessional aspect of the poem. Echard is very cautious about equating effect with intent (74). She also notes a distinction "between manuscripts intended chiefly to be looked at, and manuscripts intended to be read" (75). Her observations, however, both about the way in which appearance affects reading and vice versa, are of significance not only to the early reception of the poem but also to the way in which it is presented in modern editions. [PN. JGN 22.1. Copyright John Gower Society] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Sian. Published Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall. Ed. A. J. Minnis. York: York Medieval Press, 2001, pp. 57-75. 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 Dialogues and Monologues: Manuscript Representations of the Conversation of the Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 has long been accepted that the two fifteenth-century Iberian manuscripts of the CA--one in Portuguese and one a Castilian translation based on the Portuguese--were associated with John of Gaunt's daughters Philippa and Catherine, who were married to the kings of Portugal and Castile. This essay explores what we know and what we can reasonably conjecture about the path these manuscripts followed from their creation in some kind of courtly context, to intermediate owners of humanistic leaning, to the safe haven of royal libraries. The presence of the Castilian MS in the Library of El Escorial is first attested in 1576 in a catalog listing it among the donations by Philip II, whose goal was to create a world-class national library and center of learning. The king very likely received the book from the scholarly Hieronymite friar Juan de Huete, whom he had appointed as the first prior of the Escorial (331-37). In Philip's royal library, the Spanish CA was classified not as fiction or "fabula," but as a work of "filosofía" along with other mirrors for princes and didactic works (338-39). The Portuguese manuscript, owned since the early nineteenth century by the Royal Library in Madrid, can be traced along a circuitous path to the library of Luis de Castilla (d. 1618), a book collector whose library included works of "law, classics, history, and regiments of princes, all of them typically humanistic readings" (342). On the death of Castilla, it was acquired by the polymath Count of Gondomar, long-serving ambassador to the court of James II. Left to his descendants, the volume went next to the Royal Library. Throughout its travels, the Iberian CA "seems to have been continually valued for its moral advice" and especially its regimen for princes (344). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Saez-Hidalgo, Ana. Published Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana. "Gower in Early Modern Spanish Libraries: The Missing Link." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 329-44. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower in Early Modern Spanish Libraries: The Missing Link. 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 Nicholson, Peter. Published Nicholson, Peter. "Writing the 'Cinkante Balades'." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 306-28. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades Confessio Amantis Review This essay discusses CB within the rich tradition of late medieval French ballades (especially the collections and numbered sequences) of Machaut, de Granson, the anonymous Pennsylvania chansonnier, and more. "Gower's relation to the tradition is complex. While he clearly adopted many of the most recognizable conventions of form, diction, and theme . . . the work also has some distinctive qualities that set it apart from every earlier collection of 'balades'" (307). The most original feature of the CB may be its near-ubiquitous use of the envoy, a short stanza concluding the ballade which addresses the poem "from one person to another . . . What is perhaps most unique about that communication is that in 35 of these 48 poems, it takes place explicitly in writing" (314-15)--hence, the title of the essay. This use of direct address has an intriguing variety of effects, for example: the lover may write what he doesn't dare to say in person (318), and/or "re-enact" as well as describe the futility of his verbal appeal (321). As a dramatic device, the envoy promotes "our awareness of the addressee" (321), thus recording a relationship (happy or otherwise), rather than the usual complaint of a lover in isolation (321-24). An exception to the pattern is the highly original "Balade" 46, where the woman persona muses on her silent pleasure at hearing her beloved praised by others, with no suggestion that her intimate thoughts were meant to be shared (319). The final ballade, addressed to the Virgin Mary, resembles the ending of the CA in moving the sequence beyond earthly love, while not rejecting it (325). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. 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 Writing the "Cinkante Balades." 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 This essay considers the material world in Gower's CA, with particular focus on "crafted things," a cause of particular "anxiety about the ways in which such goods are produced and used" (295) in a corrupt and declining world. Both Aristotle and Thomas taught that all things are "hylomorphic," inseparable in form and matter, while medieval poets believed the same of their craft. As her chief example, Parkin discusses the jewel-encrusted goblet in the "Tale of Albinus and Rosemund," which despite its polished surface and innocent appearance is really constructed around the skull of Rosemund's father, who was killed in battle by her husband Albinus. The ambiguous status of the cup can best be understood in the context of Aquinas and Ockham on form and matter. Following Aristotle, Aquinas taught that "the body of any animal is a substance, while manufactured things . . . are artifacts" (300). For Aquinas, the skull cup is now an artifact, as the body ceases to be a substance when it is no longer alive, but for Ockham, even a dead body retains some properties of a substance--else why do we venerate the bodies of the saints (302)? For Gower, along the lines of Ockham, the skull retains "a kind of vitality" (302), but it is the craftsman who transforms it into a deceptive artifact with the power to do harm. Despite his anxiety over crafted objects, Gower believed in the possibility of honest craft; his own poetry, including the plain morality of "Albinus and Rosemund," is evidence of that (304-05). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Parkin, Gabrielle. Published Parkin, Gabrielle. "Hidden Matter in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 295-305. 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 Hidden Matter in John 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 Gastle, Brian L. Published Gastle, Brian L. "'The Lucre of Marchandie': Poet, Patron, and Payment in Gower's "Confessio Amantis'." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 283-94. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Biography of Gower Review This essay focuses on the specifically "Ricardian" dedicatory passages at the beginning and end of the CA as compared with the passages that replaced them in "recensions" of the CA addressed to Henry IV. As Gower describes his chance encounter with Richard II on the royal barge in Ricardian version of the poem, he received a "charge" from his king to perform the "busynesse" of manufacturing a product, a poem (285, citing CA Prol.47-56*). The poet's humble service and the commercial quality of the transaction are reinforced in the closing dedicatory passage of the Ricardian version (CA VIII.3050-52*, discussed at 289). In the replacement passage found in the Henrician Prologue, Gower abandons the persona of the dependent/supplicant to state his authorial intention with a bold first person indicative verb (CA Prol.52-52, 62-63, discussed at 289). In the final dedicatory passage as found in the Henrician version, Gower deleted the suggestion of patronage by expressing his moral agenda--to advise on the common good--in first person indicative constructions, with himself as subject, and with no suggestion of subservience or hope of royal favor (291). In the same passage, he indicates his discomfort with the "business" of exchanging payment for product--"the lucre of marchandie" (CA VIII.3037, discussed at 292)--as tending to corruption. It seems his intent was to establish a moral voice independent of patronage: "In the end, his most significant allegiance is neither to Richard nor to Henry, but to his craft" (294). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. 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 Lucre of Marchandie": Poet, Patron, and Payment 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 Meindl, Robert J. Published Meindl, Robert J. "Gower's 'Speculum Iudicis': Judicial Corruption in Book VI of the 'Vox Clamantis'." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 260-82. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review The title phrase "Speculum Iudicis" or "Mirror/Guidebook for Judges" is a take-off on the well-known genre "speculum principis/regis," the "mirror/guidebook for kings" (261 n.4), especially fitting as the judge is a stand-in for the king, who represents God (262). Meindl focuses his analysis on VC VI, Chapters 4 and 5 (VI.249-418), both concerned with the moral failings of English judges. Throughout these chapters, Gower condemns the entire judiciary for allowing "lex" (mere human law) to subvert "ius," the true justice that "lex" is meant to serve (262). Chapter 4 excoriates the judges from their earliest training as eager for bribes, thus making it impossible for the poor to receive justice; instead, justice must be unlocked with a golden key. These judges are willing prey to indirect forms of influence available only to the rich, known as "laboring" and "maintenance"; the royal treasury suffers thereby, while corrupt judges prosper (265-74). Chapter 5 addresses the judges directly, in a series of "commonplaces" borrowed from "De Vita Monachorum" (276): you scheme to steal your neighbors' land; rapacious on earth, you are losing treasure in heaven; you will find yourselves harshly judged and eternally suffering in hell--this last has an interesting parallel passage in the thirteenth century English law book cited by Meindl as "Bracton" (279). As explained by Gower (VC VI.179-80), the only hope for reform of a corrupt judge is the personal forum of his conscience: "Given his [Gower's] insistence everywhere on individual responsibility, we could hardly expect anything else" (280, 281). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. 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 "Speculum Iudicis": Judicial Corruption in Book VI of the "Vox Clamantis." 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 Giancarlo's argument begins by examining Gower's admonitory "regimen" for kings in general, including the mirror for princes in Book VII of the CA, and how the poet creatively reworked his sources, especially the "Secretum Secretorum" and the regiminal material in Brunetto Latini's "Livres dou Tresor." In so doing, the poet addressed "the pragmatics of governmentality," a term derived from the political theory of Foucault (228). The regiminal tradition was "constitutional" in that it theorized the king's power not as absolute, but always predicated on justice and the just rule of law (230-45). Following the English tradition enshrined by Bracton, Gower "made the relation of the king and the law one of mutual conditioning" (234). In an exemplum from the CA's mirror for princes, the wise sovereign Lycurgus gave his people a just law, then disappeared, never to return; the moral is that good law is necessary for good government, while the person of a king is not (242, citing CA VII.3002-07). Next, Giancarlo discusses Gower's regiminal theory as he expressed it in his writings addressed to the new king Henry IV, both the Latin encomia and the English "In Praise of Peace." All are "constitutional" (250) in specifying limits on the king's power, not through institutional checks and balances as in a modern democracy (246), but grounded in the voice of the people, justice, and law; if Henry violates the principle of "ius," he will incur both evil fame and the destruction of his rule (245-54). In "In Praise of Peace," Gower praised Henry, advised him, and expressed hope for his reign, while (constitutionally) affirming his loyalty to Henry's regal estate, not to his person (258, citing IPP 372-78). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Giancarlo, Matthew. Published Giancarlo, Matthew. "Gower's Governmentality: Revisiting John Gower as a Constitutional Thinker and Regiminal Writer." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 225-59. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Minor Latin Poetry In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Governmentality: Revisiting John Gower as a Constitutional Thinker and Regiminal Writer. 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 This essay focuses on Gower's "In Praise of Peace," which Kobayashi seeks "to situate in a cross-channel movement committed to the promotion of peace in Europe" (204-05). As her frame for comparison, she uses Philippe de Mézières' "Epistre au roi Richart" (1395) and "Songe du vieil pelerine" (1385), both of which offer advice to kings through the author-persona of "an old sage" (205) much like the self-construction of John Gower. After tipping his hat to just war theory in defense of Henry's usurpation, the English poet proceeds to his major preoccupations: the Christian-versus-Christian bloodshed between England and France, and the conflict of pope versus pope, the true source of disharmony between Christian nations (207-08). The resulting chaos leaves Christendom vulnerable to incursion by non-Christians (209). Remarkably similar themes are expressed in de Mézières' "Epistre": Christendom is diseased at the top, so Richard II and Charles VI must intervene to heal the schism by arranging a truce between England and France and proceeding to "rescue" the Holy Land (212-14). The poet Oton de Grandson, a courtier to John of Gaunt, may well have been a conduit for peace-promoting ideology between de Mézières and Gower (214-15). Another commonality with Chaucer and Gower is de Mézière's treatise defending marriage and married women (215).Both Gower and de Mézières share in the vilification of Alexander as the prototype of tyrants (218-22). A notable difference between the two authors is their opinion of crusading: de Mézières promoted it by founding a new chivalric order meant to recapture Jerusalem, while Gower was much more reserved, preferring to convert the misbelievers through preaching rather than warfare (216-17, 220-21). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Kobayashi, Yoshiko. Published Kobayashi, Yoshiko. "Letters of Old Age: The Advocacy of Peace in the Works of John Gower and Philippe de Mézières." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 204-22. Gower Subject In Praise of Peace 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 Letters of Old Age: The Advocacy of Peace in the Works of John Gower and Philippe de Mézières. 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 Gower was not preoccupied with the Jews. In all his vast trilingual corpus, fewer than 300 lines refer to Jewish people per se, "of which 122 make up the 'Tale of the Jew and the Pagan'," the primary focus of Yeager's analysis (184, referring to CA VII.3207*-3329*). The tale is anti-Semitic by any standard. Although unschooled by true religion, the pagan follows the law of nature by helping his fellow human, while the Jew observes Jewish law by helping only himself and his fellow Jew. The story presents an analogue to the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the Samaritan (a religious outcast, a sort of pagan) shows himself superior in compassion to the (obviously Jewish) priest and Levite (188-90). In both stories, however, it is only the wrongful exercise of free will "[that] makes a Jew, not ethnicity or genealogy" (190). Gower's work is notably devoid of the usual medieval tropes on Jewish people as condemned by mere fact of birth to "societal detrimentality, physical deformity, monstrosity or bodily filth" (191). Intriguingly, the story appears only in a group of manuscripts evidently designed for Henry IV (193-94). According to St. Augustine, the Jewish people were kept alive for a reason, and a few would be converted, so all must be treated fairly (195-96). The "Jew and the Pagan" appears in a discussion of "pity," a virtue the poet was especially concerned to promote in Henry (199). Also, Gower may have wished to encourage the new king in supporting London's "domus conversorum," a refuge for converted Jews that must have been familiar to Gower (197, 202). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R.F. "Gower's Jews." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 185-203. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Jews. 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 For Chaucer (or at least, his fictional Man of Law), the sin of incest is unspeakable because "unkynde," that is, unnatural, an "abhominacion" (158). Eschewing such repression, Gower presents a detailed accounting of incest as wholly natural and yet not natural: sibling marriages were necessary for the children of Adam and Eve; natural law does not forbid it, only positive law; siblings Canace and Machaire were drawn to their fatal union by a natural desire--yet the poet proceeds to contradict his own dispassionate analysis, as he excoriates Amon's rape of his sister Tamar as "ayein kinde," thus an object of horror (164, referring to CA VIII.215). Both Chaucer and Gower express an anxiety over incest consistent with the late medieval "tectonic shift" to the ideal of "companionate marriage" as natural and proper (166), but "it is Gower whose poetic is the fuller and more searching" (168). Scanlon discusses "three moments in particular in Lydgate's poetry where he confronts the legacy of Gower in the form of the problem of incest" (172). In the story of Oedipus, Lydgate dwells on the grisly unnatural union of mother and son as it gave rise to the unnatural crime of fratricide, but paradoxically notes the free choice of the brothers to sin (174). Departing from Gower, he darkens the union of Canace and Machaire as "unnatural," even as he appears to celebrate the "meek[ness]" of Canace as she obeys her father's murderous command (177). In the unfinished allegory Reason and Sensuality, the goddess Diana (as moral instructress) advises the protagonist to reject illicit unions, including the unnatural sin of incest (178); his reward will be marriage, uneasily "naturalize[d] . . . as the true consummation of erotic desire" (180). Lydgate has not resolved the contradictions in Gower's conflicted treatment of incest, but the tension may be strategic on his part as it is inherent in the topic. [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Scanlon, Larry. Published Scanlon, Larry. "Gower, Lydgate, and Incest." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 156-82. Gower Subject Confessio Amanti Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, Lydgate, and Incest. 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 Zarins focuses her analysis on how Gower retells the stories of "two Ovidian villains who are known for their depravity" (141), Polyphemus in "The Tale of Acis and Galatea," and Tereus the rapist who mutilates his victim. "Gower writes sympathetically about them (141), treating their stories "without irony," that is, devoid of the heavy foreshadowing that in Ovid's telling, makes them evil from the start: " . . . throughout Gower's "Confessio," monsters are not born, but made" (143). The lonely Polyphemus is assailed by envy of the happy lovers Acis and Galatea, but only when he surrenders to his sinful urge--by burying the lovers in a landslide--is he named as a "giant," a monster (144). Tereus is declared an evil freak of nature both in Ovid and Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women," while Gower goes out of his way to portray the future rapist as a loving husband until the moment of his choosing to act on a criminal desire (152). In many other tales, Genius illustrates how "conversion" to evil is possible for anyone, thus providing a cautionary example for Amans in his spiritual struggle--and of course for the reader as well. The reader's sympathy with Gower's villains is based not on guilty identification, as is sometimes alleged, but on a sense of our common humanity and free will. Zarins notes: "Gower's greatest villains are unsettling because they started out happy, hopeful, and ordinary, and in Gower's sympathetic retelling, one can imagine an alternate ending in which they remain so" (155). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Zarins, Kim. Published Zarins, Kim. "Violence without Warning: Sympathetic Villains and Gower's Crafting of Ovidian Narrative." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 141-55. 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 Violence without Warning: Sympathetic Villains and Gower's Crafting of Ovidian Narrative. 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 Nolan's analysis opens with a classic example of biblical "sermo humilis," a simple teaching brought to life with a single sensory detail: "whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones . . . shall not lose his reward" (Matt. 10.42, discussed at 111). Nolan proceeds to analyze the same kind of "plain style" in Gower's CA, arguing that this style "is uniquely suited to represent and indeed to recreate sensory experience," together with the aesthetic and instructive values such experience is especially equipped to provide (113, 140). The medium of Gower's English plain style is a smooth and regular verse that never strives for effect or diverts attention from the story (114-19). The poet explains his moral purpose at CA 1.8 ff.: to engage with "the everyday . . . world governed by love" (121), in the plain and literal style required of priest and penitent in the sacrament of confession (121-25). The "Tale of Acteon and Diana" illustrates the riches of the plain style in action. Told by Genius as a warning against misusing the sense of sight, the exemplum places the reader within the consciousness of Acteon as he emerges from a flowery forest into an aptly titled "litel plein," where suddenly--but willfully--he views the naked goddess standing in a well (125-29). A different, morally ambiguous effect is accomplished by a single sensory detail in the passage where Amans describes an imaginary visit to his lady's bed at night: his disembodied "herte" finds her body "warm" (135). As Amans describes his painful return to reason, the imagery of a cold shower evokes the reader's empathy along with moral instruction (139-40). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura. Published Nolan, Maura. "Sensation and the Plain Style in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 111-40. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sensation and the Plain Style 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 Review Cooper's analysis begins with the famous surprise ending to the CA, where Amans is curtly informed that he is old and unfit for love: "in ending his story collection like this, Gower is being true to the deep roots of the form in ways we do not normally think about. Ideas of mortality, the end of life, and the ends of storytelling are closely linked. Ends can be spatial or temporal," or synonymous with the "final cause," the aim or purpose of an action (92). In the latter sense, the end or purpose of a story may be found in its ending, for example: "The Apocalypse is the necessary conclusion to the volume that opened with Creation" (94). Although this "end" may include a moral, Cooper's discussion--ranging expertly from "Gilgamesh" to Gower--explains how the universal "end" of storytelling is to hold our common mortality at bay, at least in fantasy, yet somehow accommodate the reality that even the longest of story collections--like every human life--must end, must die. The final story of the CA--while ending happily--in that same happy ending artfully affirms mortality as the end of storytelling: "The echo of St. Paul's mystical experience [at Apollonius of Tyre, CA VIII.1898-99] suggests that the story is moving even beyond the world of time . . . the audience . . . mortal like Gower . . . when his tales come to their end, can share in his hope of joy on the other side of apocalypse, the end of the world, the end of the story" (106-07). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Cooper, Helen. Published Cooper, Helen. "Gower and Mortality: The Ends of Storytelling." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 91-107. 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 Gower and Mortality: The Ends of Storytelling. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review At CA VII.3545-47, "Genius voices the astonishing advice that the king should shape his face so as to control what it expresses to others. 'A king schal make good visage / That no man knowe of his corage / Bot al honour and worthinesse" (73), thus seeming to condone a form of deception as a strategy for rule. However, this counsel is not unexpected, as the medieval "science" of physiognomy was a staple of advice to princes and is ubiquitous to a major source for CA Book VII, the "Secreta [sic] Secretorum" (74-76). In a world much declined from the Golden Age, a king must control his own "visage" and also read faces if he seeks to preserve his rule. Both Chaucer and Gower offer numerous examples of the "good visage"--in all its moral ambiguity--as a strategy for survival in royalty and other walks of life (78-82). As a poet who writes for kings, Gower resolves the tension by trusting the king to keep his face a plain reflection of his "corage" (82). In Taylor's argument, Gower deleted the tribute to Chaucer from the Henrician version of the CA as a rebuke to his friend for failure to comment on the political crises of 1386 and 1388 (83). Chaucer responded by injecting the Gowerian theme of "corage" versus "visage" into his Clerk's reworking of Petrarch's translation of the "Tale of Griselda," with Walter the archetypal tyrant who conceals his uncontrolled desires behind a "good visage" (88). For Chaucer, "The result of Genius' Machiavellian advice . . . is not a disciplined, ethical ruler, but a Walter," and Gower is following the example of Petrarch by trimming his ethical standards to write for tyrants (90). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Taylor, Karla. Published Taylor, Karla. "Reading Faces in Gower and Chaucer." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 73-90. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Reading Faces in Gower and 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 How to explain the peculiar juxtaposition of pity and chastity among the virtues enjoined upon the king in Book VII of the CA? As Irvin argues, citing the political theory of Foucault and Agamben, " . . . pity is a form of 'power over life' that sovereignty claims . . . " (51). It descends from the classical virtue of "clemency" defined by Seneca as a function of superior power, be it of emperor or paterfamilias (53-56), combined with the Christian virtue of affective pity modeled after God's salvific love (56-58). In classical and Christian theory, failure of clemency (or pity) leads to lechery, as witnessed by the sexual sadism and uncontrolled womanizing of Nero (59-60). True power over life requires chastity, "a power available only to men" (63, discussing CA VII.4255-56). Like pity, chastity serves the agenda of biopower as monopolized by the male; the man who gives in to desire, as did the rapist Arruns, becomes a mere feminized "caitif" in the service of Venus (66). The suffering of Mary at her son's passion was expressed in the planctus, a "script" for the feeling of pity, but in Gower's response to the planctus, he always speaks in his own masculine voice (68-69, discussing MO 28909-220). Although he tells the story of Lucrece in his section on chastity, Gower's Lucrece is scarcely granted a voice, only a wordless, almost subhuman outpouring of tears. Even her last words are barely uttered, "noght withoute peine," and recorded only in paraphrase (71-72). "Her chastity is not a virtue, but a spontaneous natural event subject to the male gaze, compassion, and power over life: she is an object of male power over the household" (71). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Irvin, Matthew. Published Irvin, Matthew. "'Noght withoute Peine': Chastity, Complaint, and Lucrece's Vox Clamantis." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 50-72. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Noght withoute Peine": Chastity, Complaint, and Lucrece's "Vox Clamantis." 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 Drawing on the theory of Jean-Luc Nancy, Batkie argues that "Gower's persistent use of audio-centric language and wordplay argues for a poetics of attention and openness . . . the openness and uncertainty of the ear" (37). While hearing is involuntary, listening is active, "temporal," and "open to the other" (32), as the listener must attend in expectation as a vocal utterance unfurls over time. Aurality calls into question the credibility of the speaker as well as the credulity of the listener; Gower values credulity as necessary to learning, even though it may lead to error (36). The VC reechoes with aural approaches, especially the homonymic punning uniquely suited to connect related concepts and allow, where appropriate, for multiple interpretations. Having recently co-translated the VC, Batkie explicates a series of sample passages: by playing on "sensus" (understanding) and "census" (accounting [of money]), Gower underscores how greedy prelates equate wealth with wisdom, while slighting the poor. The poet's riddle on his name has several meaningful solutions. The goddess Fortune--object of misplaced popular credulity--is described in grammatically ambiguous language well suited to convey her deceptive quality (37-44). For Gower, the attentive credulity of the listener is a necessary step to faith, to apprehending "the polysemy of the divine" (45). In new translation, the dual nature of the baby Jesus is harmonized in homonymic wordplay: "That he presses Mary's breast expresses true man; / A new star exposed expresses that he is God" (46-47, VC II.413-14). Although Gower's prophetic voice may sometimes sound in weeping, his vocal appeal to active faith is nonetheless resistant to despair (34, 48-49). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Batkie, Stephanie. Published Batkie, Stephanie. "The Sound of My Voice: Aurality and Credible Faith in the 'Vox Clamantis'." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 32-49. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Sound of My Voice: Aurality and Credible Faith in the "Vox Clamantis." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The essay begins by reconstructing the medieval view of neuroanatomy and cognition as inherited from Galen and illustrated in medieval and early modern diagrams, four of which are reproduced in the text. In medieval cognitive theory, the brain has three ventricles: first, the "imaginatio" (or "fantasia") forms an image based on input from the eye. Second, the "imaginativa" uses images from the first cell to create a "performative materialization," that is, a "staging" of multiple mental scenarios along with a sense of their meaning--this lively process is called "multiplication of species." The third is the storehouse of memory which also contains the "membrorum motiva," a link to intention and bodily motion (8-12). Other diagrams connect the brain to the heart (with music having the ability to bypass the brain) and provide for a "custos" (force of habit) that regulates cognition (13-17). All of these concepts are key to understanding the CA, where the sense of sight--both for good and ill--is the chief route of access to heart and mind and the entryway for love (17-18). While Amans obsessively stokes his "imaginative" with remembered images of the lady (19-20), Nectanabus generates visual stimuli to manipulate the performative faculties of Olympias, his target for seduction (21). Acting directly on the heart, music promotes peace and awakens Apollonius from despair (24-25), while a darkly parallel progress--from eye to "fantasia" to heart to members--brings on a disastrous coupling and death for Canace at the hands of her heartless father (25-29). In the "Tale of Three Questions," however, "all three ventricles are at peace with each other and their audience, through Peronelle's careful staging and balanced regulation" (31). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell. Published Peck, Russell. "The Materiality of Cognition in Reading, Staging, and Regulation of Brain and Heart Activities in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.'" In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017) pp. 7-31. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 Materiality of Cognition in Reading, Staging, and Regulation of Brain and Heart Activities 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 Review This collection of sixteen essays "originated as part of the Third International Congress of the John Gower Society, held at the University of Rochester, June 29-July 3, 2014. . . . All the essays here have been included because in one manner or another they comment on facets of selfhood: views of the inside, the personal, and of the exterior, the outside in its interaction with the 'other,' defined several ways" Introduction 1). The collection is divided into three sections: Part 1, "Knowing the Self and Others," consists of five essays "that, taken together, reflect on multiple aspects of self-encounter" (Introduction 1). Part II, "The Essence of Strangers," includes five essays united by "the expanding awareness by the singular self of an encompassing 'otherness'" (Introduction 2). "The six essays in Part III, "Social Ethics, Ethical Poetics," trace the trajectory of two of Gower's greatest concerns: honest government and honest craft, bringing together "the very public and the very private ("Others and the Self") in the fabric of life and thought" (Introduction 2). For individual essays, search for John Gower: Others and the Self under Published. [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. and R. F. Yeager, eds. Published Peck, Russell A. and R .F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. ISBN 9781843844747. 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 John Gower: Others and the Self. 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 Yeager provides an overview of John Gower's engagement, in life and works, with the procedures, lexis and literary-creative influence of common (or civil) law. Biographical facts and conjectures are rehearsed (period of birth; county of origin; possible social, armigerous extraction and filiation; vexed 'striped-sleeves motif' at Mirour de l'Omme 21772-74; landed estate ownership and acquisition, including the 'Septvauns Case'; elaborate testament concerning real estate and chattels), all shown to evince vigorous, if involved, response to law and its proceedings. Moving on to the textual/literary level, Yeager reviews a number of passages (in Mirour, Vox, Cronica, Confessio) clearly indicative of the poet's writing under multi-sided, common-legal influence across his exceptionally trilingual corpus, critically addressing socio-literary topics from estates to justice and kingship to procedures of love as trial and verdict: "[Gower's] scathing critique of aspects of the judicial system and profession in general; the overt presence of legal terms in his trilingual writings; and often enough the almost judicial presentation of narrative matter have seemed to many largely to prove exact legal knowledge, if not first-hand practice" (650). Yeager thus contributes to a current revival of looking into the case for a "legal Gower." Yet missing from his account is how Gower's oeuvre also reflects forms of possibly rudimentary, yet significant absorption of canon law. Still unstudied is how Gower would have known about it, most conceivably (if not any earlier) through his exceptionally long residence at the Augustinian priory at Southwark facilitating familiarisation with canon law and ensuing synodal legislation (distinctive components of regular canons' habitus). The poems nevertheless reflect a sizeable awareness of that domain, especially in discussions of matrimony or socio-religious estates, not least Mirour (notably at 16081-92 ff., and 17137-748; both laws are in syntactic and prosodic equipoise at 16092 and 17140) and Traitié pour Essempler les Amantz Marietz." [J-PP. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 36.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R.F. "John Gower" in Écrivains juristes et juristes écrivains du Moyen Âge au siècle des Lumières, ed. Bruno Méniel (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2015), pp, 648-652. ISBN 9782812451461. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Language and Word Studies Vox Clamantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Cronica Tripertita Confessio Amantis 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 John Gower. 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 This monograph, revised from the author's 2007 University of Western Ontario dissertation, establishes a solid grounding for the law as an important component of Gower's thinking, through close readings of moments in the Confessio Amantis (primarily) his other major works, and some of the less-read ones, as well. Van Dijk resists the argument that we can settle the question of Gower's pre-retirement career on the basis of his poetic content and style, but along the way he does provide as deft a discussion of the Gower-as-lawyer question as one can reasonably expect, barring additional evidence on the subject. Van Dijk neither rules out nor insists upon identifying Gower as a lawyer, but along the way he makes it very clear that Gower was intimately familiar with the workings and discourse of the legal profession. Using that familiarity as a guide, van Dijk analyzes the genres of the exemplum and the legal case, which he sees as similar in key ways. Though many readings of the Confessio have focused on its construction of exempla, van Dijk argues effectively (without investing too much in the notion of stable literary forms) that the case as a form is sometimes a best match for Gower's didactic stories. In the following chapter, on "legal questions" in the Confessio, van Dijk interrogates what sorts of legal issues Gower may have been exploring. The later chapters explore in depth notions of kingship and justice. This allows van Dijk to engage with a variety of central issues in Gower scholarship (such as Gower's sense of balance between royal authority and the rule of law). Each chapter focuses around an important concept," regalie," "equite," and retributive justice, respectively, and each covers solid ground, including in-depth examinations of Books II and VII, as well as the "Cronica Tripertita." Though Van Dijk carefully avoids totalizing readings that would overstate the connection between the ideas raised in these chapters, he does effectively argue for how past readings of legal and political issues in Gower's work have been able to base such different conclusions on the same literary work. [RAL. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 36.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Van Dijk, Conrad. Published Van Dijk, Conrad. John Gower and the Limits of the Law. Publications of the John Gower Society VIII. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. ISBN 9781843843504. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 John Gower and the Limits of the Law. 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 Nowlin, Steele. Published Nowlin, Steele. Chaucer, Gower, and the Affect of Invention. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2016. ISBN 9780814213100. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Review "This book studies," Nowlin writes in his Introduction, (entitled "The Emergence of Invention") "the 'affect of invention,' a self-reflexive process that conceptualizes affect and invention in terms of each other and that understands invention as a process concurrent with the movements of affective emergence" (1). Clearly, the book doesn't lack for ambition. Two chapters on Gower ("'A Thing So Strange': Macrocosmic Emergence in the Confessio Amantis" [93-121] and "'The Chronique of the Fable': Transformative Poetry and the Chronicle Form in the Confessio Amantis" [122-50]) follow two on Chaucer, one considering the House of Fame, the other the Legend of Good Women. Nowlin sees Gower and Chaucer sharing basic poetic tenets: "The projects of both writers . . . actively work to understand the relationship between affective occurrence and inventional activity in a similar way, appealing not simply to scholastic rhetorical traditions or neoplatonic notions of poetic creation. The intersection of internal and external worlds, of cosmological concerns with the particular social, cultural, and political realities of lived experience that make both Chaucer's and Gower's writings so appealing to us today, constitutes the same conceptual realms in which they explore the relationship of affect and invention" (31). Nevertheless, for Nowlin there are differences between what the two poets considered the purpose of poetry, the most significant being the focus of each: Chaucer's gaze turned inward ("Chaucer's poems continually work to 'get behind' the discourses and emotions that structure experience" [32] , while Gower looked outward, attempting to write verse that would transform society ("Gower's poem works to move the potentially productive emergent qualities that characterize the affect of invention into the world outside of poetic fiction" [33]). By way of developing his argument, and in order to "show how this Gowerian formulation of invention as movement--as weie--operates thematically and metatextual in three significant and representative tales" (99): the "Tale of the Three Questions," "Constantine and Sylvester," and "Medea and Jason." Nowlin further provides a close reading of the Confessio Prologue and bits of the Book I, which in his view evince "how . . . emergent potential can be registered and generated through poetic invention" (98). In a final chapter ("From Ashes Ancient Come: Affective Intertextuality in Chaucer, Gower, and Shakespeare") Nowlin analyses Shakespeare's "Phoenix and the Turtle" with "The Parliament of Fowls," and Pericles with Book VIII of the "Confessio Amantis." He concludes that "'Phoenix' and Pericles . . . define their self-conscious interactions with Chaucer and Gower not only in terms of source material, medieval alterity, and authorial politics but also in ways that recognize and build on Chaucer's and Gower's self-conscious representations of inventional emergence" (210). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 36.2] 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 Chaucer, Gower, and the Affect of Invention. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Edwards sets out the terms of his inquiry early in his introduction: "The central argument I want to advance is that literary authorship develops in medieval England from discrete acts of invention--that is, from the discovery of expressive possibilities within and against established conventions of reading and writing. As this description implies, authorship is at once rhetorical and literary, historical and poetic" (xi). He amplifies this a bit later, noting that "we must look . . . to moments when writers claim authorship and locate themselves in relation to literary culture . . . . These moments are not simply exemplary but constitutive; they are the primary record of writers acting within historical contexts to inaugurate themselves as authors" (xxviii). Clearly, Gower figures large in Edwards' subsequent analysis of writers and their works that carry his points. For Edwards, Gower is "the poet who most overtly seeks to become an author in trilingual medieval England. Throughout his career, Gower employs the textual apparatus of biblical and classical commentary to frame his poems. He sees his major works--the "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," and "Confessio Amantis"--as comprising a literary canon, and he generates paratexts to sustain the structure of his canon, even as the works themselves undergo development, revision, and contextualization. Authorship figures internally in the Mirour and the Vox through the voice of an exemplary self, preacher, and prophet. It is marked externally in Gower's glosses in the Confessio and his creation of the persona of a lover whose final dismissal from erotic service coincides with Gower's return to his earlier body of didactic writing. Gower is also the custodian of his reputation as an author. Here he has his precedents in [Walter] Map obliquely and Marie [de France] explicitly, while his contemporaries embed their authorship with their fictions. Moreover, after completing the Confessio, Gower creates a secondary and parallel canon of shorter poems, in three languages, that stands as a commentary and extension of his major poem" (xxix-xxx). He devotes chapter 3 ("John Gower: Scriptor, Compositor, Auctor," 63-104) of the monograph to a work-by-work commentary on Gower's poems, major and minor, in all three languages. Again, Edwards sets out the terms of his larger argument very clearly: "In most reckonings, Gower figures as a poet who writes as a moralist" (65). However, as Edwards establishes in subsequent pages, for Gower the role of moralist was inseparable from--even dependent upon--his self-establishment as auctor: "Gower functions as a moralist precisely by being an author . . . . Gower's poetic career reflects a sustained and continually renewed performance of authorship in the service of ethical and political reflection. Authorship is the necessary condition of 'moral Gower'" (66). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 36.2 Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, Robert R. Published Edwards, Robert R. Invention and Authorship in Medieval England. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 2017. ISBN 9780814213407. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Manuscripts and Textual Studies Language and Word Studies Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis Confessio Amatis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Invention and Authorship in Medieval England. 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 Biggs, Frederick M. Published Biggs, Frederick M. Chaucer's Decameron and the Origin of the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017. ISBN 9781843844754. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Biggs seeks to establish Chaucer's direct reliance on Boccaccio's Decameron for inspiration and for narratives in the Canterbury Tales. Gower figures prominently, especially in chapter 1, in a section sub-titled "The Canon' Yeoman's Prologue and Tale and Gower's Confessio Amantis" (32-42), and chapter 5, entitled "The Wife of Bath's Tale and the Tale of Florent" (178-227). Much of Biggs' rangy argument about Chaucer's use of the Decameron relies on establishing composition dates for various tales. It is important for his case to show that Gower's discussion of alchemy in Book IV was revised--and criticized--by Chaucer into the CYT. In Biggs' view Gower considered alchemy a true science (because Genius says so), and in mocking that notion Chaucer continued a "Quarrel" between the two (much debated of yore) that had begun with Chaucer's satirical portrait of Gower as the Man of Law, and a "sharp criticism" of Gower in the WBT--which, Biggs claims (relying in part on Tyrwhitt), Chaucer crafted out of the "Tale of Florent" to condemn "Gower's moral blindness to rape" and his failure "to treat the stories of others and women honestly," albeit that--in Biggs' view--Chaucer thought Gower had the capability to do so (214-15)." [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 36.2] 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 Chaucer's Decameron and the Origin of the Canterbury Tales. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Jamison, Carol. Published Jamison, Carol. "John Gower's Shaping of 'The Tale of Constance' as an Exemplum contra of Envy." In Richard G. Newhauser and Susan J, Ridyard, eds., Sin in Medieval and Early Modern Culture: The Tradition of the Seven Deadly Sins. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The University of York / York Medieval Press, 2012, Pp. 239–59. ISBN 9781903153413. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Considering several versions of the Constance story, Jamison argues that in the Constance section of Book II of CA Gower pointedly replaced Trivet's political concerns, eschewed Chaucer's high rhetoric, and, shortening and simplifying the known narrative, produced an exemplum of Charity as a remedy to Envy. Focusing on characterization, Jamison argues that the sultan's mother "exemplifies envy" (247), that the Northumbrians charitably respond to the virtue in Constance, an embodiment of Charity itself, and that the knight who threatens Constance "reflects the first branch of envy that Genius mentions, sorrow over another man's joy" (250). Constance's marriage to King Allee "emphasizes the triumph of charity over envy," Jamison tells us, and the execution of Domilde "evokes the sin of envy" through fire imagery (252). Other details of Gower's version evince the generative power of charity in familial bonds and neighborly love. While consistently contrasting Gower's version and its analogues, Jamison also indicates how his tale "plays against the other tales and commentary in Book Two" (242), especially "The Tale of Constantine and Sylvester," to produce an exemplum pro Charity and contra Envy. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 37.1]. 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 John Gower's Shaping of "The Tale of Constance" as an Exemplum contra of Envy. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Federico. Sylvia. Published Federico, Sylvia. "Queer Times: Richard II in the Poems and Chronicles of Late Fourteenth-Century England." Medium Aevum 79.1 (2010): 25-46. ISSN 0025-8385. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Federico examines the "idea of royal queerness" in English literature produced between the mid-1380s and the early 1390s (i.e., before the Lancastrian propagandists), exploring how details of literature by Chaucer, Gower, Walsingham, and Henry Knighton "uncannily predict[s]" Lancastrian depictions of Richard II. By disturbing our ideas of past, present, and future, Federico suggests, the literature can be seen to participate in "queer historicism" (26). Used by Lancastrians, but not invented by them, the "discourse of the king's perversion" has "Edwardian precedents" that "brought the word 'sodomite' into the later fourteenth-century narrative of failed kings" (33). Subsequently, Federico argues, no pre-Lancastrian writer actually accused Richard of sodomy, but they engaged the "cultural discourse of sexual misrule . . . as a kind of code with which to speak about unnatural politics" (33), Chaucer doing so in "The Miller's Tale," Maidstone in his "Concordia," and Gower in Book VII of CA, where Lechery is postponed as a topic and Politics takes its place temporarily. Warnings against womanish behavior recur in Book VII, and in the plough imagery and oblique reference to unnaturalness in lines 4215-25, Gower "seems to warn against the specifically queer type of lust we have come to associate with Richard II" (40). Furthermore, Federico suggests, Gower's seriatim revisions to CA, while not indicating that he was a "closet Lancastrian," show that he "entertained the desire for another," duly fulfilled when Richard was replaced by Henry, a "less legitimate but preferable man" (41). [MA.Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 27.1]. 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 Queer Times: Richard II in the Poems and Chronicles of Late Fourteenth-Century England. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Shoaf, R. Allen. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Published Shoaf, R. Allen. "'A Pregnant Argument': Bodies and Literacies in Dante's Comedy, Chaucer's Troilus, and Henryson's Testament." In Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Fleshly Things and Spiritual Matters: Studies on the Medieval Body in Honour of Margaret Bridges. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011. Pp. 193–208. ISBN: 9781443827393. Review Shoaf argues for the need to expand critical notions of gendered "literacies," ranging widely in order to demonstrate how Dante, Chaucer, and Robert Henryson use various kinds of verbal play to explore expansions and contractions in literature and literacy, particularly focusing on Chaucer's allusion to Pyramus and Thisbe in "Troilus and Criseyde" (4.1247-48). In an aside that explores the meaning of the allusion in Chaucer. Shoaf includes discussion (pp. 195-97) of Gower's account of Pyramus and Thisbe (CA 3.1331-1502), observing in it punning play upon "contek" as a subset of anger and as the contact impossible for the lovers because of their dividing wall: "The impetuosity of the two lovers is the 'contek' that prevents their contact" (196). Like Ovid, Shoaf tells us, Gower explores the "necessity of walls" insofar as they provoke and restrict communication: without walls, communication paradoxically ends in self-destruction. [MA.] Dublin Core The Dublin 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 2011 Title A name given to the resource "A Pregnant Argument": Bodies and Literacies in Dante's "Comedy," Chaucer's "Troilus," and Henryson's "Testament." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 Machan begins by describing differences between oral and literary code-switching, including comments on the "pragmatic strategies" (306) and bibliographical codes available to authors and scribes for representing code-switching in late-medieval England. He distinguishes "intersentential" and "intrasentential" switching (between and within sentences), and comments on a full range of scribal possibilities, from "non-recognition" (310) of switching to "consistent graphic design that visually emphasizes moments where a text changes languages" (310), using the Trentham manuscript as one example of the latter. He then examines in greater detail the practices evident in psalters and in manuscripts of Langland's "Piers Plowman" and of Gower's "Confessio Amantis," using them to show that "code-switching constitutes a particularly elusive feature in the meaning of medieval manuscripts and their texts" (312). When discussing manuscripts of CA, Machan observes a general rarity of intrasentential switching (relative to that found in Langland), but he documents the "variety of ways" scribes used to "correlate the visual, rhetorical, and linguistic significances of code-switching" (323) that is found in trilingual Gower. BL MS Additional 12403 "offers no graphic distinction among languages or rhetorical functions" (323) while more lavish manuscripts offer several kinds of indications, from the red underscoring and glosses of Latin in BL MS Stowe 950 which represent a "slightly more complex design," marked by a "changing or even confused sensibility" (323), to the rich "panoply of bibliographical codes" (324) that align with language switching in BL MSS Egerton 1991 and Royal 18.C.XXII, the latter a manuscript that uses switching "to shape [its] 'mise en page'" (326). Machan closes by cautioning against the perils of generalizing in such a discussion and offering three generalizations nevertheless, commenting on 1) the fluidity of code-switching in medieval England, 2) the need to conceptualize code-switching as rhetorical rather than lexical, and 3) the literary productivity of code-switching. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 37.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Machan, Tim William Published Machan, Tim William. "The Visual Pragmatics of Code-Switching in Late Middle English Literature." In Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright, eds. Code-Switching in Early English (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2011), pp. 303-34. 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 The Visual Pragmatics of Code-Switching in Late Middle English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Leff, Amanda M. Published Leff, Amanda M. Johnson's Chaucer: Searching for the Medieval in "A Dictionary of the English Language." Age of Johnson: A Scholarly Annual 21 (2011): 1-20. ISSN 0884-5916. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Language and Word Studies Review Leff documents the strong presence of Chaucer in Samuel Johnson's "Dictionary of the English Language" and explores Johnson's views on Chaucer's language. Although he considers Middle English outdated, Johnson quotes and/or refers to Chaucer works a number of times as identified by previous scholars. Leff reviews this scholarship and, enjoying the benefits of digital research, adds significantly to the data of her predecessors, correcting a few errors and misconceptions along the way, and reporting hundreds of previously unremarked instances where Johnson quotes or refers to Chaucer's works in John Dryden's modernizations. Along the way, and of particular interest to Gowerians, Leff discusses Johnson's recurrent effort in his critical writings to "deflate Chaucer's reputation and boost Gower's" (13). Johnson praises Gower's "smooth numbers and easy rhymes," Leff tells us, calls Gower, not Chaucer, "the father of English poetry," and presents him as Chaucer's teacher, the latter notion seemingly based on Johnson's misreading of Venus's praise of Chaucer in the first recension of CA, perhaps reinforced (or inspired) by the lexicographer's familiarity with John Skelton's "Garland of Laurel" which privileges Gower over Chaucer. Leff observes that in the body of his "Dictionary" Johnson cites Gower only twice, in effect undercutting his praise of him elsewhere. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society 37.1]. 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/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Title A name given to the resource Johnson's Chaucer: Searching for the Medieval in "A Dictionary of the English Language." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 Included as Chapter 5 in a book-length study on the recovery of classical histories of Alexander the Great in twelfth- to seventeenth-century England, Stone's chapter on Gower examines the portrayal of Alexander to trace the evolution of the poet's ideas about the causes and ramifications of the collapse of Alexander's empire through his three major works. Stone demonstrates that whereas Gower represents Alexander as the victim of Fortune's whims in the MO, he gravitates toward a more "historical" view of Alexander in his subsequent works, ascribing his fall to his lack of self-control and his failure to heed Aristotle's teaching. As Gower looks more deeply into the question of moral culpability, he also pays increasing attention to the magnitude of the suffering that the conqueror caused through his incessant pursuit of personal gain. Stone argues that in thus presenting Alexander as a paradigm of misguided and destructive rule, Gower's poems reject the positive conceptions of the conqueror found in the romance tradition and align themselves instead with such twelfth-century monastic texts as the St Albans Compilation, the first compendium of classical sources on the history of the Macedonian Empire, produced, like Gower's later works, in an era of political unrest. [YK. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stone, Charles Russell. Published Stone, Charles Russell. "'Moral' Gower and the Rejection of Alexander." In From Tyrant to Philosopher-King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 141–63. 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 "'Moral' Gower and the Rejection of Alexander. 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 Sobecki's essay addresses three major claims: 1) that the "Trentham Manuscript" (now properly London, British Library MS Additional 59495), commonly thought to have been a gift to Henry IV, instead remained very likely in Gower's possession until his death, and thereafter in St. Mary Overeys Priory until the Priory's surrender ca. 1541, during the Dissolution; 2) that "In Praise of Peace" was begun as a poem for Richard II supporting peace with France, and finished as a poem for Henry, urging the same--a purpose that governed the inclusion of the Traitié pour les amantz marietz balades and Ecce patet tensus as well, all of which concern "marriage," but not of people, rather of nations; 3) that the final two Latin poems ("Ecce patet tensus" and "Henrici quarti primus," so titled in Sobecki's article, elsewhere and more commonly "Quicquid homo scribat," or occasionally In fine"), copied in a hand identified by Malcolm Parkes as "Scribe 10," are in fact the work of Gower himself, as therefore is also the latter portion of BL MS Cotton Tiberius A.IV, which exhibits the same hand. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sobecki, Sebastian. Published Sobecki, Sebastian. "'Ecce patet tensus': The Trentham Manuscript, 'In Praise of Peace,' and John Gower's Autograph Hand." Speculum 90 (2015): 925-59. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies In Praise of Peace 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 "Ecce patet tensus": The Trentham Manuscript, "In Praise of Peace," and John Gower's Autograph Hand. 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 Maria Wickert's 1953 "Studien zu John Gower" is a foundational and influential work in Gower studies. Focusing primarily upon the VC, Wickert examines the poem's formal traits and its recensions to argue that Gower was composing the Vox throughout the end of Richard II's reign and even after Richard's deposition. Wickert's study has become central for Gowerians beyond even those who focus primarily on the Vox. Her examination of Gower's voice, of his political and social ties and interests, of his trilingual project, of his use of homiletic, Ovidian, and other materials, especially the iconographic archer, all hold central positions in our understanding of Gower over fifty years after her work was first published. Robert Meindl first translated and published an English edition of Wickert's work in 1981, and this second edition incorporates a number of useful updates. Notes include references to publications that have appeared since the original 1953 German edition. The text has been modernized both with respect to current scholarly standards and usage, such as current manuscript designations. Some German passages have been retranslated for clarity. And most significantly, translation of Latin citations has been largely redone to address some problematic translations noted in first edition. R. F. Yeager's Introduction to this edition succinctly and effectively summarizes and assesses Wickert's contribution to Gower studies. [BWG. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Meindl, Robert J., ed. Wickert, Maria. Published Meindl, Robert J., trans. Maria Wickert: Studies in John Gower, 2nd rev. ed. (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 2016). ISBN: 9780866985413. 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 Maria Wickert: Studies in John Gower, 2nd rev. ed. Studien zu John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Marshall argues that Chaucer's Miller is linked to the rebels of the 1381 Rising by his large, furnace-like mouth. Before analyzing Chaucer's imagery, she establishes the common currency in which the rebels' linguistic apparatus was coined, investigating four contemporary chroniclers (Thomas Walsingham, Henry Knighton, Jean Froissart, and the Anonimalle author) and John Gower's Visio Anglie in Book I of the Vox Clamantis. Marshall sees the chronicles presenting the ruling classes as the victims of the Rising; they depict the unfree peasantry attempting to "silence the ruling speech through the destruction of legal and official documents, most often with fire as their weapon of choice" (77). The chroniclers, she argues, paint the rebels intending to rewrite the documentary record to give themselves, as the "commons," the same rights under the king that other social groups enjoyed. Following the arguments of Steven Justice and Paul Strohm, Marshall shows that the chronicles censor and discredit the rebels' voice by reducing it to animal noises and an incoherent clamor, a strategy replicated by Gower in the "Beast Vision" of the Visio. Here the commoners are further demeaned by Gower's use of curtailed forms of their English names and a simplified syntax in which to represent their bestial behavior. Especially notable, in her view, is that, as their disturbance reaches its destructive zenith, the noise issuing from the peasants' mouths becomes sulfurous flames that consume everything. Chaucer's Miller, while not explicitly connected to the rebels of 1381, likewise violates the conventions of order, cries out in a loud voice, and, in parodying the Knight's philosophical romance with a bawdy fabliau, suppresses the ruling elite's elegance with a peasant's coarseness. That the Miller's vision is destructive of conventional values is "emphasized by the presence of his furnace-like mouth" (94). Nevertheless, Chaucer, unlike Gower, makes no effort to suppress or censor his character's voice, instead advising any troubled reader to simply choose a different story, for "the peasant word is only as destructive as the author, firstly, and the reader, secondly, allow it to be" (97). In the end, the narrator "provides the necessary guidance so that the Miller's 'forneys' may safely remain closer to the cold black color of his nostrils than the fiery red of his beard and effectively shows us how we may, indeed, play with fire" (97). [RJM. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Marshall, Camille. Published Marshall, Camille. "Figuring the Dangers of the 'Greet Forneys': Chaucer and Gower's Timely (Mis)Reporting of the Peasant Voice." Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 46 (2015): 75-97. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figuring the Dangers of the 'Greet Forneys': Chaucer and Gower's Timely (Mis)Reporting of the Peasant Voice. 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 Knapp's essay is preceded by his own summary, as follows: "This essay seeks to revise our sense of late medieval allegory by examining the representation of crowds and urban space in Hoccleve, Langland, and Gower. I begin by looking at Walter Benjamin's treatment of the flâneur, with a specific eye towards his sense that allegory is born in the hermeneutical challenge of making meaning out of the unknown faces in a city crowd. I then turn to readings of Hoccleve's 'La Male Regle,' Langland's "Piers Plowman," and the initial Visio in Gower's VC to establish both the surprising frequency with which late medieval English allegory turned to depictions of crowds as well as the particular narrative structures generated out of the attempts to represent urban space in these three poets." Knapp offers close readings of Hoccleve (concentrating on his travels through the London streets), Langland (concentrating on his vividly "meaningful crowds," in Benjaminian fashion), and Gower (concentrating on the 1381 rebels' invasion of "New Troy"--a form of "not-London"). Gower's narratives, Knapp finds, "are often organized around an oscillation from urban spaces to extra-urban wilderness and back again" (102). An example is the nautical wanderings of Apollonius in CA Book VIII. But "perhaps the most striking version of this narrative structure occurs in the dream visio that supplies a prologue to Gower's Vox Clamantis" (102). Knapp traces the narrator's flight from the crowd of rebels-turned-animals from city to woods, finding in it three levels of allegorical import--"at least three comments on the significance of 1381 in terms of the city and the crowd. First, the crowd's pursuit suggests that with the boundaries of the city and country loosened by rebellion, the urban mob is free both to enter the city and also to disrupt the Horatian refuge of the countryside. Second, the juridical force of the allegory suggests the downfall of yet another stabilizing urban institution as the court of law…has been swallowed up by sheer rumor. And, lastly, the fast pursuit of these tongues seems a wholly malevolent version of Langland's constant motion; here, the motion of the crowd must stand for…fear of the rapidity with which both the word and fact of rebellion spread from region to region" (105). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Knapp, Ethan. Published Knapp, Ethan. "Towards a Material Allegory: Allegory and Urban Space in Hoccleve, Langland, and Gower." Exemplaria 27 (2015): 93-109. Gower Subject 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 Towards a Material Allegory: Allegory and Urban Space in Hoccleve, Langland, and Gower. 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 "Literary interest in old age," Feinstein claims, "has concentrated largely on the various stages of man topos, the 'senex amans' of fabliaux, and stylized poetic complaints, beginning with mid-twentieth century exegetical interpretations, and continuing with more recent feminist and historicist readings." (23) Feinstein's approach incorporates both of the latter. She examines three texts: Gower's "Tale of Florent," Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale," and "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle," focusing on the "loathly lady" figured in each, and the protagonists' responses to her. Citing historical and demographic records she contextualizes--and justifies--the argument, that after the Black Death social norms permitted more frequent marriages between young men and older, wealthier widows (24-25, 28). Understanding "social history," Feinstein asserts, makes "nuanced readings open to seemingly contradictory attitudes and representations" both possible and necessary. (26) Thus, "Gower's 'Tale of Florent' offers multiple points of view on male and female desire in young and old as well as on the power and the impotency of both." (26) Notably, unlike most studies of "Florent," Feinstein stresses the inability of so old a woman as Florent's "loathly" bride to bear children--he "stands to be the last of his line." But because she has the answer to the question he needs to find, in order to save his life, she offers a chance "to continue his line and whatever powers are associated with it" (27). Implicit is the connection with "social history" that Feinstein leaves unstated: the "loathly lady" of romance is empowered by knowledge precisely as were elderly widows, with inherited wealth. This is true in all three tales, she finds, pointing out that even (or especially, perhaps) as old women, the "loathly ladies" already possess the sovereignty they say all women want (41). Turning to the recognition of "Amans/Gower" of his own aged state in Venus' mirror at the conclusion of the CA, Feinstein points to the resemblance to the romance plot, albeit in reverse: perpetually young and beautiful Venus helps "Gower…as author, if not as lover…transform old age into youth" (31). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Feinstein, Sandy. Published Feinstein, Sandy. "Longevity and the Loathly Ladies in Three Medieval Romances." Arthuriana 21 (2011): 23-48. 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 Longevity and the Loathly Ladies in Three Medieval Romances. 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 Donavin outlines the argument of her essay in its opening paragraph, as follows: "'Rex Celi Deus' is a poem of fifty-six lines written in 1399 to celebrate Henry IV's ascent to England's throne after the deposition of Richard II. There John Gower forges an innovative conjunction of epistolary and musical conventions, as he combines structures and strategies taught in "dictamen" (instruction on prose letters) with the singing of a popular hymn… 'Celi Deus Sanctissime,' one in a series of Gregorian chants about creation. Although recent scholarship has promoted an ironic reading of Gower's poem, 'Rex Celi Deus''s deployment of 'Celi Deus Sanctissime' creates a worshipful tone that invokes the coronation liturgy…." Gower's purpose, she argues, is "to speak to the king directly about the historical moment, locate late fourteenth-century politics in the context of God's reign, remark upon Henry's participation in the cycles of continuing creation, and emphasize the coronation's liturgical nature" (103-04). The essay includes Donavin's translation of Gower's poem, in an appendix (122-23). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Donavin, Georgiana. Published Donavin, Georgiana. "'Rex Celi Deus': John Gower's Heavenly Missive." In Public Declamations: Essays on Medieval Rhetoric, Education, and Letters in Honour of Martin Camargo. Ed. Georgiana Donavin and Denise Stodola. Turnhout: Brepols, 2015. Pp. 103-23. Gower Subject Minor Latin Poetry 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 'Rex Celi Deus': John Gower's Heavenly Missive. 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 The depiction of impotence as an inevitable consequence of old age in the conclusion to the CA is not found in any of Gower's other sources, but derives directly, Carlson argues, from the elegies of Maximianus. More specifically, Carlson traces Gower's "Qui cupit id quod habere nequit, sua tempora perdit. / Est vbi non posse, velle salute caret" (VIII.2376 vv. 1-2) and Venus' paraphrase, "Min herte wolde and I ne may" (VIII. 2412), to Maximianus' "nec quod possum, non voluisse meum est" (4.55), which Carlson translates, somewhat freely, as "my part is not to want what I am incapable of"; and he traces Venus' punning declaration that "The thing is torned into was" (VIII.2435) to Maximianus' "Non sum qui fueram; periit pars maxima nostri" ("I am no more what once I was; the best part of me has perished") (1.3). The largest part of this essay, however, is concerned with introducing Maximianus to modern readers: the little-known contemporary of Boethius whose reflections upon his sexual exploits, successful and unsuccessful, in youth and old age, were included, along with other products of a phallocentric Latin culture, in the medieval school curriculum. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David Richard. Published Carlson, David Richard. "Gower's Amans and the Currricular Maximianus." Studia Neophilologica 89 (2017): 67-80. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis. Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Amans and the Curricular Maximianus. 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 This new, updated edition of the influential initial volume in the MLA's "Approaches to Teaching" series is welcome and timely, particularly given all the changes that have taken place, technologically and in the demography of our classrooms, since 1980, when the first edition appeared. If one seeks evidence in the new edition of increased recognition of the importance of Gower's works to the instruction of his contemporary, however, the results are very thin. Only Martha Driver, in her essay on "Multimedia Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's Middle English Texts" (187), acknowledges assigning her students to read any portion of the CA (the "Tale of Florent"). R.F. Yeager's 1991 collection of essays entitled "Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange" is cited by the editors in their discussion of "Materials" (13), but Gower himself is not listed among the "all-important [primary] texts" for students to consult on page 6. The inclusion of "Florent" in Kolve and Olsen's Norton Critical Edition of selections from the "Canterbury Tales" is noted on page 4. Michael Calabrese, however, in his essay on teaching the "Man of Law's Tale," gives more attention to the "jab" at Gower in MLP (p. 84) than he does to Gower's version of the tale of Constance (mentioned only alongside Trivet's in a note, p. 87). The other three references hardly give any greater prominence to Gower. Roger Ladd cites Gower's and Langland's use of exchange and "chevisance" in his discussion of the possibility of satire in Chaucer's portrait of the Merchant (74); Michelle Warren notes Gower's appearance among the listeners in Ford Madox Brown's painting of "Chaucer at the Court of Edward III" (114); and Alex Mueller claims that the subtitle of the online Chaucer blog, "Take That, Gower!," offers a "model of interaction" for his own students.] [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Travis, Peter W., and Frank Grady, eds. Published Travis, Peter W., and Frank Grady, eds. "Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'." New York: Modern Language Association, 2014 ISBN 9781603291408 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 Approaches to Teaching Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 superb volume collects nineteen scholarly essays based on papers delivered to the Second International Congress of the John Gower Society, held in 2011 in Valladolid, Spain. Its most original offerings concern Gower's under-examined connections with the Iberian Peninsula. These resulted from migration of a copy of CA to Portugal--probably by way of John of Gaunt's daughter, Philippa, who between 1387 and 1415 was Portugal's queen--and subsequent translation of Gower's English poem into Portuguese and then Castilian Spanish. Mauricio Herrero Jiménez's "Castilian Script in Iberian Manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis" compares the types of professional Gothic book-hands used in copying Madrid, Real Biblioteca MS II-3088, the Portuguese "Livro do Amante," and Madrid, El Escorial Library MS g-II-19, the Spanish "Confysion del Amante." Each manuscript was made for private, noble readers who sought in Gower's poem "a model of ethical and political education and/or romantic diversion" (22)--that is, lore and lust. A Castilian table of contents added to the Portuguese codex and the conjoining of parts of two copies in the Spanish one, the author argues, indicates a wider audience for the Ca in Iberia than two surviving manuscripts suggest. María Luisa López-Vidriero Abelló's "Provenance Interlacing in Spanish Royal Book-Collecting" focuses on the Portuguese codex in the Spanish Royal Library. She describes its movement there from the private collection of Count Gondomar, an ambassador of Philip III of Spain to the court of James I of England, who himself acquired it from Luis de Castilla, son of a dean of Toledo Cathedral, whose humanist leanings link Gower's English work with high Iberian culture. In a more speculative vein, David R. Carlson connects a letter sent by the Black Prince from the Battle of Nájera, where Edward and John of Gaunt allied in 1367 with Pedro of Castile against his brother, with propagandist features of Gower's "Cronica Tripertita" in praise of the English usurper, Henry IV, while Fernando Galván investigates how the same battle established a nexus between England, Castile, and Portugal that led to the arrival of the CA in Iberia. R. F. Yeager suggests the influence of Pedro Alfonso's twelfth-century anthology of fables, "Disciplina Clericalis," on Gower's "Tale of the Three Questions," for which an exact source has yet to be identified, while Tiago Viúla de Faria proposes, against the prevailing hypothesis of a royal avenue for the CA's progress to Iberia, an ecclesiastical one--Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich, who had "strong and enduring" (136) associations with Philippa of Lancaster. The poet who emerges from John Gower in England and Iberia is a more sophisticated and bracing figure than even Gower aficionados have hitherto acknowledged: global in his appeal, erudite in his textual practices, and refreshingly secular in his aesthetic concerns. [MPK. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Published Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, and R. F. Yeager, eds. "John Gower in England and Iberia: Manuscripts, Influences, Reception." Publications of the John Gower Society, 10 . Cambridge, UK: D. S.Brewer, 2014 ISBN 9781843843207 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 John Gower in England and Iberia: Manuscripts, Influences, Reception Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D. S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 special issue of ES: Revista de Filologia Inglesa 33.1 (2010) contains ten papers from the Second International Congress of the John Gower Society in Valladolid, Spain in July 2011, each, as the editors explain in their introduction, situating Gower's work in one of the contexts relevant to its interpretation. [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Filardo-Llamas, Laura, Brian Gastle, Marta Gutiérrez Rodríguez, and Ana Saez-Hidalgo, eds. Published Filardo-Llamas, Laura, Brian Gastle, Marta Gutiérrez Rodríguez, and Ana Saez-Hidalgo, eds. "Gower in Context(s): Scribal, Linguistic, Literary and Socio-historical Readings." ES: Revista de Filologia Inglesa , 33 (1). Valladolid: Universidad, 2012 ISBN 9788484487258 ISSN 0210-9689 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 Gower in Context(s): Scribal, Linguistic, Literary and Socio-historical Readings Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Universidad, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 their brief introduction, the editors divide this book into two major parts. The first, "Materials," contains three essays (Peck, Nicholson, and Gastle) on Gowerian texts for teaching, the critical tradition, and online resources. The second, longer part, "Approaches," contains twenty-two essays and is subdivided into five sections: 1) Historical Approaches and Context (Pearsall, Lightsey, Peck, Palmer, and Boboc), 2) Language, Literature, and Rhetoric (Coleman, Donavin, Koff, Echard, Yeager, and Kelemen), 3) Theoretical Approaches (Mitchell, Bullón-Fernández, and Kruger), 4) Comparative Approaches (Bertolet, Dean, Yeager, and Wetherbee), and 5) Specific Class-Room Contexts (McKinney, Chewning, Passmore, and Beidler). The work ends with notes on the contributors, a list of scholars and teachers whose responses to a survey on the teaching of Gower helped frame the contents of this volume, an inclusive list of works cited in these collected essays, and an index. In describing available teaching resources and examining a wide range of approaches to teaching Gower, this volume will prove useful to both instructors newly interested, and/or already practticed, in teacing the poet. [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W., eds Published Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W., eds. "Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower." New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011 ISBN 9781603290999 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 Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 contains twenty-five essays selected and fully revised from seventy-eight papers read at the 2008 International Congress of the John Gower Society 1408-2008: The Age of Gower, in conjunction with Cardiff University Centre for the Study of Medieval Society and Culture, and the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London, who acted as hosts. [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dutton, Elisabeth, Hines, John, and Yeager, R. F, eds. Published Dutton, Elisabeth, Hines, John, and Yeager, R. F, eds. "John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition." Westfield Medieval Studies, 3 . Cambridge: Brewer, 2010 ISBN 9781843842507 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed