14 100 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 As part of her ranging study of depictions of the Orient and its peoples in medieval western romances--reflecting cultural contact through trade, pilgrimage, and crusading--Heffernan comments briefly on Gower's tales of Constance and Apollonius of Tyre, mentioning in passing only the incest motif in the latter (93-94) and dilating in somewhat greater detail on the presence and function of merchants and commerce in the former while comparing Gower's Constance tale with Chaucer's Man of Law's Prologue and Tale and Boccaccio's "Decameron" 5.2. In this discussion Heffernan attends to "curious intersections of mercantilism and faith which reflect the historical reality of the Eastern Mediterranean the Middle Ages" in Chaucer's tale and "less pervasive" ones in Gower's and Boccaccio's analogous accounts, even though those in Boccaccio do reveal "a greater intertextual connection" with MLT "than has been previously recognized" (23). All but ignoring their ultimate source in Trivet's "Chronicles" (mentioned only on p. 27), Heffernan takes for granted similarities between Gower's and Chaucer's versions, and observes several details of emphasis that distinguish Gower's: Constance's father is "[p]erhaps a crusader" and Constance herself a "religious crusader" who "seems worldly" in managing "to achieve conversions while actually trading with merchants" (41)--and when she confronts sexual assault with "ready pluck," more of a "take charge' heroine" (42) than Chaucer's Custance. For Gower, perhaps, it may be that "there was nothing inappropriate about a saintly woman converting merchants while doing business with them" (43)--a characterization, Heffernan surmises, shaped to justify the "clos Envie" of the Sultan's mother and thereby fitted to Gower's book of envy. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Heffernan, Carol F. Published Heffernan, Carol F. The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003. 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 Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance. 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 "John Gower's 'Confessio amantis' is a text deeply informed by concepts of the late fourteenth-century aristocratic household and the social structures it supported. This thesis offers an interpretation of Gower's poem guided by the poem's own language of the great household and its intersection with contemporary texts within this discursive territory. These texts include parliamentary petitions on livery and maintenance, the appeal and impeachments of the Merciless Parliament of 1388, vision poetry of Chaucer and Sir John Clanvowe, and household administrative records. Many critical readings of the 'Confessio' deploy concepts of the political too narrow adequately to illuminate the work's historical situation of production and use. I attempt to locate the 'Confessio' in an aristocratic milieu of magnates and landed gentry. The generic strands blended in Gower's text evince an aristocratic readership (designated and actual), and register a bifurcation of interests within this readership. This splitting, and the literary themes and generic expectations which reflect it, are examined under headings of the 'courtly' and the 'traditionalist.' The 'Confessio' functions as an appropriation of ephemeral, exclusive courtly poetry, endeavouring to refashion it as edifying and socially (that is, aristocratically) responsible, or traditionalist. Evidence of textual usage, including manuscript provenance and Gower's own revisions, suggests accommodation and resistance to this transformation. Theories of symbolic and material exchange, meanwhile, align one-sided 'magnificence' and asymmetrically ordered 'reciprocity' with courtliness and traditionalism respectively. The representation of household-based social relations and exchanges in Genius and Amans's confessional dialogue, in its petitionary frame (which sequesters penance to lay, seigneurial authority), and in the exemplary tales supports the poem's traditionalist politics. It also aligns these politics with the interest in the privileges of a landed community (and magnate responsibility for them) which is manifest in contemporary parliamentary texts. Gower's discussion of kingship, like aspects of these texts, discloses a slippage towards magnificence which casts into relief the tension between reciprocity and hierarchy inherent in traditionalist, reciprocalist discourse." Author/Editor Author/Editor Kendall, Elliot.  Published Kendall, Elliot. The Landowner's Book of Courtly Love: Languages of Lordship and the "Confessio amantis." Ph.D. Dissertation.  University of Oxford, 2003. Dissertation Abstracts International C70.36. Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis 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 Landowner's Book of Courtly Love: Languages of Lordship and the "Confessio amantis." 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Bakalian, Ellen Shaw Published Bakalian, Ellen Shaw. "Aspects of Love in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Studies in Medieval History and Culture. . New York: Routledge, 2004 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review "Modifying nature, keeping one's natural instincts under reason's control, and learning to love properly is a duty which Genius tries to teach Amans in John Gower's Confessio Amantis," Bakalian begins (xvii), and she explores Gower's presentation of this theme in four chapters. In the first, she outlines the background to Gower's depiction of the struggle between Nature and Reason, and she uses the tales of "Albinus and Rosemund" and "Pyramus and Thisbe" as illustrations of two types of loss of reason and their consequences. Chapter two takes up the tales of the four virtuous wives who appear in the Company of Lovers in Amans' vision in Book 8, Penelope, Lucrece, Alceste, and Alceone. In each, the husbands and wives "enjoy a mutual and reciprocal love, and in their marriages reason tempers sexual passion; hence their worlds exude peace and harmony" (xviii). In chapter three, Bakalian examines for contrast the tales of Deianira, Medea, Dido, Phyllis, and Ariadne, who love imprudently (in three of the five cases outside of marriage), and who suffer the consequences. Ruled by kinde rather than reason, they "live in a world ruled by discordia, revenge, destruction, and death" (xix). The final chapter examines lovesickness as an example of the loss of reason and compares Amans' condition to that described in medieval medical handbooks and to the lovesickness depicted by Chaucer and Ovid. If the emphasis on reason as the proper guide of conduct in CA is not new, there are few studies that undertake to explain as patiently or in as great detail how Gower incorporates this principle into the structure of his exempla. In emphasizing the moral lessons of the individual tales, moreover, Bakalian's study is a valuable reminder of how much the poem has to say about conduct in love that is not encompassed within Amans' abandonment of love (or is it abandonment by love?) in the poem's conclusion. Her principal method is close reading, and she displays a particular sensitivity to the emotional impact of Gower's sometimes spare lines, particularly in the poet's depiction of conjugal tenderness and happy married love. She also displays a particular alertness to the moral choices faced by the women in the tales, and in fact one begins to suspect, as one considers the tales that she has chosen as her examples and the way in which she focuses on the female characters in each, that this book either evolved from or was evolving towards a study of Gower's depiction of women. One of Bakalian's principal recurring themes is the moral responsibility that women bear for their own decisions. As she summarizes this aspect of her discussion in her conclusion: "Gower's poetry often defies the feminist theory which places woman as victim and man as perpetrator. In the Confessio he is neither partial to man nor woman, and although it appears his sympathies lie with women, it is rather that he views woman as man's equal; if he is responsible for his actions, then so is she. Gower's unique insistence upon equality in the Confessio proves this point: man cannot blame woman, and woman cannot blame man" (153). The chapter in which the theme of woman's moral responsibility emerges most strongly is the third, and this is also the chapter that may give most pause to some readers. Deianira, Dido, and Phyllis are usually not blamed for the fact that their lovers left them, but Bakalian wants us to believe that they were the victims of their own lack of prudence as much as they were of their lovers' deceit and that their abandonment is also the appropriate consequence of their remaining unmarried. These are new readings that deserve consideration, but I doubt that all will be convinced, especially since the explicit moral lesson in each case is directed elsewhere. Ariadne's fault is even harder to find since she is married, as is Medea, whose principal "crime" occurs only at the end of the tale, and it is condemned neither by Genius nor by the gods. There is other evidence of strain as Bakalian makes her argument. Her treatment of "Albinus and Rosemund" is perhaps a best attempt to deal with a very problematic exemplum, but I think that she simply misreads the tale of Penelope and Ulysses in Book 4. She is not alone here, but instead of a condemnation of Ulysses' sloth, doesn't the tale instead commend his ability to fulfill his duties both in war and at home, in contrast to the preceding example of Eneas? Though this is a small book, moreover (159 pages of text, plus notes and introduction), Bakalian betrays a wish to incorporate everything that she has read, with the result that she doesn't always take a clear stand on some general issues of direct relevance to her case. She never faces the ambiguities of Nature's role in CA, for instance, at times offering moral guidance and at times needing to be restrained by Reason. She also never gives a clear statement of Genius' role, throwing up her hands on the question in note 79 to page 115, and then on pages 129-30, declaring even less helpfully: "[Genius] may be the priest of Venus, but he is also the voice of rational judgments, advocating the use of reason as man's best defense against foolish love errors, and recommending married love over amorous pursuits without a marriage license. Gower's Genius is a character in whom pagan, Christian and Gowerian philosophies meet, yet he is not a reliable authority figure." And in chapter 4, the extensive discussion of the symptoms and treatment of lovesickness (drawn in large part from Mary Wack's very useful compilation) proves more instructive on Troilus (for the way in which his condition transcends the merely medical) than it does for Amans. Hard questions still remain. If Amans cannot help being in love (because of Nature), then how is he himself to blame? His love is unreasonable, Bakalian insists, but the only real evidence that she cites is that it is unreciprocated, another fact for which Amans himself is hardly responsible. He is old, but his age only becomes relevant in the conclusion, where it serves not as proof of his foolishness but as the means of his release: he is "cured," Bakalian acknowledges, not by his own reason but by another external force beyond his control. The questions I raise here remain some of the largest unresolved issues in our reading of the poem, and it doesn't strengthen Bakalian's case, either on the precise role of reason in CA or on the nature of a woman's choices, that she skirts them. She does, however, have some interesting new perspectives on the particular tales that she considers that might eventually be incorporated within a more general understanding of the poem. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 23.2] 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 Aspects of Love in John Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Routledge, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "During the final decades of the fourteenth century in England, as Lollards attempted to disseminate theological materials to the masses and rebellious peasants appropriated polemics for their own designs, the role of vernacular literature became a matter of paramount importance. This dissertation argues that Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales in part as a reaction to John Gower's conservative conception of vernacular literature in Confessio Amantis. I contend that Gower, who throughout his career aligned himself with the interests of society's empowered, attempted to create a vernacular work meant only for the elite. His text reaffirms the legitimacy of the social order by creating a fictional situation in which submission to an authority, Genius, makes one hale. Throughout the Confessio, Gower maintains that society will flourish only when people know their place. Gower's work, which relies on the exegetical tradition, attempts to preclude interpretive variety, for such variety, the poet realized, could prove dangerous to the status quo. I propose that Chaucer, in contrast, anticipates that a diverse audience might access his work and, therefore, creates a text encouraging interpretive autonomy. . . ." [JGN 24.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Behrman, Mary Davy Published Behrman, Mary Davy. "Chaucer, Gower and the vox populi: Interpretation and the common profit in the 'Canterbury Tales' and 'Confessio Amantis'." PhD thesis, Emory University, 2004. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Chaucer, Gower and the vox populi: Interpretation and the common profit in the 'Canterbury Tales' and 'Confessio Amantis' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available UMI, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Mitchell has an ambitious triple agenda in this engaging study: redeeming medieval morality generally from the charge that it is merely prescriptive and authoritarian (an accusation most often voiced by those who also find it inherently suspect); to offer a poetic of exemplary literature that transcends the assumption that narrative is inevitably hostile to moral principle; and to demonstrate the centrality, and also the consciousness of the potential complexity, both of exemplary rhetoric and of moral practice in Gower and Chaucer. Mitchell's central propositions are first that narrative is necessary to give meaning to moral principle, and that in an exemplum there is therefore a "reciprocal movement between narrativity and normativity" (17); and second, that reception is integral to the exemplary process: that exempla by their very nature are addressed to the reader's future action. For that reason, they must be applied to particular circumstances, and they are thus open to a diversity of responses. "The end of exemplary rhetoric is not to find a determinate moralization or thematic closure," Mitchell declares, "but to discover how to live a moral life" (13-14). He lays out the background to his analysis in his first two chapters. In chapter 1, "Reading for the Moral: Controversies and Trajectories," he responds to what he sees as the modern misreading of medieval exemplary rhetoric, and he cites both medieval and modern theorists in defense of his pragmatic emphasis on reader choice and on moral practice. In chapter 2, "Rhetorical Reason: Cases, Conscience, and Circumstances," he traces the ancestry of the case-based rhetoric of the exempla to its roots in Aristotelian thought, and he cites other medieval examples of a similar flexibility in the application of moral principle, for instance the emphasis laid in the confessional manuals on examining closely the circumstances both of the sinner and of the sin. The remainder of his book explores the adoption of the rhetoric of exemplarity in works of poetry, in two chapters on Gower and three on Chaucer. The first of the chapters on Gower, "Gower for Example: Confessio Amantis and the Measure of the Case," has already appeared, in somewhat revised form and with a slightly different title, as an article in Exemplaria (see JGN 23, no. 2). In it, Mitchell argues that the poem is "comprehensive" but not "coherent": that in its vastness, it offers a wide array of lessons on moral practices in love that are sometimes confusing and even contradictory, and the burden is thus placed upon every reader, as it is upon Amans, to discover the application of each lesson that is most relevant to his own behavior. Genius participates in that effort by the way in which he adapts his lessons to the practices of lovers; Amans participates, for instance, in the way in which he rejects the lessons that seem to have no application whatever to his case. "The exemplary array constitutes something like a horizon of possible outcomes, a taxonomy of cases, a repertoire useful for orienting the moral subject without predetermining final ethical positions in practice" (59). In the end, therefore, "Amans himself must reach his own judgement, find the measure, make meaning – by moving in and among contrastive exempla representing cases in extremis – if he is to figure out what it is good for him to do with his love" (58). Similarly (to borrow a formulation from the next chapter), whatever good the poem itself achieves "will occur outside the poem in the conscience of the reader" (65): "Gower's is an art that provokes the audience to proceed without the promise of coherence. To adapt what has become a favorite medieval motto: Gower provokes us to doubt, so that by doubting we come to questioning, whereby we might arrive at answers. The moral mean-ing rests as much on what readers do as on what the text means" (66). In that next chapter, "All that is Written for our Doctrine: Proof, Remembrance, Conscience," Mitchell first situates his argument with reference to recent discussions of Gower's poetical "authority," which he notes need to be "reconceptualized to include the potentialities of reader response" (63). He then goes on to discuss some of the problems inherent in the key terms of Gower's "ethical poetic" (66). Both "remembrance" and "evidence" occur repeatedly in the poem, and as the exempla themselves demonstrate, each can be either incomplete or misleading. The solution for Gower, Mitchell argues, resides in the notion of "conscience," which in the poet's "ethical empiricism" (78) still bears the burden of moral judgment. When he comes to Chaucer, in his last three chapters, Mitchell is obviously less concerned with dispelling the poet's reputation for moral sententiousness than he is in Gower's case. He argues instead the very importance of the ethical dimension of Chaucer's work and of the poet's engagement with, rather than dismissal of, the impact of his tales upon the ethical choices of his readers. After surveying the pervasiveness of the exemplary mode in CT, including but certainly not limited to such instances as 2NT and Mel, he focuses on what he calls the "problematic cases" (84) – the tales of the Wife of Bath, Friar, Summoner, Pardoner, and Clerk – in order to examine how Chaucer both explores and exemplifies exemplary practice. The Wife of Bath confronts the antifeminist exempla of her husband's book of "wicked wives" with an exemplary rhetoric of her own that is grounded in a literalist hermeneutic, drawn from her own experience. "By trading on the inherent flexibility of the rhetoric[,] the Wife of Bath effectively reminds us that exempla are amenable to diverse applications. An applied ethics, exemplary morality exists to be reinvented in practice" (93). The Friar, Summoner, and Pardoner are each shown abusing exemplary morality for personal and private ends, and each is also guilty of the sins that he preaches against (and in the first two cases, attributes to another). As studies in the abuse of exemplary rhetoric, each reaffirms rather than undermines the value of exemplary instruction since we perceive their faults ironically by means of their own exempla. "Chaucer creates figures who become . . . their own best worst examples" (111). "At last, these pilgrims are 'bad' only because their exempla are 'good'" (110). In that respect, Mitchell suggests, the Pardoner's performance – in which he himself serves as exemplum – may be more effective than the Parson's. ClT, finally, problematizes exemplary instruction by offering too many, often conflicting, moral lessons. The necessity of choosing a single moral for the tale, Mitchell argues, is itself a moral decision. The tale itself is thus a "parable of exemplarity" (129): in forcing us to choose one reading to the exclusion of others, "the tale draws its audience to a pointed recognition of what is at stake, in the face of the dilemma, every time moral application is sought in the futurity of decision" (ibid.). The tale's "undecidability" is thus "a call to responsibility" (130). Mitchell is both subtle and refreshingly iconoclastic, and even if one does not accept every detail of his readings, he offers a persuasive demonstration of a rich range of possibilities in what might all too easily be seen as a limited and transparent form. Much of what he says has implications reaching far beyond Chaucer and Gower, and his examination of CA opens up some interesting new ways of seeing the work. [PN Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mitchell, J. Allan Published Mitchell, J. Allan. "Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower." Chaucer Studies Series (33). Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, Limited, 2004 ISBN 1843840197 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 Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Boydell & Brewer, Limited, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Mitchell, J. Allan Published Mitchell, J. Allan. "Gower for Example: Confessio Amantis and the Ethics of Exemplarity." Exemplaria 16 (2004), pp. 203-234. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review The "Confessio Amantis" is a "profoundly inclusive but indeterminate poem," Mitchell claims; it is "comprehensive" but not "coherent"(205). It contains a vast diversity of tales and lessons, but it resists reduction to single consistent ethical or moral argument; it contains the materials for a moral lesson, but not the lesson itself. But rather than being a failure, either on Gower's or on Genius' part, this diversity is a reflection of the type of ethical instruction that the poem offers, in which Amans or the reader must actively participate in the choice of the moral lessons that are applicable to his or her own case. Mitchell chooses as his examples of the poem's "incoherencies" not the instances in which Genius' moralization seems to have little to do with the tale that he has just told but instead the conflicts that arise among the different tales and their moral lessons. The lesson of "Pygmaleon," for instance, on the effectiveness of speech in bringing about love's rewards (with its distant echoes of the statements in the Prologue on man's responsibility for his own fate) seems to be inconsistent with the lesson of "Jupiter's Two Tuns," which echoes instead the opening lines of Book 1 on the caprices of love's fortunes. The tale of "Phebus and Daphne," in which Daphne is turned into a tree because of Phebus' impatience, seems to offer advice on conduct that is directly contrary to that suggested by "Demephon and Phillis," in which Phillis becomes a tree because of Demephon's neglect. But Gregory long ago advised that the message must be modified according to the listener: "The slothful are to be admonished in one way, the hasty in another" (quoted on p. 227). Each lesson is valid under particular circumstances, and the proper course of conduct may also lie in discovering a mean. The comprehensiveness of the poem thus places a burden upon the listener or reader to discover the most relevant application. "In the strongest sense, the poem remains to be invented through reader response" (221), and the proper test of the poem itself "is not whether the text is formally coherent or logical, but whether it can stimulate a practical ethical response" (218 n.) As Mitchell puts it in his conclusion: "What evidence Amans finds useful and appropriate to his own case of unrequited love is for him to invent--not "ex nihilo," but in the old rhetorical sense, out of the myriad possibilities he has been proffered in the form of moral exempla on various topics. Exempla, as much as instantiating conventional morality, are therefore in a sense on a quest for practical precepts that practitioners have not yet formulated, or at the very least supply moral guidance which, as I've argued, one can affirm, refine, or deny. Gower's Amans, like any other practitioner, is thereby invited to explore sundry stories (e.g. about fortune and free-will, haste and hesitancy) in order to, as it were, triangulate a present, proportional response that m[a]y not be reducible to any single precedent. The technique has a strong theoretical basis in that there is no universal and invariable abstract form of the good according to which every moral act can be automatically judged apart from contingent circumstances. As Aristotle said and the 'Confessio Amantis' emphatically affirms, 'the good is not something common which corresponds to a single Idea.' The good is instead perforce instantiated in a multiplicity of ethical practices. . . . Moral cases, as Aquinas elaborates in his exposition of Aristotle's Ethics, themselves tend to be 'infinitely diversified.' It is therefore necessary to acquire a sense of the diversity and to cultivate the discretion that enables one to judge cases as they arise. Readerly circumspection, rather than textual coherence, becomes crucial" (233). This is a challenging and thought-provoking essay, for what it says or implies about Amans' role, Genius' role, and the nature of the teaching in the poem, and for the way in which it deals both with those who seek the meaning of the poem in a single ethical or philosophical proposition and with those who throw up their hands and proclaim that whatever argument the poem proposes is undermined within the poem itself. It is also pleasingly well written. Mitchell has a book on "Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower" forthcoming from Brewer in October. We should look forward to it. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society 23.2.] 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 for Example: Confessio Amantis and the Ethics of Exemplarity Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Moll, Richard J. Published Moll, Richard J.. "Gower's Cronica Tripertita and the Latin Glosses to Hardyng's Chronicle." Journal of the Early Book Society 7 (2004), pp. 153-158. ISSN 1525-6790 Gower Subject Cronica Tripertita Influence and Later Allusion Review Three rubrics in the unpublished MS of the first version of the English metrical Chronicle of John Hardyng, completed sometime in the 1450's, cite Gower's Cronica Tripertita as a source, and two of these include 7- and 8-line passages of verse based directly upon Gower's poem. Moll notes the changes in the text due both to scribal confusion and to Hardyng's somewhat greater sympathy for Richard. He points out the importance of these passages as evidence that Cronica Tripertita was known well outside of the small circle of Gower's original readers in the decades after his death, and that it evidently circulated alone, detached from Vox Clamantis. He also notes that "In several places, Macaulay quotes the second version of Hardyng's Chronicle [which had appeared in print, but which lacks these three glosses], apparently as an independent witness to corroborate details in the Cronica. Given his knowledge of the text, however, it is more likely that Hardyng derives these details from 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 Cronica Tripertita and the Latin Glosses to Hardyng's Chronicle Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "Gower's Lancastrian Affinity: The Iberian Connection." Viator 35 (2004), pp. 483-515. ISSN 0083-5897 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review If the place of "Confessio Amantis" in literary history were not already secure, the poem would still be notable as the first work of English literature to be translated into a contemporary vernacular. Both Portuguese and Castilian translations survive (the latter based on the former). Yeager surveys what is known about the origin and circulation of these, based on the evidence contained in the two MSS and on what is known and can be deduced from the historical record about the two named translators, the one named scribe, their patrons, and the circles in which the latter moved; and nowhere else is this information presented in so complete or so engaging a form as in this essay. Yeager gives central importance to Queen Philippa of Portugal (daughter of John of Gaunt), both for the origin of the Portuguese translation and for a likely role in the production of the Castilian translation for her sister, Queen Catherine of Castile; and he cites the long tradition of learning among the members of the House of Lancaster in support of the inferred literary interests of the two women. He also argues that they may have known of CA and even have had copies of the completed portions of the unfinished poem when they left England for Iberia in 1386. He also considers other possible routes by which CA might have reached the peninsula, however, including others in the 1386 entourage and the connections – social, political, and commercial – that resulted from John of Gaunt's marriage to Costanza of Castile in 1371. One effect of this union was the strengthening of ties between England and Portugal, including a treaty in 1372 that recognized John and Costanza's claim to the Castilian throne. The community of English merchants in Lisbon and Porto grew considerably, and Robert Payn, the Portuguese translator, may have had his origin there. The two surviving MSS suggest that Gower's readership on the peninsula, as in England, extended well beyond the royal family. Gower's anti-authoritarian stance and his advocacy of "comun profit? would have been quite congenial in the political climate of both countries during the first half of the fifteenth century. The production of the two translations is also consistent with other contemporary literary activity, including a multitude of other translations and the composition of such works as the Libro de buen amor. The royal connection remains of central importance in the explanation of the circulation of CA in Iberia, Yeager concludes, but there is also much more to say about the many others who may have played a role, about the tastes to which the work appealed, and about the needs that it supplied, as Yeager so admirably reveals. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 24.1] 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 Gower's Lancastrian Affinity: The Iberian Connection Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Williams, Tara Nicole Published Williams, Tara Nicole. "Inventing womanhood in late medieval literature." PhD thesis, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey - New Brunswick, 2004. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review "This dissertation uncovers the origins of the word womanhood in the fourteenth-century works of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. It then traces the evolution of the term and concept through the fifteenth century, combining philology with feminist readings. Although many feminist medieval projects have analyzed female characters, the underlying idea of womanliness has received little attention. I argue that post-plague social and economic shifts created a linguistic gap: new ideas about women's roles necessitated new vocabulary. Chaucer invents several terms to address this gap, including femininity and wifehood, but womanhood becomes particularly significant and its meanings evolve through various late medieval texts. Womanhood does consistently involve two issues: whether it is primarily interior or exterior (and, by extension, whom it includes or excludes) and whether it restricts or enables feminine forms of power. . . . While Chaucer focuses on its internal virtues, Gower imagines womanhood as embodied and performed; Chapter Three explores his divergent usage in the Confessio Amantis. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Inventing womanhood in late medieval literature Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Passmore, S. Elizabeth Published Passmore, S. Elizabeth. "Loathly Lady Transformed: A Literary and Cultural Analysis of the Medieval Irish and English Hag-Beauty Tales." PhD thesis, University of Connecticut, 2004. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review "This dissertation examines five extant Middle Irish kingship tales . . . along with four Middle English Loathly Lady tales (Gower's Tale of Florent, Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, and The Marriage of Sir Gawain) to demonstrate their connection through the role of the Loathly Lady as counselor to the male protagonist. The themes of kingship (encompassing all aristocratic leadership) and counsel (focusing on the role of the Loathly Lady as advisor) are viewed through historical and cultural factors in eleventh to twelfth century Ireland and fourteenth to fifteenth century England. . . . Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Loathly Lady Transformed: A Literary and Cultural Analysis of the Medieval Irish and English Hag-Beauty Tales Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Kennedy, Kathleen Erin Published Kennedy, Kathleen Erin. "Maintaining injustice: Literary Representations of the Legal System c. 1400." PhD thesis, Ohio State University, 2004. Open access at https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_olink/r/1501/10?clear=10&p10_accession_num=osu1085059076 (accessed January 22, 2023). Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Review "Medieval English authors often regard aspects of the legal system to be in conflict with an endemic cultural practice, maintenance. Simply put, maintenance was the payment of a form of salary to a high-level servant by a lord. The salary this servant (or affine) might receive could consist of cash-payments, gifts, or access to lucrative official positions, including the proxy enjoyment of some portion of the lord's judicial rights. The more lavish the assistance, the more the lord honored the retainer. Obviously, the mutual ties of aid and loyalty between a lord and an affine threatened impartial justice at every level, and medieval authors strove both to bring its abuses to light, and to offer alternatives. Each of my chapters sheds light on how late fourteenth-century authors articulated the relationship between different legal institutions and maintenance. . . . John Gower spends a considerable amount of time writing about the legal profession, especially lawyers and other legal officials. I claim that Gower argues that if the king allowed maintenance and other personal considerations to influence his judgement, then legal officials would do the same; moreover, legal officials tarnish the king's reputation since they receive their legal powers by delegation from the king. . . . In sum, late-fourteenth- and early-fifteenth-century authors demonstrated detailed knowledge of the law and used literature as a forum in which to discuss inadequacies of the system. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Maintaining injustice: Literary Representations of the Legal System c. 1400 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Mooney, Linne R Published Mooney, Linne R. "A New Scribe of Chaucer and Gower." Journal of the Early Book Society 7 (2004), pp. 131-140. ISSN 1525-6790 Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review Mooney adds a fifth scribe to the list of those who are known to have worked on MSS of both Chaucer's and Gower's works. His was the sole hand, Mooney argues, in both Harley 1758 (CT) and London, Society of Antiquaries 134 (Macaulay's "X"), which contains Lydgate's "Life of Our Lady," Hoccleve's "Regement of Princes," a portion of Walton's verse translation of Boethius, and, in Macaulay's classification, an "intermediate" version of the "first recension" of CA. The scribe worked in the mid-15th century. On the basis of spelling, Mooney traces his origin to the area between Ludlow and Halesowen, in a line almost directly west of modern Birmingham, consistent with the earliest evidence of the ownership of the two books. Other contemporary MSS of CT with West Midlands affiliations indicate that this was "not a particularly unusual site for copying of these texts" (137). Both books are of high quality, on vellum, with extensive decoration. Harley 1758 has been heavily corrected, while Macaulay notes that the textual affiliations of CA in "X" change in mid-copy, indicating access to more than a single exemplar of each work. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 24.2] 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 A New Scribe of Chaucer and Gower Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 is a study of the dream poem in the context of medieval ritual, exploring the interaction between poetry and London civic ceremony in late medieval England. In it I examine the poetic use of visions of civic life to illustrate and negotiate an individual's place in their community, the way that late medieval poetry used elements of civic ceremony to critique London life. Each chapter of my thesis presents the work of a medieval author – Langland's Piers Plowman; Chaucer's Legend of Good Women; Gower's Confessio Amantis, Mirour de l'Omme and Vox Clamantis; Lydgate's Troy Book, Siege of Thebes, Fall of Princes, and coronation verses – in close comparison with a different type of London performance recorded in church processionals and civic records, reading the language of each ceremonial text side by side with poetry and examining the form of literary texts alongside performances. . . . In the second chapter [I discuss] Gower's poetic visions of public chastisement, alienation and exile, which I argue echoed the ridings to Newgate used to punish both perceived sin within the community and civil disobedience. . . . In each case, I attempt to establish the thesis that by using medieval ceremony to re-imagine city life each of these authors negotiated an individual relationship with civic order and communal harmony. Author/Editor Author/Editor Horsley, Katharine Frances Published Horsley, Katharine Frances. "Poetic visions of London Civic Ceremony, 1360-1440." PhD thesis, Harvard University, 2004. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis 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 Poetic visions of London Civic Ceremony, 1360-1440 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 in the vernaculars aristocratic coterie entertainments and vulgar literary performances ("minstrelcy" and "popular tales") were supplemented (though not displaced) by broader treatments, of matter of broader import, for broader audiences, so too in Latin the post-plague fourteenth century in England saw poets inventing subject-matters for their work, of interest beyond the more narrowly clerical matters to which they theretofore restricted themselves, and inventing modes of address to go with such subject-matters, appropriate for addressing potentially interested non-clerical parties, as well as a widened range of persons having some clerical status. The later fourteenth-century Anglo-Latin poets' invention of broader secular subjects and audiences for their Latin writings was matched too by their invention of a simpler, more broadly apprehensible style, involving unrhymed dactylic verse" (390). The central figure in Carlson's stylistic narrative is Gower, particularly in the "Visio Anglie" now incorporated into Book 1 of VC, which Carlson takes to be the only "preponderantly Ricardian piece still evident" in the much revised and edited longer work (398). The Visio "focuses on secular affairs . . . , at the national level even, in which diverse social groups had to take an interest, not excluding the clerical estates but not restricted to them. In it, Gower argues for an agenda for a particular programme of secular governance – albeit an appallingly narrow, reactionary one . . . – and Gower argues this agenda in largely if not exclusively secular terms" (398), employing the dream-vision form and writing in "unrhymed elegiac distichs – a complementary form of versification, unadorned, that lent the work stylistic accessibility" (399), that does not appear remarkable by classical standards but that stands out in sharp contrast to the practices of other contemporary writers of Latin verse. Gower abandoned his own experiment: his last major Latin work, the Cronica Tripertita, employs complex rhyme patterns "in addition to other stylistic features in common with the hyper-sophisticated scholastic Latin poetry" (401). But the simpler style lived on in the work of other poets who wrote on contemporary events, notably Richard Maidstone and the anonymous composer of the Lancastrian "Metrical Historia regum Angliae continuation." [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R Published Carlson, David R. "The Invention of the Anglo-Latin Public Poetry (circa 1367-1402) and its Prosody, esp. in John Gower." Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 39 (2004), pp. 389-406. ISSN 0076-9762 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 The Invention of the Anglo-Latin Public Poetry (circa 1367-1402) and its Prosody, esp. in John Gower Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 In an earlier essay (in Chaucer Review 34 [2000]; see JGN 19.2), Duffell credited Chaucer with the invention of the iambic pentameter in English, but he noted Gower's use of the new meter in "In Praise of Peace," referring both to the influence of Italian models. He also mentioned Gower's experiments with a 10-syllable line in French in CB. This essay presents the results of a much closer collaborative examination of Gower's 10-syllable lines and credits Gower with an important role in the development of English metrics. Gower's interest in metrical experimentation, the authors argue, is demonstrated by the regularity of the octosyllables in both MO, in contrast to the looseness of his Anglo-Norman contemporaries, and CA, in which the "perfectly iambic" octosyllables (395), more regular than Chaucer's of the same period, mark Gower as "the first poet to employ the canonical iambic tetrameter in English" (396). Chaucer introduced the 10-syllable line in English in "Troilus and Criseyde," following his trip to Italy, and Gower's pentameters (in IPP and in Amans' petition to Venus in CA 8:2217-2300) come afterwards, but following his practice in the rest of CA, his pentameters are iambic, and they are "more regular than Chaucer's in both rhythm and syllable count" (394). The authors conclude that "we should ... regard the two poets as collaborators in a series of metrical experiments (involving verse in two languages), and acknowledge Gower as the first English poet to employ meters that were stress-syllabic in the strictest sense, regular in both syllable count and accentuation" (395-96). A large part of this essay consists of a classification of Gower's decasyllables into 8 types, 4 more common in French and 4 more common in Italian, based on the use and placement of the caesura. More interesting is the authors' establishment of the regularity of Gower's verse, because they offer some specific observations on how they assume that his verse should be recited. Final schwa, they note, is elided before all words beginning with a vowel or a diphthong, and also before all words beginning with the letter h, "whether of Romance or Germanic origin" (387). They also list a certain number of common words in which final schwa was not pronounced even when it stood before a consonant, and some others in which medial schwa appears regularly to be elided (387). They count only 12 lines in which a strong syllable falls on what should be a weak position, but 10 of these involve disyllabic prepositions, which because of their grammatically subordinate status probably did not receive prominent metrical stress on either syllable (391). Other apparent exceptions involve words of French origin which may have retained their original accentuation (392-93) and seven words of Germanic origin, which may represent genuine inversion but which also might also, the authors claim, have borne a stress on the second syllable. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Duffell, Martin J. Billy, Dominique Published Duffell, Martin J. and Billy, Dominique. "From Decasyllable to Pentameter: Gower's Contribution to English Metrics." Chaucer Review 38 (2004), pp. 383-400. ISSN 0009-2002 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 From Decasyllable to Pentameter: Gower's Contribution to English Metrics. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Both Chaucer and Gower depict both Dido (in HF 373, LGW 1349-52, and CA 4.132-34) and Pyramus and Thisbe (in LGW 850, 915 and CA 3.1444, 1490) as taking their own lives by stabbing themselves in the heart, a detail not found in any of their known sources. The priority of HF suggests that Chaucer set the example here, but Sobecki is not primarily interested in who came first. He instead focuses on the significance of the heart, not as the most efficient target of a suicide, as we might presume, but as the seat of the passion that motivates its victims: "Eneas's blade, it seems, is directed by Dido into her emotive centre in a frantic attempt to extinguish her suffering" (112). And he links the force that compels their death to common medieval descriptions of love-sickness, suggesting that the poets attempted to place the characters' deaths within the narrow grounds that under medieval theology and law might provide exoneration for suicide. Thus for both poets "Dido is not only a victim of Eneas's sloth; she is also a casualty of lovesickness, a "Minneopjer," which circumstance, at least in its pathological right, could exculpate her from mortal sin" (112). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sobecki, Sebastian Published Sobecki, Sebastian. "'And to the herte she hireselven smot': The Loveris Maladye and the Legitimate Suicides of Chaucer's and Gower's Exemplary Lovers." Mediaevalia 25 (2004), pp. 107-121. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 'And to the herte she hireselven smot': The Loveris Maladye and the Legitimate Suicides of Chaucer's and Gower's Exemplary Lovers Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 "By exploring two premodern versions of the tale of Medea through the lens of J. L. Austin's speech act theory," Wade seeks "to tease out the 'unpremeditated articulations' [quoting Paul Strohm, Theory and the Premodern Text, xiii] latent within those texts." For Ovid, Medea is a means to explore "the social and moral ambiguities that involve a woman who chooses to speak and act independently, and as Medea depicts speech as a catalyst of power, her relationship with languages becomes integral to her utilization of the power she is given within Ovid's tale." Gower however "portrays Medea as an ideal figure to be perjured--an innocent, disempowered, and modest lover." The "discrepancy" between "what Genius 'intends' and what he actually does" allows Medea to emerge "from the facade of the disempowered ingenue to become a figure of power." This sequence reveals Gower's intent: he has Genius "take away the narrative space for her to speak in an attempt to control our reception of her through a subverted space of direct discourse." In the end, however, Medea's power is irrepressible, and leads to a violent conclusion elusive of Genius's narrative grasp: "his [i.e., Genius's] subversion of Medea's power through the confinement of her narrative space and illocutionary presence only demonstrates the unsettling nature of Medea as she remains a powerful figure despite her lack of speech." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wade, James Published Wade, James. "'Sche made many a wonder soun': Performative Utterances and the Figure of Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses and John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Postgraduate English 9 (2004), n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Sche made many a wonder soun': Performative Utterances and the Figure of Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses and John Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Sadlek, Gregory M Published Sadlek, Gregory M. "Idleness Working: The Discourse of Love's Labor from Ovid through Chaucer and Gower." Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004 ISBN 9780813213736 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Sadlek includes the Confessio Amantis in a Bakhtinian study of "the ideologically saturated discourse of love's labor" as present variously in as well the "Ars amatoria," "De amore," "De planctu Naturae," "Roman de la Rose," and "Troilus and Criseyde." His chapter on Gower revises and enlarges an earlier essay, "John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Ideology, and the 'Labor' of 'Love's Labor'" in Re-Visioning Gower: New Essays, ed. R.F. Yeager (1998; rev. JGN XVII.1). Sadlek's focus is Book IV, in which "Genius and Amans grapple with the question of what it means to be slothful in love, and whether Amans is guilty of this sin" (168). His contention is that "Gower's favored labor ideology is one that presents work as a necessary but positive human activity, one whose value derives not merely because it is an antidote to idleness but primarily because of its material contributions to the common profit" (171). This is an idea Sadlek finds consistent in Gower's work, from the Mirour de l'Omme forward; he cites the discussion of Accedie in MO 5125-6180 (186-89). Pointing out that "labor and productivity issues . . . played an important role in late fourteenth-century England, Sadlek surveys and assesses the impact of the Black Death on available labor and consequences for worker value, religious reforms aimed at the apparent idleness of what Wyclif termed "clerks possessioners" and changes in attitudes toward time-keeping brought on by the introduction of clocks (174-81). These "were essential parts of the writing context for both Chaucer and Gower" (181). The problem for Amans and Genius is that--far from being idle--Amans is ceaselessly working to win his lady's love. Genius shows him, however, that "Amans's labor ideology here is inconsistent. Although . . . he argued that he was not guilty of idleness because he kept himself busy, he [later] admits (IV.1757-60) that just keeping busy, just countering the vice of sloth, is not enough. One's work must produce results"(197). Sadlek clarifies helpfully that although Amans recognizes that "he is an idle man" (198), he does so "not on the basis of Christian morality, but rather on the basis of a labor ideology that equates labor with productive activity" (198). Such activity Amans equates with his lady falling in love with him--a goal he has failed to achieve, rendering his "busyness" mere wasted time (200). But Gower's concern is broader than Amans' compass. Genius goes beyond Amans' immediate situation to add other concepts of labor, including "the dignity of intellectual labor" (202). The result is that Book IV ultimately "contains a dialog among various ideologically colored voices," including "traditional medieval ideology of work based on . . . the Seven Deadly Sins;" "aristocratic voices" emphasizing amorous idylls and chivalric combat; and "finally, the voice of a humanist work ethic in process" (203). "In short," Sadlek posits that "Gower's ideology of labor in Book 4 is neither simply traditional nor avant-garde, neither completely aristocratic nor bourgeois. It is an ideology in process, mirroring to some extent ideological shifts in Gower's language and his society . . . a 'site of action' in which various late-medieval labor ideologies undergo a 'sustained literary engagement'"(204). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 29.2] 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 Idleness Working: The Discourse of Love's Labor from Ovid through Chaucer and Gower. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Catholic University of America Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 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 is a magnificent volume. The seventeen contributors, most of whom are already very well known to Gowerians, provide an extremely useful guide to the current state of our knowledge of Gower and his work. Anyone with any serious interest in Gower will want to own this book. In her introduction, on "Gower's Reputation" (1-22), Echard identifies five recurring themes in the critical response to the poet: his identity as "moral Gower," his political views, his choice of language, his relation to his sources, and both his personal and his literary relation to Chaucer. She traces these in large part to the poet's own deliberate self-fashioning, to "the qualities that he made central to his own poetic ethos" (17), and she points out how Gower's reputation has shifted over the centuries as each of these has provided either a stick with which to beat the poet (primarily during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) or as an opening to a greater understanding of his work (more recently), as, for instance, critics have taken a broader interest in the implications of "moral," in the complex issues of a poet's self-presentation, and in the political and ideological implications of the choice between Latin and the vernacular. That broadening of understanding is admirably illustrated by the writers that follow, and Echard's essay serves both to situate their contributions and to tie together the diverse approaches of this volume. Whether by accident or design, all but the last of the chapters that follow fall into pairs. The first two are concerned with Gower's biography. John Hines, Nathalie Cohen, and Simon Roffey ("Iohannes Gower, Armiger, Poeta: Records and Memorials of his Life and Death," 23-41) survey what can be inferred from the scant life records (mostly on property dealings) and the references in Gower's own poetry, and then give their greatest attention to the geography of Southwark during Gower's time (they provide some helpful maps), to the layout of the priory church of St. Mary Overie, and to the construction of Gower's tomb, as it appears today and as it was described by 16th century observers. The tomb, they note, "represents a range of facets of a contemporary perception of Gower; several, perhaps all of them, his own model of how he saw himself, or wished to be portrayed" (40). Robert Epstein ("London, Southwark, Westminster: Gower's Urban Contexts," 43-60) discusses the social geography of the three adjacent communities with which Gower had connections. He explores the difficulties of reconstructing Gower's audience, particularly of associating him directly with those who are though to have made up the "Chaucer circle." He also notes some paradoxes in the relation between Gower's writing and his life: that the man who spent nearly his entire life in Southwark should have so little to say about the city, its government, or the majority of its citizens; and that a poet with so little personal or professional ties to the monarchy should be been so preoccupied with the nature and responsibilities of kingship. "Gower's uniquely urban condition," he concludes, "as a non-bureaucratic, non-aristocratic, privately employed professional, allowed him to develop a sense of the poet that was elevated in its autonomy, in its self-regard and in its ambition – but that required a strong and attentive monarch to legitimize his voice and to realize his social visions" (60). Jeremy J. Smith ("John Gower and London English," 61-72) provides a brief but comprehensible account of what we know of Gower's language – a mixture of Kentish and Suffolk forms (consistent with Gower's family background) that would have been "fairly easily accommodated" (69) within the great variety of London speech at the time but that might have struck some as a bit old-fashioned – and equally helpfully, of how we know it. Smith also points to the remarkably conservative character of scribes' spelling habits in the later MSS of CA as an example of the perpetuation of one of several competing "standard" forms of the language, this one serving the very specific purpose of disseminating Gower's text. Derek Pearsall ("The Manuscripts and Illustrations of Gower's Works," 73-97) provides an even more remarkable gathering in one place of what can be said about the appearance, format, arrangement, contents, illustration and decoration, production, ownership, and readership of the MS copies of Gower's works. Pearsall writes not only from long and intimate acquaintance with the books that he describes but also with characteristic sympathy for the scribes (also evident in his essay on the Latin apparatus in the MSS, in the Takamiya festschrift, below). The handlist of Gower MSS on pp. 74-79 will now be our basic point of reference until the appearance of the much awaited Descriptive Catalogue, forthcoming under Pearsall's editorship. The next two chapters treat Gower's reception. Helen Cooper ("'This worthy olde writer': Pericles and other Gowers, 1592-1640," 99-113) discusses the appearance of Gower the poet in Robert Greene's Greenes Vision of 1594 and in Shakespeare's Pericles (1611), and the borrowings from CA in Shakespeare's earlier Comedy of Errors and in a 1640 pamphlet entitled A Certain Relation of the Hog-faced Gentlewoman, called Tannekin Skinker (in which the example of Florent is narrated in order to suggest the possibility of an equally happy metamorphosis for the unfortunate young woman of the title). In Greene's work, Chaucer and Gower are each called upon to tell stories in which the issue of the moral value of literature becomes entangled with the issue of the moral dangers posed by the beauty of the women in their tales. The author awards the prize – for the uprightness of both tale and character – to Gower. Cooper has much of interest to say about how each of these works perpetuated Gower's reputation both as moralist and as storyteller. Siân Echard's chapter on "Gower in Print" (115-35) looks at Gower's reception through his publication history, from Caxton, through Berthelette, Todd, Morley, Pauli, and Macaulay, down to Peck, with a glance at the Roxburghe Club editions and at the editions of selected tales intended for use in the classroom. (Missing, however, both here and in the bibliography on p. 272, is any reference to Macaulay's 1903 edition of selections for "young students," who Macaulay evidently felt wouldn't be too put out either by the Latin glosses and epigrams or by thorn and yogh.) Echard skillfully traces the impact on Gower's reputation not only of the critical commentary included in each edition but also of such matters as typography, layout, and apparatus. She notes that on the whole, Gower has been hurt more than helped by those who have brought his works to print, and while not suggesting that there can be any perfect edition, she has high praise for Peck's. Two chapters focus on Gower's non-English works. R.F. Yeager ("John Gower's French," 132-51), surveys Gower's surviving works in his other vernacular. After giving careful attention to their survival in MS, he has much to say about the quality of both Gower's verse and prose, about the uniqueness of conception of his works, particularly MO and CB, and about the significance of the fact that these works are in French. MO, he notes, has a breadth and ambition unprecedented in any of the works that have been identified as its possible sources, but it is unified, first of all by its "envelope of amorous address " (143), the invocation of "chascun amant" at the beginning and the lyrical prayer to the virgin at the end, and second, by its examination, through is description of the vices and virtues, of good and bad desire. CB has a narrative structure centered on the poet-narrator's decision to absent himself for the sake of his lady's reputation, which leads to a more complete union based on trust and actual devotion rather than mere desire. The resulting tendency towards the typical and the general is appropriate to a poem of exemplary wisdom. CA is not noted for its "richly poetic strokes" (248), Burrow concludes, which is one reason why it may fail to appeal. "In its limitations as well as its strengths, Gower's is essentially a long-poem style" (249), and while long poems themselves have gone out of style, the result can nonetheless be considered true poetry. T In both these works, Gower "use[s] the culture of French courtly writing against itself" (144): he transcends the "essential immorality" (147) of courtly literature and reclaims it for legitimate love. A.G. Rigg and Edward S. Moore ("The Latin Works: Politics, Lament and Praise," 165-80) more briefly situate Gower's Latin writing within the trilingual culture of late 14th-century England and within the traditions of Anglo-Latin writing. They point out that Gower's choice of unrhymed elegiac couplets for VC represented a return to a somewhat old-fashioned practice. VC's focus on politics and history is typical of Anglo-Latin writing of the time, and the "public" quality of the work distinguishes it from the more personal CA and MO. Most of VC attempts rather typically to summon historical evidence in support of the author's moral and political views; the Visio and TC, however, offer a more exceptional re-creation of historical events. The Visio, the authors note, also has important debts to vernacular literature. Ardis Butterfield and Winthrop Wetherbee, in the next two chapters, take up CA's relation to its antecedents. Butterfield ("Confessio Amantis and the French Tradition," 165-80) discusses Gower's relation to Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, and their successors Machaut and Froissart. All these poets, she writes, "are preoccupied by a desire to investigate the relationship between writing and the self, the kind of access a writer has to truth, and how the art of fiction both enables and inhibits this access. In all these writers, the figure of the lover acts as one of the main ways for them to represent the art of writing: the lover generates the poetry, and indeed is often represented as a poet" (165). So too Gower creates a "precarious distinction" (180) between poet and lover before collapsing the two roles at the poem's end, and he also includes Genius as a way of doubling his presence: "Genius is the interlocutor of the author and at the same time an internalized projection of him" (177). The confession frame is also enlisted in the exploration of the topic of identity. "Working within the central tradition of French writers," Butterfield concludes, love "becomes for him, as for them, a way of examining the art of fiction, and hence the multiple art of confessing the self" (180). According to Wetherbee ("Chaucer and Boethian Tradition in the Confessio Amantis," 181-96), the essential ambiguity of naturatus amor in the opening Latin epigram of Book 1 of CA reflects "fundamental questions about the authoritative role of the Latin tradition in forming [Gower's] literary culture" as well as "larger questions about the relation of human life and history to the natural order" (181-82). The uncertainties about man's relation to nature – whether as a "paradigm of order" or as "a kind of cosmic determinism" (184) – can be traced to DCP. Boethius' successors – Bernardus Silvestris, Alain de Lille, and Jean de Meun – depict the contradictions that result in different ways. For Jean de Meun they are manifested in an unresolved dialectic between the Latin Boethian tradition and the love-cult of vernacular poetry. The same confrontation is made visible in the framing of Gower's English poem with its Latin apparatus, which fails to either contain or control the English text. It is also embodied in Genius, who partakes both of the Latin and the vernacular. "He is less a spokesman than a mediator – a mediator, moreover, whose own perception of the standards of 'kinde' and 'resoun' which he holds up to Amans preserves unresolved the ambiguous perspective of the Boethian tradition. . . . Genius participates in both worlds, but he can provide no authoritative bases for reconciling the conflicting claims of Nature and courtly idealism" (190). "Skeptical of its own authority," Wetherbee concludes, "the Latin tradition is thus normative for Gower, a stable framework for his questioning of the values of his own world" (196) rather than authoritatively re-affirming them. Diane Watt and Russell Peck examine CA in rather more traditional terms. Watt ("Gender and Sexuality in Confessio Amantis," 197-213) discusses Gower's treatment of his female characters. She focuses on three tales, "Canace and Machaire," in which, Watt argues, contrary to most published commentary, the children are held responsible for their incestuous relationship and, at least at the beginning, the blame is equally shared between them; "Iphis and Iante," in which the two girls suffer no blame for their desire for one another or for Iphis' cross-dressing before Iphis is transformed into a man; and "Calistona," in which Gower's alterations subtly transform the rape into a seduction for which the woman herself can be held at least in part responsible. Watt reaches two important conclusions: one, "going against the tide of recent gender criticism," as she herself proclaims, that Gower's main concern is ethical, and that "when a writer like Gower writes about women or men, about homosexual or heterosexual desires, or about transvestism or transsexuality, he (or she) is not necessarily discussing something else" (211). And second (echoing an argument also recently made by Ellen Shaw Bakalian; see JGN 23, no. 2), that "the central ethical message of the Confessio Amantis as a whole is that the responsibility for sin or error falls firmly on the individual who commits it, male or female" (213). Peck ("The Politics and Psychology of Governance in Gower: Ideas of Kingship and Real Kings," 215-38) summarizes the argument on the relation between personal and political governance in all of Gower's work, particularly in CA, that he first put forth in his Kingship and Common Profit in 1978. "Gower conceives of the hypostasis between the personal and social through images of kingship, domain, and right rule. Each--the social and the personal--is contingent upon the other and operates through metaphoric interdependence. The king of England is akin to the king of the soul; the state of England is linked to one's sense of personal domain; and right rule is mirrored simultaneously through both sides of the equation" (216). In the longer, second part of his essay, Peck traces Gower's commentary on the effects of royal misrule through VC, MO, TC, and "IPP," and he offers a new attempt to read the dedication of CA to "Henry of Lancaster" as a rejection of King Richard II motivated by Richard's dispute with the city of London in 1392 (cf. Fisher, 116-22). (The reasons for the second dedication are an issue on which Gower scholars are not yet of a single mind. For an assortment of views, see in the same volume pp. 26, 57, 61, 94 n. 45, and 159.) John Burrow, finally ("Gower's Poetic Styles," 239-50) considers the implications of Gower's "correctness," his "purity of diction" and his "plain style," the three terms that occur most commonly in the descriptions and assessments of Gower's style. The first is at least to some extent anachronistic, since there were no fixed standards of correctness in such matters as spelling, one of the features of language in which Gower's MSS are most consistent, in Gower's time. It does apply, however, Burrow observes, to the poet's handling of both meter and rhyme – both for their regularity and for the way in which they conform to spoken language – and to grammar and syntax, where Gower displays an impressive command of periodic syntax, perhaps because of his experience of writing in Latin. Gower's diction is notable for its virtual exclusion of "commonplace English poeticisms" (244) from contemporary popular poetry or from the alliterative tradition, both found in far greater numbers in Chaucer. The "plain style," finally, is best understood with reference to Gower's own comments on "plainness": it is a style unadorned by rhetorical display consisting of "simple words used in straightforward literal senses" (246). The resulting tendency towards the typical and the general is appropriate to a poem of exemplary wisdom. CA is not noted for its "richly poetic strokes" (248), Burrow con-cludes, which is one reason why it may fail to appeal. "In its limitations as well as its strengths, Gower's is essentially a long-poem style" (249), and while long poems them-selves have gone out of style, the result can nonetheless be considered true poetry. The volume concludes with a "Chronology of Gower Criticism" prepared by Echard and Julie Lanz , which in its arrangement is an extremely useful supplement to the exist-ing bibliographies, as well as being more up-to-date. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân, ed Published Echard, Siân, ed. "A Companion to Gower." Cambridge: Brewer, 2004 ISBN 9781843840008 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 A Companion to Gower 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 2004 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A., ed. Published Peck, Russell A., ed. "John Gower. Confessio Amantis, 3 vols." Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2004 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Review LET ME SAY first of all that the production of this new edition of the "Confessio Amantis" is a remarkable achievement, and Russell Peck deserves every praise for his energy and erudition, and for his expedition in bringing the project to completion in such a comparatively short time. This praise must be added to the admiration he has won from all scholars and students of Middle English for his Herculean efforts in master-minding the TEAMS series (of which these Gower volumes are part) over the years since 1990. We should also add a word of praise for the team of helpers he has gathered around him at Rochester, and whom he is so generous in acknowledging, and for the Gower volumes a special commendation to Andrew Galloway, since it is he who has contributed the translations of the Latin (both the Latin verses and the marginal summaries and annotations) which are the single most important feature of the new edition. The lay-out of the fairly large format page, with good-sized print, wide margins, side-glosses, translations of the Latin verses at the foot of the page (the translations of the Latin marginal summaries and annotations are among the Explanatory Notes at the end of each volume), is very pleasing, and the volumes, though large, are easy to use. I like the little medieval-style hands with pointing fingers that signal the presence of marginalia, as translated in the Notes; the form of the speech-markers and of the titles for stories and subjects inserted at the beginning of 'chapters'; also the simple, unfussy way in which the text of revisions like those at Prologue 24 are set out. There are some changes and improvements in format in Volume III, and I presume that these and other changes will be extended to and incorporated in the other volumes in later reprints. In this context of overall praise, there are some issues to take up. In the first place, the organisation of the three volumes, with Prologue and Books 1 and 8 in the first volume, Books 2-4 in the second, and Books 5-7 in the third, now looks a little bizarre. Russell Peck associates me with the idea of doing things in this way, and thanks me, and so I can hardly complain. I think what I had in mind was that students should have the general shape of the poem made available to them from the start. I suppose I was assuming that it would be a good many years before the other volumes came out (perhaps with the experience of being on the Council of the EETS in mind) and that meanwhile this was a good interim measure. In the event, Russell has surprised us all with his speed in moving to completion, and all I can say is that what looked like quite a good idea at the time has turned out a little oddly. No matter: it is all there. The text is not a great problem with Gower. One could follow Macaulay exactly and produce a perfectly satisfactory text. Peck goes back to MS Fairfax 3, follows Macaulay in some of his few emendations, though not in some others that are necessary (e.g. bore for MS both at 1.397, "worldes" for MS "worldee" at 5.5552), and not in his attempt to standardise Gower's grammar, spelling and metre on a systematic basis (e.g. standardisation of "here" and "hire" respectively as "their" and "her", and elimination of otiose final -e). Peck introduces a few emendations of his own, based on the small number of manuscripts he seems to have consulted, and also substitutes "agein" for "ayein," "forgat" for "foryat," "thee" for "the," etc., presumably to help the reader (Peck may explain his editorial practice somewhere, but so far I have not found where). Generally speaking, Peck favours the idea that the variations between manuscripts mark the progress of Gower's opinions rather than the day-to-day realities of manuscript production, as argued consistently by Peter Nicholson (see, for instance, the discussion at Vol. I, pp. 286-7). He tends still to assume that Gower himself supervised the production of MS Fairfax 3 (see Vol. I, p.69). The punctuation of the text is generally too heavy, a common fault in modern texts of Middle English verse, where there is the modern tendency to punctuate by the clause rather than the pause and to neglect the function of the line-end as a form of punctuation. I count twelve superfluous commas at line-end in eighty lines at 4.1118-93 (and two further unnecessary medial commas, at 1179 and 1180) in the lover's eager outpouring of his puppyish devotion to his lady, a passage which above any must run freely and without impediment. Side-glosses can be for ever taxed with omission and superfluity, often on the basis of personal preference, but there is one general point worth making. Side-glosses are always in danger of providing too many contextualised senses for common words which are not really needed and which may deter the reader from doing the normal and necessary work of reading in context. For instance, "To stonde" in "To stonde at his commandement" (Prol.84) is glossed "To submit to," where the extended sense of "stand" is familiar and easy to come to through the context; likewise with "mot stonde" in "For trowthe mot stonde ate laste" (Prol.369), glossed "must remain" (see the very relevant note on the frequency of the verb "stand" in Gower at Prol.143, Vol. I, p.291). This kind of contextual explicitness will sometimes also lose the lively possibility of personification that is always present in Gower's poetry. In Prol.223, "Humilité was tho withholde," withholde is glossed "practiced (held with)," which misses the (for me) vital sense of "retained" (as a retainer) which is preserved a few lines later in the gloss to :Which coveitise hath now withholde," (Prol.263, where there might be some debate too about the capital letter). So in Prol.130, "And lawe hath take hire double face," the side-glosses are "lawyers" and "put on (donned) their," which miss the personification and violate the rule that Macaulay at least insists on that "hire" in Gower means "her" (while "their" is always "here"). Another kind of over-explicitness is present in the translation of "conquestes" in Prol.709, "Gaf the conquestes that he wan" as "booty," which obscures the point that "conquestes" include kingdoms, as the subsequent lines make clear. Kingdoms, to me, don't sound like "booty," and it would have been better to leave the word unglossed. These are general points, worth observing; though of course one could disagree also about particulars in the these first few hundred lines, e.g., "plit" (Prol.676) as "plight" (better, "manner"), "franchise" (Prol.761) as "sovereignty" (better, "freedom"), "redely" (Prol.948) as "skillfully" (needs no gloss), "saulf" (Prol.1016) as "safe" (better, "saved," especially since Noah is being referred to). Here, too, over-explicitness is often the problem. The translations of the Latin verses are sometimes very weird-sounding. At Vol. I, p. 70, Tempus preteritum, 'Legibus vnicolor tunc temporis aura refulsit' is translated "then the unicolored air of the times was aglow with laws" (compare Siân Echard and Claire Fanger, "The Latin Verses in the Confessio Amantis," p. 5, "The air of that age shone, one-hued, with laws," with no loss, as far as I can see, of accuracy). At p.84, Prosper et aduersus, 'Mundu in euentu versatur' is translated "The world is overturned in its outcomes" (compare Echard and Fanger, "The world is tossed and turned by chance," with maybe some loss of specificity). At p.134, Flectere quam frangi, 'olle/ Fictilis ad cacabum pugna valere nequit' is translated "the attack of the earthen pot cannot prevail over the cauldron" (Echard and Fanger, "the blow/ Of claypot 'gainst the kettle is in vain"). At p.173, Gloria perpetuos, 'Scandere sellata iura valebit eques' is translated "will succeed in mounting up the saddled laws as a knight" (Echard and Fanger, "The knight . . . mounts the saddled laws"--I suspect "mounted up" is the problem here). And so on. I think Galloway may be trying to convey something of the contortions of Gower's Latin verse, the ostentation of opacity, the straining of metaphor, the tortured verse-forms, the Hisperican cleverness that undoes the ambitious Latinitator. It is all very painful. Strangely enough, the clouds clear as Volume II begins, and the translations begin to run much more fluently, almost as if Galloway had seen the light, or had just gradually got the knack of doing it. The Explanatory Notes are enormously full and informative (Peck has made good use of the mass of material in Peter Nicholson's invaluable "Commentary," and acknowledges too his extensive use of Macaulay's notes, e.g. Vol. I, p. 329). They are generally even-handed in matters of interpretation, and Peck does not grind too many of his own axes. They are perhaps at times too expansive; if they had been at the foot of the page, I think there might have been more economy. Sometimes, for instance, they draw in references to critical works of comparatively little importance, often making points that are of only general relevance or sometimes hardly worth making at all (e.g. at Prol.196, 1022, 1.1769, 3, 213, 1193--Peck seems fond of this quotation, and repeats it in the note to 8.2339). I think such notes, though I consider them superfluous, are a tribute to Peck's collegiality, his generosity to all who have written on the poem and his desire to acknowledge them by including them somewhere; the same would be true with the more indulgently lengthy quotation from the seminar-paper of a Rochester graduate-student (at 3.1375). The recurrent notes on what is happening in "Chaucer's Ghoast" (1672) are a whimsical addition to the already expansive annotation. The Introduction to Volume I takes a few passages from Peck's 1968 edition of "Selections" from the CA, but is greatly expanded. It is a fine piece of writing, instinct with a deep knowledge of and a deep feeling for the poem. Peck is particularly good on the Augustinian physiology and psychology of reading and perception, on 'reading as therapy', on the stories as exercises in maturing understanding, on the long dramatic narrative of self-discovery. His views have not changed much over the years. He sees Gower as a moral poet rather than a love-poet, indeed a moralist before a poet, and considers Book 7 the king-pin of the whole. It is not my view of the poem, but I have to acknowledge it to be closer to the modern consensus of critics like Kurt Olsson, Winthrop Wetherbee and James Simpson. Volume II has another long Introduction, stressing the nature of the CA as a "psychological drama of reading," and making good analysis of approaches to the poem in terms of performance-theory, the frame-narrative, and the use of visual imagery in narrative. There is also lavish explication of the stories in Books 3-5. Volume III has another long Introduction (I think Russell may now have said all that he wants to say about the poem), especially important in marking the shift from the confessional mode of earlier books to the more explicitly educational mode made evident in Book 7. There are some reflections on "Gower the Historian" and then, as before, extended summary and explication of the matter of the three books in the volume. There are a good many changes in format in this volume, presumably the model for future revisions of the whole. Innovations include the valuable List of Contents with itemized titles for each story and "chapter," an Index of Subjects (for Vols. I-III) and an Index of References for Vol. III only.One or two startling moments: "novelly," as adverb (Vol. I, p.303); "ficticious" (sic, Vol.I, p.344), "breech" (for "breach," Vol. I, p. 354). And how did "Let he who . . . . (Vol. I, p.201) get past so many distinguished professors of English? Some moans and disagreements therefore, inevitably; but a magnificent achievement. [DP. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1.] When I reviewed the first volume of Peck's new edition of CA for JGN in 2001, I welcomed the opportunity that it gave to teach the poem in entire books rather than just selections, and I praised the choice to put the Prologue, Book 1, and Book 8 together in one volume as an ingenious solution to the problem of presenting the poem to beginners. I also commended Andrew Galloway's translations of the complete Latin apparatus. But I had a few reservations. I pointed out the incomplete and to some extent misleading account of the presentation of the text; I felt that Peck could have done a lot more to update Macaulay's punctuation; and I felt that he gave an overly directive reading of the poem in place of a real introduction. The completion of the edition with the appearance of volume 3 offers a chance to reassess both the scheme as a whole and the details of its execution. In some respects the edition has improved as it progressed. There is evidence of much greater care in the preparation of the text, and there are, for instance, more textual notes in vols. 2 and 3 than appeared in vol. 1, and they are far more detailed. There is still, however, no good account of the editorial procedure, a problem that is now only exacerbated by the inconsistencies between the first and the subsequent volumes. Peck claims to have used the Fairfax MS as his "copy text" (3:485) and to have "consulted" (3:33) six others (Macaulay's A, B, C, J, S, and T). This is a different list from vol. 1 (which does not cite C or T, but includes Delta), and it is not clear what Peck means by "consulted," since A, C, and T are cited far less often in the notes than B, J, and S. Even with these latter copies, the notes do not offer a complete record of variants. (Macaulay's notes offer a much fuller selection.) The emphasis is on departures from Macaulay: in vol. 3 alone there are 42 instances in which Peck follows F where Macaulay chooses to follow a different MS; 17 instances in which Peck follows F where Macaulay's different reading has no evident MS support (These are evidently Macaulay's errors of transcription. All are very minor. They include 5.5918, where the note is incorrect.); and 19 instances in which Peck follows Macaulay in departing from F. At least Peck has provided the MS authority for his departures from Macaulay or from F (one of the issues that I had with vol. 1), though he still does not explain what principles guided his choice. (His understanding of the relation among the surviving copies appears to be based only on Macaulay and Fisher; see 3.33.) The text itself appears reasonably accurate. I checked a passage of a little less than 400 lines (5.2859-3246) against both Macaulay and my photocopy of F. I found one instance where Peck follows Macaulay in error (my for mi in 5.2939) and one new mistake (him where Macaulay and F have hem, 5.2884). This is pretty small stuff, on about the same level as the errors that Peck found in Macaulay. I also found that Peck has modernized the capitalization and some of the spelling in his text, following the normal practice for TEAMS editions, and that he has also taken far more liberty with Macaulay's punctuation than he did in vol. 1, making at least two dozen changes in the passage that I examined. These are welcome, but again I wish he had done more, and there are at least another dozen passages in which I feel that no modern editor, beginning fresh, would have chosen the punctuation that Macaulay did. Again, not a major problem, but it does lead me to the same conclusion that I reached with vol. 1: that Peck's "copy text" was not Fairfax at all but Macaulay, which he has read against F and some other copies and which he has modernized a bit. This is actually not a new edition of the poem in the usual sense, and I think that Peck could have been a little clearer about it. The introductions to vols. 2 and 3 are very much in the mold of that to vol. 1. They offer us Peck's reading of the poem. Amans is a lost sinner; the poem is "a study of the self's effort to reclaim its own estate" (2:39); and Amans' personal regeneration also has a political and social correlative, in the regeneration of the community. In vol. 2 Peck is somewhat hard-pressed to apply this understanding to Books 2 and 3 except in his discussion of individual tales (which he must treat in isolation from the dialogue), and in Book 4, it emerges only as an unexpressed and ironic counterpoint to what Genius and Amans actually say. In vol. 3 Peck has somewhat more to work with, as "Gower alters his earlier structural patterns to shift the focus from confession and impersonation to education--education in good rule" (3:1). Except in his discussion of the treatment of Chastity, however, there is little hint in the third introduction that the poem is actually concerned with love, and Peck arranges his discussion (as Gower does not) to conclude with the tale of Lycurgus and the importance of the rule of law. There is certainly much of value here: a good couple of pages on Nature in vol. 2, for instance, (2:14-17) (though I find the preceding discussion of CA as "drama" to be heavy with anachronism), and some good comments on the folkloric aspect of CA and on the range of Gower's style in vol. 3 (3:10-15). But overall, Peck has evidently viewed this edition as an opportunity to espouse the same view of the thematic structure of the poem that he has argued for since 1968. Whether or not I agree with this view is unimportant (just for the record: I don't); what is at issue is whether or not this is an appropriate function for the introductions in an edition that is intended for beginners. I see another missed opportunity here. Not only does Peck close off discussion of such issues as the roles of Genius and Amans (What really does happen in the conclusion? For a view very different from Peck's, students should be directed to Burrow (1983).), but some of the best of the recent writers on Gower have opened up the poem in ways that couldn't have been anticipated when Peck and I first studied it, and some have challenged both the necessity and the possibility of a single consistent moral message from beginning to end. Except in his discussion of Nature, however, Peck never acknowledges them. By being a little less prescriptive, by focusing a little more on what still must be regarded as unresolved issues in the reading of the poem, Peck could have done quite a bit more to prepare the way for the next generation of Gower scholars. Having studied the poem for so long, Peck certainly knows it very well, and there is therefore much of value in the explanatory notes, particularly, I feel, in Book 7. And I must say once again what a fine job Andrew Galloway has done with the Latin apparatus. (Note to the publisher: half of the translation to the gloss at 5.4579 was inadvertently left out.) The notes also record Galloway's discovery that the twelve Latin glosses to the discussion of the signs of the zodiac in Book 7 are metrically regular and together constitute a "Latin poem on the seasons" (3:449); to which I can add that the second of these, at 7.1015, contains a typically Gowerian quotation of Ovid's "Fasti" 3.240, the best evidence that I know of that Gower himself actually composed at least some of the glosses to the poem. As for the overall scheme of the edition: it appears to me now that if the original plan was to make each volume independent, it has not been carried out consistently, and if it was not, then there was perhaps much less reason for presenting the poem out of chronological order and placing Book 8 in vol. 1. Vol. 3 contains a subject index (a list of characters and topics) to all three volumes, suggesting that they constitute a single work. Peck seems to have thought of his three introductions as parts of a single composition, and indeed his discussions of such topics as Nature or law are as relevant to any of the volumes as to the volume in which they occur, and his own argument on the structure of the poem depends heavily on reading Book 7 before Book 8. Those who use vol. 1 alone are going to receive a very partial, very incomplete view of the poem, and those who use the complete edition will now have a rather disjointed view. I'm afraid that moving Book 8 to vol. 1 seems much less of a good idea now that the edition is complete than it seemed at the beginning. In sum: this is a very attractive and usable edition of the complete text of the "Confessio Amantis"; it has some very important features (notably Galloway's translations); and it is very affordable. We have to be glad to have it. But it also has its quirks, notably its arrangement; as a guide to reading the poem, it has to be used with great care; and in several important ways, it leaves me thinking about what might have been. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1.] FOR ALMOST 40 years--from 1966 to the year 2004--Russell Peck's edition of selections from Gower's "Confessio Amantis" has been the best hope of teachers wishing to introduce Gower's great poem to undergraduate readers. There were other excerpted editions, but none was as ambitious as Peck's nor, from the time it was taken up by the MARTS series, so neatly combining availability and affordability. Nevertheless, the first version of Peck's Gower left many gaps. As a collection of excerpts, it privileged the stories in the poem, excising much of the frame. That excision also necessarily removed the Latin from the poem--most of the Latin verses and all of the prose glosses disappeared. And as a one-volume edition of the poem, Peck's first edition was limited in terms of introduction and explanatory notes. Then, in the year 2000, Peck's new Gower began to appear, and by 2004 the three-volume set was complete. It still has the undergraduate student very much in mind: Volume 1 contains what one might think of as the essence of the poem, while Volumes 2 and 3 offer all the rest of--one could still assign a one-volume, partial Gower. But a quick glance at Volume 1 shows how differently we now approach the question of the essential Gower. This volume offers the poem's frame--the Prologue and Book VIII, and Book I, the introduction of the confessional structure. Like the other volumes, it now includes all the Latin: the verses, on the page with translations in the notes, and the glosses in both Latin and translation in the notes, indicated in the text by the presence of pointing hands. The speaker markers found in many manuscripts of the poem have been included as well. The poem no longer ends with the "Explicit iste liber," but rather, with the "Quia vnusquisque," a restatement of Gower's whole poetical career. Even in this single volume, then, the poem is presented as a complex, ornately structured, multi-layered and multi-lingual text, the work of a highly self-conscious public poet. There are gestures towards its textual tradition as well: the first volume offers 5 illustrations drawn from the manuscripts, and prints the Ricardian and Henrician versions of the Prologue side-by- side. The first edition drew on Macaulay, checking the venerable editor's work against the Fairfax manuscript, then understood to show signs of Gower's personal intervention. This new edition continues to draw on Macaulay, but has sampled from seven manuscripts (note a typo in the reference to Trinity R.3.3--Peck of course consulted R.3.2), and the results of that sampling appear in the (relatively brief) textual notes at the end of each volume. Volume 1 is a reimagination of what one might teach if one were teaching part of the CA--but the edition as a whole is much more. It represents a lifetime's work on the poet, and thus is in many ways a very different beast from that first collection of excerpts. Each volume has a meaty introduction, often consisting of two parallel texts--Peck's reading of the poem, and a second critical conversation taking place in the extensive footnotes (there was little room for engagement with criticism--and of course, much less criticism with which to engage--in 1966). The extensive notes add further critical depth: where in the 1966 excerpted edition they consisted largely of brief references to sources and analogues, here they range widely through both medieval texts and modern critics. The notes to the Latin material, provided by Andrew Galloway, who also did the translations, are extremely thorough and thoughtful, restoring this part of the poem to its full role in the CA as a whole. And Peck's introductions, ranging as they do through medieval theoretical, social, political and literary contexts, and drawing extensively on Gower's other works, give a clear sense of many different ways one could approach the CA. Excerpted editions in the first part of the last century often gave the impression that they existed simply to allow a reader to compare Gower's stories (usually unfavorably) to Chaucer's. This new student edition of Gower, whether represented by its first volume or by the whole set, makes Gower's own claims central. The introduction to Volume 1 sets out the plan of the CA, reading it as a confessional text in the Boethian mode. Some of this material appeared in the first edition as well, but here the argument is enriched with considerable detail, for example from St Augustine and other medieval thinkers on the subjects of memory, history, and learning. Peck argues that Gower's "middle weie" is in part a reflection of a new, 14th-century mode of reading, one which attends to the gaps in fictions. He takes up the question of Gower's various authorial impersonations as part of this discussion of reading and reception. In Volume 2 (Books II-IV), he shifts his attention to what he sees as Gower's dramaturgical mode, in which confession is shown to be a performative art. Book IV, the last book in this volume, is read as the culmination and structural center of what Peck comes to call the "play"--before Gower shifts his attention to education, and takes on the mantle of this historian, a shift discussed in the introduction to Volume 3 (Books V-VII). Peck argues that by Book VII, Gower's legal and historical interests come to the fore, and he appears as the social counselor, concerned above all with the importance of right rule. It is a peculiarity of the non-sequential structure of these three volumes that the introduction to Volume 3 does not end explicitly with reference to the poem's frame--when surely it matters, as Peck makes very clear elsewhere, that the poem situates itself so clearly in Ricardian/ Henrician England. There are many references to this context throughout the three volumes--a student possessing all three would come away with a very clear sense that Gower imagined a public, political role for poetry. But the particular final moment at the end of the introduction to Volume 3 does seem to leave one hanging. I understand the decision to split the CA as has been done, and I can easily imagine, as I hope I've made clear above, how one would make use of Volume 1. I have a little more difficulty putting the three volumes together--I think what I'd most like would be either Volume 1 on its own, or three volumes which offered the poem--and thus Peck's many stimulating readings– in order. There are a few other decisions with which I might quibble. Apart from the side-by-side printing of the Prologue versions discussed above, most of the significant variation between versions is relegated to the notes, sometimes printed out and sometimes simply described– Macaulay's decisions about the relative status of the versions is still largely intact, in other words. Nevertheless, there is much more acknowledgement of variance here than was the case before, and Peck never claims to be providing a new scholarly edition to replace Macaulay's. There are many features of the texts intended to help students--words are glossed in the margins, difficult passages are translated at the bottom of the page, and there is even a brief glossary at the end of the third volume. But one feature of the 1966 excerpted edition, a long discussion of Gower's language, has been largely omitted--some teachers might miss this aspect of the text. These are minor points. There is no doubt that Russell Peck has done teachers and students (of many levels) of Gower a great service by so significantly re-imagining and reworking his old edition. Both the one- and three-volume versions present Gower as a vital, engaging and important poet. We all of us owe Peck and TEAMS a debt of gratitude for providing us the wherewithal to make that case to new generations of students. [SE. Copyright. The John Gower Newsletter. JGN 25.1.] 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. Confessio Amantis, 3 vols. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek Published Pearsall, Derek. "The Organisation of the Latin Apparatus in Gower's Confessio Amantis: The Scribes and their Problems." In The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya. Ed. Matsuda, Takami and Linenthal, Richard A. and Scahill, John. Cambridge: Brewer and Tokyo: Yushodo Press, 2004, pp. 99-112. ISBN 1843840200 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review The remarkable stability of the text and the consistency in choice and placement of the illustrations and in the hierarchy of decoration in the earliest MSS of CA all suggest, Pearsall argues, their derivation from exemplars that had been "meticulously supervised by the author" (100). The consistency of presentation of the Latin apparatus in the same MSS suggests that it too "was in that tradition from the start and derives from the author's copies" (102); and in part because of the unlikelihood that anyone else either could or would have wanted to provide the Latin summaries, Pearsall concludes that these must be attributed to the author himself. In the longest part of his essay, he considers that problems that the scribes faced in incorporating the marginal apparatus, particularly in the instances when a long Latin summary began near the bottom of a column, or in later MSS, when the decision was made to incorporate the summaries into the column of text. Five plates illustrate some typical results of the scribes' decisions and miscalculations. Pearsall offers a broad and sympathetic conclusion that has implications that go beyond the subject of the glosses or of the MSS of CA: "What I have found is that the scribes of the Confessio mostly copy what is in front of them with care and accuracy and occasionally ingenuity but no more effort of thought than is immediately necessary. Where the exemplars or the general instructions for dealing with them are difficult to fol-low, scribes do their best to solve practical problems (sometimes of their own making) in the management of a complex layout, working with little or no supervision, evolving ad hoc expedients but not applying them consistently, trying to reduce the amount of extra work they are asked to do in organising the apparatus, growing exhausted. It is the world of Hard Work that the manuscripts open up to us, of uncomfortable benches and creaky desks, pens in need of repair and ink in need of replenishment, poorlight, strained eyes, strained patience" (112). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 24.1] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Organisation of the Latin Apparatus in Gower's Confessio Amantis: The Scribes and their Problems Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer and Tokyo: Yushodo Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, A. S. G. Published Edwards, A. S. G.. "Gower in the Delamere Chaucer Manuscript." In The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya. Ed. Matsuda, Takami and Linenthal, Richard A. and Scahill, John. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 81-86. ISBN 1843840200 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review The former Delamere MS (now Takamiya MS 32) is one of the very few copies of CT still in private hands. It is also one of the rare MSS in which Chaucer's and Gower's works appear together (Edwards lists only 5 others), and of those that contains excerpts from CA, Takamiya has the largest selection, including 5 tales at the beginning and a sixth ("Nebuchadnezzar") at the end. Edwards skillfully disentangles the complicated history of the book. Though by the same scribe, the three gatherings containing the Gower excerpts were not originally part of the CT MS with which they are presently bound, and may once have been part of a much larger book. The order and formatting of the selections suggest that they were done in two phases. The tale of Nebuchadnezzar, finally, which immediately follows the conclusion of CT, may, Edwards suggests, have been "conceived as some kind of quire filler" (85). This essay (along with that of Derek Pearsall, summarized below) appears in a magnificently produced new festschrift in honor of the present owner of this MS, Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya of Keio University. Forty of our most distinguished medievalists here offer 39 essays in worthy tribute to Professor Takamiya's labors as a collector and his contributions to the study of medieval English literature, including his work on Chaucer, Malory, Hilton, and Gower. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1.] 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 Gower in the Delamere Chaucer Manuscript 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân Published Echard, Siân. "Last Words: Latin at the End of the Confessio Amantis." In Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A.G. Rigg. Ed. Green, Richard and Mooney, Linne R.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, pp. 99-121. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review Echard examines how the selection and presentation of the final matter (mostly in Latin) in both MSS and editions of Gower's works affect the reader's perception of the poet's achievement and reputation. The variety that she reveals is concealed, of course, beneath the arrangement that has become familiar to us from the choices that Macaulay made for his edition. Where we are accustomed to read the author's assertions about his "survival through his works " (100), for instance, two MSS of VC end instead with an epitaph, an offer of indulgences for those who pray for the poet's soul, and in one case an illustration of a tomb, drawing attention to his death and to an afterlife of a very different kind. Similar alternatives are evident in the two versions of the final Latin epigram of Book 8 of CA. One praises Richard, the other makes a more general prayer. Apart from the political motivation for the alteration, "one version could be seen as the poet's self-proclamation under the guide of the conventional courtly gesture; the other, as the equally conventional but different recognition, in the face of approaching death, of a spiritual imperative that supersedes the poetic claim" (103). The Latin Explicit that normally follows CA also exists, as is well known, in two versions, one with an additional two lines commending the book to Henry. But again, beyond whatever personal or political motivation for the addition, there is also a change in the poet's self-presentation, shifting attention from "his own poetic claims to attention" (104) to his subservience to his patron. In the revisions of the colophon, Echard sees not only a changing view of his first patron but also a shift from the attention given to the composition and structure of Gower's three poems to the language in which they are written: "the result of the process, whether it was Gower's process or not, is that this linguistic aspect of his poetic identity is heightened, and actually looms as large or larger in the manuscript tradition than do his political allegiances" (106). Gower's linguistic achievement is also emphasized in the verses beginning "Eneidos Bucolis," which are found in two copies of CA and four of VC. "This is a paradoxical piece," Echard notes, "asserting in Latin that the key aspect of Gower's poetic identity is his mastery of the vernacular" (108), a paradox heightened by the way in which it normally occurs in the company of his Latin or French compositions rather than his English, even in MSS of CA. The surviving copies also differ in the ways in which the end matter is decorated and arranged. The result is a variety of different presentations of the poet, a tradition that continues in modern editions, as both Berthelette and Macaulay, in Echard's account, can each be found making choices of presentation based on his own ideas about what constitutes an appropriate "last word." Echard's essay concludes with a helpful table showing the end contents of all of the surviving MSS of CA and VC. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.2.] 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 Last Words: Latin at the End of the Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Toronto Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Mehl, Dieter Published Mehl, Dieter. "Old Age in Middle English Literature: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Gawain-Poet." In Old Age and Ageing in British and American Culture and Literature. Ed. Jansohn, Christa. Münster: Lit Verlag, 2004, pp. 29-38. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Middle English depictions of old age fall into several distinctive categories: the "ugly witch" (SGGK, WBT), the "disturbing reminder of death" (PardT, PP), but most numerous of all, the figure of the impotent lover. "The most disturbing, comical or sobering thing about old age, according to most medieval poets, is that it makes you unfit for love" (29). Female examples include the figure of Elde in RR and the old woman in WBT, but "the majority of Love's ageing victims . . . are old men" (31). A cruelly comic example occurs in MerT. More serious and more disillusioning is the experience of the aged lover at the end of CA. "In the end, the ageing poet is left feeling that he has wasted his time on an illusionary pursuit and had better go home to spend the remainder of his life in prayer. . . . This is a long way from the comedy of January, even though the final lesson may be the same: old age represents a time of life when man should turn his thought to more serious matters than love and think of his end. The universal symptoms of senile infirmity, so easily laughed at in the conventional fabliau, will turn into a frightening memento mori when taken seriously" (34-35). A more moving, and much less conventional, picture of ageing can be found in the Book of Margery Kempe, which describes Margery's caring for her invalid husband. "There comes through this account an impression of genuine devotion and human charity that says more about some real problems of old age than many more poetical texts" (38). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.2/] 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 Old Age in Middle English Literature: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Gawain-Poet Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Lit Verlag, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Echard identifies five recurring themes in the critical response to the poet: his identity as "moral Gower," his political views, his choice of language, his relation to his sources, and both his personal and his literary relation to Chaucer. She traces these in large part to the poet's own deliberate self-fashioning, to "the qualities that he made central to his own poetic ethos" (17), and she points out how Gower's reputation has shifted over the centuries as each of these has provided either a stick with which to beat the poet (primarily during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) or as an opening to a greater understanding of his work (more recently), as, for instance, critics have taken a broader interest in the implications of "moral," in the complex issues of a poet's self-presentation, and in the political and ideological implications of the choice between Latin and the vernacular. That broadening of understanding is admirably illustrated by the writers that follow in this volume, and Echard's essay serves both to situate their contributions and to tie together the diverse approaches. [PN. Copyright John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân Published Echard, Siân. "Gower's Reputation." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 1-22. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Influence and Later Allusion 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 Reputation 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Surveys what can be inferred from Gower's scant life records (mostly on property dealings) and the references in Gower's own poetry; then gives greatest attention to the geography of Southwark during Gower's time (providing some helpful maps), to the layout of the priory church of St. Mary Overie, and to the construction of Gower's tomb, as it appears today and as it was described by 16th century observers. The tomb, they note, "represents a range of facets of a contemporary perception of Gower; several, perhaps all of them, his own model of how he saw himself, or wished to be portrayed" (40). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hines, John Cohen, Nathalie Roffey, Simon Published Hines, John and Cohen, Nathalie and Roffey, Simon. "'Iohannes Gower, Armiger, Poeta': Records and Memorials of His Life and Death." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 23-41. 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 'Iohannes Gower, Armiger, Poeta': Records and Memorials of His Life and Death 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Discusses the social geography of the three adjacent communities with which Gower had connections. He explores the difficulties of reconstructing Gower's audience, particularly of associating him directly with those who are though to have made up the "Chaucer circle." He also notes some paradoxes in the relation between Gower's writing and his life: that the man who spent nearly his entire life in Southwark should have so little to say about the city, its government, or the majority of its citizens; and that a poet with so little personal or professional ties to the monarchy should be been so preoccupied with the nature and responsibilities of kingship. "Gower's uniquely urban condition," he concludes, "as a non-bureaucratic, non-aristocratic, privately employed professional, allowed him to develop a sense of the poet that was elevated in its autonomy, in its self-regard and in its ambition--but that required a strong and attentive monarch to legitimize his voice and to realize his social visions" (60). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Epstein, Robert Published Epstein, Robert. "London, Southwark, Westminster: Gower's Urban Contexts." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 43-60. 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 London, Southwark, Westminster: Gower's Urban Contexts 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Provides a brief but comprehensible account of what we know of Gower's language--a mixture of Kentish and Suffolk forms (consistent with Gower's family background) that would have been "fairly easily accommodated" (69) within the great variety of London speech at the time but that might have struck some as a bit old-fashioned--and equally helpfully, of how we know it. Smith also points to the remarkably conservative character of scribes' spelling habits in the later MSS of CA as an example of the perpetuation of one of several competing "standard" forms of the language, this one serving the very specific purpose of disseminating Gower's text. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, Jeremy J Published Smith, Jeremy J. "John Gower and London English." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 61-72. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies 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 John Gower and London English 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Provides a remarkable gathering in one place of what can be said about the appearance, format, arrangement, contents, illustration and decoration, production, ownership, and readership of the MS copies of Gower's works. Pearsall writes not only from long and intimate acquaintance with the books that he describes but also with characteristic sympathy for the scribes. The handlist of Gower MSS on pp. 74-79 will now be our basic point of reference until the appearance of the much awaited "Descriptive Catalogue," forthcoming under Pearsall's editorship. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek Published Pearsall, Derek. "The Manuscripts and Illustrations of Gower's Works." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 73-97. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Manuscripts and Illustrations of Gower's Works 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Discusses the appearance of Gower the poet in Robert Greene's "Greenes Vision" of 1594 and in Shakespeare's "Pericles" (1611), and the borrowings from CA in Shakespeare's earlier "Comedy of Errors" and in a 1640 pamphlet entitled "A Certain Relation of the Hog-faced Gentlewoman, called Tannekin Skinker" (in which the example of Florent is narrated in order to suggest the possibility of an equally happy metamorphosis for the unfortunate young woman of the title). In Greene's work, Chaucer and Gower are each called upon to tell stories in which the issue of the moral value of literature becomes entangled with the issue of the moral dangers posed by the beauty of the women in their tales. The author awards the prize--for the uprightness of both tale and character--to Gower. Cooper has much of interest to say about how each of these works perpetuated Gower's reputation both as moralist and as storyteller. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cooper, Helen Published Cooper, Helen. "'This worthy olde writer': Pericles and other Gowers, 1592-1640." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 99-113. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 'This worthy olde writer': Pericles and other Gowers, 1592-1640 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Looks at Gower's reception through his publication history, from Caxton, through Berthelette, Todd, Morley, Pauli, and Macaulay, down to Peck, with a glance at the Roxburghe Club editions and at the editions of selected tales intended for use in the classroom. (Missing, however, both here and in the bibliography on p. 272, is any reference to Macaulay's 1903 edition of selections for "young students," who Macaulay evidently felt wouldn't be too put out either by the Latin glosses and epigrams or by thorn and yogh.) Echard skillfully traces the impact on Gower's reputation not only of the critical commentary included in each edition but also of such matters as typography, layout, and apparatus. She notes that on the whole, Gower has been hurt more than helped by those who have brought his works to print, and while not suggesting that there can be any perfect edition, she has high praise for Peck's. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân Published Echard, Siân. "Gower in Print." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 115-35. 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 Gower in Print 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Surveys Gower's surviving works in his other vernacular. After giving careful attention to their survival in MS, Yeager has much to say about the quality of both Gower's verse and prose, about the uniqueness of conception of his works, particularly MO and CB, and about the significance of the fact that these works are in French. MO, he notes, has a breadth and ambition unprecedented in any of the works that have been identified as its possible sources, but it is unified, first of all by its "envelope of amorous address" (143), the invocation of "chascun amant" at the beginning, and the lyrical prayer to the virgin at the end; and second, by its examination, through is description of the vices and virtues, of good and bad desire. CB has a narrative structure centered on the poet-narrator's decision to absent himself for the sake of his lady's reputation, which leads to a more complete union based on trust and actual devotion rather than mere desire. In both these works, Gower "use[s] the culture of French courtly writing against itself" (144): he transcends the "essential immorality" (147) of courtly literature and reclaims it for legitimate love. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "John Gower's French." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 137-51. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's French 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Situates Gower's Latin writing within the trilingual culture of late 14th-century England and within the traditions of Anglo-Latin writing. The authors point out that Gower's choice of unrhymed elegiac couplets for VC represented a return to a somewhat old-fashioned practice. VC's focus on politics and history is typical of Anglo-Latin writing of the time, and the "public" quality of the work distinguishes it from the more personal CA and MO. Most of VC attempts rather typically to summon historical evidence in support of the author's moral and political views; the "Visio" and CrT, however, offer a more exceptional re-creation of historical events. The "Visio," the authors note, also has important debts to vernacular literature. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rigg, A. G. Moore, Edward G Published Rigg, A. G. and Moore, Edward G. "The Latin Works: Politics, Lament and Praise." In A Comanion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 153-64. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 The Latin Works: Politics, Lament and Praise 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Discusses Gower's relation to Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, and their successors Machaut and Froissart. All these poets, she writes, "are preoccupied by a desire to investigate the relationship between writing and the self, the kind of access a writer has to truth, and how the art of fiction both enables and inhibits this access. In all these writers, the figure of the lover acts as one of the main ways for them to represent the art of writing: the lover generates the poetry, and indeed is often represented as a poet" (165). So too Gower creates a "precarious distinction" (180) between poet and lover before collapsing the two roles at the poem's end, and he also includes Genius as a way of doubling his presence: "Genius is the interlocutor of the author and at the same time an internalized projection of him" (177). The confession frame is also enlisted in the exploration of the topic of identity. "Working within the central tradition of French writers," Butterfield concludes, love "becomes for him, as for them, a way of examining the art of fiction, and hence the multiple art of confessing the self" (180). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Butterfield, Ardis Published Butterfield, Ardis. "'Confessio Amantis' and the French Tradition." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 165-80. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 'Confessio Amantis' and the French 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Wetherbee, Winthrop Published Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Chaucer and Boethian Tradition in the 'Confessio Amantis'." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 181-96. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review According to Wetherbee, the essential ambiguity of "naturatus amor" in the opening Latin epigram of Book 1 of CA reflects "fundamental questions about the authoritative role of the Latin tradition in forming [Gower's] literary culture" as well as "larger questions about the relation of human life and history to the natural order" (181-82). The uncertainties about man's relation to nature--whether as a "paradigm of order" or as "a kind of cosmic determinism" (184)--can be traced to Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy." Boethius's successors--Bernardus Silvestris, Alain de Lille, and Jean de Meun--depict the contradictions that result in different ways. For Jean de Meun they are manifested in an unresolved dialectic between the Latin Boethian tradition and the love-cult of vernacular poetry. The same confrontation is made visible in the framing of Gower's English poem with its Latin apparatus, which fails to either contain or control the English text. It is also embodied in Genius, who partakes both of the Latin and the vernacular. "He is less a spokesman than a mediator--a mediator, moreover, whose own perception of the standards of 'kinde' and 'resoun' which he holds up to Amans preserves unresolved the ambiguous perspective of the Boethian tradition. . . . Genius participates in both worlds, but he can provide no authoritative bases for reconciling the conflicting claims of Nature and courtly idealism" (190). "Skeptical of its own authority," Wetherbee concludes, "the Latin tradition is thus normative for Gower, a stable framework for his questioning of the values of his own world" (196) rather than authoritatively re-affirming them. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] 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 Chaucer and Boethian Tradition in the 'Confessio Amantis' 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Discusses Gower's treatment of his female characters, focusing on three tales: "Canace and Machaire," in which, Watt argues, contrary to most published commentary, the children are held responsible for their incestuous relationship and, at least at the beginning, the blame is equally shared between them; "Iphis and Iante," in which the two girls suffer no blame for their desire for one another or for Iphis's cross-dressing before Iphis is transformed into a man; and "Calistona," in which Gower's alterations subtly transform the rape into a seduction for which the woman herself can be held at least in part responsible. Watt reaches two important conclusions: one, "going against the tide of recent gender criticism," as she herself proclaims, that Gower's main concern is ethical, and that "when a writer like Gower writes about women or men, about homosexual or heterosexual desires, or about transvestism or transsexuality, he (or she) is not necessarily discussing something else" (211). And second (echoing an argument also recently made by Ellen Shaw Bakalian), that "the central ethical message of the Confessio Amantis as a whole is that the responsibility for sin or error falls firmly on the individual who commits it, male or female" (213). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watt, Diane Published Watt, Diane. "Gender and Sexuality in 'Confessio Amantis'." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 197-213. 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 Gender and Sexuality in 'Confessio Amantis' 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Peck summarizes the argument on the relation between personal and political governance in all of Gower's work, particularly in CA, that he first put forth in his "Kingship and Common Profit" in 1978: "Gower conceives of the hypostasis between the personal and social through images of kingship, domain, and right rule. Each--the social and the personal--is contingent upon the other and operates through metaphoric interdependence. The king of England is akin to the king of the soul; the state of England is linked to one's sense of personal domain; and right rule is mirrored simultaneously through both sides of the equation" (216). In the longer, second part of his essay, Peck traces Gower's commentary on the effects of royal misrule through VC, MO, TC, and "IPP," and he offers a new attempt to read the dedication of CA to "Henry of Lancaster" as a rejection of King Richard II motivated by Richard's dispute with the city of London in 1392 (cf. Fisher, 116-22). (The reasons for the second dedication are an issue on which Gower scholars are not yet of a single mind. For an assortment of views, see in the same volume pp. 26, 57, 61, 94 n. 45, and 159.) [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A Published Peck, Russell A. "The Politics and Psychology of Governance in Gower: Ideas of Kingship and Real Kings." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 215-38. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Cronica Tripertita In Praise of Peace 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 Politics and Psychology of Governance in Gower: Ideas of Kingship and Real Kings 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Considers the implications of Gower's "correctness," his "purity of diction" and his "plain style," the three terms that occur most commonly in the descriptions and assessments of Gower's style. The first is at least to some extent anachronistic, since there were no fixed standards of correctness in such matters as spelling, one of the features of language in which Gower's MSS are most consistent, in Gower's time. It does apply, however, Burrow observes, to the poet's handling of both meter and rhyme--both for their regularity and for the way in which they conform to spoken language--and to grammar and syntax, where Gower displays an impressive command of periodic syntax, perhaps because of his experience of writing in Latin. Gower's diction is notable for its virtual exclusion of "commonplace English poeticisms" (244) from contemporary popular poetry or from the alliterative tradition, both found in far greater numbers in Chaucer. The "plain style," finally, is best understood with reference to Gower's own comments on "plainness": it is a style unadorned by rhetorical display consisting of "simple words used in straightforward literal senses" (246). The resulting tendency towards the typical and the general is appropriate to a poem of exemplary wisdom. CA is not noted for its "richly poetic strokes" (248), Burrow concludes, which is one reason why it may fail to appeal. "In its limitations as well as its strengths, Gower's is essentially a long-poem style" (249), and while long poems themselves have gone out of style, the result can nonetheless be considered true poetry. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burrow, John Published Burrow, John. "Gower's Poetic Styles." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 239-50. 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's Poetic Styles 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 In its arrangement, this is an extremely useful supplement to existing bibliographies, as well as being more up-to-date. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân Lanz, Julie Published Echard, Siân and Lanz, Julie. "Chronology of Gower Criticism." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 251-73. Gower Subject Bibliographies, Reports, and Reference Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chronology of Gower Criticism 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 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 In 1931, Ethel Seaton attempted to demonstrate that Gower was the most likely author of the French dream vision "Le Songe Vert." Someone (I have lost the reference) later characterized Seaton's piece as an exercise in "misplaced ingenuity," and Yeager would no doubt agree. He sets aside most of the points of resemblance that Seaton cites as unpersuasive, and he points out differences from Gower's work that she doesn't take into account. The main thrust of his essay, however, is what can be deduced about the date, authorship, and preservation of the poem from the two manuscripts in which it is found. The earlier and more ornate, London, British Library MS Additional 34114, bears the arms (and mitre) of Henry Le Despenser, Bishop of Norwich from 1370 to 1406. "Le Songe Vert" appears there somewhat anomalously alongside three long verse narratives about heroes from the past, and Yeager speculates that the interest that binds the four works together lies in the models of behavior that they provide--in two very different realms--for the chivalric class. Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont MS 249 dates from the mid-fifteenth century and originated, Yeager argues, not far from where it is presently found, and it bears traces of the dialect of the south of France. It would be difficult to explain how a work of Gower's found its way so far, and "it seems wiser," Yeager concludes, "to speculate that Bishop Despenser, whose travels to France and the Low Countries are firmly attested, brought it home with him . . . than that the poem is one of Gower's that travelled the other way" (87). Yeager doesn't cite James Wimsatt's discussion of "Le Songe Vert" in "Chaucer and the French Love Poets" (Chapel Hill, 1968), 137-43, in which Wimsatt suggests that the French poem was modeled on Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess," and that it served in turn as a source for Oton de Granson's "Complainte de Saint Valentin," which resembles it closely in narrative setting. If the latter is correct, it would help make the dating of "Le Songe Vert" a bit more precise since Granson died in 1397. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "'Le Songe Vert,' BL Add. MS 34114 (the Spalding Manuscript), Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249 and John Gower." In Middle English Texts in Transition: A Festschrift Dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th Birthday. Ed. Horobin, Simon, and Mooney, Linne R. Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press/Boydell & Brewer, 2004, pp. 75-87. ISBN 9781903153536 Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Le Songe Vert,' BL Add. MS 34114 (the Spalding Manuscript), Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249 and John Gower. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available York Medieval Press/Boydell & Brewer. Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This article includes analysis of Gower the choric character in Shakespeare's "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." It does not discuss the works of Gower the poet. Famously disparaged by Ben Jonson as "a mouldy tale," "Pericles" serves Oesterlen, quoting Judith Butler, as a kind of test case for examining "the reciprocity of language and the body [that] is so creatively explored in [Shakespeare's] romances" (41). The "rich strangeness" of the romances is "more visionary than metaphysical," as the embodied experience of characters and audience is transformed into a vehicle of revelation. In "Pericles," Shakespeare (with his coauthors) created a new genre, the "dramatic narrative," in a "'mouldy tale' forever prone to all kinds of textual and bodily returns" (41). She sees the character of Gower as especially suited to personify the transcendental via the corporeal, as he returns, phoenix-like, from the "mould" of death to introduce a drama of "spectacular bodily and textual 'restorations'" (36, alluding to the "restorative" power claimed by Gower for his storytelling at "Pericles," choric Prologue 8). Mould-y indeed, the play creates "the mold" for something new, a melding of "narrative and drama," as the dead poet reappears at intervals to narrate past actions not enacted on the stage and set the scene to follow. Throughout this play, Oesterlen argues, the near-miraculous regeneration of the human body will be accomplished in close communion with a renewal of speech and text (37), as demonstrated by "outmoded" yet "re-creative" poetic style of Gower the character. Through sight and sound, the ancient tale is transfigured as "a play that matters [pun intended]" (38). Similarly, the "paradox" of the queen's restoration to life "is framed by the similarly anachronistic presence of Gower as narrator. This play "delays the need for explanation long enough to let the performance dominate the desire to know [as Pericles states]: "we do our longing stay/To hear the rest untold" (V.3.83-84, p. 41). Spoken by Gower, the final lines of the play sustain the theme of revival: "New joy wait on you! Here our play has ending" (Epilogue 18). This "ending" will not be permanent, however, as "the protean body of texts stays behind, promising 'new joy' with every new performance" (41). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Oesterlen, Eve-Marie. Published Oesterlen, Eve-Marie. "Why Bodies Matter in Mouldy Tales: Material (Re)Turns in 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre'." The Upstart Crow 24 (2004): 36-44. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Why Bodies Matter in Mouldy Tales: Material (Re)Turns in "Pericles, Prince of Tyre." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Moll shows that in London, British Library MS Lansdowne 204, containing the first version of John Hardyng's "Chronicle" (ca. 1450), "three of the rubrics to the history of Richard II make direct reference to Gower's work, and two of the rubrics quote the text at length" (154). After quoting the passages borrowed from, or dependent on, Gower's CrT, Moll concludes: "We can, therefore, expand the influence of the 'Cronica Tripertita' beyond Gower's immediate London circle to not only Hardyng's rubricator but the northern chronicler himself. In its brief borrowings from Gower's 'Cronica,' the first version of Hardyng's 'Chronicle' not only mollifies the harsh image of Richard II, it also separates Gower's text from the 'Vox Clamantis.' Hardyng does not seem to have used the 'Vox,' and all of the lines that place the 'Cronica' in relation to the 'Vox' have been omitted, thus raising the possibility that Hardyng had access to the 'Cronica' on its own" (157). Hardyng's knowledge and use of the 'Cronica' indicates that "the text continued to circulate long after Gower's circle of friends and associates had died" (157). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Moll, Richard J. Published Moll, Richard J. "Gower's Cronica Tripertita and the Latin Glosses to Hardyng's Chronicle." Journal of the Early Book Society 7 (2004): 153-58. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Croniica Tripertita Vox Clamantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's "Cronica Tripertita" and the Latin Glosses to Hardyng's "Chronicle." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Gingell, C. J.  Published Gingell, C. J.  "Gazing into the void": Apocalypse, Authority and Culture on the Margins of Medieval Society. Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Wales College of Cardiff, 2004. Dissertation Abstracts International C70.37. Abstract available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Mirour de l'Omme Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Review "The thesis examines ways in which . . . . apocalyptic feeling . . . . was one of the principal ways in which ordinary people responded to the crises of late fourteenth-century Europe, especially in England. The modern apocalyptic tradition is examined in the Introduction, looking at popular culture, such as TV, films and the Internet, whilst Chapter 1 reviews the medieval apocalyptic tradition and its equivalent means of expression – Mystery Plays, sermons, manuscript illustrations and lyrics. Chapter 2 examines 'Piers Plowman' as a text not only explicitly apocalyptic, but also explicitly fourteenth-century, grappling with many contemporary trends and traumas. Chapter 3 takes a similar approach to Gower's three major works, which have not previously been considered to be especially apocalyptic. The chapter also examines Gower's use of humour and satire, not just as didactic tools, but as further ways of reacting to crisis. The final two chapters detail the third form of response, that of seeking to take control of a threatening situation. These chapters review diverse activities such as alchemy and witchcraft, and look in more detail at those on the margins of society, often forced there by their lifestyle choices: in times of uncertainty and crisis the majority seeks to banish the unorthodox or unknowable in order to reaffirm its collective identity." Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Gazing into the void": Apocalypse, Authority and Culture on the Margins of Medieval Society. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review One of his nineteen contributions to the ODNB, Gray's biography of Gower opens with mention of Gower's tomb and date of death in 1408, estimating his birth as '"in the 1330s or 1340s," then proceeds to describe Gower's '"Family origins," correcting errors in Caxton's 1483 edition and other early biographies and clarifying the poet's origins in Kent and his connections with Yorkshire. Gray comments on Gower's role in the '"messy affair" of the purchase of the manor of Aldington Septvauns in Kent, and thinks it probable that Gower held '"some legal or civil office," citing evidence from the "Mirour de l'Omme" of his '"good knowledge of legal privileges and terminology." He then moves on to evidence that Gower lived in Southwark, his financial transactions, Lancastrian SS-collar, and late-in-life marriage to Agnes Groundolf (refraining from guessing why). Gray observes that, of Gower's life in the priory of St. Mary Overie, '"virtually nothing is known," and that the '"mysterious incident" involving Thomas Caudre, for whom three Londoners were mainprisors "that he would do or procure no harm to John Gower, remains unexplained: it may refer to a private quarrel, or to some financial dealings, or to some political disagreement." Beginning his description of Gower's "Literary career" Gray explains the difficulty in dating any early lyrical poetry that may reside in the late manuscript of "Cinkante Balades." Summary descriptions of "Mirour de l'Omme," "Vox Clamantis," and "Confessio Amantis ensue, accompanied by appreciative comments, and followed by similar treatments of Gower's short Latin poems, "In Praise of Peace," and "Cronica Tripertita." Throughout, Gray comments on political backgrounds to Gower's works and on relations between his works and Chaucer's. In his final sub-section--'"Last years, death, and reputation"--Gray returns to Gower at St. Mary Overie and Gower's tomb, along with other portraiture of the poet. Gray comments on the central place the CA holds in Gower's reputation, its Iberian translations ('"unusual" for a Middle English poem), and the negative treatment Gower received among nineteenth-century critics, replaced by '"serious study" undertaken after the publication of Macaulay's edition. A brief but useful list of sources closes Gray's account. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gray, Douglas. Published Gray, Douglas. '"Gower, John." In H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 61 vols. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Vol. 23, pp. 125-30. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, John. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This John Gower is not the poet, but a little-known 17th-century schoolmaster of Latin and Greek who "graduated from Cambridge University with a BA in 1632 and an MA in 1636 . . . . " In 1635 "he published a comic poem entitled 'Pyrgomachia,' or the Cowrageious Castle Combat'" (255) and in 1640, under the title "Roman Festivalls," his translation of Ovid's "Fasti." [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Newlands, Carole E. Published Newlands, Carole E. "The Other John Gower and the First English Translation of Ovid's 'Fasti.'" Hermathena 177/78 (2004, 2005): 251-65. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 Other John Gower and the First English Translation of Ovid's "Fasti." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004, 2005 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's brief tale of Dante's rebuke of a flatterer (CA *7.2329-37), while unique in its emphasis on the power of flattery, appears to combine elements from two different previously existing anecdotes, one (as told by Petrarch, usually cited as Gower's source) recounting Dante's reply to Cangrande regarding which servant is more pleasing, playing upon the similarity between the lord and the fool that he has rewarded, and another, originally told of Marco Lombardo (see Purg. XVI), invoking a difference in material rewards and addressing the rebuke to the fool himself. Sarantino surveys and reprints the most important surviving examples of each tradition (almost all Italian), noting the several points at which they intersect. Because of the difficulty of explaining Gower's access to any of these written texts, the most economical and therefore most likely explanation of Gower's immediate source, she concludes, is an oral tradition in which the elements of the two anecdotes had already been combined, and while it requires some adjustment in our understanding of the dating of the "second recension," she proposes that one possible conduit for the oral tradition was the party of Henry of Derby, who passed through northern Italy on his return from Jerusalem in 1393. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 25.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Tarantino, Elisabetta Published Tarantino, Elisabetta. "The Dante Anecdote in Gower's Confessio Amantis, Book VII." Chaucer Review 39.4 (2005), pp. 420-435. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Dante Anecdote in Gower's Confessio Amantis, Book VII Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Bratcher, James T. Published Bratcher, James T.. "Function of the Jeweled Bridle in Gower's 'Tale of Rosiphelee'." Chaucer Review 40 (2005), pp. 107-110. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Bratcher contrasts Gower's "Rosiphelee to the 13th-century French "Lai du Trot," which, he asserts, despite the many differences, "in some form . . . must have contributed" to Gower's tale, for these are the only two known versions of the medieval "purgatory of cruel beauties" in which a lone woman is punished for her neglect of love. The differences between the two reflect Gower's "deliberate reworking" of the earlier tale. The most significant of these is the attribution to the woman in the vision of a richly decorated bridle as a token of her (unhappily too tardy) submission to love. The introduction of the horse's headgear makes possible a pun on the ME word for bridle (< OE brīdel) and that for bridal (< "bride-ale," the custom of drinking in celebration of a wedding) in the woman's admonition to the heroine, "To godd, ma Dame, I you betake, / And warneth alle for mi sake,/ Of love that thei ben noght ydel, / And bidd hem thenke upon mi brydel" (CA 4.1431-34). The pun, judging from the citations in both OED and MED, appears to be completely plausible, though the spelling of the two words remains distinct and Gower nowhere else uses "bridale" in the marital sense (but cf. the "Cook's Tale," CT I.4375). As far as I can tell, it has gone unnoticed, and it is more significant than Bratcher realizes, for however subtle, it introduces the only allusion in the tale to marriage as the goal of one's submission to love (Bratcher's summary is incorrect in this regard), and it thus anticipates Genius' counsel, in the passage that immediately follows, that "thilke love is wel at ese, / Which set is upon mariage" (4.1476-77). As Bratcher notes, a complete edition of the "Lai du Trot" by Glyn S. Burgess and Leslie C. Brook is available at http://www.liv.ac.uk/sml/los/narrativelays.pdf. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1]. 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 Function of the Jeweled Bridle in Gower's 'Tale of Rosiphelee' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "John Gower's Audience: The Ballades." Chaucer Review 40 (2005), pp. 81-105. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review Gower's Cinkante Balades must in all likelihood be dated after 1385, not, as so many have believed, from Gower's youth, for all but two of the ballades consist of three identically rhymed stanzas plus an envoy, "the form that became standard for ballades only in the last years of the fourteenth century, influenced especially by the theories and practices of Eustache Deschamps? (82). This is just one of the many new insights into the origin and audience of both CB and Traitié that Yeager offers in this new essay, a complement to his piece in Echard's "Companion to Gower" (JGN 24.1), in which he provided the first convincing description of the thematic and narrative unity of CB. Christine de Pisan's Livre de Cent Balades was both a token of and an inspiration for the great fashion for the ballade in the early 1390s which, given the extensive contacts between French and English during the period, would certainly have been communicated to both poets and readers in England as well. Chaucer's ballades might well all date from this period, Yeager suggests. Traitié, since it does not use the envoy, is likely to be the earlier of Gower's two collections, probably dating from about 1390; and pointing to its affinities with CA – its similar use of Latin glosses, its use of ten of the same narratives as CA, its appearance within MSS of CA – Yeager argues that it was originally written for inclusion with CA, probably in the original Ricardian version. He thus has little patience with the notion that the work was meant as a wedding gift for Agnes Groundolf, pointing out that, with her Flemish name, there is little reason to suppose that she would have been the recipient of a composition in French. CB is more difficult to date precisely. In the only surviving copy it is preceded by a dedication to Henry IV, already king. That MS cannot, however, be the original presentation copy, Yeager points out, because of its lack of decoration and because of the diversity of its contents, lacking any single unifying theme. He offers some speculations on how the MS might have been assembled. More importantly, the separation of the existing copy from the original composition of its contents allows him to suggest that CB might have been first presented to Henry early in the 1390's, when interest in the ballade was at its highest, and even perhaps in 1393, when Gower is known to have received from Henry his collar of SS; and it also allows him to infer that the work might well have circulated beyond its royal patron. For in the last part of his essay, Yeager argues that neither collection should be viewed as intended for any particular reader but as addressed instead to contemporary poets, as Gower took up the challenge to demonstrate his mastery of the new form and responded with a strong statement of his own views on the morality of love, and to posterity, as part of the same attempt to secure his future reputation that is evident in the poet's colophon and in the design of his tomb. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 24.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Audience: The Ballades Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Barbaccia, Holly G. Published Barbaccia, Holly G.. "Kalendes of chaunge: Thinking Through Change in Middle English Poetry." PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2005. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review "The middle ages, so often assumed to be an epoch of orderly, hierarchical stability, is continuously fascinated or dismayed by the prospect and spectacle of change. My dissertation surveys representations of chaunge and eschaunge (interchangeable terms in Middle English) in fourteenth and fifteenth-century literature in order to arrive at a better understanding of how medieval authors struggled with the subjects of transformation and substitution, and what that struggle tells us about those authors, and about Middle English poetry. It transpires that the Middle English poetry paying most attention to chaunge and eschaunge attaches the language and imagery of transformation and substitution to female figures. My study investigates the most important of these figures and representative practices as they evolve in late fourteenth-century England, within the context of the literary exchanges and social changes of the Hundred Years War. Langland's Lady Meed and Gower's Constance, Chaucer's Criseyde, and the Gawain-poet's Lady Bertilak work differently to different ends, effecting change in masculine narrators and protagonists that excites outrage, astonishment, and admiration. . . . The figures and texts I study speak to complex concerns and questions for the Middle Ages: chaunge and eschaunge reveal the instability of the world, and are in turn used to theorize the ways instability itself might provide or deny us access to stable meaning. My aim is to show that what for moderns might seem trite or clichéd formulae, such as Lady Fortune and her wheel, might (as great poetry) speak powerfully to our deepest concerns: what happens next? What is happening to me? Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Kalendes of chaunge: Thinking Through Change in Middle English Poetry Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Renda, Patricia A. Published Renda, Patricia A.. "Mythopoesis and Ideology in Late Medieval and Early Modern Versions of 'Lucrece' and 'Philomela'." PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2005. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review "To investigate how late medieval writers transmit ideology in their revisions of popular mythical narratives, I contrast vernacular reductions of Lucrece and Philomela with their classical sources to argue that the narratives perform specific ideological work in fourteenth-century Britain. The Lucrece narrative – involving the rape and suicide of a Roman matron and the subsequent transformation of government from monarchy to republic – envisions female political power, paradoxically insisting upon female self-destruction as that power. Employing intertextual analyses for different versions of the narrative, I further describe the modifications Lucrece's characterization undergoes that reveal an evolving patriarchal ideology, one that normalizes female self-destruction as response to victimization. . . . In addressing versions of Lucrece by Livy, Ovid, Augustine, Chaucer, Gower, and Shakespeare and versions of Philomela by Ovid, Chrétien de Troyes, Chaucer, and Gower, I have found that structures of ideology transmission reveal important relationships among several key developments, literary and social as well as political and national: namely, among the spread of literacy, the poetic use of vernacular English, and British national identity. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mythopoesis and Ideology in Late Medieval and Early Modern Versions of 'Lucrece' and 'Philomela' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Giancarlo, Matthew Published Giancarlo, Matthew. "The Septvauns Affair, Purchase and Parliament in John Gower's Mirour de l'Omme." Viator 36 (2005), pp. 435-464. ISSN 0083-5897 Gower Subject Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Giancarlo summarizes his article thus: "The analysis focuses on three points: 1) the poet's involvement in a parliamentary law dispute about land purchasing in 1365-66; 2) the parliamentary allegory (the 'parliament of the devils' in Part I), extensive legal diction, and the condemnation of 'purchasing' in the poem; 3) the significance these elements have for understanding the Mirour as a complex social allegory. This article argues that Gower's poetical ambivalence about 'the common voice' is reflected in the work's parliamentary form, its powerful but also subtly defensive condemnation of legal manipulation, and in the problems of representation--both political and artistic--that these elements raise. This analysis thus reevaluates the Mirour as an important early work in Gower's oeuvre demonstrating engagement with many of the same issues arising in his later verse." Even were it a lesser project, Giancarlo's study would be notable, examinations of the Mirour on any subject whatever being so rare on the ground. As it is, he makes a convincing claim for Gower's purposeful application of contemporary parliamentary practices to the Mirour, in the description of the "devil's parliament" in Part I. Particularly intriguing is the reminder thus indirectly raised that, as early as 1365, Gower was a close observer of parliamentary action, so evident from his negotiation of the land transaction involving the Septvauns heir---a transaction in which Gower alone of those involved seems to have emerged with his purchase (and probably his reputation, Macaulay's grumbling notwithstanding) intact. Giancarlo's focus on legal language laced into the sections of the poem he studies is very helpful, too. He teases out words otherwise overlooked as specialized vocabulary of the trade, thereby restoring a sense of how such passages would have been received by Gower's fourteenth-century readership. His sense of Gower's "poetical ambivalence about the 'common voice'" is a little less convincing, if only because, his basis for argument being relatively narrow slices of so vast a poem, it can seem less readily descriptive of the work entire. Too, Giancarlo (reasonably enough) assumes a straightforward, beginning-to-completion program for the writing of the Mirour, when indeed there may have been a lengthy hiatus between the earlier and final sections.] [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Septvauns Affair, Purchase and Parliament in John Gower's Mirour de l'Omme Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Nowlin, Steele Published Nowlin, Steele. "Narratives of Incest and Incestuous Narratives: Memory, Process, and the Confessio Amantis's 'Middel Weie'." Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 35 (2005), pp. 217-244. ISSN 1082-9636 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review For Nowlin, "To read Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' is to read about incest. It is also to read incestuously" (p. 217). What Nowlin means by "incest" is transparent, given that the focus of his study is the "Tale of Apollonius;" but his notion of "reading incestuously" is a bit more complicated. Essentially he argues that Gower's description of "Apollonius" as "a long process" (Bk. VIII, 269)--the only use of the word in the CA--should be taken seriously, as a calculated announcement of a literary practice applicable not only to the tale but to the CA itself, and to Gower's entire poetic project as well. "Put most simply, that project is to repair the discord of human history manifested as late-fourteenth-century England's particular cultural and historical moment," using "a memorial process through which narratives of the past are redistributed through a poetics of the 'middel weie' in order to educate readers on how to use knowledge to improve themselves and their society (Pro. 17)" (p. 217). The "most insidious threat" to this poetic project is "the destructive consumption of memory" which can be defined, according to its retrogressive character, as incestuous, and facilitative of "incestuous reading." To counter this destructive process, Gower depends on Augustine's argument in the "Confessions" (II.23) against the existence of either the future or the past, but for the present only, on the grounds that neither the future, which has yet to be, nor the past, which exists only in the present, in memory, has real-time existence. Hence, according to Nowlin, Gower attempts to retell old stories, in order to "restructure the present through the reconfiguration of the past" (p. 238). By this means, although we are forced to "read incestuously," Gower's focus on "process" "transforms that act of incestuous, consumptive reading into something generative and productive" (p. 238). Particularly interesting is Nowlin's extended reading of Antiochus' riddle (pp. 224 ff.) as a prime example of incestuous narrative on several levels. One caveat regarding the notes: Nowlin has some difficulty keeping straight work belonging to Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (identified correctly in n. 16, as the author of "Betwene Ernest and Game": The Literary Artistry of the Confessio Amantis) and Kurt Olsson (author of "John Gower and the Structures of Conversion," as in n. 10); eventually all "Olsens" blend to "Olssons" (viz., nos. 34, 40). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1.] 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 Narratives of Incest and Incestuous Narratives: Memory, Process, and the Confessio Amantis's 'Middel Weie' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Nicholson, Peter Published Nicholson, Peter. "Love and Ethics in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005 ISBN 9780472115129 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Peter Nicholson's "Love and Ethics in Gower's Confessio Amantis," weighing in at close to 450 pages, mightily qualifies as what would once have been deemed "a hefty tome." Especially given the reluctance these days of publishers to commit to books of such size, it says much about the risen status of Gower studies internationally that the University of Michigan Press backed this capacious project. But like all fine books, which are themselves their own best recommendation, Nicholson's study needs no external hand-up from a burgeoning critical interest in Gower. "Love and Ethics in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'" speaks up for itself, confidently, often eloquently, thoroughly justifying its substantial heft. As Nicholson is clearly aware, however, his book will discomfit readers of a certain stripe, who will find it composed in a style of "forty years ago," as he himself (somewhat self-deprecatingly) has it in his preface (p. v). Apparently he means by this "close reading," and what he has produced is ample demonstration of why such an "old fashioned" methodology may still be the most effective approach to the multilayered CA, which as a work has largely eluded critical approaches "plus au courant." Taking as his starting points the notions first, that, to avoid the errors of the three blind Brahmins describing an elephant, the poem needs to be addressed not in parts but whole; and second that a half-century of focus on the CA as a political document is quite enough, Nicholson sets out to read Gower's poem from beginning to end, and "to argue that the principal subject of the Confessio Amantis is human love; that Amans is a quite ordinary mortal with his share of virtues as well as sins; that the issue in the poem is not whether Amans should be in love but rather how he might become a more virtuous lover; and most importantly of all, that the moral structure of the poem is the fundamental harmony rather than opposition between God's ethical demands and love's" (p. vi). A fairly ho-hum list, at first glance, and thus initially it seems odd that these are dubbed "rather large claims" (p. vi). Who doubts Amans' piebald mortality, or that a "Lover's Confession" would be about love? The validity of Nicholson's estimation--and the originality of his effort--very quickly become clear, however. Nicholson begins with an extraordinary opening chapter describing Machaut's influence on the CA which is sufficiently perceptive about the "dits amoreux" as to be independently publishable, and will no doubt be mined assiduously by "romanistes." Ultimately, however, his claims commit him to reading the CA not (as has been so often the case) primarily through the lens of its sources but, rather, transparently, one might say--altogether on its own terms. Hardly a novel notion in another field, but something Gower criticism has commonly avoided, given the magnitude of the task. The preference has been to read selectively, extrapolating conclusions about the full poem from this example or that, in accord with the fashion of adapting the text to theory. Nicholson, on the contrary, seeks to account for every tale, as well as most of the dialogue between Amans, Genius, and Venus, pressing his case that only such slow, digestive thoroughness adequately delivers Gower's thoughtful construction in its varietous dimensions. In the process he develops claims--all challenging, and for the most part well supported--that Gower organizes the eight Books of the CA in different ways, each requiring a separate imaginative response; that frequently individual tales are set out in clusters, informing and answering each other; that Books VII and VIII should be read more or less as a unit. This last idea, as Nicholson notes, he derives from a passing observation of John H. Fisher's which the latter failed to develop, and it may serve as a weather-vane for how Nicholson himself uses sources. More than a decade as bibliographer for the John Gower Society has given Nicholson a familiarity with the full range of Gower scholarship that is almost unique, and his own study, unsurprisingly, benefits immensely from his years of concentrated reading. Of those several claims named above, Nicholson's treatment of two undoubtedly will prove exceptionally influential. One is his treatment of Amans. Nicholson strives to view Gower's figure of the Lover with heretofore-unknown acceptance, crossing frequently into empathy. The result is an Amans no longer the familiar monochrome mouthpiece in a two-dimensional frame, but rather a figure altogether larger, a full-blooded person sprung free of the confines of allegory, engaged in an (ultimately bootless) affair of the heart in complex and legitimate ways. As Nicholson sees it, we are meant to care about Amans--a consideration itself permitting something larger, an in-depth evaluation of Gower as maker of fictions. (Indeed, "Love and Ethics in Gower's Confessio Amantis" frequently has this quality of Russian dolls, as each discovery progressively reveals another.) Yet it is when Nicholson convincingly integrates Amans' feelings, as microcosm, with Gower's over-arching enterprise, to demonstrate in the macrocosm the multivalent power of love as it emanates from God and governs every facet of society and creation, that his work moves to a level above, and provides rich, original insight. Nicholson's is thus a more coherent, and consequently more satisfying, understanding of the CA and of Gower's art therein than any yet offered. Not that his will be the last word: there are various moments, particularly in his discussion of the controversial excursus on the pagan gods in Book V (and Gower's attitudes toward classical material generally), and his account of the inspiration and plan for Book VII, where the argument seems driven forward rather too quickly. From time to time, too, in making the case for Gower's use of Machaut Nicholson forgets how combinative Gower was in his use of sources, especially in the CA. And one might offer as well, without summoning revenants, that there are political messages strewn here and there amid the "locus amoenus." But such concerns have their airings elsewhere, and in no way detract from Nicholson's achievement. Clearly, not unlike Fisher's seminal "John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer" (1964) in this as in much else throughout, "Love and Ethics in Gower's Confessio Amantis" is a book that will engage and enable Gower scholarship for a generation at least. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.2] 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 Love and Ethics in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Michigan Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura Published Nolan, Maura. "Lydgate's Literary History: Chaucer, Gower, and Canacee." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005), pp. 59-92. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Review Lydgate greatly expanded the story of Canacee that Laurent de Premierfait inserted into his translation of Boccaccio's "De Casibus virorum illustrium" when he translated Laurent's work in his "Fall of Princes," and his English rendering contains clear evidence of his consciousness of and his debt to both Gower's and Chaucer's very different representations of the heroine in Book III of "Confessio Amantis" and in "Man of Law's Tale." With this as her starting point, Nolan investigates the conflicting genres, discourses, and views of Fortune that Lydgate has drawn upon and set into opposition in his tale. Gower is a "lurking presence" throughout Book I of Lydgate's poem (62). In his version of the story, Gower accentuates the pathos of the heroine's plight, an example that Lydgate follows despite the moral bearings of his own work, particularly as he adopted the image of the baby bathing in his mother's blood. But in shifting the emphasis from the narrative back to the letter that Canacee writes, Lydgate also excises most of Gower's concern with the force of "kynde" together with his interest in the philosophical and moral issues that it poses and his inquiry into the causes of the heroine's predicament. Lydgate thus sets into bold opposition "didactic exemplarity and amorous complaint" (67), and "while the reader of the 'Confessio Amantis' is gradually being led through a complex process of education, in which he or she is asked to ponder some very fine points of moral theology (the role of "kynde," for example), the reader of the 'Fall of Princes' is merely stymied by the apparent contradiction between the logic of virtue that guides the enterprise as a whole (sin causes falls) and the affective principle of pity that the story of Canacee so insistently enforces" (68). In the rest of this rich and challenging essay, Nolan explores the significance to the "Fall of Princes" as a whole of the "incoherencies and incompatibilities" (78) that Lydgate creates. Let one passage stand both for the scope of her argument and the nature of her conclusions: "These two notions of Fortune (the idea of a remediable negative force and an efficacious poetry versus the fearsome thought of arbitrary contingency and the uselessness of speech) are the twin poles between which Lydgate suspends the Canacee story. Jumbled together in this episode we find precisely these opposing epistemologies, the former a model in which the world is saturated with a single meaning and the latter a paradigm that evacuates the human world of all significance and silences all speech. History is both subject to logic--available to hermeneutics--and utterly excessive and irrational at the same time. Lydgate knows this, in the sense that he knows that his sources fundamentally conflict--that Ovid, Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Gower each propose a different solution to the basic problem of finding meaning in history. His instinctive response to these conflicts--a response utterly characteristic of him--is to seek some kind of synthesis. Ultimately, Canacee and her son represent ideal subjects for the kind of 'vernacular philosophy' that permeates the 'Fall of Princes,' precisely because they expose the structural contradictions at work in the historical models for human life in the world that Lydgate inherited from his predecessors" (88). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.2.] 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 Lydgate's Literary History: Chaucer, Gower, and Canacee Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "Chaucer's 'To His Purse': Begging, or Begging Off?" Viator 36 (2005), pp. 373-414. ISSN 0083-5897 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations In Praise of Peace Minor Latin Poetry Biography of Gower Cronica Tripertita Review Yeager uses both Gower's and Christine de Pisan's relations with the newly crowned King Henry IV to help set the context for a re-examination of the occasion and purpose of Chaucer's "To His Purse." Though she evidently did respond to Henry's solicitation of her by presenting him with a poem (perhaps the Epistre d'Othéa), Christine provides the model for one not all that impressed with Henry and, once her son was free from his captivity, not feeling any special obligation to support the king's pretensions. Gower, of course, enthusiastically subscribed to the Lancastrian justification of Henry's usurpation, producing within a short period of time the short Latin poems of the so-called "laureate group," the Latin Cronica Tripertita, and the Middle English "In Praise of Peace." Yeager revisits the chronology of these in order to determine which might have been known to Chaucer. "Rex Celi Deus," he suggests, probably predates Henry's coronation; "O recolende" is the most likely candidate for presentation at the time of the coronation; and "H. aquile pullus," with its reference to the oil used to sanctify the coronation, probably dates from shortly later. The Cronica Tripertita, with its allusion to Richard II's death, cannot have been finished before the early months of 1400. The Cronica, which Yeager describes as "the Latin Gower at nearly highest volume" (404), serves the propaganda needs that the shorter Latin poems, in their brevity and learnedness, do not, and it also sets into relief Chaucer's very different response to the appeal for justification from the king. Early in his essay, Yeager argues that "To His Purse" could well have been written with Richard in mind rather than Henry, and he chooses 1393 and 1398 as times when poet might have had special need to remind the king of his obligations. He also argues that there is no evidence that Chaucer had unusual pecuniary needs in 1400, and that examined closely, the envoy that Chaucer provided in addressing the poem to Henry could be read as undermining rather than supporting the publicly offered justification of Henry's right to the throne. In that respect, Chaucer's omission of any reference to the will of God in Henry's accession, very much a part of Gower's claims for the king, takes on a special significance. But Chaucer's poem is also much shorter and clearly less serious than both Christine's and Gower's offerings, and in Yeager's view, that fact in itself constitutes a near dismissal: "Under pressure to write something for Henry, [Chaucer's] decision to send a 'begging poem' was a literary choice with a political motive, both courageous and not a little reckless, in either case heavily ironic: he would present the usurper with his desired 'new song,' written 'al of the new jest,' just as desired – in a minstrel's voice, as verses on command, in exchange for pay" (412). And while not naming God, the last two lines of the envoy may in fact invoke him, Yeager suggests, if we read them as a separate sentence, not addressed to the king but to Chaucer's hopes from a different, higher source: "And ye that mowen alle oure harmes amende, / Have mynde upon my supplicacion." [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 25.2] 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 'To His Purse': Begging, or Begging Off? Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 "A generation before the war at Troy, king Adrastos led an ill-fated expedition against Thebes. One of his commanders, Capaneus, died so spectacularly that he was virtually guaranteed a lasting place in the myth. He boasted that he would take Thebes whether the gods willed it or not and was subsequently struck from the city's wall by a lightning bolt from Zeus. Despite this simple narrative Capaneus' character is handled in a variety of ways. As would be expected he is at times portrayed as a villain. Thus in Aeschylus' "Septem," Euripides' "Phoenissae," and Statius' "Thebaid," he is an impious, vicious, threatening, and boastful character who is finally punished at Thebes. This portrayal, however, was not the only possibility in handling his character. In Euripides' "Suppliants," Capaneus is held up as a model citizen whose moderate life and tragic downfall should serve as a lesson to others. The earliest artistic depictions of Capaneus show a similar divergence in characterization. An artist could emphasize the villainy of the hero by including elements like a ladder to scale the Theban wall, a torch to burn the town, a lightning bolt to imply his punishment, or conversely portray him as a vulnerable youth struck down suddenly in war. Christian writers of the Medieval period take these lines of development further. Gower presents him as a warning against excessive pride, one of the seven deadly sins, and Dante lets him rage in hell against God under a continuous rain of lightning. In both the French "Le Roman de Thèbes" and Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes" the hero is a noble and beloved knight who, while dying at Thebes, lives long enough to take part in the later Athenian attack on the city." [JGN 25.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nau, Robert Published Nau, Robert. "Capaneus: Homer to Lydgate." PhD thesis, McMaster University (Canada), 2005. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Capaneus: Homer to Lydgate Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "When texts make exemplary claims," Allen writes (p. 2), "they express an aspiration toward exact alignment among authorial purpose, narrative form, and audience response." Allen investigates the many possible disruptions of that alignment and the ways in which medieval authors such as Gower and Chaucer, through their consciousness of those disruptions, explore both the nature of fiction and the limits of exemplarity. Allen sets out the "contradictory strains" of what she calls the "exemplary mode" (declining to see it limited to a single genre) in her introduction, "Towards a Poetic of Exemplarity." Exemplary texts offer to teach a general moral truth based upon a particular event. They often attempt to control the interpretation of the event and its application through extra-narrative comment and through the comments of an "inscribed audience" made up of both the participants and spectators. But especially in the late medieval period, there is an increasing awareness of the historical contingency of all interpretation and therefore also of the role of the reading audience in creating meaning. There is also increasing awareness of the mediating effects of narration itself and of the paradox created by allowing affective response to shape if not to determine moral meaning. Concern over the inability to control the reader's response leads in some quarters to a Plato-like distrust of all representation. For others, of a more Aristotelian bent, the participation in the evaluation and the application of the particulars of a narrative – the very necessity of interpretation – implies that reading itself is a moral act and that "the very experience of exemplary discourse is itself a form of moral activity" (16). Consciousness of the problematic nature of the reader's role is reflected, in poems such as Chaucer's and Gower's, by the inclusion of a responding audience, whose interpretations are not just dependent upon their own circumstances but are also limited in comparison to those that the actual reading audience is invited to imagine; and consciousness of the role of formal structures in shaping moral meaning is reflected in the large number of Middle English exemplary texts that are "disjunctive, interrogative, ambiguous, or indeterminate. . . . Through aesthetic rather than simply directive methods, exemplary literature registers plural and unpredictable audiences. The literature itself raises questions of how its own contingent forms might constitute moral education and bring about social good" (23). Allen thus seeks to draw our attention back to "the profound medieval concern with the moral consequences of reading" (25). "Medieval exemplary literature," she writes (26), "does not simply demand obedience but inquires into its own social benefit, examines its own poetic indeterminacy, and argues for its audiences' moral freedom" (26). Gower provides the second of her major examples (pp. 53-82). She has less to say than one might expect from her introduction about the dialogue frame of the poem and about Amans' role as recipient of Genius' lessons. She does comment that, "Framed by the discussion of love between Amans and Genius, Venus's priest, the Confessio's examples are embedded in a courtly context that mediates their exemplary application to the public world invoked in the book's Prologue" (66-67). She thus implicitly defines the agenda of the poem as political, and more specifically as an attempt to mediate between private and public in a search for the meaning of the "common good." Gower conducts this search rhetorically, by way of copiousness, with all that that implies about the significance of each particular example and of the role of the reader in applying them to the general lesson: "The contingencies of various, and changing, political circumstances call into question the clarity of exemplary alignments among author, tale, and moral; kingship as constructed through exemplary discourse emerges as a continual, effortful process of imagining general unity. If examples make the singular common, they also indicate the degree to which, for Gower as for his classical predecessors, political virtue must be constantly reformulated rhetorically, in the re-presentation and reinterpretation of new exemplary instances" (67). In her discussion of this process, Allen naturally focuses on Book 7. She takes a fresh look at Gower's own discussion of rhetoric in 7.1507-1640, linking "plainness" to the illusion of a single, stable moral or political truth, "uninterrupted by figurative uses of language" (68), and Caesar's use of "colored" language, in his plea for mercy, with the "copious" procedure of CA itself, deriving a concept of political virtue from the multitude of contingent circumstances in which it must be exercised. In excluding the possibility of pity, "plainness," the rigid adherence to the law, is finally to be associated with tyranny, and proper governance is dependent not just upon eloquence and copiousness but upon fiction-making itself. Allen relies upon two principal examples for her argument, the tales of Lucrece and Virginia, and her rereading of the latter in comparison to its ultimate source in Livy provides some of the best evidence for her claims both about the design of CA and about the late medieval understanding of exempla. Genius describes the tale as a "wonder thing" (7.5134), moving it from the realm of history to that of fiction. He also dismisses each of the devices that Livy relies upon to defend Virginius' killing of his daughter as a defense of the Republic that Appius defiles. Instead, he describes Virginia's death as the result of an act of murderous rage, and "where Livy emphasizes the opposition between Virginius and Appius, Gower emphasizes their similarity. . . . Gower's Virginius, like Appius, acts according to an ungoverned will that overcomes his imaginative capacity for mercy toward his daughter" (77). Each is also guilty of a "literalizing interpretation of political fiction" (80), Appius of the analogy between ruler and ruled, Virginius of the analogy between the ordinary man and a king, and it is the latter that produces the more horrifying result as the father slays his daughter. "By shifting the tale away from the public realm in the direction of the familial, then, Gower calls attention to the unsteadiness of the relations between public and domestic tyrannies, and between public benefit and private desire. These relations emerge as necessarily metaphorical: it is the failure of both Appius and Virginius to recognize the metaphorical status of political fictions that generates their respective acts of cruelty. For Gower, the gap between individual desire and public policy must be mediated by the tools of fiction. Kingship, then, emerges as a process of reading political fictions, not only the theoretical fictions of the body politic, and the common profit, but also the narrative fictions of his own mirror for princes" (80). An earlier chapter treats The Book of the Knight of the Tower, arguing that the author's use of narrative implies a role for the reader in creating interpretation that is at odds with his desire to control his readers' education. Later chapters treat Chaucer's and Lydgate's versions of the tale of Virginia, the former destabilizing Virginia's exemplary value even more disturbingly than Gower, the latter responding to both of his predecessors in his own effort to "institute poetic order" (101); the "Interlude" attached to the post-Chaucerian "Tale of Beryn" as a response to "The Pardoner's Tale"; and Henryson's Testament of Cresseid as a response to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Allen, Elizabeth Published Allen, Elizabeth. "False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature." New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 ISBN 978-1403967978 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Palgrave Macmillan, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 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 Fox "seeks to elucidate Gower's reception not only of Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics (as Latinized by Grosseteste and adapted by Trevisa) but also of the moralizations on Ovidian texts, and to analyze how these traditions influence the goals of the Confessio." For Fox, "Genius employs the 'Tale of Medusa' to mirror the paralysis, impaired will, and confused desires of Amans, and uses it to argue for an ethical agenda that is practical, rather than theoretical in nature." She finds the tale "sourced in the moralizing commentaries on the Metamorphoses and the exempla of thirteenth-century sermons;" in Gower's hands, however, the tale becomes "an Aristotelian practical ethic to emphasize the importance of productive, directed action and the role of individual agency in that action." [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fox, Hilary E Published Fox, Hilary E. "'Min herte is growen into ston': Ethics and Activity in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Comitatus 36 (2005), pp. 15-40. ISSN 0069-6412 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 'Min herte is growen into ston': Ethics and Activity in John Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 new volume is really two editions in one. Since "In Praise of Peace" arises out of very much the same political and biographical circumstances as the majority of Gower's short Latin poems, no one will object to the juxtaposition, but since the two parts have different editors, they will be treated separately here. The "Minor Latin Works," which occupy about two-thirds of the volume, include "De Lucis Scrutinio," "Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia," and the poems such as "O Deus immense," "Ecce patet tensus," and "Rex celi deus," which we are accustomed to seeing referred to by their opening words since they do not bear titles in the MSS; plus Gower's prose colophon, "Quia unusquisque," and "Eneidos Bucolis," which the headnote in the MSS attributes to "quidam Philosophus." (In his headnote, Yeager points out that Macaulay prints the poem among Gower's other works while also conjecturing that it was written by Ralph Strode. Yeager himself presents the best case for believing that it was actually written by Gower, but he places it in an Appendix.) The fifteen poems (including "Eneidos Bucolis") range in length from 4 lines to 320, and they are of varying interest. But they are complete, and now, since in addition to Stockton, Echard and Fanger, and Wilson, we also have Andrew Galloway's translations of the complete Latin apparatus to the Confessio in Peck's new three-volume edition, almost everything that Gower wrote in a language other than English is now available in English (we lack only the shorter French works, the Traitié and the Cinkante Balades), and those of us who have resisted the effort now have no excuse for remaining unfamiliar with these last bits and pieces of Gower's work. Yeager's text is based on the same MSS as Macaulay's, and in the passages I checked, it is virtually identical, except for editorial punctuation, the use of indentation, Yeager's use of boldface to indicate the larger capitals, and the rendering of u and v. The greatest difference from Macaulay's edition is that where his predecessor printed the poems in the order in which they normally appear in the MSS, Yeager has chosen to present them in the order of composition, as best this can be determined. He acknowledges the necessity of some uncertainty here (pp. 9-10), but the effort is consistent with the invitation that virtually all of these poems make to read them with reference to some specific event, either in English history or in the life of the poet. The translations, which appear en face of the Latin text, are meant to be useful to the largest possible number of readers. Yeager makes no effort to imitate the poetic qualities of the original, nor does he resort to prose: he does his best to translate the text line by line (though that's not always practical; cf. "Carmen" 13-14), but not word by word or by preserving Latin grammatical structure at the expense of English. Thus "Carmen" 1-2, "Non excusatur qui verum non fateatur, / Ut sic ponatur modus unde fides recolatur" becomes "He who does not confess the truth is not excused / From finding a way to act in good faith." The emphasis is on preserving the sense but in such a way as to direct the reader's attention back to the Latin whenever possible. It's a good compromise, and while the translator can't hope to please everyone all the time (I myself have a couple of very small quibbles), the effect overall is a great success. What truly makes this volume indispensable for any serious study, however, is the apparatus. Compared to Yeager, Macaulay gives these poems amazingly short shrift. There is virtually no notice of them in the prefatory material to volume 4 of his edition of Gower's works, and the notes at the back (which are roughly evenly split among textual notes, explanatory notes, and some comments on sources) occupy less than five pages. Yeager provides an excellent seven-page introduction, describing the stylistic qualities of Gower's Latin verse, placing these poems among Gower's other works, justifying their importance both as historical documents and for what they can tell us about the poet, and providing a brief but detailed account of the events leading up to Richard II's deposition and death that provide the setting in which most of these poems were written. He also provides 32 closely packed pages of notes. There he gives answers to every basic question about the text, the metrical form, the thematic structure, the sources, and the best guess for the date of each of these texts, plus explanations of the historical allusions and citations of similar passages in Gower's other works. Some of this information is drawn, of course, from the work of other scholars, who are duly cited. Yeager also preserves the most useful of Macaulay's notes, though he can also be found taking polite issue with him from time to time. Not all of the notes will be required by all users: the explanation of the Great Schism, for instance (p. 56, note to "De Lucis Scrutinio" 4), is clearly intended for students rather than scholars, consistent with the purposes of the series in which the volume appears. But Yeager is everywhere judicious and each note has a discernible value to some likely reader of this book, and most (such as his full account of the Biblical allusions in the poems) will, like his translations, be welcomed by professional users as well as by those we teach. "In Praise of Peace" is neither as inaccessible nor as poorly known as the shorter Latin works: Macaulay includes the 385-line poem in the second volume of his edition of the Confessio, his edition is sound and has an adequate if not extensive apparatus, and the poem is, after all, in Middle English rather than Latin. It has also received its fair share of comment, particularly from those who have been concerned to trace Gower's political allegiances during the last decade of his life. Livingston's task is rather different from Yeager's, therefore: there is much less basic work to be done, and he thus uses his new edition as an opportunity to offer his own detailed critical reading of the poem. The text poses few problems: there is only the Trentham MS plus Thynne's not very good 1532 print. For the comparison between MS and print Livingston refers the reader to Macaulay's notes (p. 105). His own textual notes (p. 133) are few: they include 12 instances in which he has chosen to follow the MS where Macaulay followed Thynne, 17 instances in which he has rejected Macaulay's emendation, and 4 other notes of miscellaneous character. Most of Livingston's differences from Macaulay are very minor and amount to little more than the inclusion or omission of a final -e. Livingston has also introduced some silent emendations of his own, consistent with the practice of the TEAMS series: for instance, thee for the (to distinguish the pronoun from the article; e.g. lines 3, 92) and for to in place of forto (e.g. lines 7, 33 – one of the very features for which Macaulay took Wright to task for his edition of the poem: Works 3.551). Like Peck, in his edition of CA, Livingston consistently transcribes yogh as g, even where y would almost certainly be more appropriate (e.g. give, line 190); and he also introduces modern capitalization (God, Y) and punctuation. The biggest differences from Macaulay in the presentation of the text, however, are in the inclusion of glosses to the "hard" words (he evidently anticipates readers with virtually no familiarity with Middle English) and in the numbering of the stanzas. Livingston has also included a much fuller apparatus: 16 pages of introduction and another 13 of notes, both of which are set into even greater relief by Yeager's comparative restraint. The introduction in particular reads more like a critical essay than like a guide to the study of the poem, as Livingston seeks to overturn some of what he terms the "simplistic reductions" of earlier criticism (p. 90). There is certainly abundant precedent (Peck may again have been the model here), but the result does tend to overwhelm the poem. Livingston argues that "In Praise of Peace" proceeds "in careful, logical steps" (p. 94) and that its division – into nine marked sections plus an additional stanza – has a numerological significance that is closely related to its theme; and as proof of its "subtle craft" (p. 101), he presents a detailed, four-page summary of the poem, section by section. His argument certainly deserves to be read, and while it may not fully overcome the impression that, like much of Gower's moral and political writing, the compendiousness of "In Praise of Peace" is organized more by free association than it is by logic, it will have served its purpose if it forces us to take a closer look at the poem. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F., trans. Livingston, Michael, trans Published Yeager, R.F., trans. and Livingston, Michael, trans. "The Minor Latin Works." Middle English Texts Series . Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2005 ISBN 9781580440974 Gower Subject In Praise of Peace 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 The Minor Latin Works Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute Publications, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 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 "Scribe D" is one of five scribes who worked on the copy of CA that is now Trinity College, Cambridge MS R.3.2, as identified by Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes in their celebrated 1978 essay, and his hand has been found in eleven other MSS, including seven more of CA, two of CT, and one of PP. On the basis of the spellings found in these copies, his origins have been traced to the SW Midlands, specifically to Worcestershire. Horobin and Mosser argue, however, that the SW Midlands forms in his copies of Chaucer and Langland derive not from his own dialect but from the spellings of his exemplars, a conclusion consistent with data that Jeremy Smith has presented from Scribe D's copies of Gower. D appears to have been remarkably conservative in his attitude towards his exemplars, an observation that may require a reconsideration of the chronology of his work. It also suggests "a considerable tolerance of dialect variation within London English, indicating that the establishment of a London standard language was a later, and more gradual phenomenon, than has previously been considered" (304). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Horobin, Simon, Mosser, Daniel W Published Horobin, Simon, and Mosser, Daniel W. "Scribe D's SW Midland Roots: A Reconsideration." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 106 (2005), pp. 289-305. ISSN 0028-3754 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies 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 Scribe D's SW Midland Roots: A Reconsideration Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 "The thesis examines the poetics and politics of 'olde bokes' (Legend of Good Women, G25) in selected works by Chaucer and Gower, paying particular attention to the way in which both writers appropriate their sources and the theories of history and political ideas informing these appropriations. It argues that Chaucer eschews metanarratives in his appropriations of the past and its writings, emphasizing the multiplicity of voices that are contained in written discourse across time. In contrast, Gower, while acknowledging the presence of multiple voices, appropriates the writings of the past in an attempt to arrive at a harmonized poetic voice of his own. These poetics of the past result in different politics of the present in both writers' work. While Gower's politics are generally nostalgic and conservative, Chaucer is apolitical and primarily interested in the processes of political discourse. In this respect, Gower is a writer who strives to make sense of history and tradition and formulate poignant political statements in the face of contemporary struggles, whereas Chaucer does not offer unambiguous statements, but rather creates a multi-facetted poetic voice that highlights the reasons why such statements are impossible to achieve in the face of discursive heterogeneity." [JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Urban, Malte Published Urban, Malte. "Poetics of the Past, Politics of the Present." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 2005. Fully accessible via https://research.aber.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/poetics-of-the-past-politics-of-the-present/ (accessed April 6, 2026). 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 Poetics of the Past, Politics of the Present. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 focus of this essay is Gower's decasyllables in CB and Traitié, building upon Macaulay's observation that Gower's meter appears to represent a blending of an English accentual measure with the French syllabic measure in the contemporary "vers de dix." Like Macaulay, the authors give close, in fact far more detailed, attention to Gower's frequent violation of the rules governing the use of the caesura in the French decasyllable, which they attribute to Gower's adoption of a predominantly accentual meter beginning with the octosyllables of both MO and CA. The iambic decasyllable of the later poems thus represents less an adaptation of the French "vers de dix" than an extension of the accentual meter from an 8-syllable to a l0-syllable line, following the example set by Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde, who followed in turn the example of Il Filostrato, which he discovered during his journey to Italy in 1378. Gower and Chaucer are depicted as joint experimenters in English metrics, Gower providing the example for Chaucer of the virtues of the regular accentual iambic line. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Billy, Dominique Duffell, Martin J Published Billy, Dominique and Duffell, Martin J. "Le Decasyllabe de John Gower ou Le Dernier Metre Anglo-Normand." Revue de Linguistique Romane 69 (2005), pp. 75-95. ISSN 0035-1458 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Le Decasyllabe de John Gower ou Le Dernier Metre Anglo-Normand Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 The salient example of the "righteous heathen" as Grady intends it is the Roman emperor Trajan, whose apparent salvation after having lived and died a pagan comes via the intercession of Gregory the Great--a legend retold many times, and differently, throughout the Middle Ages, and one that caused theologians, Thomas Aquinas among them, no end of headaches explaining. Fortunately, in his introductory chapter, "The Rule of Exceptional Salvations," Grady makes clear, relatively brief work of the history and the problems related to this spiritual "promotion" (1-14). He addresses the CA in his chapter 4 (101-21), "The Rhetoric of the Righteous Heathen," (arguing that this "rhetoric . . . helps to organize the most difficult transition" in the poem: "Alexander's education by Aristotle is the prime example of the pedagogical relationship of ruler and sage on which Gower's idea of court poetry fundamentally depends, and the 'well-tutored Alexander' stands at the center of the 'Confessio' and Gower's conception of him." Yet, Grady notes, there are "several dangers inherent in this late-medieval rhetoric of exemplarity," and Gower, aware of them, "moving from the penitential model of book 6 to the Fürstenspiegel of book 7 . . . draws on the structural resources of the virtuous pagan scene to control these anxieties and to manage the intersection of the amatory and the political in his poem." (15) In his discussion of Books VI-VII, Grady situates Gower between Malory and the Chaucer of Troilus, finding closest comparisons between Troilus' apparent apotheosis at the end of that poem and Gower's use of "the pedagogical relationship between two virtuous pagans" (i.e., Alexander and Aristotle): "Like Chaucer, facing at the end of 'Troilus and Criseyde' a difficult transition from courtly love to Christian prayer, Gower at this point in the 'Confessio' finds the convention of the righteous heathen the means to move from love to politics; if his gesture is less spectacular (and the results less compact) than Troilus's apotheosis, it is just as crucial to the structure of his poem, and just as dependent on the contemporary discourse of the virtuous pagan." (121) In his concluding chapter, "Virtuous Pagans and Virtual Jews" (123-32), Grady takes up the "Tale of the Jew and the Pagan," found in Book VII in six manuscripts of the type Macaulay called "second recension." Grady's approach to the tale employs François Hertog's "rule of the excluded middle, a strategy that permits a narrative trying to represent alterity to handle more than two terms (i.e., self and other) at once." (125) In Grady's reading, "in order to express adequately the alterity of the Jew," Gower transforms the normal triad "Jew-Pagan-Christian" into a duality: "the pagan is temporarily assimilated into the field of Christian ethics, and the middle term--a non-Christian but nevertheless morally admirable paganism--is essentially elided." (125) Grady's conclusion to Gower's solution is highly critical: "But in making an anti-ecumenical ruthlessness a supposed tenet of Jewish law and contrasting it with the laudable mercy of another non-Christian, this noxious little anecdote implies that the praise of pagan virtue is structurally dependent upon the denigration of Jewish vice" (125). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Grady, Frank Published Grady, Frank. "Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England." New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 ISBN 978-1403966995 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Palgrave Macmillan, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Williams, Deanne Published Williams, Deanne. "Gower's Monster." In Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures. Ed. Kabir, Ananya Jahanara. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 127-150. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review "As a spiteful despot cum humble penitent, as a prophetic dreamer, gifted with foreknowledge of the apocalypse, and as a lamenting beast in the wilderness, Nebuchadnezzar is a figure for juxtaposition and the swift shifting of gears,," Williams writes (144). She surveys the use of Nebuchadnezzar in other fourteenth-century texts, including "Cleanness," Chaucer's "House of Fame" and "Monk's Tale," and "Piers Plowman," but she focuses on his appearance at the end of the Prologue and Book I of CA, seeing the Biblical figure as an image of the cultural and linguistic hybridity both of Gower's England and of his poem; of the multiple "divisions" of CA as a whole, including the tension between the orderliness of the frame and "the fascination with narratives of chaos, metamorphosis and monstrosity that make this ostensible orderliness spin out of control" (128); and of its form: "When Gower segues from the apocalyptic discourse and political analysis of the Prologue into the personal, amatory woes of Amans in the 'Confessio Amantis' he makes a generic move from prophecy, political treatise, and estates satire to dream vision and ars amatoria. With this shift of gears, . . . the 'Confessio Amantis' reveals itself to be as hybrid, generically, as Nebuchadnezzar is physically" (142). "The story of Nebuchdnezzar," she concludes, "suggests how we can be, simultaneously, one thing and the other: a paradigm that defeats the kind of binaries that distinguish East from West, civilized from barbarian, self from Other. Nebuchadnezzar is both/and as opposed to either/or: a tasteless barbarian and an expansionist conqueror; an ignoramus and a visionary; a king and a monster; a human and a beast. He at once embodies the binaries, and transcends the conflict between them. . . . [The] dichotomy between the self/Other binary and the hybrid continues to motivate postcolonial theory: the true choice, it seems, is not between East and West, colonizer and colonized, and self and Other, but instead between a mentality of unassimilable cultural difference and multicultural diversity and cosmopolitanism. Gower's alienated, ambivalent, yet compelling Nebuchadnezzar offers an alternative to these binaries that is monstrously resistant to classification: both" (144-45)]. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.2/] 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 Monster Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cambridge University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Gertz examines the Prologue to the Confessio Amantis in order to demonstrate the ways Gower's entire poem reinvigorates allegorical modes of interpretation. Though clearly invoking this time-honored interpretive mode, the poem consistently resists standard, stultifying modes of allegorical interpretation. For example, readers are alerted to the fact that default modes of interpreting allegory are insufficient when Amans' identity as "John Gower" is not revealed until the end of the poem. Enigmas such as this encourage attentive readers to pause and puzzle, eventually prompting them "to return to the beginning, to see if [this] new knowledge changes the allegory in decisive ways" (335). This metaliterary concern with teaching readers to read at multiple levels, Gertz argues, revitalizes the process of reading and interpreting allegory. This technique is illustrated with close readings of the Nebuchadnezzar and Arion passages bracketing the Prologue's fifth section. Not only do these two passages illustrate two modes of reading and interpretation, but they rehearse the tensions between 'translation studii' and 'translatio imperii,' between diachronic and synchronic modes of interpretation, between unity and division. Cumulatively, these tensions allow Gower to create "living metaphors throughout his poem," and thereby to renew allegory (349). [CB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 29.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gertz, SunHee Kim Published Gertz, SunHee Kim. "Beginnings Without End: The Prologue to John Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Life in Language: Studies in Honour of Wolfgang Kühlwein. Ed. Schuth, Andreas S. and Weber, Jean Jacques. Trier: WVT, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2005, pp. 329-52. ISBN 9783884767467 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 Beginnings Without End: The Prologue to John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available WVT, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Miyashita examines the choric role assigned to Gower in Shakespeare's "Pericles" and argues that he differs markedly from other Shakespearean choruses in that he is endowed with a distinct personality. Although Gower describes the primary purpose of his storytelling as to give pleasure to the audience in his opening speech, Shakespeare deliberately preserves his identity as "moral Gower" by having him constantly moralize over the action he presents. Miyashita demonstrates, however, that, instead of providing the audience with "necessary and trustworthy information" (p. 98) as the choruses do in Shakespeare's other plays, Gower's comments only reveal discrepancies between the events unfolding on stage and his evaluation of them. His moralization thus "works antithetically to the audience's reception of the play," but precisely because his moral judgments are proven to be subjective and therefore limited, the audience is given "an opportunity for retrospection" at the end of the play and encouraged to "reconsider" its "true significance" (107). This essay originally appeared in Japanese in The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences in 2003. See Yayoi Miyashita, "Pericles ni okeru Chorus, Gower no hataraki," Hokkaidō Daigaku Bungaku-bu Kiyō/The Hokkaido University Annual Report on Cultural Sciences110 (July 2003): 113-28. [YK. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Miyashita, Yayoi. Published Miyashita, Yayoi. "Gower, the Chorus, as a Fictional Character in Pericles." Bulletin of the Faculty of Humanities and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University 117 (2005): 89-108. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, the Chorus, as a Fictional Character in "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Peter Holland is well-known for his interests in Shakespeare and drama in performance, and both are reflected here. This essay is largely concerned with "Pericles" as a play--a drama--made of narrative source-materials, mentioning in swift passing Gower's "Tale of Apollonius" among these materials. Holland gives little particular attention to specifics of Gower's and other narrative versions, focusing instead on emphases rendered in the transition (or "journeying") between literary forms, arguing that "Pericles" itself "is a journey across the mapping of narrative represented by the Apollonian story . . . [in] all its manifestations" (25). The story was widely known to the audience of "Pericles," but its presentation as drama was new and unknown, Holland tells us, perhaps even a little "dangerous," aligning the artistic experiment with action of the play, and suggesting that the non-traditional name "Pericles" is a version of Latin "periculum." Early modern navigational techniques, geographical dislocations in the play, repetitive structuring, and "Gower's choruses" are recurrent concerns in this essay, with the choruses "acting as dramatic stitching to make the drama a web of lines radiating across the map of the Apollonius narrative like the lines on the early charts that link harbours and headlands" (26). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Holland, Peter. Published Angles on the English-Speaking World 5 (2005): 11-29. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Coasting in the Mediterranean: The Journeyings of "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Codling's abstract: "The thesis breaks new ground in examining Henry IV's kingship from the perspective of its 'theatre', and in looking at how the king fashioned and projected a convincing image of majesty. Its principal themes are: the king's personality and the practice of his kingship; his response to problems of a dubious title; the public and private aspects of his piety; his court; his relations with parliament; his responses to challenges to his kingship; the use of 'propaganda' to establish his regime and his patronage of art and architecture. The underlying assumption is that, whilst Henry IV's finances and the composition of his retinue have already been extensively covered, little has been done to bring to life the character and kingly style of Henry himself. The main sources used are the two surviving Wardrobe accounts for the region (E101/404/21 and MS Harleian 319) and other Exchequer and Wardrobe material in E101 and E403 (Public Record Office); the Duchy of Lancaster Accounts (DL28); letters, for example: 'Royal and Historical Letters of Henry IV,' ed. F.C. Hingeston and 'Anglo-Norman Letters & Petitions,' ed. M. D. Legge; chronicles for 1399-1413; literary sources, in particular the work of John Gower; and surviving material evidence, such as Henry's tomb at Canterbury Cathedral." Author/Editor Author/Editor Codling, Deborah Ann. Published Codling, Deborah Ann. The Kingly Style of Henry IV: Personality, Politics and Culture. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of London, Royal Holloway College, 2005. Dissertation Abstracts International C70.40. Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. 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 The Kingly Style of Henry IV: Personality, Politics and Culture. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Machan, Tim William Published Machan, Tim William. "Medieval Multilingualism and Gower's Literary Practice." Studies in Philology 103 (2006), pp. 1-25. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Review Machan---one of the most interesting and profound speculators about late medieval English sociolinguistics now writing---argues for "the strategic character of [Gower's] multilingualism, the way in which, within the grammatical and pragmatic constraints of a language, purpose can determine usage Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Medieval Multilingualism and Gower's Literary Practice Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 In an earlier article (see JGN 21:5), Bratcher pointed out the similarity between Gower's tale of "The Three Questions" (CA 1.3067-3402) and the ballad of "King John and the Bishop" (Child, no. 45). For Gower's use of a young girl instead of a shepherd (as in the ballad) and for a closer analogue to the "dust-to-dust" theme of Gower's first riddle, Bratcher now cites Aarne-Thompson type 875, "The Clever Peasant Girl," particularly as reflected in a version collected near Hanover in the early nineteenth century. In a private correspondence, Bratcher points out that the reference to type 988 in his first footnote should instead be to type 922. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bratcher, James T. Published Bratcher, James T.. "Gower's 'Tale of Three Questions' and 'The Clever Peasant Girl' Folktale." Notes and Queries 53 (2006), pp. 409-410. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 'Tale of Three Questions' and 'The Clever Peasant Girl' Folktale. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Many Gowerians were first introduced to Robert Greene's 1594 Greenes Vision, with its presentation of a fictionalized debate between Gower and Chaucer, by Helen Cooper's delightful essay in Echard's Companion to Gower (see JGN 24, no. 1). Dimmick pursues the analysis of Greene's work in greater depth. From his own abstract: "The guest appearances by Chaucer and Gower in Greenes Vision reflect a fifteenth- and sixteenth-century tradition of paired citation; here they represent rival literary values and styles, exploited by Greene in a complex and playful mock-repentance. While Greene claims to be moving away from a licentious, Chaucerian comedy, he is really expanding his range to incorporate the farcical vein of the recently published anonymous Cobler of Canterburie, and the tale offered by Gower as a corrective to the former follies of Greene's pen in fact closely resembles his earlier romances. Within the vision the authority of both the poets is dismissed when King Solomon appears to reject every study except Theology; what appears to be a dramatic conversion from folly to wisdom is in fact a much more playful and unstable piece in which all claims to literary authority come to look suspect." Despite the wildly inaccurate portrayal of Gower in this rivalry and the lack of any evidence of any actual stylistic influence on the tale that Greene attributes to him, Dimmick suggests that the entire presentation is based on a "genuine critical engagement" with the issues of morality and authority that are posed in both Chaucer's and Gower's works. [PN. COpyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dimmick, Jeremy Published Dimmick, Jeremy. "Gower, Chaucer and the Art of Repentance in Robert Greene's Vision." Review of English Studies 57 (2006), pp. 456-73. ISSN 0034-6551 Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower, Chaucer and the Art of Repentance in Robert Greene's Vision Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Gilbert justifies her provocative juxtaposition of these two unrelated texts in this way: "Both aim to promote ethical action on the part of their audiences and use exemplary figures as central strategies in this enterprise. Both take as their subject-matter language, desire, law and taboo, and both express anxiety concerning the writer's own position in relation to these matters. More particularly, both draw a connection between a desired linguistic purity and a perverse masculine heterosexuality centring on the maternal body" (77-78). The comparison leads to a consideration of both similarities and differences in the two authors' deployment of their exempla and in the ways in which they associate sexual transgression with the breaking of linguistic norms. With reference to Gower, she finds the latter linkage in the final stanza of Traitié, in which the poet appears to apologize for his poor command of French. In one respect a typical modesty topos, intended to draw attention to exactly the achievement that he denies, Gower's statement is also a claim to be taken seriously as an Englishman, capable of producing a text that meets the highest standards of the "international courtly language" (85). "By declaring his own linguistic insecurity," furthermore, "the commoner Gower deferentially flatters [the] superior competence of his audience," the French-speaking English court. But he also betrays an unease about his treatment of his subject. He employs the metaphor of the "proper path" both with regard to linguistic correctness and, in an earlier passage, with regard to sexual mores. "The poet's concern for the purity of his language is thus shadowed by the uncomfortable suggestion that he parallels his exemplars in mistaking foldelit for droit amour, an error which would destroy the Traitié's didactic value. Anxiety about erotic deviancy (and perhaps even about the erotic as essentially deviant or as tending inevitably to deviancy) is coupled with a corresponding disquiet about linguistic deviation" (86). The parallels between Gower's project and Derrida's, however, suggest that by choosing to write in French, Gower consciously calls into question the naturalness of the norms that his text advocates. "Conceptual confusion appears to derive from Gower's inability when working in French to anchor the earthly as a morally valid sphere between the divine and the corrupt. This sphere and its value are therefore not asserted but questioned and explored. These (no less ethically serious) activities here rely on the representation of French as the language in which Gower acknowledges constitutive alienation, which Derrida claims is a necessary condition of ethical responsibility. The Traitié's ruin as a didactic project is, in a different light, the commencement of its poetic and ethical potential" (87). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gilbert, Jane Published Gilbert, Jane. "Men Behaving Badly: Linguistic Purity and Sexual Perversity in Derrida's Le Monolinguisme de l'autre and Gower's Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz." Romance Studies: A Journal of the University of Wales 24 (2006), pp. 77-99. ISSN 0263-9904 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies 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 Men Behaving Badly: Linguistic Purity and Sexual Perversity in Derrida's Le Monolinguisme de l'autre and Gower's Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 In an earlier essay, "Politics and the French Language in England during the Hundred Years' War" (see JGN 20, no 1 (March 2001): 23-26), Yeager focused on the origin of MO, arguing that its opening and its choice of language indicated that it was intended to be read by a chivalric audience, more specifically by King Edward III and his French-speaking inner circle. In the present essay, Yeager focuses on the completion of the poem, which he believes occurred many years later, when Gower had become installed at St. Mary Overes priory in Southwark. Both the penitential tone of the final section of the poem – so different from everything that precedes – and the appeal to the intercession of the Virgin can be explained, Yeager suggests, by a shift in Gower's intended audience to the Austin canons of the priory, and Gower's residence there also explains his access to the sources, which he is not known to have used otherwise, for this section. There is obviously much that is speculative about this argument, of course, but Yeager has anticipated virtually every objection, and in doing so, he has added to the discussion of the relative status of the three languages current in England at the time by pointing out that French would have been in common use by the priory's residents. Also along the way, he adds some new material on the origins of MO, suggesting Henry of Lancaster's "Livre de Seyntz Medicines" as one of Gower's models, both for the form of his poem and for the idea that a moral work of this sort would appeal to a royal and aristocratic audience. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "Gower's French Audience: The Mirour de l'Omme." Chaucer Review 41 (2006), pp. 111-37. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's French Audience: The Mirour de l'Omme Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 "[Late medieval literary] compilations did not necessarily achieve or even aim for a single meaning to the exclusion of others; indeed, the capacious forms of play---generic, intertextual, imitative---that gave them their literary appeal tended to multiply rather than delimit meaning. This compilational tension paralleled the difficulty of convoking a group of city-dwellers into a unified polity that could speak and act with a single voice; London compilations served in part as textual thought-experiments in the kinds of cultural and social models that could make coherent a polity's disparate interests and groups. "Early in the fourteenth century, Londoners like City Chamberlain Andrew Horn and the compiler of the Auchinleck manuscript tentatively explored imitation of courtly play as one way of laying claim to the cultural status that would help them resist royal attempts to disenfranchise them. The turbulence of Ricardian London, however, brought Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower to opposite conclusions about the relevance of such models: Chaucer's construction of the Canterbury Tales argues that chivalric performance had lost its viability in the face of Richard's pageantry-laden yet socially disruptive reign, while Gower's repackaging of earlier texts in a new compilation [Trentham mansucript] for Henry IV's accession proposes that courtly literary forms could regain their relevance under the rejuvenating aegis of the new Lancastrian dynasty." Directed by Anne Middleton. Author/Editor Author/Editor Bahr, Arthur William Published Bahr, Arthur William. "Convocational and compilational play in Medieval London literary culture." PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2006. Gower Subject 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 Convocational and compilational play in Medieval London literary culture Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This dissertation offers a history of sexual violence in late-medieval England by tracking the associative patterns that structure the experience and production of sexual violence in contexts as varied as the legal regulation of marriage and raptus, the erotics of hagiography, the ethicizing work of instructional treatises, and the gendering of political communities and ecstatic experience. In attending to this associative network, this project unsettles the weight of raptus, a medieval legal term that includes rape but also encompasses non-sexual abduction and consensual elopement, as the paradigmatic framework for a historical understanding of sexual violence. . . . Texts considered range from the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries and include Geoffrey Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale and the Tale of Melibee, Gower's Tale of Florent, Margery Kempe's The Book of Margery Kempe, the anchoritic text Holy Maidenhood, Reginald Pecock's Folewer to the Donet, Richard Rolle's Form of Perfect Living and the Life of St. Elisabeth of Spalbeck." Directed by Mark Miller. Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, Suzanne M Published Edwards, Suzanne M. "Beyond raptus: Pedagogies and fantasies of sexual violence in late-medieval England." PhD thesis, The University of Chicago, 2006. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Beyond raptus: Pedagogies and fantasies of sexual violence in late-medieval England Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 Ricardian poets have been seen in the past as rejecting their native tradition in favor of a more "sophisticated" continental mode. I contend, however, that Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower continue their English predecessors' themes of public duty and morality. Although by the fourteenth century Middle English romances had already begun to distance themselves from their French antecedents in terms of ethics and themes, the Ricardian romancers of London in the 1380s and 90s took this distancing a step further. Indeed, instead of embracing the literary themes of French romances, these tales explicitly reject the courtly values and ethics of continental literature and are thus in many ways a natural development of Middle English romance tradition. I argue that by both distancing themselves from the literature of the continent and addressing current socio-political issues, these works participated in a nation building project and formed the beginnings of an English national literature. As an expression of, and means for, this distinctive style of English romance, these texts all portray characters reading. While the progressive shift from oral, communal reading to silent, individual reading in the fourteenth century encouraged a multiplicity of interpretations, the danger inherent in critiquing the king and court constrained the poets to use allusion and allegory in referencing political concerns. I show that these two forces combine to cause an alteration in the very structure of narrative to create a reflexive and multilayered metafictional environment. By depicting failed acts of interpretation of French romances within the tales themselves, the Ricardian poets criticize the king's own predilection for French literature and create a sort of metafictional boot camp through which they train their readers in both what to read and how to interpret." Directed by Ann W. Astell. Author/Editor Author/Editor Gould, Mica Dawn Published Gould, Mica Dawn. "Reading the reader: Metafictional romance in Ricardian London." PhD thesis, Purdue University, 2006. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Reading the reader: Metafictional romance in Ricardian London Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Higl, Andrew Published Higl, Andrew. "Printing Power: Selling Lydgate, Gower, and Chaucer." Essays in Medieval Studies 23 (2006), pp. 57-77. ISSN 1043-2213 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Review At the center of this essay is a 6-page table (59-64) showing the chronology of the appearance of the major printed editions of the works of Gower, Lydgate, and Chaucer between 1477 and 1598. Alongside the three editions of CA (one by Caxton, two by Berthelette) stand 18 separate imprints of Lydgate and 19 of Chaucer, and Higl seeks to explain why Chaucer was regarded as a more marketable commodity than either of his near contemporaries. The monk Lydgate, Higl notes, fell increasingly out of fashion with the onset of the Reformation. He had diminished his own auctoritas, moreover, by placing himself below "Father Chaucer," and he was often identified merely as translator rather than as poet. Gower too was out of step with the Reformation: he expresses his strong opposition to Lollardy and schism, and Higl notes that the three editions of CA appeared either before the Act of Supremacy in 1534 or during the brief return to Catholicism under Mary. And though Gower is sometimes cited during this period for the quality of his English, as the author of major poems in three different languages, he did not contribute as Chaucer did to the advancement of the growth of English. "In an era dominated by humanist scholarship of classical Greek and Latin, English printers and editors needed to market English as worthwhile--something served by elevating the figure of Chaucer but not plausible with Gower" (p. 70). Chaucer was more marketable, finally, because his works were both more varied and more malleable. Fragmented and incomplete, unlike the single major monument that Gower left in English, they invited revision and expansion and allowed editors and printers to construct a Chaucer appropriate to the market demands of the time.] [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.2] 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 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 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 "My dissertation explores confession as a form or structure organizing four late-medieval texts: John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Geoffrey Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, The Book of Margery Kempe and Robert Henryson's Testament of Cresseid. I find that in these medieval texts confession functions as a discourse for producing truth and for constructing or inventing textualized bodies. Therefore, in part, I approach confession through the popular medieval analogy of a "the body" to "the book" and thereby consider how confession works to represent "truth" via the figure of a Christian body divided between inner and outer space. In each of the four texts I discuss, memorable bodies emerge as effects of confessional discourse: the senex amans in the Confessio ; the suffering women of the Legend ; the chaste body of Margery Kempe; and Cresseid's leprous body in the Testament. These problematic bodies all bear out the difficulties and frequent failures of confessional representation. Ultimately, during a period of institutional collapse and social, religious, and political upheaval, I demonstrate that desire ---for truth, renewal of faith, recuperation of the fallen body, stability, closure---underlies the need to confess." Directed by Elizabeth Scala and Marjorie Curry Woods. Author/Editor Author/Editor Meyer, Cathryn Marie Published Meyer, Cathryn Marie. "Producing the Middle English corpus: Confession and medieval bodies." PhD thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, 2006. 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 Producing the Middle English corpus: Confession and medieval bodies Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 the latter half of her title makes clear, Little's concern is to demonstrate that "the history of the medieval self . . . is bound up with the history of auricular confession" (3), an argument she grounds theoretically in those of Foucault ("History of Sexuality") and Emile Benveniste ("Problems in General Linguistics") regarding the inseparability of the "self" and language, as the latter defines and shapes the former: "To read the self in this way is to understand it as subject to the possibilities and limitations inherent in the language into which one is born; one does not preexist that language and shape it to reflect oneself." (4) The "resistance" in her title is Wycliffism/Lollardy, terms she uses nearly equivalently: "I shall investigate the Wycliffite reform of lay instruction, focusing on its consequences for self-definition" (13) as she seeks to show that "Wycliffism is . . . a disruption in the languages and practices of self-definition" (14)--especially as, following Foucault, that defining of the self takes place in confession. Hence her interest in literary texts especially related to confession: the "Parson's Tale," Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes", and the "Confessio Amantis." "The Wycliffite disruption," she argues, "can be understood largely, though not exclusively, in terms of debates around confession as a means of self-definition." (14) The "Confessio", like the "Parson's Tale," represents for Little texts that "can be mapped onto a pre-Wycliffite . . . spectrum," while Hoccleve's "Regiment," written in 1410-11, evinces a "post-Wycliffite" development of confession (102-03). "I shall argue that Gower's text stages a pre-Wycliffite confession, despite his awareness of and anxiety caused by the Wycliffite threat. For Gower, Lollardy might threaten the context of confession (the world in which it takes place), but it does not threaten its structure or its capacity to describe human experience and console the penitent." (102) Gower's awareness of the state of disruption in English society is manifest in the Prologue, and his trust in "traditional" forms of language, self, and normativities in the confession he provides for Amans, one apparently untroubled by the "topical concerns [that] interrupt and affect traditional languages, such as the exempla." 107) For Little, that the "estates satire" of the Prologue and the Lover's confession of Books I-VIII are never causally connected "suggests that confession is at this moment a kind of retreat from the present threat of Lollardy and schism into a self solipsistically concerned with love." (108) Yet "the lover's confession cannot eliminate the threat of the contemporary world completely, and there are moments in which the world of the Prologue interrupts the confession. These moments are important precisely because they signal the way in which the poem can no longer conceal or integrate the divisive forces of the present that it has attempted to set aside" (108-09). One such moment is brought about by the discussion of Homicide (III.2525-29); another--predictably--is Gower's inclusion of the "new Secte of Lollardie" amongst the "Religions of the World" section in Book V (1788-1830), passage which Little discusses in full, in order to argue that "For Gower . . . the danger of Lollardy cannot be combatted only by rejecting its 'lore' but by ensuring that one defines oneself according to examples that are undoubtedly orthodox--in this case following the saints and ancestors. Indeed, Gower not only opposes Lollards to saints but compares them--in stating that the saints are 'betre,' he underlines that what is at stake here is whom to imitate" (111). Little calls attention to "a choppiness in Gower's thinking" (111), noting that both in the awkward interpolation of Christ into his description of the dangers of Lollardy and in the presentation of Lollards as a "rownyng" in men's ears he inadvertently invokes Lollard positions (111-12). Ultimately, because of "how carefully Gower has crafted this confession to respond to the division described in the Prologue . . . the divisive power of the Lollards is nullified: although they appear in the Prologue as a threat to the social world, they do not reappear at the end in Amans/Gower's return to the world from the confession. In this way, Gower suggests that the dangerous influence of Lollards and the division they represent can be answered and disarmed by confession" (112). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Little, Katherine C Published Little, Katherine C. "Confession and Resistance: Defining the Self in Late Medieval England." Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2006 ISBN 978-2503547770 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Confession and Resistance: Defining the Self in Late Medieval England Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Notre Dame University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 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 As part of a vigorous defense of the role of Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, in the literary culture of the late fourteenth century, both in England and on the continent (and implicitly of the importance of other royal female contemporaries as well), Coleman argues that Philippa not only served, after her marriage to João I, King of Portugal, as the means by which Gower's CA became translated into both Portuguese and Spanish, but that she also, much earlier, as the recipient and presumed disseminator of Deschamps' ballade 765, in which she is named as the queen of those who hold with the order of the flower, helped provide the occasion for the commissioning of both CA and LGW, each of which makes allusion to the cults of the flower and the leaf. Coleman promises more on the circumstances of the commissioning of these two poems in an essay forthcoming in On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium, ed. R.F. Yeager, scheduled to be published in April 2007. The present essay gathers a great deal of information about Philippa's life, particularly about the many attempted betrothals arranged by her father on her behalf. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coleman, Joyce Published Coleman, Joyce. "The Flower, the Leaf, and Philippa of Lancaster." In The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception. Ed. Collette, Carolyn P. Chaucer Studies (36). Cambridge: Brewer, 2006, pp. 33-58. ISBN 9781843840718 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Flower, the Leaf, and Philippa of Lancaster 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 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 With this essay, Minnis proposes to counterbalance the emphasis on "vernacular theology" in recent studies of late medieval culture by examining the ways "discourses of secular power" were becoming standardized by the late fourteenth century (44). To find these, he extends his terrain beyond the concept of an international court culture (as proposed by Gervase Mathew) to a broader "international lay culture" increasingly concerned with asserting the state's power over the church's power, an assertion particularly apparent in such works as Latini's "Livres dou Tresor, " Gower's seventh book of CA, Giles of Rome's "De regimine principum," the anonymous "Eschez amoureux" (along with Evrart de Conty's commentary), the Pseudo-Aristotelian "Economics," and Chaucer's "Knight's Tale," all of which apply Aristotle's practical philosophy to lay society, not just rulers. Central to this practical philosophy is "the Aristotelian vision of the active life as the virtuous life of man of society" (48). With their fundamentally secular objectives, these texts establish the family "as the basic economic unit," a means by which the reason can control the passions (50). Similarly, these texts also explore another secular virtue, magnificence, as a means by which a ruler brings order and civilized behavior to his people. These examples provide a starting point for studying the standardization of "crucial aspects of lay culture in vernacular literature" and for understanding that western Europeans shared more than religious interests (58). [CB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Minnis, Alastair J Published Minnis, Alastair J. "Standardizing Lay Culture: Secularity in French and English Literature of the Fourteenth Century." In The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England. Ed. Schaefer, Ursula. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2006, pp. 43-60. ISBN 9783631551066 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 Standardizing Lay Culture: Secularity in French and English Literature of the Fourteenth Century. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Peter Lang, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor David, Alfred, and James Simpson, eds. Published David, Alfred, and James Simpson, eds. "Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1A: The Middle Ages." New York: Norton, 2006 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Review Gower finally joins the ranks of the elect: David and Simpson include an excerpt from Confessio Amantis, the tale of Tereus (5.5546-7074) in the new edition of English literature's holy canon (pp. 319-31). Their introduction briefly surveys Gower's life and works, and it offers a few comments on the structure of the poem, which culminates, in this account, in Amans' reintegration "with the psyche of which he is ideally a part." The tale that the editors reprint is the same chosen to represent CA by Derek Pearsall for his Chaucer to Spenser anthology in 1999 (see JGN 18, no. 1, 8-9). The text is based on Macaulay, but like the other examples of Middle English in the anthology, it has "been re-spelled in a way that is designed to aid the reader" (p. 15), evidently on the model of Donaldson's edition of Chaucer, which supplies the excerpts from CT in this volume. Thus, in the first few lines, "mi" becomes "my," "hiere" > "heere," "enheritance" > "inheritance," "therupon" > "thereupon," and "douhtres" > "doughtres." (The editors assure me that the substitution of "that" for "which" in the third line of the excerpt was inadvertent.) The introduction emphasizes the violence of the tale, in contrast to the "often pathetic, and always hopeless pursuit of Amans for his lady." It might also have noted that Amans' response (included in the excerpt) puts both Amans and his love for his lady in an unusually favorable light. Students who buy the anthology will also get a password that allows one year's access to the "Norton Literature Online" website, which includes material supplementary to the printed volume. They will find there an excerpt from the Prologue to VC describing the uprising of 1381, some excerpts from both VC and MO illustrating "Estates Satire," and a reproduction of the drawing of Gower aiming his arrow at the world from Cotton Tiberius A.IV (actually photographed from the frontispiece to vol. 4 of Macaulay's edition) illustrating "Medieval Estates and Orders." [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1.] 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 Norton Anthology of English Literature. 8th ed. Vol. 1A: The Middle Ages. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Norton, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 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 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 Reading "Kingis Quair" as a bridge between Scottish and English poetry and as a self-conscious poem about "the very act of writing of the poem" (19), Petrina examines the work's interplay of autobiography and literary tradition, discussing aspects of James I of Scotland's life--particularly his imprisonment and education in Lancastrian England--and the placement of the poem in the largely Chaucerian context of the only manuscript where it occurs: Oxford, Bodleian MS Arch. Selden B.24. Along the way, Petrina describes James's debts to Chaucer, with passing mention of Gower, and analyzes the dedication to these predecessors in the final stanza of the "Quair" (lines 1373-79), stating that "these lines should be read not as generic praise, but as a clear description of the two poets' main qualities" (18)--Gower as a moral poet and Chaucer as James's "teacher of 'ars poetica'"--going on to cite Lydgate and Hoccleve as evidence that "in fact, 'moralitee' and Gower never seem far apart" in fifteenth-century commentary "however damning this may sound" (19). Petrina's treatment of Gower is peripheral (at times, parenthetical) to her treatment of Chaucer's influence on the "Quair" and its reception. She concludes, "'The Kingis Quair' was probably first read in the same years in which, as king of Scotland, James was attempting a peaceful coexistence with his English neighbours; in such a context it becomes a testimony of the reception in Scotland of English writing, as well as of the King's English, here re-presented as Chaucer's (and Gower's) English" (20). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Petrina, Alessandra. Published Petrina, Alessandra. "'My Maisteris Dere': The Acknowledgement of Authority in The Kingis Quair." Scottish Studies Review 7.1 (2006): 9-23. ISSN: 1475-7737. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "My Maisteris Dere": The Acknowledgement of Authority in "The Kingis Quair." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Though this article ostensibly focuses primarily on William Langland, the fact that Lee's analysis of Langland's relationship to the concept of war relies on comparison to John Gower's position on war makes this article at least marginally relevant to Gower studies. There is a companion article that lays out his position on Gower more thoroughly, as well, from the same year in the Korean "Journal of English Language and Literature." Noting the ubiquity of war in the fourteenth century, Lee particularly focuses on the potential discord between the violence of war, and Christian ethics. He argues that Gower and Langland were not entirely pacifists, but that they did justify some warfare for "the protection of state and church and the settlement of order" (116). He largely focuses here on Langland's limited justification of crusade through the notion of "salvation for the heathens." (116). He argues that, like Gower, Langland argues for some military action as part of the responsibilities of an ideal king. He cites Gower's criticism of the Norwich Crusade of 1383 in the "Vox Clamantis," comparing to passages in the B-text that seem similarly critical of a crusading impulse. He sees Langland's position as more opposed to clerical support of war than Gower's. Noting the extent of Piers Plowman's description of Trajan's salvation and the broader question of salvation for non-Christians, Lee sees room in Langland's broader anti-war position for some crusading impulse. He also points out that knights in the poem have a role in law and order, and protecting the church (123). He contrasts Langland's position on war to Gower's: "however, unlike Gower's aggressive and active attitude in applying the just cause to regaining the rights and restoring peace, Langland's notion of justice, it seems, lies only in the least defense for the preservation of life and property, not in the plundering of other territories and properties" (127). Lee goes on to examine the Meed sequence and its critique of the war in Normandy, thus critiquing the association of war and profit in the late fourteenth century. He concludes, "war, in both Langland's and Gower's view, was not wrong when used for legitimate ends, for example, for the defense of men's rights and for the maintenance of men's truth and common good, nor when it was initiated and controlled by a king who is equipped with Christian values" (132). Overall he provides a reasonable reading of "Piers Plowman," with some attention to the distinctions between versions. Unfortunately this article suffers somewhat from being separated from its other half--publishing an extended comparison of two authors in articles in different journals makes it hard for a reader to digest the full ramifications of the comparison. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lee, Dongchoon. Published Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 14.1 (Feb. 2006): 115-37. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Church Reformers' Ideas of Warfare and Peace in Fourteenth Century England: William Langland. 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 Long acknowledged for its impact on the study of medieval English scribes, Mooney's essay proclaims Adam Pinkhurst to be "Chaucer's scribe," the addressee of the poet's "Adam Scriveyn," and, as copyist of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts of "The Canterbury Tales," the same person as Scribe B of Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes' venerable discussion (1978) of the five scribes (A through E) of the "Confessio Amantis" manuscript, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.2. Mooney sketches a possible biography for Pinkhurst, based in considerable part on the evidence of his hand in records of the Guildhall, arguing that the scribe had lengthy association with Chaucer and a close working relationship, with implications for the text and dating of several of Chaucer's works. Since publication of the essay, scholars have debated details of Mooney's argument and her methodology, but her account of Chaucer and "his scribe" has become the prevailing orthodoxy of Chaucer studies and has had huge impact on late-medieval English paleography and manuscript study. This is not the place to evaluate that orthodoxy, but I do think it worthwhile--even fifteen years after the publication of this essay--to note that at least one of Mooney's suggestions beyond the identification of Scribe B as Pinkhurst has implications for Gower studies. Specifically, she suggests that Scribe D, working with and supervising Scribe B (Pinkhurst), Scribe E (Thomas Hoccleve), and "two other London scribes" (A and C) to produce Trinity MS R.3.2 after Gower's death, did so "to preserve a reliable exemplar?" (122; question mark in original). She adds that "[w]e thus see these trusted scribes [Pinkhurst and Scribe D] continuing after the authors' [Chaucer's and Gower's] deaths to exercise control over the quality of exemplars distributed for further dissemination of Middle English texts" (122-23)--anticipating aspects of Mooney's later study (with Estelle Stubbs), "The Scribes and the City" (2013), where Scribe D is identified tentatively as John Marchaunt. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mooney, Linne R. Published Speculum 81 (2006): 97-138. 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 Chaucer's Scribe. 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 This article is not primarily focused on Gower, but as it addresses the Digby Mary Magedalene play largely in terms of the trope of "the woman cast adrift" (25), it may well be of interest to Gower scholars working on the "Tale of Constance" (Confessio Amantis, II.587-1612). Findon contextualizes the play as an East Anglian work--not necessarily relevant for Gower's work. Still, the recurring story of Constance (or Custance for Chaucer) was certainly widely known, and helps ground a useful contrast between the saint in the play and other women "cast adrift." Findon finds the incorporation of this trope (or motif) useful in that that it provides a context for variations on the Mary Magdalene story that appear in the Digby play--the playwright's "alterations to Mary's story seem deliberately to enhance her status as a female hero through her connections with Chaucer's Custance, with Trivet and Gower's Constance, and with Emaré--virtuous but largely passive romance women who are 'cast adrift'" (29). She contrasts Gower's and the other versions of this sort of heroine primarily with Mary in an analysis of the play, noting that women in this trope are generally "cast adrift by evil forces beyond [their] control" (32). Mary's travels in the play are planned by her enemies, as are those of Constance or the more secular romance heroine Emaré. Findon provides a useful analysis of the drifting woman tradition, noting that "in medieval literature in general, a woman traveling alone in a ship is often in the midst of a deep personal crisis" (31), for example, and often the voyage is meant to be fatal to the woman (32). She also points out that "in both classical and medieval literature, female protagonists who undertake such journeys are rare, and those who are active during the course of their journeys are even more rare: this is what male heroes do" (34). Thus, as the Digby playwright adapts this trope to Mary Magdalene's story: "Mary Magdalene recalls the Constance figures yet does not share their lack of personal power" (36). Overall, Gower here provides a counterpoint for Findon's insightful reading of the Digby play. This article is most likely to be useful to Gower scholars working with this particular literary trope or with Constance; its comparison of the different analogues, though focused around the Digby play, is thorough and detailed, and many of Findon's insights may inflect how one looks at the Constance narrative, also, in implicit contrast, the Apollonius of Tyre story (42). [RAL. Copyrigtht. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Findon, Joanne. Published Findon, Joanne. "Mary Magdalene as New Custance?: 'The Woman Cast Adrift' in the Digby Mary Magdalene." English Studies in Canada 32.4 (2006): 25-50. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis 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 Mary Magdalene as New Custance?: 'The Woman Cast Adrift' in the Digby Mary Magdalene. 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor McAlpine, Monica E. Published McAlpine, Monica E. "'Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters': A Paradigm from Ecclesiastes in Gower's 'Apollonius of Tyre'." In Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D. Kirk. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Pp. 225-35. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues and Literary Relations Review McAlpine suggests that Gower's "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre" may have been influenced or inspired by Ecclesiastes 11.1, leaving the suggestion unconfirmed, but using it to guide her intense, even fervent, appreciation of the character of Apollonius as a figure of "goodness and wisdom from the start" (229). She argues that the events of the tale--reinforced by the diction and imagery of gift-giving--"introduce, validate by experience, and authoritatively confirm the virtues with which the hero confronts his adventures" (225). The liberality of Apollonius's gift-giving is essential to his character, McAlpine tells is, a virtue she aligns with Bonaventure's commentary on Ecclesiastes 11.1 and with Apollonius's own agency in accepting fortune (eventually) and submitting to divine providence, concerns McAlpine also observes in Bonaventure's commentary. Fundamental to McAlpine's argument is the wheat that Apollonius gives freely to the citizens of Tharsis which she reads as the "bread" of Ecclesiastes, as its "waters" are the hero's recurrent adventures by sea. McAlpine extends the symbolic value of the gift of bread to the burial at sea of Apollonius's wife, through which his daughter, Thaise, also becomes a gift, along with "other gifts" in the tale (228). Apollonius's final gifts, his sacrificial offerings to Diana in her temple in Ephesus, McAlpine tells us, completes "the depiction of Apollonius's virtues" (232), and leads to the recognition scene between husband and wife, brought about, not only by the seas of fortune and by Apollonius's "family trait of disciplined management of one's suffering," but also by the "intervention" of his "dream of divine origin"--fortune, agency, and Providence combined. These interconnections in this final tale of the "Confessio Amantis," McAlpine concludes, respond to similar concerns in the Prologue of the poem and indicate the "many-sidedness of Gower's thinking for which "Ecclesiastes could have been a rich resource" (233). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] 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 "Cast Thy Bread Upon the Waters": A Paradigm from Ecclesiastes in Gower's "Apollonius of Tyre." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2006 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "The thesis proposes that, with the 'Confessio Amantis' John Gower produced a philosophy of kingship that defended the freedoms of the king whilst accepting the legal possibility of royal deposition. This thesis will begin with a discussion of royal legitimacy, arguing that Gower saw heredity as the beginning in a king's search for legitimate authority and not the end. This discussion continues with the theory of separation and [the] relationship between the king and his crown, thereby placing Gower's view within its historical context. The thesis continues by analysing the relationship between the king and the law as descried in the 'Confessio Amantis.' Although Gower accepts that the king is above the law, he argues that a just ruler should willingly subjugate himself; he is not the crown but its first subject. A discussion of Gower's view of counsel follows this, arguing that the king has absolute freedom to choose royal councillors alongside total responsibility for the results; Gower will not allow his monarch to escape blame for his mistakes by hiding behind his advisors. Warfare is a constant theme within the 'Confessio Amantis,' and Gower's attitude has attracted much critical discussion. This thesis argues that Gower is uncompromising in his abhorrence of royal militarism, seeing it as a rejection of a king's duty to give peace and justice to his subjects. The thesis concludes with a discussion of a number of contemporary poetic texts. This allows the thesis to put the 'Confessio Amantis' within its literary context; there are places where the work is expressing relatively common sentiments and others where Gower is taking a stand on his own." Author/Editor Author/Editor Hodgson-Jones, T. J. Published Hodgson-Jones, T. J.  Deposition and the Absolute King: The 'Confessio Amantis' and Gower's Philosophy of Kingship. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of London, King's College, 2006. Dissertation Abstracts International C70.45. Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis 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 Deposition and the Absolute King: The 'Confessio Amantis' and Gower's Philosophy of Kingship. 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 In his dissertation Nowlin explores the "creative potential of understanding invention at once as a textual and historical concept," surveying uses of invention in rhetorical tradition and late-medieval English chronicles and maintaining that this creative potential "receives its fullest treatment in the poetic exchanges of John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer." He discusses "Vox Clamantis," "Cronica Triptertita," and various stories from the "Confessio Amantis," arguing that they present "a dominant authorial persona whose poetics impose inventional control over the disparate narratives of history. Gower attempts to refigure his literary opus as a series of poetic 'res gestae,' transforming poetic works into events constitutive of English history in order to rejuvenate English culture. Chaucer's later poetry critiques Gower's poetics both directly and indirectly, destabilizing Gower's model without offering a suitable replacement" (quoted from Nowlin's Abstract). [eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nowlin, Steele. Published Dissertation Abstracts International A79.04 (2018): n.p. Pennsylvania State University Ph.D. Dissertation, 2007. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Cronica Tripertita Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer, Gower and the Invention of History. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 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 Glaser, Joseph, trans Published Glaser, Joseph, trans. "Middle English Poetry in Modern Verse." Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2007 ISBN 9780872208803 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Review Glaser includes "versions of poems from about 1200 to 1500" of various kinds, attempting to represent "a broad sampling of Middle English poetry" (ix), and states his intention "to honor the original meaning, meter and rhyme scheme while at the same time producing versions modern readers will enjoy" (xi). In his section entitled "Selections" he translates excerpts from Piers Plowman (B text), "The Squire of Low Degree," Douglas's translation of the Aeneid, and "Ceix and Alcyone" from Confessio Amantis Book IV, 2927-3123. His source for his text is J.A.W. Bennett's Selections from John Gower (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968). Each section is prefaced by a brief introduction--in Gower's case, identifying Amans as "Gower himself" (133); there is a short bibliography of editions and critical studies and indices of titles and first lines in Middle English. [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] 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 Middle English Poetry in Modern Verse Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Hackett Publishing, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 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 Using the evidence of Gower's internally datable poems, Carlson is able to construct a pattern in the development of the poet's use of rhyme as a stylistic ornament in his Latin verse. Gower's first compositions – the earliest portions of VC – are in the "relatively more informal and conversational" (15) unrhymed elegiac distichs. Leonine verses – in which the word preceding the caesura rhymes with the final word in the line – do occur, but at a rate (around 20%) consistent with chance, given the limited number of word endings in Latin, and most of these are monosyllabic rather than disyllabic. Some evidence of the use of rhyme for rhetorical effect can be found in passages in which leonines appear in higher than normal concentration, which tend to occur at the beginnings or endings of important sections. The opposite extreme is provided by the more elevated, more serious, and more ornate hexameters of CrT, with regularly occurring disyllabic rhyme. The Latin epigrams in CA are in the style of VC: the final six hexameters, however ("Explicit iste liber . . .") are in the style of CrT, and the couplet rhyme in the third and fourth lines suggests (as Siân Echard recently argued) that the two verses that follow, beginning "Derbeie Comiti," should be regarded as a separate poem. The turning point in Gower's use of rhyme, according to Carlson, is the "Carmen super multiplici viciorum pestilencia" of 1396-97, which mixes unrhymed sections largely lifted from VC with new passages in leonine hexameters, heavy with disyllabic rhyme, with the most ornate passages, incorporating rhyming couplets or repeated rhymes, again marking the beginnings and endings of sections of the poem. With these as his points of reference, Carlson suggests some revisions in the chronology of the less easily dated works. "Ecce patet tensus," in unrhymed elegiac distichs, he places before the 1390s. (R.F. Yeager, who had access to Carlson's essay in advance of publication, suggests on other grounds a date of 1398 in his recent edition of Gower's Minor Latin Works, p. 72; see JGN 26 no. 1 (April 2007): 19-22.) The poems with heavier use of rhyme, on the other hand, would be later, including "O Deus Immense," in the same style as CrT, and "Tractatus de lucis scrutinio," despite its similarities in content to VC. (Yeager, p. 55, suggests a date of 1392-95.) Carlson also proposes different periods for the revisions in VC, but he also suggests some caution, noting on the basis of "Rex Celi Deus" that "even after he began to work with disyllabic rhyme, Gower retained considerable tolerance for unrhymed lines and monosyllables" (46). Carlson concludes with some speculations on the driving force in Gower's stylistic development, whether it had a "strictly literary-internal genesis" (49) or was related to a literary effort to reassert "right order" after Henry's usurpation; and he finally links Gower's more ornate style to "the same self-monumentalizing ambitions represented by Gower's late editorial business over his own work" (50) as he organized his literary legacy in his final years. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R Published Carlson, David R. "A Rhyme Distribution Chronology of John Gower's Latin Poetry." Studies in Philology 104 (2007), pp. 15-55. ISSN 0039-3738 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Vox Clamantis Minor Latin Poetry 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 A Rhyme Distribution Chronology of John Gower's Latin Poetry Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Ganim, John M Published Ganim, John M. "Gower, Liminality, and the Politics of Space." Exemplaria 19 (2007), pp. 90-116. ISSN 1041-2573 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Ganim has come a long way in his thinking since presenting the germ of this article in a paper entitled "Gower le flâneur" in a Gower Society-sponsored session at the 39th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in 2004. Then Ganim found much to be said for viewing Gower as just such a figure of "flânérie"--a term borrowed from Walter Benjamin which Ganim defines here as "the archetypal modern subject…the modern urban observer" (112). At present juncture, however, his extensive probing of Gower's "liminalities" (N.B., although Ganim himself uses only the singular, the plural seems appropriate, given his apparent effort here to provide examples of borderlines of every sort and kind, from geographic boundaries to instances of mobility qua mobility in Book I of the Vox Clamantis and variously throughout the Confessio Amantis) has led Ganim to the precisely opposite conclusion, that "In many ways, both historically and formally, Benjamin's flâneur is very different than the wandering subject in Gower" (113); and this is because "his [Gower's] perspective is not one of detachment, even allegorical detachment, but an attachment to things as they were and should be once again, an attachment simultaneously nostalgic and utopian" (112). Gower himself, it would seem (N.B.: Ganim regularly uses "Gower" to refer to the poet and to Gower's oeuvre) comes rather close to it: his "predicament nevertheless prefigures the contradictory position of the modern subject, and suggests, in his [i.e., Gower's] obsession with liminality, at least one way of accommodating those contradictions" (113). But Ganim's primary interest lies not in Gower the individual, but rather in deciphering "Gower's largest effort, his search for a unified field theory of his world, one in which the ethical, the social, the rhetorical, the spiritual and the poetic work from the same position towards the same end" (110). Ultimately Gower cannot achieve the cohesion he seeks, however: "The analysis of space in Gower [sic] suggests that the liminal geographies and settings of his works hold contradictions and confusions in suspension, almost symptomatically (rather than intentionally) exposing a gap between the analysis of social [sic] and the personal division that is the initial focus of Gower's complaint and the transcendent and idealized solutions he offers….Reliance on a liminal imaginative geography suggests how complicated, and ultimately compromised, were Gower's efforts to align his ethical, political and poetic agendas into one coherent discourse" (113). While this is hardly an original claim--one can trace its origins to David Aers and Larry Scanlon in the 1990's, at least in so far as Ganim calls attention to the frequent contradiction between Gower's goals and his perception of realpolitik--there is nonetheless great and valuable material here, particularly in its extensive bibliography, and application of au courant discussions of "space" defined very widely indeed. This reader was particularly grateful for the breadth and depth of Ganim's resources. The following editorial issues should be noted, however: pp. 104-105, the translation of Mirour de l'Omme ll. 26497-505 is mis-numbered as ll.26497-508, and the translator mis-cited as "Burton" instead of William Burton Wilson (the full reference to Wilson's translation is correct in the bibliography); and on p. 105 as well, see fn. 8, which would seem to concern Constance C. Relihan's work on Shakespeare's Pericles but instead, to the puzzlement of this reader, cites Sheila Delany's fine article "Geographies of Desire: Orientalism in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women."] [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.2] 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, Liminality, and the Politics of Space Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Peronelle's role in providing both the solution to the riddle and advice to the king on his own behavior in Gower's tale of "The Three Questions" is not unlike that which Chaucer attributes to such women as Prudence (in Melibee) and Alceste (LGW). It has its roots, Schieberle argues, in the role reserved for women as intercessors in contemporary ideology (as illustrated, for instance, in the historical examples of English queens pleading on behalf of the less powerful), which in turn has its roots in the model of Marian intercession, also invoked by Peronelle's humble conduct in the tale. Women were able to exercise such influence over their husbands and monarchs precisely because their "subordinate status allow[ed them] to challenge the king without threatening his ultimate authority" (93). "In Peronelle, Gower imagines the possibility that a woman could exercise power both privately and publicly" (95). As the daughter of one of the king's knights, however, not yet directly related to the king, Peronelle raises the threat of a woman acting independently, a problem that Gower resolves by the way in which he arranges for her to be married to the king, restoring the proper hierarchy of gender at the end. Peronelle is one of several examples of female counselors in CA, all of whom (unlike several of the males who appear in a similar position in the poem) are successful in their attempts to influence their kings. "Such a special status for women suggests strongly that Gower finds in the image of the woman advisor a compelling model for counsel in general" (92), a model that he himself imitates in his own efforts to offer non-threatening advice to his king. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schieberle, Misty Published Schieberle, Misty. "'Thing which a man mai noght areche': Women and Counsel in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Chaucer Review 42 (2007), pp. 91-109. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 'Thing which a man mai noght areche': Women and Counsel in Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Fletcher sets himself a multi-pronged task here. He seeks to show 1) that the Dublin, Trinity College MS 244, comparatively little studied, evinces the same hand as that identified by Linne R. Mooney as "Chaucer's scribe," Adam Pynkhurst--or, alternatively, that a sort of "school" of scribes existed headed by Pynkhurst, all of whom practiced in Pynkhurst's shadow and in accord with his hand; 2) that Pynkhurst (or member or members of his "school") copied the Wyclifite prose tracts in Dublin, Trinity College MS 244; and that therefore 3) this manuscript "is not without its implications for the understanding of Chaucer's relation to the textual culture of late-fourteenth century religious radicalism" (p. 597). The argument is only tangentially related to Gower, in that (as Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes showed conclusively) the same scribe--Pynkhurst?--copied major manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis. The inferences are that if Chaucer knew Pynkhurst well enough to write "Adam Scriveyn" in mock reprimand, then Gower must have known him also, since the same hand shows up in a number of important manuscripts of CA; and this in turn "opens various possibilities" such as "a scribe actively providing the poet who employed him with reading material, as well as simply being the passive recipient of that poet's copying commissions . . . . Thus this milieu, that saw the copying of some of the major literary works of the late fourteenth century, would also now need to be seen as a possible context for some of that period's radical vernacular theology" (pg. 629). It should be noted that, for all that Fletcher attempts to stretch these suggestions to embrace Chaucer, he does not venture the same for Gower. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fletcher, Alan J Published Fletcher, Alan J. "The Criteria for Scribal Attribution: Dublin, Trinity College, MS 244, Some Early Copies of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Canon of Adam Pynkhurst Manuscripts." Review of English Studies 58 (2007), pp. 597-632. ISSN 0034-6551 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 Criteria for Scribal Attribution: Dublin, Trinity College, MS 244, Some Early Copies of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Canon of Adam Pynkhurst Manuscripts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 thesis examines the legal aspects of the writings of the fourteenth-century poet John Gower, with particular attention paid to his Confessio Amantis. The first chapter discusses the generic similarities between the legal case and the exemplum and argues that Gower frequently uses the exemplum to analyze difficult legal questions. The three subsequent chapters elaborate on the types of legal problems that Gower broaches, ranging from questions of jurisdiction in international law (the legal status of emperor, pope and king) in chapter two, to the constitutional powers of the king in chapter three, to the legality of private vengeance in chapter four. In the process a number of other legal topics are also analyzed, such as key jurisprudential concepts (e.g., equity and the rigor iuris) and aspects of criminal law (particularly treason, felony, and malice aforethought). Whereas Gower's association with the law has traditionally been approached through biographical readings (the life records), this thesis attempts to broaden our understanding of the legal dimension of his literary writings. Author/Editor Author/Editor Van Dijk, Conrad J Published Van Dijk, Conrad J. "The Exemplum As Legal Case: John Gower and the Limits of the Law." PhD thesis, University of Western Ontario, 2007. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Exemplum As Legal Case: 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 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Allen, Elizabeth Published Allen, Elizabeth. "Newfangled Readers in Gower's 'Apollonius of Tyre'." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 29 (2007), pp. 419-64. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Allen titles the third of six sub-sections (or fourth of seven, if one chooses to count the unheaded initial four pages and a half) of her voluminously erudite essay "Repetition and the Wandering Cure"--an indicative agnomen appropriate, perhaps, to suggest a sense of the whole. Allen begins with a direct claim: "For Gower… 'Apollonius' thematizes incest in order to meditate on audience reception: incestuous desire, repeatedly encountered and avoided throughout the narrative, necessitates a series of interpretive acts that figure the relation between king and subject as a relation of mutual audience. The interpretive effort that bolsters monarchy while attending to the needs of its subjects requires imagination on the part of both monarch and subjects. I argue in this essay that incest in 'Apollonius' stages an exploration of such imaginative activity: a series of kings' daughters are figured as new audiences who reinterpret in order to reaffirm monarchial power" (p. 419). Building upon Freudian psychoanalytics and psychoanalytic criticism (Brooks, Fradenburg, Scanlon, Bullón-Fernández, Watt), Allen identifies these targeted/and or developed "new audiences"--the "newfangled readers" of her title--as two-fold but overlapping: everyone who, in the end (and via substantial imaginative maturation) "gets it," i.e., comes to full grips with Gower's process in "Apollonius" and seizes its meaning (pp. 460-62); and women, "a female audience reflective of the communal nature of reading among women in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England" (p. 458). Key in Allen's approach is the concept of transference. At its least level transference converts Amans' fictive (and imaginary) love-life to "the story of John Gower's temporal existence" (p. 463); at its more significant application transference becomes the means by which "'Apollonius' calls attention to its audience's involvement with the plot and hence, in the structure of relations between authority and subject." Thus for Allen the CA is not ultimately an exemplary work; rather, "far from modeling exactly how readers should conduct themselves, subjecting them to morals, the story mediates [sic] on how readers garner authority and make therapeutic contributions to meaning" (p. 463). And, one assumes, mutatis mutandis to kingship and community, although by the essay's conclusion the political dimension held out at its opening seems in danger of being overwhelmed, if not entirely displaced, by foci interior and personal. [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.2] 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 Newfangled Readers in Gower's 'Apollonius of Tyre' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Cortijo Ocaña announced the discovery of a copy of the long-lost 15th-century Portuguese translation of CA by Robert Payn (on which the better known Castilian translation on Juan de Cuenca was based) in 1995, and he has released more details in several articles published since (see JGN 20.1). Here he provides the first published edition of a portion of the poem, the entirety of Book 6. He also provides a brief introduction, evidently addressed to a readership that knows little of CA, summarizing the book, reviewing the critical commentary upon it, listing its sources, and commenting upon the translation. Extremely faithful for the most part, Payn abbreviates some of the "closing formulas" that mark the ends of the sections marked as chapters in the translation; he expands some of the references to God and to the Virgin; and occasionally changes the order of words or phrases. Otherwise, the precision of the translation leads Cortijo to wonder whether the translator had really become so adept in Portuguese or had worked in collaboration with a native speaker. For the curious, here is an excerpt from the translation, the conclusion to the tale of Ulysses and Telegonus (6.1737-88), as Cortijo reprints it (p. 64): "E el, cheo de noio e de pesar, com grande tristura lhe contou todo o caso assy como el podia, e en como sua madre auya nome Çyrçes, a qual se enujaua a el muytas uezes encomẽdar. E disselhje toda a maneyra de sua bynda. Vllixes, sabendo que quãto lhe dizia que todo era uerdade, nõ enbargando o ssangue que del sahia, tomou[14rb]ho nos braços e, chorando, beyiouho muytas uezes, dizendo: 'Filho meu, esta ĩffortuna que me per ty agora aconteçeo, em quãto eu soo byuo, cõ boa uoontade pera ssenpre te perdoo'. Mandou entõ depressa pollo outro seu filho, o qual a sseu mandado sem mais deteença logo chegou. [vi 1752] Mas quãdo el byu seu padre jazer em ponto de morte, foysse dereito a Thellogonus, seu jrmãao, e quiserao matar, se sseu padre Vllixes nõ fora que antre elles fez paz e boa Concordia, mandando a Thellamacus, seu filho herdeiro, que a todo seu poder fezesse penssar de Thellagonus seu irmãao, ataa que de suas feridas fosse bem guarido, e que entom lhe desse terras de tanta rrenda per que onrradamente se podesse manteer. Thellemacus, ueendo a uõotade de sseu padre queianda era, disse que el staua prestes de conprir todo seu mandado. Assy que dhi en diante estes yrmãos anbos byuerõ de conssũu. E Ollixes [sic], seu padre, cuia ujda era, ia ẽ fim ffoy ueer o outro mũdo. "[vi 1768] Ues a que fym serue feytiçaria. Este rrey per ffeytiçaria conprio seu tallante; per feitiçarya foy começado todo seu mal, per ffeytiçaria scolheo el seu amor; per ffeytiçaria foy acabada sua uyda e seu filho foy geerado per ffeytiçaria, per a qual todo [14va] este mal foy obrado. E assy como el contra a naturalleza obrou bem, asy contra naturalleza ouue seu acabamento. Ca assaz contra naturaleza podemos dizer que foy quãdo o filho per suas mãaos matou seu padre. Porem para mentes que qualquer que guãaça seu amor per esta guisa todo seu prazer xe lhe torna depois ẽ noio. Ca eu acho em scripto en como esta arte em outro tenpo por guaançar amor foy outrossy usada, de que per algũa cronyca enperial se quiseres podes tomar enxenplo, a qual antre os homẽes ataa fym do mũdo por sẽpre ficara em memoria." [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.2] The article is available at <http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu>. Author/Editor Author/Editor Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio Published Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio. "El libro VI de la Confessio Amantis." eHumanista 8 (2007), pp. 38-72. ISSN 1540 5877 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource El libro VI de la Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Galloway's entrée into a journal dedicated to pedagogy is his premise that Middle English by its very nature presents 21st-century students with a variety of dilemmas concerning vocabulary and syntax that were shared by medieval writers in England, many of whom were fluent in at least three languages (Latin, French and English) and for whom the "vernacular" was a poly-lingual work-in-progress. Their lot was thus to write (just as our students now read) possessed of a "sense of the foreignness of the English they use" (p. 89). In a series of closely read passages (CA I.2041-47; I.2080-2103; II.1936-57; Piers Plowman C.9.209-18; St. Margaret ll.83-84) Galloway demonstrates the complexity of (especially) Gower's English syntax, alongside the general self-consciousness of Langland and the St. Margaret author about words in English. His points about Gower are particularly bracing: Gower's "use of any one of these languages [i.e., Latin, French, English] must take account of his fluency in the others" (p. 91); "Gower regularly handles [syntax] with a sophistication far greater than Chaucer or indeed most any (and perhaps simply any) Middle English poet" (p. 91). So are some of his questions, e.g., does "Gower [use] a style that is explicitly 'Old French' to indicate the chivalric value system he then proceeds to shred or to refine?" (p. 95). Most revolutionary of all, however, is Galloway's suggestion that perhaps those who fail to teach Gower's work because they believe him to be "morally predictable and, worse, stylistically flat" (p. 91) reveal primarily their own failure to recognize, let alone comprehend, the subtlety of what he wrote. [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Galloway, Andrew Published Galloway, Andrew. "Middle English as a Foreign Language, to 'Us' and 'Them' (Gower, Langland, and the Author of The Life of St. Margaret)." Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 14 (2007), pp. 89-102. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Middle English as a Foreign Language, to 'Us' and 'Them' (Gower, Langland, and the Author of The Life of St. Margaret) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article 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 Amans refers to his struggles with Danger three times in CA, in 3.1537-68, in 5.6607-52, and in his final supplication, 8.2264-65, 2285-86. Though Amans does not actually label him as such, Kendall argues that his description of Danger's functions invoke the role of the chamberer or chamberlain, who as the servant closest to the lord or to the king could serve as advisor, clerk, treasurer, guard, or keeper of his seal (cf. CA 3.1556), as well as, very importantly, the controller of access; and that Amans' complaints echo the common charges of concentration of power, abuse of position, and denial of access, especially to the king's justice, that led to the execution of both Simon Burley and William Scrope. But Amans' complaints lack the authority of parliamentary attacks on the king's chamberlains since they are grounded in his personal interest rather than in "common profit," and they do more to reveal Amans' own narrowness of view and pursuit of personal desire than they do Danger's. In these very passages, in fact, Amans confesses his own self-interest and his duplicity, and the wildness and violence associated with Dangier in the Roman de la Rose is transferred to Amans himself (CA 3. 1518-23). Danger, by contrast, is presented as a more civilized as well as more powerful figure than Dangier, and in his unceasing vigilance, in his loyalty to his lady, and in his utter lack of self-interest, he is a model for an ideal servant. In that regard, he draws upon a different and more potent ideal of aristocratic behavior than Amans' courtoisie; his "impervious[ness] to bribery or eloquence" (p. 62) invokes memories of the Golden Age; and his immutability (8. 2269-65) offers a response to the mutability and division that Gower cites as the sources of both immorality and social disorder in the Prologue. In borrowing the figure of Danger from RR, Gower, has inverted it, and he has placed it on "the winning side" (p. 64). "Amans' adversary demeans his desire and symbolizes a force of social renewal latent in the great household" (p. 64). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kendall, Elliott Published Kendall, Elliott. "Chamberlain Danger: The Social Meaning of Love Allegory in the Confessio Amantis." Medium Ævum 76 (2007), pp. 49-69. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Chamberlain Danger: The Social Meaning of Love Allegory in the Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed