15 100 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 Green investigates the "folklore custom, apparently widespread in Gower's day, that offers a clear analogy for both [the] conditions" (255) central to Gower's "Tale of Florent" and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale: a hero under sentence of death who saves himself by marrying a hag, who holds his salvation in her power. "Moreover, this custom, recorded in the folklore of several European countries in the Middle Ages and early modern period, fully accords with . . . the air of legality that Gower conveys" (256); "it is the custom of 'mariage sous la potence'" (256). Green cites examples from several countries, spanning several centuries, of the belief that if a condemned man accepts an offer of marriage from a prostitute, he will be pardoned and saved from the gallows, on the grounds that (in the words of an English common lawyer in 1602) "both their ill lives may be bettered by soe holie an action" (258). There are, however, difficulties in adopting this claim: Green admits that "the comparative scarcity of evidence for the custom in medieval England must be conceded" (259). Nonetheless, Green thinks "mariage sous la potence" offers a "soft-analogue" (a term coined by Peter Beidler) to the Loathly Lady stories, and for him "the possibility that [Gower] was inspired by this custom seems . . . extremely strong" (262). [RFY. Copyright. The New Chaucer Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Green, Richard Firth Published Green, Richard Firth. "Florent's 'Mariage sous la potence'." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 254-62. 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 Florent's 'Mariage sous la potence' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Zarins, Kim Published Zarins, Kim. "Rich Words: Gower's Rime Riche in Dramatic Action." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 239-53. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Review Citing Tony Hunt's work (Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci) as seminal in the recent re-discovery of rime riche as a powerful poetic tool, and noting that "rime riche in medieval poetry is very frequent, featuring in 650 couplets of the French and English poetry of Gower alone," Zarins asks "what is the dramatic power of rime riche? What brilliance and authority are conferred upon a character who speaks with such rhymes, and on what level do fellow characters hear them?" (239) Her essay makes a good job of offering persuasive answers. She takes up Chaucer as well as Gower (an appendix very helpfully listing the loci she discusses concludes her piece), by way of comparison and contrast, illuminating the practices of each, and along the way her claim that rime riche most often emanates from the mouths of speaking characters. She concludes that "Rime riche is only one means for a character to enrich speech, but, uniquely, it uses sameness to speak with difference. Though most rime riche speakers within Chaucer's tales are rich men, Gower seems interested in diversifying these sententious voices to include peasants and women and empowers them in the way he best understood -- by giving them poetic power to make their couplets sing. Though Chaucer's pilgrims delight us with their mixed estates and unlikely camaraderie, Gower presents mixed voices that are not just playful, but match and even outdo authority . . . . Gower graces peasant and female speech with rime riche like overtones of Arion's restorative music, to make the world a richer one by helping kings listen rather than speak" (251). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] 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 Rich Words: Gower's Rime Riche in Dramatic Action Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Barbaccia, Holly Published Barbaccia, Holly. "The Woman's Response in John Gower's Cinkante Balades." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 230-38. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Cinkante Balades Review Barbaccia closely analyses the five balades, 41-44 and 46, written in the voice of the lady. Toward these, she argues forcefully, "Gower encourages us to move . . . and linger over . . . as a key to the whole text" (231). In Barbaccia's view, "only in the light of her response can the male lover [there is only one, not two, in Barbaccia's reading] produce his moral insights about love and honour in Balades 48-50" (229)--balades she also examines thoroughly (237-38). Portraying the sequence as a true exchange, she characterizes the lady's literary effort as conscious both of her lover's work and of the major French poets', pointing her claim with a careful study of lines in the lady's work that resonate widely. This is hardly accidental: "By paraphrasing Machaut, Grandson, Froissart, Deschamps and the male speaker in practically the same breath, the woman speaker puts them on equal footing; she thus elevates her beloved's Balades and his poetic reputation" (236). The "Cristall dame"--an image from balade 45--is very much the center and force of the sequence for Barbaccia; she even takes the final poem addressed to the Virgin as "re-vok[ing] the woman speaker and her poems . . . . Like Petrarch's canzone 366, Gower's coda Balade apparently praising Mary functions as a palimpsest, revealing dame through dame" (238)." "Within the woman's series," she concludes, "the male speaker's best lyric efforts crystallize. So, it seems, do Gower's" (238)] [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] 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 Woman's Response in John Gower's Cinkante Balades Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Burrow, J. A Published Burrow, J. A. "Sinning against Love in Confessio Amantis." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 217-29. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review ["No one before Gower, so far as I know," Burrow observes, "had attempted to assemble stories devoted 'specialitus' to the seven sins against love, each of them with their several branches" (219). No simple task, in Burrow's view ("I agree broadly, in fact, with Peter Nicholson, who throughout his recent study [Love and Ethics in Gower's Confessio Amantis] stresses what he describes as 'the fundamental harmony rather than opposition between God's ethical demands and love's'[218]"): dealing with it forces the character Genius sometimes to seem not "altogether clear about his priorities" (218). The key for Burrow, as for Nicholson, is the verb: when Genius seems most inconsistent, he is more than likely illuminating the way things are in "real life." But it is also, Burrow points out, the "real life" of a mono-dimensional, allegorical character Amans, "who at no point makes any real progress in the pursuit of his lady. The whole account, in fact, confines itself to just one (admittedly protracted) phase in the affair, with nothing about the origins of his passion and nothing, of course, about any happy developments to come" (229). Nor has Amans done anything to require absolution: "On more than half of the forty occasions when he challenged Amans about a sin, the lover had no fault to confess, or only a fault so trifling that Genius could only dismiss it as a 'game'" (229). Genius' final advice to so harmless a sinner--either against Love's laws or God's--is thus aptly "Foryet it thou, and so wol I." But in the process of providing us with "a very full and detailed, though always conventional, picture of the life of a disappointed lover" Gower has in the CA rendered "a very distinctive contribution to the courtly Matter of Love, unmatched both in the love lyrics and in love narratives of the time. This . . . is the greatest benefit Gower derived from his project: mapping of the Seven Sins onto the life of Amans" (229). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] 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 Sinning against Love 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 2010 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 Nicholson, Peter Published Nicholson, Peter. "Irony v. Paradox in the Confessio Amantis." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 206-17. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Review Nicholson addresses "some common threads" in the recent studies of James Simpson (Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry), Diane Watt (Amoral Gower) and J. Allan Mitchell (Ethics and Exemplary Narrative), all of whom in his view "offer alternatives to reading the [Confessio Amantis] as a series of straightforward moral lessons addressed by a priest to his penitent" (206). All resort to taking the CA ironically, if any resemblance to cohesion at all is to be wrung from the poem they all three find fraught with "inconsistencies, either in its overall structure (comparing, for instance, the beginning to the end), or between lessons, or even within single passages, which are interpreted as reflecting either the inadequacies of Genius as moral instructor or as either the inability or the refusal of Gower himself to advance a coherent morality" (206). Nicholson however finds irony characteristic of Chaucer (207-09) but an inaccurate adjective for the CA, where because its subject is Love Gower continually foregrounds paradox. "Love is both beyond and also necessarily subject to reason: that simple proposition helps account for a great many of the more puzzling features of the Confessio, and it also provides a model--better than 'irony'--for the conceptual structure of the poem" (213). Nicholson sees Gower responding directly to his subject ("fallen human nature--including both the inevitability of sin and the necessity of virtue") in the CA -- a subject inconsistent and self-contradictory at its core. Hence: "Irony is not a characteristic mode for Gower, but paradox is . . . . Things are what they seem in the Confessio Amantis, but they are far from simple, and taking the poem at its word does not simplify it; it restores its complexity" (216). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] 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 Irony v. Paradox 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 2010 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 Irvin, Matthew Published Irvin, Matthew. "Genius and Sensual Reading in the Vox Clamantis." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 196-205. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Review Although the figure of Genius in the Confessio Amantis is far better known, Gower gave him a cameo in the earlier Vox Clamantis IV, 13-14. Irvin reads the former to illuminate the latter, and vice-versa. Noting that "while the ecclesiastical nature of his role in the Confessio is contestable, in the Vox [Genius] clearly functions as not only a confessor but also a bishop and a scholar of theology," and thereby stands in for the Church proper--"the real target for [Gower's] critique." In both poems, Gower uses Genius to "show how the sensual (feminine) pleasures of reading can subvert the supposedly prudential forms of masculine, institutional interpretation" (196) "Reading Genius's persona in the Confessio with his brief appearance in the Vox," Irvin argues, "can begin to illustrate Gower's larger poetic and political goals. Both texts encourage not the exclusion of love and sex, but the inclusion of them within a larger political and institutional discourse, and the necessity for a "prudens" to experience their possibilities in order to properly act morally and politically" (205). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] 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 Genius and Sensual Reading in the Vox Clamantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Gastle finds a "mercantile undercurrent" and a preoccupation with "the artistic production of cultural capital" (183) in Gower's reference to his own "besynesse" in the different versions of the CA Prologue, in the poet's comparison of his own work to that of bees in the accompanying marginal note in some MSS, and in the setting of the first version, with its account of Gower's encounter with Richard II on the Thames, the "economic and political centre" (183) of medieval London. He also sees Gower's tale of Florent as an "education in marital commodification" that is "an extension of the interest in artistic work as labour delineated in the Prologue" (189), an interest that was recognized by Chaucer and extended, not just in WBT, which "plays out its narrator's anxiety regarding trade, women's role in economic activity and, perhaps most importantly, conjugal debt" (190), but also in the portrait of the Wife of Bath herself, whose "body is commodified through her five marriages" (190). Both poets' tales, while adhering in varying degrees to the conventions of romance, represent a late medieval "intrusion of fiscal reality upon courtly ideals" (194). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gastle, Brian Published Gastle, Brian. "Gower's Business: Artistic Production of Cultural Capital and the Tale of Florent." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 182-95. 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 Business: Artistic Production of Cultural Capital and the Tale of Florent Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Taylor sees a correspondence between alchemy as Gower understood and valued it and the project of moral and political reform in CA. In view of widespread contemporary condemnation of alchemical practices, "Gower's endorsement of alchemy in Confessio book IV is at odds not only with the usual exposés of transmutation, but also with his own intolerance of fraud in language and deed" (170). But when Gower criticizes alchemy, it is for "falling away from a true essence" that he "nevertheless endorses" (173). Taylor identifies two aspects of alchemy that were useful to Gower's ethical design. Alchemists placed great faith in the reliability of surface appearance as a sign of essence: "Alchemical continuity embodies a kind of sacramentalism, the visible sign of invisible truth" which "makes it an apt model for Gower's ideal integrity of reference in all spheres – politics and ethics as well as language" (175). It was also a "science of transformation" (175), which "promises that the face of nature can be made plainly legible" (176). "Having shielded alchemy from the suspicion of offences against political authority and referential truth, Gower can use it to forge his ideal of kingship in book VII" (176). In a key passage, however (7.3545-52), Gower concedes the need for the king sometimes to adopt a "calculated dissimulation" (176). In the tale of Lucrece, Gower explores both the dilemma that results for the heroine when her outward appearance (her violated body) does not correspond to her inner essence (her virtue) and Brutus's transformative power, able to bring her virtue to expression and to bring about better governance as well.[PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Taylor, Karla Published Taylor, Karla. "Inside Out in Gower's Republic of Letters." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 169-81. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Inside Out in Gower's Republic of Letters Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Batkie notes that in Book 4 of CA Gower gives "surprising validation of alchemy as the highest possible form of human labour" (157) – particularly surprising, one might add, to readers familiar with Chaucer's depiction in the Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale. Gower credits the theory, she argues, without necessarily endorsing current practices. Alchemical theorists describe "an abstract system of transformation and unification, the end of which is the miraculous creation of a material so pure that its very perfection is contagious" (158). The first step, however, "involves the purification and perfection of the adept himself, achieved primarily through his own labour over the art and through divine election. . . . The just adept, chosen by God for his wisdom and purity, will complete the work and be rewarded with material proof that can be multiplied again and again. His inner virtue becomes embodied in the Stone, which, in turn, reproduces the same virtue in everything it touches" (159). This "logic of contagious goodness" is illustrated in the tale of Adrian and Bardus. Batkie also sees that alchemical process as a model for the reader's experience, as he or she is "transformed" by CA. Gower begins the process by eliminating the impenetrable obscurity of Latin alchemical writing – by a "vernacular transformation" (163). The "transformative reading" that he counts on is illustrated by Diogenes in the tale of Diogenes and Aristippus. Amans, unfortunately, remains more like Aristippus, bound up in the pursuit of his own desire, but the readers of the poem are invited to look beyond Amans to "assume responsibility for their own understanding" (167) and to "activate the transformative power of textual interpretation for themselves" (166). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Batkie, Stephanie L Published Batkie, Stephanie L. "'Of the parfite medicine': Merita Perpetuata in Gower's Vernacular Alchemy." In Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 157-68. 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 'Of the parfite medicine': Merita Perpetuata in Gower's Vernacular Alchemy Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 O'Callaghan surveys the sources for, and the larger tradition that lies behind, the passage on the 15 stars and their corresponding stones and herbs in CA 7.1281-1438. The entire discussion functions with reference to the larger theme of lovers' misuse of magic and sorcery, introduced under the heading of Gluttony in Book 6. Even more broadly, she suggests, the passage is one of several betraying Gower's deep interest in science. In assessing how this portion of the poem was received, she gives particular attention to the illustrations in Pierpont Morgan MS M.126, which not only devotes a miniature to each of the 15 stars but also shows stars in the illustrations to several other key passages in the poem, in each case providing a reminder "that the heavens rule the actions of those on earth" (155). "The patron who commissioned this manuscript viewed the Confessio Amantis as a book of wisdom and magical lore rather than a poem on love and vice" (155), and for Gower too, O'Callaghan suggests, Book 7 was more central to CA than has been supposed by those who read the poem as a "love-vision" (156). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor O'Callaghan, Tamara F Published O'Callaghan, Tamara F. "The Fifteen Stars, Stones and Herbs: Book VII of the Confessio Amantis and its Afterlife." In Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 139-56. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Fifteen Stars, Stones and Herbs: Book VII of the Confessio Amantis and its Afterlife Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Boboc notes that in the Latin epigram that heads the section on Perjury in Book 5 of CA, Gower draws an equivalency between perjury and seduction. All three of the tales that follow – "Achilles and Deidamia," "Jason and Medea," and "Phrixus and Helle" – place less emphasis upon amatory seduction than upon the deception – what Boboc here labels "se-duction" – of kings, in Jason's case by his own cupidity. Boboc explores "se-duction" as a threat to the sovereign – different in nature from flattery – and to the rule of law that justifies his sovereignty, as the king is deceived into acting outside the law. Each tale, in a different respect, contains suggestive implications regarding the nature of truth and the rule of law during the troubled reign of Richard II.[PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Boboc, Andreea Published Boboc, Andreea. "Se-duction and Sovereign Power in Gower's Confessio Amantis Book V." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 126-38. 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 Se-duction and Sovereign Power in Gower's Confessio Amantis Book V Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Barrington argues that in order to understand Gower's strategies of advice to Henry IV in "In Praise of Peace," one must see him not merely in the role of royal advisor but also as legal advocate. The poem is marked, she maintains, by habits or word and thought deriving from Gower's own training as a man of law. She counts no fewer than 125 words in the poem that belong to the legal vocabulary of the day and that have a precise legal meaning, and 25 instances in which, following a practice common in Middle English legal documents, a legal term derived from Anglo-Norman is paired with one derived from Anglo-Saxon (on the model of "null and void"). Procedurally she finds echoes of a writ in the Latin proem, and more interestingly, of the typical form of common law pleadings in what she sees as an alternation of voices in the sections marked off by large initials in the only surviving copy of the poem. Finally, she points to the poet's "elocutionary gestures," by which he establishes his own position as the king's counselor while also positioning Henry in the role of judge, consistent with the most significant bit of advice to the king, that he adhere to his promise to restore the rule of law. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Barrington, Candace Gower Subject Language and Word Studies In Praise of Peace Biography of Gower Published Barrington, Candace. "John Gower's Legal Advocacy and 'In Praise of Peace'." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 112-25. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Legal Advocacy and 'In Praise of Peace' Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Carlson demonstrates with persuasive detail that in its selection of incident (including its three-part structure) and in its attribution of cause and motive, Gower's Cronica Tripertita was based directly upon the official record of the parliamentary deposition of King Richard on 30 September 1399, supplemented by other sources, particularly but not exclusively for the events that followed the deposition, and when necessary by Gower's own powers of invention. Evidence of verbal borrowing, however, is very slight because of the incompatibility of the verbose, mannered, legalistic style of the official record and the demands of the rhyming leonine hexameters that Gower adopted – without any precedent – for the Cronica. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R Published Carlson, David R. "The Parliamentary Sources of Gower's Cronica Tripertita and Incommensurable Styles." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 98-111. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Parliamentary Sources of Gower's Cronica Tripertita and Incommensurable 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 2010 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 Saul undertakes to defend Gower once again from the charge of political opportunism that has recently reappeared surrounding his evident switch of allegiance from Richard II to Henry IV. After surveying the chronology of Gower's revisions in VC and CA, comparing the more traditional view to Terry Jones' recent argument that all of the pro-Lancastrian passages date from after 1399, he concludes that Gower would have had insufficient time for extensive rewriting of his work between Henry's accession and the onset of his own blindness and that his revisions must have taken place over a longer period of time. The date is not of major importance, moreover, since Gower's judgments of Richard are completely consistent with a view of kingship that he expressed in all of his major works. Saul traces the roots of Gower's doctrine of kingship to Giles of Rome. The king, in Gower's mind, was entitled to obedience, was answerable only to God, and was entitled to rule with considerable magnificence. This was a view that he shared with Richard and with virtually all of the ruling class of the time. The reason for Gower's abandonment of Richard, according to Saul, was Richard's failure to live up to another of Giles' precepts, on the king's need for moderate self-rule. As evidence of Richard's lack of self-discipline, Saul cites incidents from 1382 and 1385 (not explaining why Gower nonetheless expressed such admiration for Richard in his first dedication of CA) and the king's quarrel with the city of London in 1392, the same incident cited by Fisher.[PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Saul, Nigel Published Saul, Nigel. "John Gower: Prophet or Turncoat?" In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth and Hines, John and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 85-97. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower: Prophet or Turncoat? Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Shuffleton identifies the seemingly conflicting strains of "romance" and "exemplary" and of the "elite" and "popular" in CA, as manifested in Gower's choice of tales, in the narrative conventions reflected in his retelling, and in his choice of language; but he also notes how comfortably these co-exist within the text, and he argues that Gower, rather than exploiting the differences – particularly to the advantage of one over another – sought instead to bridge them by suppressing features that would be recognized as distinctive and by his "consistent willingness to marry high and low" (83), as he imagined himself addressing "a universal audience, undivided by taste or cultural distinctions" and as he sought "to play the role of Arion, to restore unity to a fractured polity" (84). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Shuffelton, George Published Shuffelton, George. "Romance, Popular Style and the Confessio Amantis: Conflict or Evasion?" In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth and Hines, John and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 74-84. 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 Romance, Popular Style and the Confessio Amantis: Conflict or Evasion? Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Edwards discusses the theoretical dimensions of the "literal" within medieval exegesis and then explores Gower's use of the literal in his narratives, in two aspects. In the first, ("Word and Conceit"), he demonstrates how Gower employs enigmas (in "Florent," "Apollonius of Tyre," and others) and significant material objects (in "Rosiphelee," "The Trump of Death," et al.) in pursuit of his goal, announced in the Prologue, "to recover signification so that words align with ideas and ideas with things in order to advance the project of reform" (63). In the second ("Prophetic Literalism"), he explores how the "literal" operates within the prophetic strain of MO, VC, and especially CA. In tales such as "The Three Questions," "Alexander and the Pirate," and "Lucrece," the literal narrative can be seen demystifying some of the most arbitrary assumptions underlying contemporary social hierarchy. "From the standpoint of poetics, perhaps the most interesting work of prophecy in the Confessio Amantis can be seen in the pressure of history as it bears on structures of cultural belief which are seemingly positioned outside time and contingency, beyond deliberation and debate. Prophecy in this sense operates poetically through a literalism that makes visible the systems of power that organize life and experience in a social world of division, reversal, and mutability" (70). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, Robert R Published Edwards, Robert R. "Gower's Poetics of the Literal." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 59-73. 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 Gower's Poetics of the Literal Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Kendall, Elliott Published Kendall, Elliott. "Saving History: Gower's Apocalyptic and the New Arion." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth and Hines, John and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 46-58. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Kendall notes that the hopes for a new Arion that Gower expresses at the end of the Prologue to CA constitute a deferral of the apocalypse implied by the image of Nebuchadnezzar's statue and its imminent destruction, a deferral that implies significant human agency in determining the course, if not the final outcome, of history. Roots for Gower's optimism can be found in earlier prophetic writings, but not for its tentativeness, and "because the rehabilitation of history is not inevitable, it is all to play for in the poem's project of personal reform for the sake of the divided world" (54). The Prologue's political hopes are reflected on a personal level in the penitential frame of the main part of the poem, particularly in the conclusion, where an aged poet (echoing the "world grown old") accomplishes a "personal re-ordering" through penance, which "on a population-wide scale, would mark a new 'age of Arion'" (55). Moral reform thus determines history. The ideal society depicted in the Prologue is inherently conservative but places more emphasis on "love" than on law. "And rather than a princely political mediator, Arion's successor, with his enigmatic, musical modus operandi, might bear a passing resemblance to John Gower" (58). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] 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 Saving History: Gower's Apocalyptic and the New Arion Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Collette demonstrates that in his allusions to Armenia, Gower was able to draw upon a rich framework of topical reference in the creation of the polysemous CA. On the border between the Christian and Muslim worlds, Armenia tried to remain independent of both. The last king visited England in 1386 following his deposition, and he died in France. Armenia became "known in history and romance as an example of loss and decline" and offered "a cautionary tale for Western Europe on the failure of arms and of profit" (42). Gower evokes this history in a sequence of tales in Book 4 that begins with "Rosiphelee," who is the daughter of an Armenian king. The topicality of the story emerges in the widening of frame in the tales that follows, which are concerned with the value of deeds of arms, particularly in the struggles with the "Tartans" in which Armenia was lost. Another reference occurs in the story of "Pompey and the King of Armenia," in which the king's patient suffering echoes Philippe de Mézière's account of the trials of King Levon, and in which the outcome, the restoration of the king to his throne, matches Philippe's unrealized hopes for the deposed king. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Collette, Carolyn P Published Collette, Carolyn P. "Topical and Tropological Gower: Invoking Armenia in the Confessio Amantis." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 35-45. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 Topical and Tropological Gower: Invoking Armenia 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 2010 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 Knapp's is the first of two essays in this collection concerned with Gower's knowledge of regions lying at the edge of Europe. Egypt is depicted at length in two passages in CA, in the excursus on religions in Book 5 and in the tale of Nectanabus in Book 7. In the first, Gower condemns the Egyptians, who worship animals, more severely than he does the Chaldeans, who worship planets and elements, because of the loss of distinction between the worshipper and the worshipped and the "full immersion of human beings in the world of nature" (32). The tale of Nectanabus illustrates the limits of astrology, particularly as compared to God's power, but also its truthfulness, within those limits. "Within the closed circuit of astrology, the world does indeed proceed as a purely mechanical process, with the human positioned as simply another object pushed and pulled by celestial causation. And this fatalism, I would argue, is to be read as a specifically Egyptian temptation, as the surrender of the self into a world of natural mechanisms" (33). But while the death of Nectanabus suggests passing beyond astrology and sorcery, certain aspects of the story, including the accuracy of his prophecy and the portents surrounding Alexander's birth, suggest that "Egypt is not so easily left behind" (34). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Knapp, Ethan Published Knapp, Ethan. "Place of Egypt in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 26-34. 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 Place of Egypt in Gower's 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 2010 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 Pouzet offers a detailed (though in his own view, preliminary) account of how Gower's long residence in the Augustinian priory of St Mary Overey is reflected in his poetry and in the later circulation of his works. Some of his more interesting speculations concern the books that were known to have been in the priory. To the three known to John Fisher (see "John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer, 1964, p. 93 and n.), Pouzet adds eleven more (though carefully noting that not all were necessarily owned by the priory during Gower's residence). These include commentaries on the Bible, collections of sermons, and collections of miscellaneous works, some with intriguing connections to Gower, and one, Pouzet hints (15) that might contain a note in Gower's hand. Gower's work reflects possible engagement with other works associated with the Augustinians but whose presence at the priory cannot be demonstrated, such as the "Aurora" of Peter Riga. Augustinian connections can also be shown in the copying, ownership, and dissemination of some of Gower's own works, including not just his Latin poetry but also at least two MSS (one of excerpts) of CA. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pouzet, Jean-Pascal Published Pouzet, Jean-Pascal. "Southwark Gower: Augustinian Agencies in Gower's Manuscripts and Texts – Some Prolegomena." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth and Hines, John and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 11-25. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower 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 Southwark Gower: Augustinian Agencies in Gower's Manuscripts and Texts – Some Prolegomena Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Yeager's new essay – in this collection of studies on the use of French in England during the Middle English period – captures in one place the most important of the research he has presented in three earlier articles on Gower's works in French (see JGN 20 no. 1, 24 no. 2, and 26 no. 2) and adds some important new details, particularly on the "Traitié." MO, he believes, was written in two stages: the largest part of the work was composed in French on the model of Henry of Lancaster's "Livre des Seyntz Medicines" and for the same aristocratic audience; the concluding prayer to Mary, however, was added to make the work more suitable for the Austin canons of St Mary Overeys with whom Gower had taken up residence after 1378. The "Cinkante Balades" is the later of Gower's two ballade collections as evidenced by its use of an envoy, on the model of Deschamps rather than Machaut; and conceived as a response to the popular "Livre des Cent Ballades," it was addressed to an audience of "French chevalier poets" (142) of the sort with whom the future Henry IV associated during the early 1390s. The "Traitié" is the earlier composition: Yeager has little patience with the notion that it was composed in 1397 as a wedding gift for the poet's new bride. As evidence of its readership, Yeager reconsiders the identity of the "Quixley" who names himself as the author of the English translation of the "Traitié" in BL MS Stowe 951. Rather than the small landowner chosen by MacCracken, Yeager offers instead a Robert de Quixley, prior of Nostell Priory, near York, between 1393 and 1427. Nostell was also house of Austin canons, suggesting both the nature of Gower's original readership – identical to that which Yeager proposes for the completed MO – and the means of transmission to the translator. The very fact of the translation also attests to the decline in the use of French after 1399. Yeager notes that Gower's only known composition in French after Henry's accession is the pair of ballades that preface the "Cinkante Balades" in the sole surviving manuscript, dedicating the collection to the new king, and there, his reference to the Latin verses that follow the two ballades as being in "perfit langage" is itself a comment on the status of French and Gower's choice to use either English or Latin for all of the work he composed during the final decade of his life. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 29.2]. Reprinted in virtually identical form, in Dutton, Elisabeth, ed., with John Hines and R.F. Yeager, "John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition." Westfield Medieval Studies, 3. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 304-14. Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "John Gower's French and his Readers." In Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c.1100-c.1500. Ed. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn and Collette, Caroline and Kowaleski, Maryanne and Mooney, Linne R and Putter, Ad and Trotter, David. York: York Medieval Press, 2009, pp. 135-45. ISBN 9781903153277 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Manuscripts and Textual Studies Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's French and his Readers Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available York Medieval Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 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 Pouzet, Jean-Pascal Published Pouzet, Jean-Pascal. "Augustinian Canons and Their Insular French Books in Medieval England: Towards an Assessment." In Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c. 1100-c.1500. Ed. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn and Collette, Carolyn and Kowaleski, Maryanne and Mooney, Linne R and Putter, Ad and Trotter, David. York: York Medieval Press, 2009, pp. 266-77. ISBN 9781903153277 Gower Subject Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review A prolegomenon to a larger study, this essay suggests "the extent to which Insular French books await more systematic investigation, if one attempts to sketch a literary geography of Augustinian agencies" (276). Notably, Pouzet cites the reproduction and dissemination of manuscripts of Langtoft ("regarded as production by a fellow canon") by Yorkshire Augustinian houses along "a route of circulation possibly running east (from Bridlington Priory . . .) to west--and such collaborative dissemination with the order is conceivable for other works as well, in Yorkshire and elsewhere" (276). The possibility has special relevance for Gowerians, as Pouzet remarks: "The situation is further enriched if we consider--in the light of John Gower's association with the Augustinian priory at Southwark--that the whole of the first booklet of London, British Library, MS Harley 3490, the 'Rede/Boarstall' manuscript of the Confessio Amantis, is a fifteenth-century copy of Edmund of Abingdon's Speculum Religiosorum, written by the same scribe as the subsequent Gower article," i.e., BL MS Stowe 951. [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 Augustinian Canons and Their Insular French Books in Medieval England: Towards an Assessment. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available York Medieval Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 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 Merrilees, Brian Pagan, Heather Published Merrilees, Brian and Pagan, Heather. "John Barton, John Gower and Others: Variation in Late Anglo-French." In Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c. 1100-c.1500. Ed. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn and Collette, Carolyn and Kowaleski, Maryanne and Mooney, Linne R and Putter, Ad and Trotter, David. York: York Medieval Press, 2009, pp. 118-34. ISBN 9781903153277 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Although Merrilees and Pagan begin by introducing the "Donait" ("grammar") of John Barton, a Cheshireman schooled in Paris in the early fifteenth century, and examine three chronologically descending passages from the "Anglo-Norman Prose Brut" to 1332, their primary study is of Gower's French as exemplified in the Mirour de l'Omme. (They do not include the balades in their surveyed texts.) Noting that "John Gower's French works seem until recently to have fallen between the cracks in both French and Anglo-Norman scholarship" (123), and that he was "set aside as not being part of the Anglo-Norman canon" in the first edition of the 'Anglo-Norman Dictionary'" (123) ], he is set to make an appearance in the second edition, forthcoming at time of press. However much they approve of this revision (as they seem pleased enough by it), Merrilees and Pagan nonetheless use their chosen excepts from the MO to assert that "Gower's use of the French language seems particular" (124); indeed, "here we are dealing with a quite different 'niveau de langue,' consciously literary, and an Anglo-French that seems closer to continental than insular forms" (125). They position Gower in between continental and insular linguistic models (e.g., in the MO, most rhymes are continental, but "the orthography retains some Anglo-Norman features" (126). They note as well that this is not truly surprising, as "Gower is writing in a century that saw a flourishing of lexical creativity in French" and his reading demonstrably included both Anglo-Norman and continental poetry (126). In support they offer "a small sample of Gower's vocabulary, the letters A-E," selecting for four categories: 1) "words that appear to be restricted to French used in England;" 2) "words from continental French . . . but not recorded in Anglo-Norman;" 3) "words that, to date, we have not found other than in the works of John Gower;" 4) "words that may be debatable in their form or use but which should be considered in any treatment of Gower's French" (126-27). In addition to a number of detailed, technical observations, Merrilees and Pagan offer by way of general assessment that 1) "his adoption of fairly newly minted words" from the continental indicates "his familiarity with contemporary French" (130) and 2) "certainly Gower's French seems more standard than that of John Barton, and his overall ability to assimilate contemporary forms, and even to create his own, show a significant comprehension of French" (132). They posit as well that Gower, like "chancery officials, when addressing diplomatic documents in French to continental recipients," possibly "reduced the number of Anglo-Norman features" in his language--perhaps "recognizing or hoping for a wider audience than merely English" (134). [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 John Barton, John Gower and Others: Variation in Late Anglo-French. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available York Medieval Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 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 Kobayashi, Yoshiko Published Kobayashi, Yoshiko. "The Voice of an Exile: From Ovidan Lament to Prophecy in Book I of John Gower's Vox Clamantis." In Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee. Ed. Galloway, Andrew and Yeager, R.F. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009, pp. 363-80. ISBN 9780802099174 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Review It is difficult to do justice in a short summary to this closely-argued, entirely persuasive essay. Those with any interest either in the Vox Clamantis or Gower's centonic Latin strategies are therefore urged to read it themselves. Essentially Kobayashi demonstrates, by a carefully supported examination of Ovid's exilic poetry--"Tristia," "Heroides," and the Evander section of the "Fasti," added during revisions made in Tomis--along with the Philomela and Procne narrative from the "Metamorphoses," that Gower selectively borrows and incorporates Ovidian lines and passages into the Visio section of the VC in order to invoke the isolated, muted and feminized experience Ovid projects in his works composed in exile. Gower' s skillful choices permit him to triangulate the fate and sentiments of Hecuba at Troy's fall with the city of London ravaged (raped) by the 1381 rebels and with his own persona/poetic voice, hiding alone in the woods, emasculated, fearful of discovery and violation. The narrator/Gower's experience begins to turn, however, when the fearsome bestiary transforms into the dream of the voyaging ship (VC I.1600 ff.). Unlike Ovid, who decries his friends' abandonment of him in his hour of need, on the dream ship the narrator/Gower "is accompanied by 'many others of the noble class' ("[i]ngentui sexus alios . . . plures" [VC I.1603-04] (353), who join him in "a penitential sorrow" and "an admission of sin" (354). This facilitates a move away from Ovid to the Bible, specifically the Book of Lamentations, credited to the prophet Jeremiah. Kobayashi shows that the movement here is at once backwards--Jeremiah's early experience as an observer of Jerusalem's fall to Nebuchadnezzar recalls Troy's sacking and the narrator/Gower's fear of violation by the mob--and forwards, through Jeremiah's empowerment by the voice of the Lord, and consequent reinvention as the prophet and leader of his people in repenting their transgressions, the direct means to their ultimate deliverance. The obvious parallel with Jeremiah thus at the end of the Visio enables the narrator/Gower to restore his courage--and his masculinity--and speak powerfully in the ensuing books. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 29.2]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 228-39. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to 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 Voice of an Exile: From Ovidan Lament to Prophecy in Book I of John Gower's Vox Clamantis. 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 2009 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 Antonio Cortijo Ocaña is the researcher who has published most extensively on the Spanish and Portuguese medieval translations of the "Confessio Amantis," including the edition of some sections of the latter. In this article he brings together the two versions in order to analyze the Juan de Cuenca's craft as Spanish translator of Robert Payne's Portuguese version. As he states that his purpose is to examine the "intrahistory" (87) of this rendering, he focuses on the opening of book VIII for his analysis, the story of Apollonius, which he edits in parallel. In the pages that precede this edition, Cortijo reminds us of the context in which the Confessio reached the Iberian Peninsula-–during the reigns of Philippa and Catherine of Lancaster–-suggesting that the Spanish humanist Alonso de Cartagena might have promoted Cuenca's translation, as "a propaganda literary text, of ethical, moral and entertaining character" (84). His study of Payne's and Cuenca's versions leads him to conclude that the Spanish text is highly faithful to the Portuguese at all levels--syntactical, semantic, lexical--to the point of calquing his source text. Cortijo Ocaña remarks that, in spite of this fidelity, Juan de Cuenca deliberately evinces his presence and work as translator in the Spanish text through some minor modifications like "amplificationes," abbreviations or changes in word order which however do not alter the sense of his source. Because, in Cortijo's opinion, the ruling principle of translation for Juan de Cuenca was that the Portuguese text was "almost a 100% transferable" (87). [ASH. Copyright. The John Gower Society JGN 29.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio Published Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio. "La traducción de Juan de Cuenca: el minúsculo oficio del traductor." In Traducción y Humanismo: Panorama de un desarrollo cultural. Ed. Recio, Roxana. Soria, Spain: [University of Valladolid], 2007, pp. 83-129. ISBN 9788496695184 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 La traducción de Juan de Cuenca: el minúsculo oficio del traductor. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [University of Valladolid], 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 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 Bullón-Fernández, María Published Bullón-Fernández, María. "Gower and Ovid: Pygmalion and the (Dis)illusion of the Word." In Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee. Ed. Galloway, Andrew and Yeager, R.F. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009, pp. 363-80. ISBN 9780802099174 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Pointing out that Gower's "Tale of Pygmalion" (CA IV.37-450) is the only re-telling of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" X.238-97 by a Middle English author, Bullón-Fernández argues that "Gower shares with Ovid a similarly paradoxical view: fundamentally, the Ovidian desire for language to create reality, and the simultaneous awareness of the impossibility of its fulfillment" (364). She traces the major sources, in addition to Ovid, that Gower likely considered in producing his version--"Roman de la Rose," Petrus Berchorius' "Ovidius moralizatus"--to illustrate both the common agency of Venus' power in bringing the statue to life, and also the steady shift from Ovid's "active" Pygmalion, who prominently engages with his creation tactily (so much so, indeed, that we often fail to notice that animation comes via prayer) to a more verbal version in the "Roman" ("Jean's Pygmalion is articulate and seems a better love poet than sculptor," [368]), to an identification in Berchorius of Pygmalion with "preachers who sculpt souls, especially the souls of holy women" (369), and finally to the CA, in which "it . . . seems that it is solely Pygmalion's prayer, his appropriate use of words, which leads Venus, or love more generally, to reward him" (372). Bullón-Fernández points out that CA IV is concerned with Sloth, and that the Pygmalion story offers a counter-example to the sub-sin of Pusillanimity (which she defines as "a lack of courage to use words" [371]), i.e., because Pygmalion continually prays, sending up a never-ending stream of words until "Venus of hire grace herde" (IV.419). Thus, to a hasty reader the word in the CA might appear independently powerful, and encourage interpretations of the tale as Gower's vision of his own poetic art. Berchorius strengthens this reading, to a point, since the connection of Pygmalion with preachers in the "Ovidius moralizatus" gives Gower precedent to link Genius with Pygmalion, and consequently his labor to bring Amans to a better life with the vivification of the sculpture (369). But Bullón-Fernández argues against this, by underscoring the irony inherent in Genius' role as priest of Venus, and also by calling attention to the interchangeability of Venus and Fortune in the tale. While Genius strives to represent the word as responsible for the statue's animation, Gower (like Ovid, mutatis mutandis) on the contrary emphasizes the intervention of Fortune, a goddess arbitrary by nature. Genius' preferred lesson offers "the fantasy of fulfillment of desire" and is "only half the story . . . . Genius allows Gower to express his desire for control, his desire to shape others, evoking the Ovidan melancholic desire for a power that he does not have. At the same time, we can also see in the "Confessio" an Ovidian distancing from that desire and an awareness of the impossibility of its fulfillment. At the end of the poem, Gower becomes the disillusioned lover and the disillusioned writer who in recognizing his lack of amorous power also recognizes the limits of the power he has through writing" (375-76). [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 Gower and Ovid: Pygmalion and the (Dis)illusion of the Word. 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 2009 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 their self-appointed roles as public poets, both Gower and Lydgate meditate on ancient and medieval ideas of rhetoric, the aspect of practical politics by which the eloquent presentation of words can "improve, provoke, enable and judge the social order" (569). At the same time, when their texts depict characters using rhetorical craft, we find great ambivalence about rhetoric's benefits and hazards, its rewards and risks. Despite rhetoric's pragmatic power, it remains constrained by 'human ineptitude and powerlessness,' narrative complexity, and the contingencies of audience response" (570). Although rhetoric expects response from audience, it cannot guarantee results. Gower expresses his optimism about rhetoric through two legendary harpists: Arion (in the Confessio's Prologue) and Apollonius of Tyre (in its Book 8). They frame the CA and "embody a rhetorical ideal" that pacifies, unifies, and rules society. In this idealized past, rhetoric is a subsidiary component of ruling a kingdom. Book 7, however, complicates this picture by recategorizing rhetoric into a "verbal science that employs but is not bound to possess congruity or integrity" (573), as shown by Gower's exempla of Ulysses, Tiresias, Phebus' crow, and Laar. Here, expediency trumps morality, tales and their lessons are misaligned, and exemplary lessons within the CA contradict one another. Rather than suspecting Gower of undermining exemplary rhetoric, we should remember that rhetoric is a practical art, provoking readers "to think 'about' rather than simply 'along with' the rhetoric" (575). In these and other examples, Gower provides his readers a way to conduct the ethical work of finding "the middle weye" (Prol 13). Lydgate also presents rhetoric as an effective necessary component for civil society. As his nostalgic depictions of Cicero in "Fall of Princes" indicate, however, rhetoric frequently fails to fulfill its civic functions. Like Gower, Lydgate promotes rhetoric's practical benefits; he also emphasizes the ways a refined language can civilize a people. Despite this affirmation of aureation, Lydgate is "highly conscious of the problems and possibilities of verbal artifice" (578), an awareness displayed in such poems as 'See myche, Say Lytell, and Lerne to Soffar in Tyme,' 'Say the Best, and Never Repent,' and the 'Churl and the Bird,' which explore the complex and frequently paradoxical referentiality between surface and core meanings. [CB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mitchell, J. Allan Published Mitchell, J. Allan. "John Gower and John Lydgate: Forms and Norms of Rhetorical Culture." In A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c. 1350--c.1500. Ed. Brown, Peter. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007, pp. 569-84. ISBN 9780631219736 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower and John Lydgate: Forms and Norms of Rhetorical Culture. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Blackwell, 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 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 Review Sargent seeks to determine "how we can use the evidence of numbers of surviving manuscripts as a way to deduce information about what was being made available to read in English from the end of the fourteenth century to the early sixteenth (205). His speculations have relevance for Gower studies, as the sixty-three manuscripts of Gower's Confessio Amantis, as Sargent counts them ("fifty-three originally complete copies, ten extracted tales or groups of tales, plus one manuscript each of a Portuguese and a Castilian Spanish translation of the complete work and one manuscript containing a Latin abridgement of the tale of Constance" [206]), make Gower's poem the fifth most common Middle English work in manuscript, behind the Wycliffite bible (250+ MSS), Brut (181 MSS), Prick of Conscience (123 MSS), Canterbury Tales (81 MSS). More specifically, Sargent notes a distribution pattern that "shows a rising rate of production for a period of a quarter- to a half-century, followed by a leveling off when some form of 'market saturation' was achieved" (243). The CA, Sargent finds, mirrors this conclusion exactly: "the book-length text most commonly produced by scribes participating in the early fifteenth century London book trade in vernacular manuscripts was John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Two manuscripts of the complete text are datable paleographically to the end of the fourteenth century, Huntington Library MS E126.A.17 and Bodleian MS Fairfax 3; one is datable to the beginning of the fifteenth century, Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 67; a further twenty-six manuscripts are datable to the first quarter of the fifteenth century, fourteen to the second quarter, seven to the third quarter, one to the final quarter of the century, and two to the sixteenth century. One manuscript of the first half of the fifteenth century, Bodleian MS Rawlinson D.358, contains a Latin abridgement of the story of Constance based on both the Latin and English of Gower's text; four manuscripts of extracts can be dated to the second half of the century, one to the last quarter, and two to the early sixteenth century. The overall pattern shows that the Confessio Amantis was particularly popular in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, but dropped off gradually over the rest of the century" (235-36). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sargent, Michael G Published Sargent, Michael G. "What Do These Numbers Mean? A Textual Critic's Observations on Some Patterns of Middle English Manuscript Transmission." In Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England. Ed. Connolly, Margaret and Mooney, Linne R. [York]: York Medieval Press, 2008, pp. 205-44. ISBN 9781903153246 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 What Do These Numbers Mean? A Textual Critic's Observations on Some Patterns of Middle English Manuscript Transmission Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available York Medieval Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 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 Mooney argues that not only were London scribes ca. 1400-1476 responsible for vernacular literary manuscripts not working in scriptoria, they were not working in shops, either--but instead, "many of them were not members of the Textwriters' Gild ... and even worked in their homes or lodgings" (184). Mooney emphasizes the distinctions "vernacular literary" in her analysis, since the copiers of manuscripts of literary importance were not producing "the kinds of texts that were in regular demand in high numbers: indulgences, Bibles, Latin rites, breviaries, books of hours, primers, other schoolbooks, university set texts and so forth" (184). Those were the province of the Textwriters' Gild, since they supported the trade; nor were vernacular literary MSS produced by "the 'scriveners,' who after 1373 were a distinct gild of the Writers of Court Letter, really attorneys or notaries public, who could draft legally binding documents" (184) or by the "stationers," who were largely "retailers, selling second-hand and imported books and paper . . . perhaps also pens and plummet and so forth" (185). Rather, vernacular literary books were most often bespoke products, made by "'free-lance' scribes," some of whom (about a third, based upon surviving evidence) were foreign-born, "and it seems probable that many were working part-time at copying books after long hours put in at other full-time jobs, whether as canons, vicars or schoolmasters, as legal scriveners or as clerks in government offices in London and Westminster" (186). Crucially, such scribes needed to reside outside the London city limits, or in one of the several liberties within the City, to avoid violating gild laws, and much of Mooney's chapter seeks to identify who they were and where they lived. Hoccleve, partly responsible for the Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.2 Confessio Amantis, was one such (194-95; 197); another was the French-born "Richard Franceys or Ricardus Franciscus" who "appears to have moved from one government office to another, or possibly to have taken commissions from them as a free-lance scribe living outside the City or within one of the liberties of the City" (199). Franceys may have been "moonlighting out of the heralds' offices in the liberty of Blackfriars when he made copies of English vernacular works .. .including Gower's Confessio Amantis" (i.e., New York, Pierpont Morgan Library MS M 126) (200). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Socity. JGN 281.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mooney, Linne R Published Mooney, Linne R. "Locating Scribal Activity in Late-Medieval London." In Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England. Ed. Connolly, Margaret and Mooney, Linne R. [York]: York Medieval Press, 2008, pp. 183-204. ISBN 9781903153246 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 Locating Scribal Activity in Late-Medieval London. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available York Medieval Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 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 Scribe D was "active in the London-Westminster area between the 1390's and the 1420's, although his linguistic origins were in the southwest Midlands" (42). Apparently he knew and worked with other prominent scribes and the major poets. He has been shown to be responsible for ("in whole or in part") the two Canterbury Tales MSS that are Thaisen's focus (Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 198 [Cp] and London, British Library MS Harley 7334 [Ha4]), a "De Proprietatibus Rerum," a "Piers Plowman," and eight "Confessios": Cambridge, Trinity College, R.3.2 (quires 9, 15-19, and parts of 14); London, British Library, Egerton 1991; New York, Columbia University Library, Plimpton 265; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 294; Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 902 (fols. 2r-16v); Oxford, Christ Church College 148; Oxford, Corpus Christi College, 67. Thaisen sets out to demonstrate that orthographic variation can help establish "the number of exemplars a given scribe used and in what order he copied them" (58), since a scribe's native dialectal idiosyncrasies give way to those of other scribes as he "works in" to exemplars not in his own dialect. Ultimately Thaisen's data are intriguing, despite his admission of inconclusive results. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 28.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Thaisen, Jacob Published Thaisen, Jacob. "The Trinity Gower D Scribe's Two Canterbury Tales Manuscripts Revisited." In Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England. Ed. Connolly, Margaret and Mooney, Linne R. [York]: York Medieval Press, 2008, pp. 41-60. ISBN 9781903153246 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 Trinity Gower D Scribe's Two Canterbury Tales Manuscripts Revisited. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available York Medieval Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 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 As the reception history of Gower and his CA clearly shows, Jacobean England knew both the poet and his poem as representing values which were seen as those of an earlier age and quite distinctive from those of Protestant England. Whether through "Greenes Vision," Berthelette's black-letter edition of the CA, Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde," or Gower's tomb at St. Saviour's (Southwark's "theatrical parish"), Shakespeare's encounters with Gower were with the poet representing the moral authority of pre-Reformation, medieval England. Shakespeare's "Pericles," a re-conception of Gower's tale of Apollonius, foregrounds its source's medieval origins. In addition to the dumb show (a form "Shakespeare clearly connected . . . with the past"), Shakespeare highlights Gower's antiquity by embedding Latin within his English lines, clothing the poet in recognizably medieval garb, and placing the poet in the role of a presenter (a role associated with old-fashioned mystery and morality plays) who speaks in an antique register. These purposeful medievalisms provide a moral seriousness essential to understanding the play. And yet, it is these medieval elements that are quickly excised when "Pericles" has been staged in the past 150 years. Without them, however, the play loses its moral cohesion, giving us "sufficient reason to insist on the medieval presence when performing 'Pericles'." [CB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "Shakespeare as Medievalist: What it Means for Performing 'Pericles'." In Shakespeare and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Performance and Adaptation of the Plays with Medieval Sources or Settings. Ed. Driver, Martha W. and Ray, Sid. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009, pp. 215-31. 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 Shakespeare as Medievalist: What it Means for Performing 'Pericles'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available McFarland, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 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 McNally argues that Gower's CA does not "mix water and oil" in combining the penitential tradition with the poetry of courtly love. To make this point, McNally carefully traces the gradual historical convergence of these two types of literature. He first outlines the origin of the seven (sometimes eight) deadly sins, the introduction of penitential tracts and confessional manuals, the use of exempla collections in preaching, the adoption of the confession as a literary model, and finally the eventual parody of the whole penitential system in comic literature (74-81). Next, McNally looks at the religious aspects of courtly literature. He points out, for example, that there are some significant similarities between the penitent and the lover. Both have a desire to receive the "grace" (82) of the beloved and both suffer from sickness (caused by sin or love). Penance and love were thus intimately related. McNally then charts this overlap in troubadour poetry, Dante (especially the Purgatory), Chretien de Troyes, Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and a number of other writers. In Dante, for instance, "the domna of the troubadours, transfigured and idealized [as Beatrice], is reached by the lover whose progress upward to her begins with the act of purgation, involving confession and the Seven Deadly Sins, both of which have structural functions in the work" (84). The final link between love and penance comes in the genre of the dream vision. McNally provides an elaborate comparison between a dream from Bede's Ecclesiastical History and a vision (of the afterlife of lovers) from Andreas Capellanus' De Amore. While the latter is also indebted to the tradition of the epithalamium (with its locus amoenus), the similarities are striking. Indeed, many of the elements of the religious and courtly dream vision come together in Alan of Lille's De Planctu Naturae, a significant source for Gower (94). McNally concludes, therefore, that Gower was "following an established tradition in which the Seven Deadly Sins, the confession courtly praecepta, a court of love, a quasi-religious vision, the petition of and judgment of the god or goddess, the instruction of the poet-lover-penitent, and tales and exempla for the purposes of instruction are conventional devices" (94). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor McNally, John J Published McNally, John J. "The Penitential and Courtly Traditions in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Studies in Medieval Culture. Ed. Sommerfeldt, John R. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1964, pp. 74-94. 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 Penitential and Courtly Traditions in Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1964 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 To reveal something of Gower's artistry, Esch looks at the Tale of Rosiphelee, the Tale of Albinus and Rosemund, and the Tale of Constance. The Tale of Rosiphelee is indicative of Gower's aims in the CA, since it promotes marriage, rather than just courtly love. Rosiphelee's vision of the ladies on horses is full of tension and suspense, and the narrator's easy transitions in point of view provide rich psychological insights into Rosiphelee's mind. In the second narrative, Gower makes Albinus much more in love with Rosemund. Whereas Gottfried of Viterbo (Gower's source) focuses on the curse that follows Albinus' actions, Gower primarily sees Albinus' boasting as a breach of the law of love. More attention is thus given to the feast, to the magical artwork on the cup made from Gurmond's skull, and to the dramatic moment when Albinus cryptically asks Rosemund to drink with her father. Albinus here conflates his victory in battle with a victory in love, and so in boasting he plays herald to himself. The rest of the tale – with its focus on fortune, discord, and the "wylde loves rage" (CA 1. 2620) – is entirely a "Tragödie der Liebe" ("Love tragedy"; 225). Finally, Esch compares Gower's Tale of Constance with the versions by Trivet and Chaucer. Gower creates unity by making the various episodes parallel with one another and by occasional foreshadowing of later events. Whereas Chaucer opens the tale by giving much more social context and background and initially makes Constance known less for her piety than for her beauty, Gower is more focused and abstract in his narration. In fact, Gower "erwähnt kaum ein Detail, das nicht direct mit der Handlung verknüpft ist" ("mentions hardly a detail which is not directly tied to his plot"; 233). Gower creates less pathos than Gower and separates Constance from her world by making her "einsamer, größer, unsentimentaler" ("more lonely, larger, less sentimental"; 234). Chaucer mixes irony with saintliness, but Gower is completely focused on creating a saint's legend. Still, Gower occasionally introduces brief psychological insights, as when we see Allee's thoughtfulness in dealing with Domilde's crimes (a moment which leads to a more judicial trial and punishment). Thus, Gower shows great skill in the construction of narratives, even though his artistry may not be as exceptional as Chaucer's. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Esch, Arno Published Esch, Arno. "John Gowers Erzahlkunst." In Chaucer und seine Zeit: Symposion fur Walter F. Schirmer. Ed. Esch, Arno. Tübingen: Neimeyer, 1968, pp. 207-239. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gowers Erzahlkunst Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Neimeyer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968 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 Doyle and Parkes use Trinity College, Cambridge MS R.3.2 (581) to make some observations about the book trade in late medieval England. The Trinity MS contains the second recension of Gower's CA as well as some of his minor works. The account of Gower's works in the latter section includes the words "dum vixit," which gives us a terminus post quem of c. 1408 for the MS. Five hands appear in the MS (labeled A-E), and each of the scribal stints corresponds with the beginnings and ends of quires. The exemplar was thus distributed in portions for "simultaneous copying" (164). Of scribes A and C we know nothing, whereas scribes B and D can also be identified for various other MSS, including copies of the Canterbury Tales (e.g., scribe B is responsible for both Ellesmere and Hengwrt) and other copies of the CA. Scribe E, finally, was Thomas Hoccleve. Hoccleve's death in 1426 gives us the MS's terminus ante quem. Doyle and Parkes conclude from all of this that most copies produced in the period were not the work of a scriptorium (as Macaulay and Fisher suggest for Gower). Instead, the author, compiler, or stationer typically hired independent craftsmen. Such commissions must at times have required the use of scribes who usually worked outside of the trade. This explains the parts taken by Hoccleve (who worked as Clerk of the Privy Seal), scribe A (who seems inexperienced), and by scribe C (whose style resembles that used in documents of the offices of state). While Gower probably did not use a scriptorium, he "could have contracted with independent scribes and limners in much the same way as other patrons or stationers did, and perhaps retained the services of some of them in order to expedite the production of copies of his own works" (200). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Doyle, A. I., and M. B. Parkes. Published Doyle, A.I., and Parkes, M. B. "The Production of Copies of the 'Canterbury Tales' and the 'Confessio Amantis' in the Early Fifteenth Century." In M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson, eds. Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts & Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker (London: Scolar, 1978), pp. 163-210. 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 Production of Copies of the "Canterbury Tales" and the "Confessio Amantis" in the Early Fifteenth Century. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Scolar, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1978 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 Schueler suggests that Gower gave up the rigid organization of the first few books of the CA (esp. the five-part subdivisions of each sin) in order to create a more life-like, natural dialogue between Genius and Amans. Genius increasingly becomes "the archetype of the garrulous but wise pedant" (18) and so he is particularly given to long digressions. Genius is also no longer simply a priest of Venus. While this leads to some awkward moments in the poem, it gives Gower more scope to discuss all varieties of love as well as natural law. Although Genius is "long-winded and discursive . . . the characters in his tales never are" (21). Schueler sees Gower as "a master of the action type of story" (21). He further praises the poet for his skillful use of the octosyllabic couplet. Not only does Gower generally avoid a "jingling gait" (22), but he also manages to create a distinctive difference "between the plaintive, hurried measure of the Lover's voice and the deeper, slower voice of Genius" (22). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schueler, Donald G Published Schueler, Donald G. "Some Comments on the Structure of John Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Explorations of Literature. Ed. Reck, Rima D. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1966, pp. 15-24. Gower Subject 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 Some Comments on the Structure of John Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Louisiana State UP, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966 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 Although not concerned with Gower per se, Jones focuses squarely on medieval elements visible in "Pericles," whose plot was ultimately derived (whether wholly by Shakespeare or not) from Gower's "Apollonius of Tyre" in CA 8. Noting that for some in the Middle Ages (including the anonymous pamphleteer behind The Tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, ca. 1380-1425, with whose opinions Jones opens) "dead books" offered an illiterate public little spiritual solace or counsel. Preferable were plays, essentially "quike bookis" that all could read through the actors' efforts. Jones argues that such a view of the theatre's exemplarity underlies the development of the chorus or Prologue character as a figure of authority in early modern drama, both for good (e.g., Mercy in "Mankind") or for ill (as in the case of the "subversive authority" of the Machiavel [204-05]). One such figure is "Gower" in "Pericles" but because "Gower is also a historical figure and subject to . . . visual iconicity" (206) his recognized status as a moral writer for Shakespeare's audience (still inhabiting a time when print culture was fluid, and "where perhaps the literary and performative modes of storytelling were not so entirely disparate entities" [207]) could be counted on to lend his words added authority in his role as Prologue. Thus, Jones argues, "Shakespeare's play projects Gower as a hybrid of archaic alterity and iconic familiarity" (209). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Jones, Kelly Published Jones, Kelly. "'The Quick and the Dead': Performing the Poet Gower in Pericles." In Shakespeare and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Performance and Adaptation of the Plays with Medieval Sources or Settings. Ed. Driver, Martha W., and Ray, Sid. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009, pp. 201-214. 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 'The Quick and the Dead': Performing the Poet Gower in Pericles Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available McFarland, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 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 Theiner argues first that the Peasants' Revolt was not an isolated incident of violence in the fourteenth century, and then provides a short overview of how Gower and Froissart viewed the events. Gower is a "mirror of his age" (304) and so in the VC he defends the hierarchical order by turning the rebels into animals. These unnatural transformations (the animals are really monsters) lead to poetry that is neither beast-fable nor successful narrative (305). When the vision then turns into allegory, the references to the fall of Troy are likewise unconvincing. Many Trojan names "are strewn about pretty much at random, identifying no one in particular, but trying to convince the reader that what he has in front of him is a coherent allegory" (305). The resulting lack of true narrative and causation means that Gower does not really engage with the changes of history (as Froissart does in a limited way) and rather describes the revolt as "a state of being" (306). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Theiner, Paul Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Published Theiner, Paul. "The Literary Uses of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381." In Actes du VIe Congres de l'Association Internationale de Litterature Comparée. Ed. Cadot, Michel, et al. Stuttgart: Erich Bieber, 1975, pp. 303-306. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Erich Bieber, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource The Literary Uses of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Kirk surveys a number of English works and writers that Chaucer may have known or drawn from. The first of these is Gower, whose CA is a model of the plain style (as C. S. Lewis called it). Gower's poetry is a combination of "simplicity of style and decorative intricacy of structure" (112), although Kirk also goes on to call Gower's spare, direct style "limpid" (113). Kirk agrees with J. A. Burrow that both poets tend to work "concentrically, embedding simpler units in larger, formal one" (114). This process of encapsulation allows them to explore various parallel views of love (the different kinds of Venuses). Gower explores the meaning of love by combining personification allegory (in the frame) with narratives of individual people and situations. He is thus able to combine lucid narrative with lucid moralization. Chaucer, by contrast, dramatizes both levels of understanding within his narratives. Chaucer communicates by juxtaposition of narratives. In Gower's hands, by contrast, encapsulation "becomes a delightful puzzle, a masterpiece of the fluid Gothic tracery of fourteenth-century English windows, which makes the epithet which their contemporary, the French poet Deschamps, attached to Chaucer more applicable to Gower [--] "grand translateur" (115). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kirk, Elizabeth D Published Kirk, Elizabeth D. "Chaucer and his English Contemporaries." In Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles. Ed. Economou, George D. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975, pp. 111-127. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Chaucer and his English Contemporaries Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available McGraw-Hill, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 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 Lawlor, writing in a commemorative volume for C. S. Lewis, takes issue with Lewis's belief that Gower is at times romantic "in the nineteenth-century meaning of the word" (qtd. by Lawlor 122). Lawlor argues that Romanticism ultimately revolves around the question of belief. C. S. Lewis himself noted that the old gods must die before they can "wake again in the beauty of acknowledged myth" (qtd. by Lawlor 123). The romantic sense of a pleasing terror (an aspect of the sublime) depends on a mythology of the supernatural and magical which is known to be untrue but which is entertained by a willing suspension of disbelief, as Coleridge put it. The problem with Lewis's examples of Gower's romanticism is that in each instance there is no suspension of disbelief. For instance, Medea's magic is still considered within the realm of possibility in the medieval world. Lawlor observes that the same can be said for the famous line about the "beaute faye" (fairy beauty) upon the faces of the dead in the Tale of Rosiphilee: "That which is faye in the sense which concerns us is thought of as a possible mode of being" (134). Similarly, Lewis's examples of romanticism from the story of Nectanabus and the Tale of Ulysses and Telegonus are taken out of context. The reason why Lewis finds Gower romantic is because to him the Middle Ages appears far away in time, a realm of wonders and marvels, located at the edge of what is known: "When, in a later age, everything has been explored, desire shifts ground; and it is then that the apparatus of the old world, the monsters, the demons, all the exciting glimpses at the margin of the map, comes into new life" (137). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lawlor, John Published Lawlor, John. "On Romanticism in the Confessio Amantis." In Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis. Ed. Lawlor, John. London: Edward Arnold, 1966, pp. 122-140. 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 On Romanticism in the Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Edward Arnold, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966 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 Bennet, writing in a commemorative volume for C.S. Lewis, notes that Lewis commented surprisingly little on the "ethical scheme" (106) of CA and how the poem fit within the history of the allegory of love, and paid more attention to Gower's poetic craft. Bennet aims to make up for this lack by demonstrating that Gower does not advocate a complete relinquishing of earthly love in favour of divine charity. Gower's Genius is a combination of the two characters of Genius and Nature in the Roman de la Rose (109), and becomes a spokesperson for a chaste love that finds its end in marriage and procreation. This virtuous love is frequently referred to as "honeste" (see the citations on 113-17) and is what provides Amans, and indeed the commonwealth, with true "pes" (peace). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bennett, J. A. W Published Bennett, J. A. W. "Gower's 'Honeste Love.'." In Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis. Ed. Lawlor, John. London: Edward Arnold, 1966, pp. 108-120. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies 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 'Honeste Love.' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Edward Arnold, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966 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 Economou notes a "strong thematic bond among works like the De planctu naturae, the Roman de la Rose, the Parlement of Foules, and the Confessio Amantis, works which share strong formal and generic elements" (23). Each of these works focuses on courtly love, and each participates in the medieval idea of the two Venuses. Gower's Venus is the "good Venus, associated with Natura (VIII. 2337-44) and identified as the planet (VIII 2942-44)" (31-32). This Venus restores Amans to his senses and allows him to recognize the folly of lechery in his old age. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Economou, George D Published Economou, George D. "The Two Venuses and Courtly Love." In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature. Ed. Ferrante, Joan M and Economou, George D. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat, 1975, pp. 17-50. 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 Two Venuses and Courtly Love Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Kennikat, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 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 Gower's primary concern in the "Confessio Amantis" was with politics, specifically right kingship and governance, prompted in large part, in McKinley's view, by his growing dissatisfaction with Richard II. Ovid, McKinley argues, was particularly useful to Gower in presenting both his views of right rule and his critique of Richard, who, McKinley believes, was among the readers. of CA "Throughout the "Confessio" Gower engages Ovid to effect metamorphosis within the understanding of his royal reader or his counselors. The most important transformation in Gower occurs when Genius interprets the tale for Amans, and thus for the king: what results is metamorphosis in hermeneutical terms" (p. 108). Following David Wallace's identification (in "Chaucerian Polity") of husband and wife as stand-ins in late medieval discourse for king and realm, McKinley provides close readings of two tale from Book V of the CA "Jason and Medea" (3247-4229) and "Tereus" (5550-6074). After comparing each to Ovid's version and, as relevant, in other sources ("Óvide moralisé," "Ovidius moralizatus," "Roman de Troie"), McKinley concludes that "In rendering the Jason and Tereus tales, Gower seems to follow Ovid's emphases much more strongly that those of the medieval moralising tradition . . . . Gower's political readings are finally similar to the classical uses of such characters and dissimilar to medieval moralising versions that then read such characters as emblematic of sinful spiritual states. By following closely Ovid's own emphases, Gower in this section of Book Five presents negative illustrations of rulers who violate oaths of various kinds. When one considers the various versions of these stories available to Gower and examines his departures from them, one can see both the independence of his judgment and his determination to recreate a more truly 'Ovidian' telling of each tale. In the 'Confessio Amantis,' Gower is concerned not just with the larger rubric of Amans' confession of sins to Genius; he intends above all to employ this larger framework to mediate his own reflections on proper governance and self-rule" (p. 127). [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor McKinley, Kathryn Published McKinley, Kathryn. "Lessons for a King from John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." In Metamorphoses: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Ed. Keith, Allison and Rupp, Stephen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007, pp. 107-28. 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 Lessons for a King from John Gower's '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 2007 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 Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "The Politics of Strengthe and Vois in Gower's Loathly Lady Tale." In The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs. Ed. Passmore, S. Elizabeth and Carter, Susan. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 42-72. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Gower's "Tale of Florent" is aptly suited for the purposes of instruction of Amans, Yeager notes, but it has more than a single target. Book 1 is not only drawn almost exclusively from classical sources; it is marked by the "clear effort Gower made to situate his narratives historically" (p. 45), mostly in the ancient past. In conjunction with the use of Latin for the verse headings and marginalia and the choice of Roman deities for the frame, the insistent antiquity of the stories helps lend authority to Gower's vernacular text. But it also, Yeager suggests, serves as a way of blunting and camouflaging--self-protectively--the poet's direct critique of his contemporaries, another of the purposes of the poem which Gower sets out expressly in his Prologue. The "historical matrix" for the tales is provided by Nebuchadnezzar's statue, which "helps reinforce just how far distant from the present they are to be taken" (p. 47) but also helps direct the attention of alert readers to the comparison of past and present, with all of the statue's implications of degeneration and decay; and to emphasize the relation, Yeager points out that Book 1 includes tales that can be matched to each of the five ages that the diverse materials of the statue represent. The marginal gloss firmly sets "Florent" as a Roman tale, from the "Age of Brass." The analogues suggest that this must have been Gower's deliberate choice, and the purpose, Yeager suggests, has to do with the tale's implicit "political critique" (p. 50). Though set in the past, the tale still concerns a knight and knighthood; and the "primary dichotomy" in the tale, unique to Gower's version, is between "obedience" and "strength" (CA 1.1401-2), "precisely the problematic facing the barony" in an age that was rife with "Murmur and Complaint" (p. 53). After Florent has demonstrated his strength in his successful combat with Branchus, it is "through his gentility . . . that the 'grantdame' (CA I.1445) perceives a means to neutralize Florent's combat potential" (p. 53), and "strengthe," from this point in the tale on, shifts from the purely physical to the inner strength manifested in Florent's "trouthe." At the same time, Gower emphasizes the "division" in Florent's struggle with the alternatives that he faces. These are resolved with his surrender to his lady and his decision to grant her "myn hole vois" (CA 1.1828). "For the first time since his quarrel began, Florent's quarreling inner voices are silenced at the prospect of reintegration. 'Bothe on,' the two will speak with a single 'vois,' and by this at last grow 'hole'" (p. 55). The construction of this scene recalls both the political (e.g. in the 'commun vois') and the apocalyptic significance that Gower attaches to "voice" in both CA and in his other works, notably in the Vox Clamantis, and again extends the tale beyond its merely literal application. "The political message of 'The Tale of Florent' is, . . . on one level, that the knightly class has only to gain by ceding sovereignty to where it rightly belongs" (p. 58), but "the political applicability [of the tale] extends to all whose Pride has led to Murmur and Complaint, and outright Inobedience to established sovereign rule" (p. 59). [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 The Politics of Strengthe and Vois in Gower's Loathly Lady Tale Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Peck, Russell A Published Peck, Russell A. "Folklore and Powerful Women in Gower's 'Tale of Florent'." In The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs. Ed. Passmore, S. Elizabeth and Carter, Susan. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 100-146. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Peck argues that "John Gower's 'Tale of Florent' is the first sustained Loathly Lady narrative in English literature," and "that Gower, drawing on folk materials, put together the basic narrative as we know it. 'The Tale of Florent' then functioned as the primary literary source for 'The Wife of Bath's Tale' and, along with 'The Wife of Bath's Tale,' though less exclusively, for the Loathly Lady section of 'The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle" (p. 100). Although "there is an 'Irishness' about Gower's narrative as it subtly explores oppressions of disenfranchisement" (p. 102), Peck believes Gower could not have known Irish sources directly, as has sometimes been suggested; rather, he constructed his tale out of a congeries of folk motifs likely in oral circulation--"the cultural stock of ancient stories, whether Irish, English, French, Indian, or even beyond the Indo-European hegemony" (p. 105). For one thing, the concept of sovereignty in the Irish sources is essentially political; but "for Gower and Chaucer the notion of sovereignty is personal" and "psychological" (pp. 102, 103). Hence Peck connects "Florent" and WBT with coming-of-age narratives: Florent (and in his way Chaucer's nameless knight-rapist) is "full of puberty" (p. 108) and in need of an education in order to discover himself. Thus for Peck the landscape of tale is interior, as he makes clear when he breaks down its action into three parts: 1) "First life-exposure: The setting out;" 2) "Second Life: Social entanglement;" 3) "Third life: Discovery" (pp. 108-09). Florent, he points out, must gain insight into himself, and also into "that other outside himself, the hag to which he finds himself married…he must begin to understand women, that other half of humanity that nature has made both like and different from himself" (p. 112). While for Peck "women define and control all phases of the plot" (p. 112), it is (as in all folk-tales of the sort he describes) "the stepmother" who, "although [she] does not appear until the end of the tale…is the principal determinant, what might be called (with apologies to Greimas) the "destinateur" of the story, the 'why' behind the loathly hag's circumstance" (p. 113). This "destinateur" permits Peck to delineate Gower's hag with the truly "loathsome lady" of folktale "narratives we know so well from childhood": she who is "the bestower of curses in dozens of animal tales where beautiful youth, both male and female, get transformed into birds, serpents, cats, pigs, frogs, or whatever. Usually she is jealous--some cranky fairy or hateful elder person who lacks youth, beauty, or paramour; or perhaps she is one who has simply been passed over herself…but who has, nonetheless, the power to dock her enemies of their sovereignty, leaving them in a state of deformity until that sovereignty can be restored" (p. 113). Since Peck's primary focus is Florent's coming of age as a grown-up male, it is vital to his argument that this female hag-figure be female, and he insightfully identifies the underlying threat to the male psyche--"male fears of woman's sexuality that characterize folklore variants on the vagina dentata" (p. 115)--with Gower's hag-wife, and pointedly with Dame Ragnelle and both the Wife of Bath and her Loathly Lady surrogate (pp. 115-16). But his secondary focus (not much behind-hand, in essence) is to clarify the relationship of Chaucer's tale to Gower's, and less importantly to the "Ragnelle" version (although ultimately Peck will iterate the several ways "Ragnelle" agrees with Gower, while taking "the issues of the poem a step beyond its predecessors [p. 125]). Both in Chaucer's WBT, and especially in "Ragnelle," Peck states, "the 'vagina dentata' motif implicit in Gower's story is prominent" (p. 117). His argument here is complex and rich, and resists easy summary, since Chaucer's Wife as a narrator is quite different from Gower's Genius, vastly more invested and consequently exponentially more polyvalent in her shaping of the tale she tells. Peck's central point--and the difference he finds between Gower and Chaucer--is that "Gower's simpler narrative has become a showboat for the Wife's creative ingenuity, her 'queynte fantasye' of what in real life is too often denied to women" (p. 121). His conclusion is worth quoting "à la lettre": "The configuration of Loathly Lady motifs which Gower activates are attuned to matriarchal tensions that may be traced back to the most ancient of myths of furies and blessed ones negotiating with an Apollonian world of laws that codependent victims (victims of hatred, chance, ill-will, disenfranchisement) ultimately move beyond. As they proceed they discover a higher ethic, one founded in recognition of the other and the subsequent recovery of personal sovereignty that makes possible mutual love. This reading is distinctly Gowerian" (p. 126). [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 Folklore and Powerful Women in Gower's 'Tale of Florent' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Galloway, Andrew Published Galloway, Andrew. "Gower's Quarrel with Chaucer, and the Origins of Bourgeois Didacticism in Fourteenth-Century London Poetry." In Calliope's Classroom: Studies in Didactic Poetry from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Ed. Harder, Annette and MacDonald, Alasdair A and Reinink, Gerrit J. Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2007 ISBN 904291808X Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Review Galloway here positions the CA as significantly more important for what it "yields…to political and social theory than [what] it does either to clerical didacticism or love poetry" (p. 246). In a direct challenge to contemporary views, he reads the long-discredited "quarrel" between Gower and Chaucer as legitimate, but only if properly understood as reflective of a debate within a self-consciously mercantilized polity, not about issues of amour courtois and/or moral stricture, but rather about the nature and limits of power between what he argues is Gower's Lockian optimism and Chaucer's Hobbesian pessimism with regard to self-interest both public and private. It is a debate that reveals itself in Chaucer's failure to complete the "Legend of Good Women," which Galloway claims was abandoned not because Chaucer "became bored with its repetitive form and moralising requirements" (p. 259) but rather because he found the "task of showing an ideal union of political and moral absolutism" quite "impossible" (p. 259). "The unfinished Legend of Good Women, with its chillingly 'realist' view of atomized absolutist self-interest, and its demands for an encompassing absolutism that would merge moral authority with secular power," Galloway asserts, "was a major instigation for Gower to write the Confessio Amantis--at least as important as any commission by King Richard II" (p. 259); indeed, for Galloway, "the entire Confessio is a long and pre-emptive answer to the absolutist social didacticism of the "Legend of Good Women," one showing how governance of self-sufficient entities and self-interested society should be imagined in another way" (p. 260). Like Locke (whom Galloway likens to Gower among other ways by taking "Two Treatises on Government" to be an answer to Hobbes' "Leviathan," which he compares to Chaucer's LGW), Gower for Galloway is a kind of "constitutionalist" (p. 256), who continually creates narratives supporting the potential of "a consensual urban community to establish a principle of justice and freedom to pursue secular self-interest" (p. 262). Chaucer's trajectory after turning his back on the incomplete LGW is to the Canterbury Tales, which Galloway assesses from the perspective of the Manciple in the work's final tale as expressing its author's ultimately "bitter disenchantment about the possibilities of any governance over self-interest" (p. 264). This is a vision so dark as to move outside either a Lockian or a Hobbesian position, one that "anticipates later and more sweeping critiques of 'bourgeois philosophy'" such as those offered by Horkheimer and Adorno (p. 265), and Galloway contrasts it staunchly with "Gower's overarching optimism…that, with enough self-sacrifice (by himself or others) he and his poetry might offer [a] socially harmonising" alternative to "the Manciple's black concluding pessimism for any harmonious framework, poetic or social, containing a world of absolutism inherent in natural existence" (p. 266). In the end, while Galloway deems Chaucer the more "penetrating" ironist and--in a carefully turned phrase significantly pointed by his italics--"less 'intellectually' absolutist," he concludes that it is "Gower's Lockian genius, with his distinctive literary brilliance in conveying it [that] deserves far fuller credit than it has received" (p. 266). [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 Gower's Quarrel with Chaucer, and the Origins of Bourgeois Didacticism in Fourteenth-Century London Poetry Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Peeters, 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 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 Gaffney, Paul Published Gaffney, Paul. "Controlling the Loathly Lady, or What Really Frees Dame Ragnelle." In The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs. Ed. Passmore, S. Elizabeth and Carter, Susan. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 146-62. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review "'The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle' exemplifies the traditional stream of the Loathly Lady tale, little influenced by bookish traditions," Gaffney contends (p. 146). Thereafter substituting Roland Barthes' narratological distinction of histoire ("bare story") for "traditional stream," and discours ("the particular embodiment of a histoire") for "bookish traditions," and with recourse to John Miles Foley's and Carl Lindahl's notions of, respectively, "orally-derived" [sic] tales and oral/folk vs. "elite" styles, Gaffney seeks to situate the peculiar power of "Dame Ragnelle" in its indeterminate "discours," arguing that "the less fixed the meaning of a 'discours,' the more evocative it can be" and hence "the more is left to the audience" to "excavate." This suggests to him that tales originating in the oral tradition, and hewing closely to it, are "a different species of story, one in which the audience participates more in the construction of meaning" (p. 147). To illustrate this difference "and some of its special strengths," Gaffney compares "Dame Ragnelle" to Gower's "Tale of Florent" and Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale." Not surprisingly, he finds both Chaucer's and Gower's versions to be "elite" narratives, their "histoires" heavily reworked into exemplary discourses, each with a didactic point to make (p. 158 and passim.). Both Gower and Chaucer "seek to establish control over their sentence. This control is exercised through all manner of means: plot, style, characterization, and commentary"; "Ragnelle," on the other hand, "carried [no] such intent" (p. 158). Gower exerts control by making "his discourse more clerkly by giving it a classical setting and [his] characters Latin names" (p. 152) and by his addition of Latin glosses. He also emphasizes "the interior life, how the characters think and feel" (p. 153). This latter induces the audience also to think, and hence to interpret--the activity which in turn yields the "sentence," the point Gower wished to get across (p. 153). "'Florent's' strengths "are the strengths of good elite culture literature," as are those of the WBT, "while most of the strength of 'The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle' are the strengths of folk literature"--as Gaffney sees it, that means to be indeterminately evocative, free "to take many shapes" (p. 158). [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 Controlling the Loathly Lady, or What Really Frees Dame Ragnelle Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Coleman, Joyce Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Review The first 16 pages (135-51) of Coleman's study paint a sensitive and revealing portrait of the daughter John of Gaunt married to the young king João I of Portugal in 1387. Pious, learned and intensely moral, but also convincingly sketched by Coleman as a patroness of many things English in her new kingdom, including the Sarum Rite and religious Nottingham alabasters alongside lighter pastimes and English styles of dress and accessories, Philippa here is brought to life as a popular and admired consort whose influence significantly helped shape the emergent Portuguese court. Coleman intends this biographical material as backdrop and support for her arguments that 1) "Philippa, having obtained a copy of the Confessio from one of her many English contacts, …then engaged Robert Payne to translate it as a present for her husband, and more generally their court, and that she further had the work translated from Portuguese into Castilian as a gift for her half-sister Catherine, and her brother-in-law, Enrique III of Castile" (p. 154); 2) that Robert Payne the translator was the son of "Thomas Elie/Elim Payn," Philippa's treasurer, and a Portuguese wife, Antónia Dias d'Arca (p. 153). These conclusions, whole or in part, have been severally raised in the past by P.E. Russell, John Matthews Manly, W.J. Entwhistle, Robert Hamm, Manual Alvar and R.F. Yeager, but Coleman, while giving full credit wherever it is due, constructs the most convincing case yet for Philippa's direct involvement, based upon the richer vision of the queen she is able to afford us through her adroit combing of historical sources for evidence overlooked or misinterpreted by earlier (male) scholars, whose own gender, she implies, led them to erroneous conclusions: "Can it be a coincidence that most of the alternative initiators proposed by these scholars are male? Not all of the scholars who speculate about the Iberian Confessio's [sic] exclude Philippa, but none pays sufficient attention to the web of associations that link her to the Payn family and to the prospective owners and readers of the translations. Nor has any scholar--even Russell, who cowrote a short biography of Philippa in 1940--discovered more in her than the hyper-pious and dutiful daughter, wife, and mother, Coleman writes (p. 154). All should agree with her subsequent conclusion, that "The account of her life in Portugal assembled here allows us to broaden that perspective considerably" (p. 154). [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.2] Published Coleman, Joyce. "Philippa of Lancaster, Queen of Portugal--and Patron of the Gower Translations?" In England and Iberia in the Middle Ages, 12th-15th Century: Cultural, Literary, and Political Changes. Ed. Bullón-Fernández, María. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, pp. 135-65. 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/. 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 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Philippa of Lancaster, Queen of Portugal--and Patron of the Gower 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 Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Examines the association between violence and sexuality, which is either suppressed or left unexpressed by Genius, particularly in the tales of "Phoenus and Daphne," "Canace and Machaire," and "Orestes," in which the construction of masculine selfhood either requires or results in violence against a woman. Donavin detects two conflicting sorts of taboo at work in Book 3, one preventing Genius' acknowledgment of the link between sexuality and violence, the other expressed in Genius' prohibitions against Wrath. Because of the former, Gower reveals, the latter are ineffectual in containing violence and instead result in its propagation. Gower also allows the implicit violence in heterosexual love to be revealed in his characterization of the stages of passion in "love's court" in Book 3. He reveals the antidote to this violence in the figure of Venus, who "escapes the position of the victimized feminine by actually encouraging the violent processes of heterosexual attraction" (229). The resolution does not come about until Book 8, when Venus hands Amans the glass in which he finally recognizes his old age. "The goddess, like other female characters in Book III, takes responsibility for her part in forming male identity, but does so in a way that deflects feelings about selfhood away from her and back onto the male subject" (230). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Donavin, Georgiana Published Donavin, Georgiana. "'When reson torneth into rage': Violence in Book III of the Confessio Amantis." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 216-34. 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 'When reson torneth into rage': Violence in Book III of the Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Discovers an interpretive nexus in the allusions to "timor dei" in Book 1 of CA. Traditionally associated with Humility, "timor dei" is portrayed in its most conventional form in "Capaneus" and "The Trump of Death," though the more serious part of the lesson appears to be lost upon Amans. Another traditional locus for "holy fear" was the Annunciation, which is echoed in both "Mundus and Paulina" and "The Three Questions," and which provides a model for the association of fear, the "conception" of the Word and, by extension, poetic creation as well, and amorous seduction. Gower plays upon these associations throughout Book 1 without fully resolving them. The tale of "Ulysses and the Sirens" suggests that a fear like Mary's at the Annunciation is an appropriate response to the seductions of poetry, particularly poetry of love, that ironically embraces CA itself. In the conversation that precedes the final lesson, on Vainglory, Amans describes his own futile efforts to seduce his lady with his poems and his fear of failure and rejection. In the lesson that Genius offers in reply, Nebuchadnezzar expresses his proper fear of God in his distinctly unpoetic braying. But Genius' second tale, of "The Three Questions," is not at all so straightforward. While echoing earlier references to "holy fear" and to the Annunciation, Peronelle herself exhibits no fear and uses her "eloquent plainness" (206) both to advance her social position and to achieve her own erotic ends. "Present and absent in this riddling culmination is an ever-shifting register of "timor domini," a theme Gower modulates in earnest and in game (and without resolution) throughout Book I and a motif that suggests an ironic sense of self and poetics as subtle and elusive as that of his literary friend and colleague Chaucer" (207). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Banchich, Claire Published Banchich, Claire. "Holy Fear and Poetics in John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Book I." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 188-215. 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 Holy Fear and Poetics in John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Book I Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Though Virgil does not function as a direct source for Gower in anything like the way that Ovid does, he still serves as one of Gower's most important models, and Gower may be the most "Vergilian" of contemporary English poets, especially considered in contrast to Chaucer. The most important direct reference to Virgil is found in the verses "Eneidos Bucolis" which appear at the end of some MSS of CA and VC. If Gower himself did not write these lines, he at least must be responsible for attaching them to his work, and they affirm Virgil both as the model that he seeks to emulate and as the one that he seeks to surpass. Virgil was renowned in the late Middle Ages for his moral seriousness, for his wisdom, for his rhetorical achievement, and also for broad historical scope of his best-known poem, honoring both a heroic individual and the nation that he helped to found. Kuczynski cites evidence that Gower conceived of his own tripartite project in the same epic terms. But as the final lines of "Eneidos Bucolis" indicate, Gower also felt that his Christian ethical scheme conferred an inherent superiority over the pagan poet. A similar double view of Virgil is displayed in his three appearances in CA. In "Virgil's Mirror," it is his wisdom, extending to both moral and national self-knowledge, that is evoked, but in his other two appearances, in the discussion of Gluttony in Book 6 and in the procession of lovers in Book 8, he is the senex amans, "a type of the very lack of self-knowledge, enslavement to passion, that Amans escapes at the poem's close by gazing into Venus's marvelous glass" (178-79). Gower may have seen in Virgil a figure for his own self-subjection to the burdens of to the theme of fin'amor that he chose for CA, but at the end of the poem, "in the figure of the liberated Amans, he is released from its obsessive claims on his attention. That Virgil, Rome's greatest poet, is among the number who plead for his release is noteworthy and more significant if we understand Gower as having aspired to emulate and even to exceed Virgil's preeminent literary achievement" (180). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kuczynski, Michael P Published Kuczynski, Michael P. "Gower's Virgil." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 163-87. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Gower's Virgil Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Examine Gower's use of wordplay in VC 1 to depict the most terrifying aspects of rebellion, particularly a series of puns (modeled on Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Alan of Lille) in which terms such as "caput," "pes," and "cauda" can refer either to parts of the body or to parts of a word or line. Gower begins with the riddle on the parts of his own name at the beginning of Book 1. "By making his readers aware of a word's body – its "pedes," "caput," "membra" – he prepares us for the rebels' heads and feet in the ensuing chapters. For him, syllabic play provides more than a poetic opening: it offers a way of seeing social inversion through a linguistic metaphor, in which the peasants, and not the poet, do the cropping and adding of heads to empower themselves" (148). In the rest of Book 1, the peasants are transformed twice, first into domestic beasts and then into wild ones, as they also seek to monstrously transform society, and in the passages that Zarins disentangles for us, Gower's linguistic play captures the violence and perversion of both transformations. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 210-17. Author/Editor Author/Editor Zarins, Kim Published Zarins, Kim. "From Head to Foot: Syllabic Play and Metamorphosis in Book I of Gower's Vox Clamantis." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 144-60. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 From Head to Foot: Syllabic Play and Metamorphosis in Book I of Gower's Vox Clamantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Reads the passages describing the deaths of Wat Tyler, of Simon Sudbury, and of the Flemish victims of the mob in VC 1 both through the echoes of the earlier works from which Gower has borrowed, in the manner of "cento," key lines and passages, and through theories of sacrificial violence derived from René Girard and Nancy Jay. That Tyler should be seen as a fitting sacrifice is not a surprise; that Sudbury is is a bit more surprising; but Gower displays considerable sympathy for the Flemings. "Gower emphasizes the spectacle of carnage surely to shock those in his ecclesiastical audience into reflection upon the events of the moment. . . . In the events of Tower Hill, the mock altar upon which the archbishop yielded up his spirit, these readers would surely see the implications of the execution of one of their own. Certainly these Latin readers would infer the meaning of unburied corpses lying about as silent witness to all the souls that had gone unsaved, to all the prayers that had been left unspoken. Certainly these Latin readers would be reminded of the mob violence that had a habit of repeating itself during Holy Week; surely they would see the need to wash their hands or accept responsibility for their own actions" (135-36). The poet's identification of himself in the riddling passage at the beginning of Book 1 represents Gower's own self-sacrifice: "In a brilliant move of self-conscious submission, the poet presents himself to the critical axe of his ecclesiastical audience. By enacting his own death in a symbolic sacrifice and taking on the mantle of John, the poet gains the authority of the sacred; at the moment that that transformation occurs he empowers the poem to speak for itself" (138). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 200-10. Author/Editor Author/Editor Salisbury, Eve Published Salisbury, Eve. "Violence and the Sacrificial Poet: Gower, the Vox, and the Critics." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 124-43. 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 Violence and the Sacrificial Poet: Gower, the Vox, and the Critics Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Argues for restoring pre-eminence to the first recension of CA, as opposed to the "third recension" version that Macaulay chose as representing Gower's "final judgment," and also for restoring to Richard II major credit for the poem's inception. There is no reason for Gower to have invented the famous story of its commissioning, she points out. Citing the similarities in the depiction of the deities of love, with their allusions to Richard II and Queen Anne, and the references to the rivalry between the Flower and the Leaf in CA, the Legend of Good Women, and Clanvowe's Book of Cupid, she suggests that all three poets "may have been commissioned, or encouraged, to produce a complimentary poem incorporating these motifs (though, as with Chaucer and Gower, the critiques of Love's willful rule may have been more the poet's idea)" (112). She attributes the resistance to the acceptance of Richard's active role to a privileging of the later Lancastrian version of his text, to a "fascination with Gower's role as a Lancastrian ally" (105), and to a preference for the passages in the poem that offer "an attack on the king's excesses" (115) rather than for those that pay homage to him. But Gower's use of the cult of the Flower and the Leaf in order to "suggest the immaturity of life at Richard's court" suggests that "allegorizing the royals does not necessarily turn them into spun-sugar valentines" (116) and that the poets' acceptance of their commission need not be held against them. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coleman, Joyce Published Coleman, Joyce. "'A Bok for King Richardes Sake': Royal Patronage, the Confessio, and the Legend of Good Women." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 104-21. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'A Bok for King Richardes Sake': Royal Patronage, the Confessio, and the Legend of Good Women Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Traces the development of Gower's notions of pity and of the king's responsibility for justice through his three major works, beginning with the opposition between the tyrant and the merciful but just ruler in his discussion of Pitė as the daughter of Patience in MO (13897 ff). Even Pity, in that passage, faces the necessity of imposing the death penalty when circumstances warrant. Gower thus uses Pity as a way of creating an idealized portrait of the just and merciful king, and he implies that "only those who are capable of reconciling these competing moral demands can truly qualify as just rulers" (78). Under the force of later events, however, his later comments on pity "become increasingly complex and ambiguous" (72), and he finds it difficult to sustain this moral framework as the test of a good king. Later in MO he offers a warning against too much pity in the king (23029 ff.): pity is reduced to mere "misericordia," or as Gower later names it, "pusillamite" (CA 7). In VC 1, the patience that is allied to pity is depicted as weakness and powerlessness in the face of rebellion; the virtue of strong, swift justice that Gower advocates instead (as illustrated in the summary execution of Wat Tyler) "bears some unsettling resemblance to the figure of the angry tyrant" in the first passage in MO. In VC 6, the pity for his poorest subjects that Gower urges upon Richard II embraces a vehemence against those who take advantage of them and includes a severe punishment of evil counselors. In the tale of "Alexander and the Pirate" (CA 3.2363 ff.), in which the emperor grants a pardon in exchange for military service, Gower alludes to an actual practice: in the broader distribution of pardons near the end of Richard's reign, pity creates an opportunity for an abuse of justice. In the tale of "Orestes" (CA 3. 1885 ff.), on the other hand, Genius's apparent approval of the punishment of Clitemnestra is problematized by the Latin gloss at the beginning of the tale, by the fact that only Orestes is described as "wroth," and by the careful legal proceedings that precede the execution of Egistus. The tale thus "throws doubt on Gower's advocacy in other places of the absolute prerogative of the prince" (96) and "suggests that it may not be enough to limit the king's authority at the personal level of his conscience alone" (97). These last two tales together raise questions about the king's relation to the law that cannot be answered satisfactorily within the terms that Gower first proposes in MO. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kobayashi, Yoshiko Published Kobayashi, Yoshiko. "'Principis Umbra': Kingship, Justice, and Pity in John Gower's Poetry." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 71-103. 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 'Principis Umbra': Kingship, Justice, and Pity in John Gower's Poetry Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Bertolet sets Gower's many comments on the legal and social life of his city into the context of the concerns and anxieties embodied in the surviving civic records of London, particularly the Letter-Books and the Plea and Memoranda Rolls. He finds that both the governing authorities and the poet found "the principal threats to the civic order . . . to be deceptive trading, sedition, and dangerous speech" (45), or more concisely, in the three terms of Bertolet's title. His discussion of each of these in turn, each with particular examples drawn from the records, illuminates passages in each of Gower's three major poems and puts into relief some of the many differences in assumption between Gower and ourselves regarding the relation between the individual and the polis. "Common profit" (together with its opposite, "singular profit") assumes a literal economic sense in Bertolet's analysis as he discusses the background to the poet's protests against fraud and "division." He also documents a prevailing fear of disorder reflected in the many restraints upon what we would consider "free speech." "The charge then to the governors of London and its guilds, as Gower would agree," he concludes, "[was] to regulate the behavior of their members in their words and deeds, so that they eschew divisive practices and instead benefit the city through honest work and communal love" (62). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E Published Bertolet, Craig E. "Fraud, Division, and Lies: John Gower and London." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 43-70. 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 Fraud, Division, and Lies: John Gower and London Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Even in "Constance," Wetherbee affirms, Gower is more concerned with social difference than with religious difference; like "Apollonius of Tyre," the tale offers a universally applicable "integrity of conduct which in this tale happens to be congruent with the heroine's role as an embodiment of Roman Christianity, but which Gower is at pains to represent largely in social, rather than religious terms" (22). He finds the poem to be shaped not by the historical opposition between Christianity and other faiths but by a broader opposition that Gower himself constructs, between Rome, as a site of "wise government," "stable institutions," and "justice" (24), and the world of "ceaseless random movement" of knighthood and chivalry (25) which Gower depicts in the many tales in CA associated with Troy. Gower's Trojan characters have little of the epic dignity of their classical counterparts. To cite only highlights of Wetherbee's analysis: in the tale of "Orestes," "the anti-social aspect of knightly conduct is presented as a function of chivalric education itself" (27); "Paris and Helen" "reveals a society betrayed by its inability to acknowledge the reckless desire to which it owes its origin, and committed by its blind pursuit of that desire to inevitable dissolution" (36); and "Ulysses and Telegonus" reveals "the ultimately self-betraying character of the chivalric life as Gower understands it" (36). The "defining instance" of the opposition that Wetherbee finds is the "Tale of the False Bachelor," in which the Roman knight's pursuit of chivalry . . . cut[s] him off from the stable center of his world" (24). "Rome may or may not be the religious and political hub of the universe," he concludes, "but it is the cultural center around which the world of the Confessio is organized and thus an essential aspect of the identity of the 'wel menynge' lover" (39-40). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wetherbee, Winthrop Published Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Rome, Troy, and Culture in the Confessio Amantis." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 20-42. 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 Rome, Troy, and Culture in the Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 Kruger observes that the growth of the merchant class in the late Middle Ages offered challenges to traditional Christian conceptions both of Christianity itself and of the three estates, and that "the changes and anxieties associated with mercantilism are intimately, indeed indissolubly, connected to questions of religious identity and difference: can the Christian remain a Christian if he is a merchant?" (3). In the texts that he uses as examples, the Mediterranean provides the ideal site for acting out questions both of religious and of mercantile identity. Gower's Mediterranean is most often the pre-medieval and pre-Christian setting of the tales he borrowed from his classical sources, but he too uses the contemporary Mediterranean as a site to "think through" the relation between Christianity and mercantilism (8). Kruger's principal example from Gower's work is the tale of Constance, in which the Barbar merchants of the opening initiate a "spiritual exchange" and a series of conversions, and in which Constance herself, in her several voyages, "takes on and spiritually transforms the merchants' role" (14). Many of the exchanges that she is involved in, however, result in violence. The merchants in the tale "may . . . be part of an attempt to rethink and assert the value of the mercantile for Christian purposes, but the Mediterranean stage of their actions remains riven by religious difference, a scene of conflict and disruption as much as of Christian self-promulgation" (14). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kruger, Stephen F Published Kruger, Stephen F. "Gower's Mediterranean." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 3-19. 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 Mediterranean Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, 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 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 According to Woolf, Chaucer's apostrophe to Gower as "moral" and Coleridge's reference to the "innate kindliness" of Chaucer's nature have had a distorting effect on modern criticism. Woolf argues that it would be more appropriate if the two descriptions were inverted. While Gower writes some narratives that can be considered "moral," in general Gower is willing "to absent himself from didacticism in the Confessio" (223). At times "this suspension of moral judgment works well, liberating a fresh and illuminating sympathy for his characters; at other times it leaves the story flaccid, the controlling moral pattern of the source being disregarded" (223). To demonstrate this thesis Woolf examines a number of stories that fall under the category of lust and its five subdivisions (i.e., sexual acts against nature, incest, rape, adultery, and fornication). Gower's sympathy is particularly evident in his treatment of homosexuality and incest. Achilles, Iphis, and Canace are all characters whose innocence and lack of conscious moral responsibility are emphasized. The story of "Canace and Machaire," for instance, postpones the death of Canace's baby and subordinates it to the death of Canace herself; she is shown to be the helpless victim of her father Aeolus, whose wrath is the main focus of the exemplum. To win this kind of moral freedom from his sources, one of Gower's strategies is to attach his stories to other deadly sins than the ones they are usually applied to. Gower's tales of rape, for example, are scattered through at least four books other than Book 8 on lust. Sometimes, however, Gower's effort "to penetrate with an unscolding eye into the depths and ramifications of human weakness" (219) leads him to debase some of the key terms of his poem. In the story of "Mundus and Paulina," the sympathy created for Mundus (whose reason is said to be overcome by love) is based on a very narrow understanding of "kinde" as referring merely to sexual instincts. Here Gower follows Vincent of Beauvais, but Woolf suggests that he "would have done better not to repeat him" (229). Similarly, in the tale of the "King and the Steward's Wife," Gower creates a happy ending that shows a serious lack of sensitive moral judgment. By having the king marry the steward's wife he condones a bigamous marriage. Yet another partial failure is the tale of "Iphis and Anaxarathen," related by Ovid as a cynical story used to seduce a woman, but told by Gower as a warning against despondency in love. In Gower, the tale's "moral outlines are extraordinarily fuzzy" and the attempt "to sentimentalise the cynical, to sympathise with characters for whom the plot forbids sympathy, is a failure" (231). Whereas Gower is often uncritically kind, Chaucer is much more moral. Since Chaucer is a poet highly conscious of genres, and of the different moral codes appropriate to them, "he can suspend ordinary moral judgment simply by indicating a classical setting for his tales" (232). When Chaucer tells the story of Lucretia in the LGW he uses an allusion to Augustine to hint that the heroine's suicide is wrong. Likewise, Chaucer's story of Tereus and Progne "adopts the clever strategy of lapsing into a kind of mumbling reluctance to tell it and indeed stops short" (233). By contrast, Gower, unaware of the morally perilous nature of his material weakly completes the story. The rest of Woolf's essay (234-45) provides a close reading of The Merchant's Tale, The Franklin's Tale, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue to illustrate Chaucer's more serious treatment of love and lust. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rosemary, Woolf Published Rosemary, Woolf. "Moral Chaucer and Kindly Gower." In J. R. R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam. Ed. Salu, Mary and Farrell, Robert T. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979, pp. 221-245. 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 Moral Chaucer and Kindly Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cornell UP, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 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 Pearsall acknowledges that Gower's decision to write in three languages may be perceived as "a timid hedging of bets on posterior fame, a safe but unspectacular investment" (5), but he argues that "there is a logic in Gower's progress through the languages which reflects the age, as always, with great fidelity" (5). For instance, the morally didactic MO comes in "a long tradition of serious, practical, admonitory writing in Anglo-French" (5). Accordingly, Pearsall suggests that in the MO Gower "places a moral grid over the map of human experience and reads it through that" (8). Truth, for Gower, is a castle under siege, "whose walls are crumbling and showing fissures. It is his duty, not to make daring exploratory forays into the hinterland of experience, but to shore up these fragments against the world's ruin" (8). The same is true for the VC, for when Gower asserts the moral responsibility of man in the face of the forces of Fortune and Nature, "nothing better illustrates the meaninglessness of experience, in the medieval scheme, in comparison with moral truth" (8-9). Gower's "savage Roman obscenity of wit" (9) in this work further suggests something of "the imaginative and verbal licence which Latin provided, when the simple innocence of the laity was not in danger of being corrupted" (9). The most interesting part of the VC, for Pearsall, is Book 1. Pearsall writes: "The Revolt certainly disturbed Gower, but it was a godsend to him as a fulfillment of his prophecies and as a way of getting his poem off to an explosive start" (10). In comparison with Gower's French and Latin works, the CA is "a relaxation from these strenuous moral endeavours … In this poem Gower found, as if by chance, his natural vocation as a polished and fluent verse narrator, and it is this story-teller's gift which is our chief delight in reading Gower, and his chief claim on our attention" (5-6). The bulk of Pearsall's chapter on Gower is therefore dedicated to proving the greatness of the CA, where Gower writes "out of imaginative sympathy and not out of admonitory purpose" (6). Much here is borrowed from Pearsall's previous article, "Gower's Narrative Art" (1966), although often with different nuances and emphases. For instance, more attention is given to Gower's excision of the reference to Chaucer, and Pearsall dwells a little longer on Gower's "verbal artistry" (21). Generally, though, all the same points are made, and Pearsall's conclusion repeats his earlier findings: "The Confessio, however, does in the end become something more than a programme, for it passes beyond prescription to a 'civilization of the heart', in which fine feeling, humane sensitivity and 'gentillesse' take over the role of conscience as the source of virtuous action. Sin is made to seem not so much deadly as stupid and low" (17). Pearsall's brief volume also refers sporadically to some of the minor works, and it includes a chronology of important dates in Gower's life as well as a select bibliography of the more important secondary literature on Gower. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek Published Pearsall, Derek. "Gower and Lydgate." Harlow, Essex . London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1969 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism In Praise of Peace Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Vox Clamantis Cinkante Balades Cronica Tripertita 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 Gower and Lydgate Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Longmans, Green & Co., Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1969 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 Whereas Gower has often been censured for being dull, Farnham finds in his didacticism a great deal of irony and humour: "The excellence of his narrative art is inseparable from its peculiar style, from that almost perverse comic sense, that keen awareness of the didactic value of misdirected seriousness, which suffuses the entire Confessio Amantis" (165). For instance, in the story of Acteon in Book 1, Genius expends almost too much effort to make Acteon guilty of "Mislok," for gazing on the bathing Diana: "The earnest medieval reader will be forgiven if he is seen shaking his head in both despair and laughter at a morality more obtuse and more earnest than his own, which has attracted his sympathy but repelled his common sense, and so won a comic victory over his sensibility and taught him some of its short-comings" (168). This "comedy of high prosaic seriousness" (168-69) is also evident in the Prologue, where all the attention paid to kings and governments obscures the fact that the real issue is "the disordering of worldly love" (171). Finally, the great joke of the CA is embodied in the two figures of Amans and Genius. Amans is "the would-be dirty old man, frustrated and bewildered by an emotional commitment of embarrassing purity" (172) and Genius, in a similar mixture of character traits, is "the affable Confessor forever in a muddle over which god he serves, too garrulous to listen with understanding, too obtuse to grasp any of the realities which lie behind the moral platitudes with which his prosaic mind is plentifully furnished" (172). While the joke is without malice, "only by laughter can we come to recognize our moral beliefs and intellectual assumptions for what they are" (173). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Farnham, Anthony E Published Farnham, Anthony E. "The Art of High Prosaic Seriousness: John Gower as Didactic Raconteur." In The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Ed. Benson, Larry D. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1974, pp. 161-173. Gower Subject 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 The Art of High Prosaic Seriousness: John Gower as Didactic Raconteur Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Harvard UP, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 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 Fisher surveys fourteenth-century beliefs about the status of the aristocracy. After reading Wyclif and Langland in the light of Roman and Augustinian views of social hierarchy and government, Fisher observes that what Gower adds to the picture is the concept of the "common good." Its importance for the subject of aristocracy is demonstrated by Ewart Lewis, who writes, "The emphasis which medieval writers placed upon the superiority of common good to private good was a response to the real medieval problem of persuading arrogant individualism to give way to community consciousness" (147). Gower connects the common good with a common law for all. Since equality before the law is consonant with Roman and Christian tenets of the natural equality of all men, such a position speaks of Gower's "conservative moralism" (148). Yet Fisher adds that in promoting equality Gower reveals a kind of ideological blind-spot, for "just as Wyclif did not intend that his arguments for ecclesiastical socialism should alter the position or prerogatives of the secular aristocracy, and Langland could perceive the uselessness of hereditary aristocrats and still regret their being pushed around by the rising middle class, so Gower argued for law and justice without ever realizing that these very agencies would help destroy the social hierarchy he took so completely for granted" (148). Both in the VC and the CA Gower's argument for the importance of law places a great burden on the king to obey the law and administer it responsibly. As a result, Gower pays less attention to the aristocracy, being "content merely to take the existence of the nobility for granted" (150). Fisher's piece ends with an analysis of Pearl, where we witness "a heavenly state of equality impossible of attainment in mortal society" (152), and with the final observation that whereas Wyclif and Pearl apply a different standard to the organization of divine and temporal society, Langland and Gower are willing to use the same standard for both. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fisher, John H Published Fisher, John H. "Wyclif, Langland, Gower, and the Pearl Poet on the Subject of Aristocracy." In Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor Albert Croll Baugh. Ed. Leach, MacEdward. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1961, pp. 139-157. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Wyclif, Langland, Gower, and the Pearl Poet on the Subject of Aristocracy Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available U of Pennsylvania P, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1961 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 Faced with the fact that no major literary figure has suffered more at the hands of his critics than Gower, Coffman suggests that "the social instead of the literary aspects of Gower's writings may form the basis for an interpretation of him in his most significant role" (52). Gower is "an advocate of moral order" (53), and while his "social gospel" (53) presupposes no social equality (he has no faith in the common people), he does preach about honesty and integrity for all members of society. When men are ruled by reason, the result will be an ordered universe of peace and harmony. This vision is at the heart of all three of Gower's major works, and it underlies the notion of man as microcosm, as well as the "doctrine of individual responsibility" (54). When man uses his reason to understand God's plan for the universe then he will live a virtuous life in order to avert God's punishment for sin. Coffman argues that "Gower's complete works are as much a justification of the ways of God to man as are Milton's. His most significant role is his explanation and illustration of the ethical basis of God's universe for this little world of man" (60). By recognizing God's plans and living accordingly, man can "recreate a paradise on earth" (54). This emphasis on personal responsibility also informs Gower's opinions about Richard II and Henry IV. Of note in this regard is a passage in the CrT (3.486-87) which "echoes Wycliffe's doctrine that no man in mortal sin can hold dominion or lordship" (56). Similarly, in the CA Gower argues that the king who does not govern himself and lacks good judgment violates the law of reason and is not worthy to rule. The passage in question (CA 7.3071-83) uses phrasing "which might well have come from English puritans when they indicted Charles I over two centuries later" (57). Coffman further suggests that "In Praise of Peace" is based on the central theme of Marsiglio of Padua's Defensor Pacis, namely that the end of government is peace. The final part of the essay engages with C. S. Lewis' thoughts on courtly love, and suggests that Lewis failed to recognized that the CA was "at least in part a King's Courtesy Book" (60). As "a practical conservative-liberal" (61), Gower instructs the king and his readership in general in living a responsible life directed to "the welfare of England, his own dear land" (61). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coffman, George R Published Coffman, George R. "John Gower in his Most Significant Role." In Elizabethan Studies and Other Essays in Honor of George F. Reynolds. Ed. West, E. J. University of Colorado Studies, Series B, 2 (4). Boulder, CO: [University of Colorado], 1945, pp. 52-61. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism In Praise of Peace Vox Clamantis Cronica Tripertita 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 John Gower in his Most Significant Role Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available [University of Colorado], Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1945 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 Macaulay opens his biographical account of Gower's life and oeuvre by situating him within the history of vernacular English. Whereas it was above all Chaucer who reconciled the English language with French tastes, Gower also had some small part to play. Since Chaucer's wide reading of continental literature can hardly be regarded as typical, the "normal development of English literature in its progress towards general acceptance" can better be illustrated by Gower, "though he is a man of talent only, not of genius" (134). Macaulay provides a brief biography of Gower's life, during which he argues that there is insufficient evidence of a quarrel with Chaucer. He further suggests that the development of Gower's political opinions may best be traced in his writing. Of note is Gower's revision of Book 6 of the VC to put more blame on Richard II. In the recensions of the CA we also gradually witness Gower become "more and more embittered" (137) with Richard's self-indulgence and arbitrary rule. Finally, the CrT brings new hope in the person of Henry IV. The longest part of Macaulay's essay introduces Gower's three major works and their literary, as opposed to didactic, qualities. The MO, first of all, describes the virtues and vices "to such inordinate length that the effect of unity is almost completely lost, and the book becomes tiresome to read" (141). After noting some redeeming features, and providing a brief description of Gower's French verse style, Macaulay argues that the most valuable part of the MO consists of the review of the various classes of society. Similarly, the most interesting part of the VC is the description of the Peasants Revolt, even though this portion (the Visio) may have been added to the manuscript as "an afterthought" (144). The VC develops the doctrine of man as microcosm introduced in the MO, and dwells in more detail on contemporary politics. When it comes to language and meter, Gower's practice of borrowing couplets and longer passages from other authors means that "we must be cautious in giving him credit for any particular passage" (144). Next, Macaulay suggests that Gower's decision to write the CA may have been caused not necessarily by the meeting with Richard on the Thames, but also by the stimulus of Chaucer's recent work in the vernacular. Macaulay denies the influence of Gower's work on The Legend of Good Women and posits that the opposite is rather true. The most noteworthy aspect of the CA is its partial renunciation of didacticism. However, the unity of the CA is marred by a series of unnecessary digressions, the most egregious being the interpolation of Book 7. Another blemish is Genius's awkward characterization as both moralist and the high-priest of love. After a discussion of Gower's sources and their adaptation, as well as praise for the "taste for simplicity" (152) evident in Gower's poetical style, Macaulay concludes with a brief appraisal of the minor works. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Macaulay, George Campbell Published Macaulay, George Campbell. "John Gower." In The Cambridge History of English Literature. Ed. Ward, A. W. and Waller, A. R. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1908, pp. 133-155. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Minor Latin Poetry Cinkante Balades Cronica Tripertita Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations In Praise of Peace Vox Clamantis Biography of Gower Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cambridge UP, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1908 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 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 In the final stanzas of T&C Chaucer brutally shatters the reconciliation between love of God and the love inspired by Nature that had evidently been achieved at the highest moment of the poem in Book 3. Crépin compares Chaucer's "palinode" to CA *8.3088-114, in which Gower too describes a movement from earthly to heavenly love, and he argues that Chaucer is responding to Gower here: that Chaucer "took up the challenge" of Gower's suggestion that Chaucer say farewell to love poetry in CA *8.2941-57 by going further than Gower himself in his radical condemnation of human love. In doing so, he "out-Gowers Gower"; and in his condemnation of "the forme of olde clerkes speche / In poetrie" (T&C 5.1854-55), he also attacks the entire structure of CA as well as material of his own poem. Gower responded in turn in the revised version of CA: he dropped the allusion to Chaucer, and the anaphora of one passage of the rewritten epilogue (CA 8.3165-67) appears to be in imitation of Chaucer's use of the same device in T&C 5.1828ff and 5.1849ff. The comparison of these two works brings out some of the differences between the poets: "Gower contrasts the two kinds of love but does not set them in opposition to one another or suggest that once excludes the other," while Chaucer "makes the opposition complete and allows room for compromise." His more radical position may reflect actual belief, but is also calculated to "tease his readers/listeners, and himself, into thought." Crépin does not suggest dates for the composition of T&C or either of the versions of CA, but his argument requires acceptance of a chronology very different from that which is ordinarily assumed. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 13.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Crépin, André Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Published Crépin, André. "Human and Divine Love in Chaucer and Gower." In A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck. Ed. Dor, Juliette. Liége: L3 – Liége Language and Literature, Département d'anglais, Université de Liége, 1992, pp. 71-79. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Human and Divine Love in Chaucer and Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available L3 – Liége Language and Literature, Département d'anglais, Université de Liége, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992 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 Dauby begins her comparison of Chaucer's and Gower's social views with a detailed look at "Wife of Bath's Tale" and the "Tale of Florent." Both tales are drawn ultimately from a myth concerned with the granting of sovereignty, but both authors ignore the mythical implications. Without making any assumptions on either poet's exact source, we can identify four principal differences in the plots of their respective versions: Gower provides more of a historical frame for the tale, while Chaucer maintains more of the atmosphere of a fairy tale; the story begins in one case with the killing of another knight, in the other with a rape; the old woman offers very different alternatives to the knight in the final scene; and while Chaucer allows the implication that love transforms the one who loves or who is loved, Gower provides more rational reasons for the old woman's transformation. They also differ greatly in method. Gower's follows a straighter line; he gives names and descriptions to his characters; he specifies carefully their family relations, underlining the importance of social bonds; he rationalizes the marvelous and eliminates suspense--in brief, he privileges the clarity and vividness of the tale, while Chaucer has fun with it allows himself (or the Wife of Bath) several digressions, in the process giving us much more to think about than Gower does. Both offer the tale to illustrate a moral, but their morals are of very different sorts. Gower's interest is more social than individual: all of Florent's behavior is motivated by an effort to keep up appearances, typical of a poet whose entire work constitutes a defense of inherited social models. Chaucer, on the other hand, is more interested in the individual than in the social; "viola pourquoi la poésie de Chaucer nous touché plus pourfondément que celle de Gower." Dauby's conclusions on Gower are based on a rather small sample of the Confessio; her conclusions on Chaucer don't seem to be based very closely on her sample at all. There are also three major factual errors on the first page of the essay, which don't however impinge on the author's argument. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 13.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dauby, Hélène Published Dauby, Hélène. "Chaucer et Gower: Esquisse comparative de leurs attitudes morales et politiques." In Economie, Politique et Cultureau Moyen Age: Actes de Colloque, Paris, 19 et 29 mai 1990. Ed. Buschinger, Danielle and Spiewok, Wolfgang. WODAN: Recherches en littérature médiéval (5). Amiens: Centre d'Etudes Medievales, 1991, pp. 55-63. 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 et Gower: Esquisse comparative de leurs attitudes morales et politiques Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Centre d'Etudes Medievales, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 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 This is a shorter version of the essay entitled "Rivalry, Rape and Manhood: Gower and Chaucer," that appeared in Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange, ed. Robert F. Yeager (1991). [JGN 13.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dinshaw, Carolyn Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Published Dinshaw, Carolyn. "Quarrels, Rivals and Rape: Gower and Chaucer." In A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honor of Paule Mertens-Fonck. Ed. Dor, Juliette. Liége: L3 – Liége Language and Literature, Département d'anglais, Université de Liége, 1992, pp. 112-122. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Quarrels, Rivals and Rape: Gower and Chaucer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available L3 – Liége Language and Literature, Département d'anglais, Université de Liége, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992 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 Fichte is principally concerned with the very different responses to Chaucer's auctoritas manifested by Lydgate in his "Siege of Thebes" and by Henryson in his "Testament of Cresseid." Gower appears only briefly in the opening part of this essay, in order to provide contrast to Chaucer's refusal to assert, his own auctoritas: depending heavily on A.J. Minnis, Fichte points to Gower's assumption of the roles of the prophet in VC and of philosopher in CA. He also notes the paradox of Gower's and Chaucer's reception by later poets: despite Gower's conscious attempt to present himself as auctor, his works received only perfunctory praise, while Chaucer, despite his disavowal, was almost immediately recognized for his auctoritas. Author/Editor Author/Editor Fichte, Joerg Published Fichte, Joerg. ""Quha wait gif all that Chauceir wrait was trew" – Auctor and auctoritas in 15th Century English Literature." Traditionswandel und Traditionsverhalten. . Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991 Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Quha wait gif all that Chauceir wrait was trew" – Auctor and auctoritas in 15th Century English Literature Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Niemeyer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 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 investigation into Gower's uses of the Secretum Secretorum in Book 7 of the Confessio Amantis focusses on the education of a royal individual, a ruler, with a wise man at his side as seen in the model of Alexander and Aristotle and as seen in Gower and his patron. This Aristotelian "digression" ("Noght in the Registre of Venus," lines 19-20) is seen as more central to Gower's system of thought than is the rest of the Confessio. Other sources are discussed, but the focus is on the first half of Book 7 and on a Latin text of the Secretum. [Douglas J. McMillan. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 2.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Manzalaoui, M.A Published Manzalaoui, M.A. "'Noght in the Registre of Venus': Gower's English Mirror for Princes." In Medieval Studies for J.A.W. Bennett: Aetatis Suae LXX. Ed. Heyworth, P.L. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981, pp. 159-183. ISBN 019812628X 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 'Noght in the Registre of Venus': Gower's English Mirror for Princes. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Clarendon Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 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 "This paper explores an aspect of the traditional conflict between love and Nature on the one hand and reason on the other, in the poetry of Chaucer and Gower. It examines the special circumstances made by legal language and imagery in our awareness of the plight of medieval lovers. Both poets are commpassionately aware that in the irrational state of romantic love 'immortal longings' can be confused with powerful natural impulses; the deluded lover comes to believe that transitory temporal pleasure is transcendent eternal beatitude, and both poets challenge us to consider the essential quality of law and its appropriatness as a metaphoric vehicle for human emotions and physical drives. Legal metaphors for love are common and, on the surface, conventional. This paper attempts to show that they are nonetheless neither dead nor commonplace by examining them i) in the light of medieval theology and philosophy of law and ii) in the light of their frequent juxtaposition with terms recalling the rationality which distinguishes man from the beasts. Beginning with a short passage from each poet which raises essential questions, this paper moves to a short exposition of medieval legal theory and then returns to the poets to explore in more detail the crtical implications of that theory." [Summary by author. JGN 2.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Collins, Marie Published Collins, Marie. "Love, Nature and Law in the Poetry of Gower and Chaucer." In Court and Poet: Selected Proceedings of the Third Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Liverpool 1980). Ed. Burgess, Glyn S. ARCA (5). Liverpool: Cairns, 1981, pp. 113-128. ISBN 0905205065 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Love, Nature and Law in the Poetry of Gower and Chaucer. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cairns, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 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 Studies the textual tradition of the Confessio Amantis and its manuscripts and their histories, exploring what these tell us about Gower's readers during his own time and subsequently in the Renaissance. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek Published Pearsall, Derek. "The Gower Tradition." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983, pp. 179-198. ISBN 085991142X Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations 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 Gower Tradition Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Determines the unsettled state of the miniatures appearing in the major manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis, drawing attention to the variation in subjects portrayed, and concluding that, along other points, the 'Dream of Precious Metals' ought to be given greater prominence than heretofore in our interpretation of the poem. [PN Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Griffiths, Jeremy Published Griffiths, Jeremy. "Confessio Amantis: The Poem and Its Pictures." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983, pp. 163-178. ISBN 085991142X 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 Confessio Amantis: The Poem and Its Pictures. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Shows that Gower makes use of a vocabulary applicable at once to the ethical health of Amans and to the political well-being of the state, thus making the Confessio Amantis a true 'speculum regis.' [PN. Cpyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Porter, Elizabeth Published Porter, Elizabeth. "Gower's Ethical Microcosm and Political Macrocosm." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983. Pp.135-62. 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 Gower's Ethical Microcosm and Political Macrocosm. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Presents Gower's tales as evolving from a conscious blend of "Aristotelian ethics (as reiterated by Brunetto Latini and Giles of Rome)" which based moral knowledge on observation and exemplum theory which "stressed the importance of particulars in human understanding through the (medieval) imagination. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Runacres, Charles Published Runacres, Charles. "Art and Ethics in the Exempla of Confessio Amantis." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983, pp. 106-134. ISBN 085991142X 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 Art and Ethics in the Exempla of Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Gower's three major works in light of Romn satiric tradition, and identifies the "common voice" heard so often in Gower's works as identical with the "voice" of most medieval satirists. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Miller, Paul Published Miller, Paul. "John Gower, Satiric Poet." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983, pp. 79-105. ISBN 085991142X Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 John Gower, Satiric Poet. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D. S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Contends that the Confessio Amantis was written with a full awareness "of the nature and potential of the literary traditions available," and is "a work which (in terms of medieval literary theory) is compendious, cohesive and pleasureably didactic." [PN/ Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Minnis, Alastair J. Published Minnis, Alastair J.. "Moral Gower and Medieval Literary Theory." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983, pp. 50-78. ISBN 085991142X 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 Moral Gower and Medieval Literary Theory. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 transformations of the tales of Midas, Florent, Iphis, and Pygmalion as examples of thoughtful, plastic art which transcends source study in the usual sense. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ricks, Christopher Published Ricks, Christopher. "Metamorphosis in Other Words." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983, pp. 24-49. ISBN 085991142X 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 Metamorphosis in Other Words. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Views Amans in the context of the tradition of the ages of man, of the "dits amoreux" of Machaut and Froissart, and considers the purpose and effects of the lover's age as revealed in the conclusion. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burrow, John Published Burrow, John. "The Portrayal of Amans in Confessio Amantis." In Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Ed. Minnis, A. J. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983, pp. 5-24. ISBN 085991142X 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 Portrayal of Amans in Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Wilkins uses Gower's apparent taste for French literary forms as indication of a similar interest in French musical approaches, thereby connecting him with what Wilkins identifies as the center of late fourteenth-century musical activity. The essay contain a valuable inquiry into the growth and development of the London Pui. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wilkins, Nigel Published Wilkins, Nigel. "Music and Poetry at Court: England and France in the Late Middle Ages." In English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Scattergood, V. J., and Sherborne, J. W. London: Duckworth, [1983]. Pp. 183-204. ISBN 0715616374 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 Music and Poetry at Court: England and France in the Late Middle Ages. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Duckworth. 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 1983 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Doyle is concerned to determine "what grounds there are for thinking that particular English books were made for, owned or used by people 'at court' in one or another of the senses of that phrase . . . ." In due course, he examines the Ellesmere manuscript of the Confessio Amantis (Huntington Library 26.A.17) and the Trinity College, Cambridge, R.III.2 manuscript, as well as glancing briefly at a group of mansucripts of the early fifteenth century produced commercially by the same scribe and illuminted by the Scheerre School. Arguing that the available information is too scanty for all but the most tentative of conclusions, Doyle nevertheless suggests that there was nothing like a 'court style' in book production, or in literary taste. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Doyle, A.I Published Doyle, A.I. "English Books In and Out of Court from Edward III to Henry IV." In English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Scattergood, V.J and Sherborne, J.W. London: Duckworth, 1983, pp. 163-182. ISBN 0715616374 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Books In and Out of Court from Edward III to Henry IV. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Duckworth, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Scattergood attempts to discover what, if any, books were read by members of Richard's court through careful collection and analysis of historical documents and literary references; he concludes that, although the situation "is not a simple one . . . circumstances for the production and dissemination of literature were obviously not unfavourable," and that Gower's work was near the center of this activity. Author/Editor Author/Editor Scattergood, V.J Published Scattergood, V.J. "Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II." In English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Scattergood, V.J and Sherborne, J.W. London: Duckworth, 1983, pp. 29-44. ISBN 0715616374 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 Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Duckworth, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 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 Strohm argues that the most appropriate "framework for understanding Gower's persona in action remains the threefold scheme which E. Talbot Donaldson first described in 'Chaucer the Pilgrim.' Just as Donaldson made us aware of the interaction in Chaucer's poetry between and among Chaucer the Pilgrim, Chaucer the Poet, and the historical Chaucer, so is our enjoyment of Confession Amantis sharpened by the interplay of Gower as Amans, Gower as Poet or 'auctor' of the 'presens libellus,' and the historical John Gower" (p. 295). Strohm goes on to point out how this interplay is made possible by the assumption that the text will be apprehended in written, not oral, form. He concludes that, in the end, all the three personae come together into one, just as Chaucer's do, in Donaldson's interpretation. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 3.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Strohm, Paul Published Strohm, Paul. "A Note on Gower's Persona." In Arts of Interpretation: The Text and Its Contexts 700-1600. Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature in Honor of E. Talbot Donaldson. Ed. Carruthers, Mary J and Kirk, Elizabeth D. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1982, pp. 293-297. ISBN 093766460X Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Note on Gower's Persona. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pilgrim Books, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 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 examines major and minor poets of late 14th-century England for their attitudes toward the pervasive problems of the time: proper kingship, religious egalitarianism or its absence, attitudes toward the agrarian estate. Chaucer, Langland, and Gower receive prominent treatment within the larger contaxt including Wycliff, John Ball, Clanvowe, the author of "Richard the Redeles." Peck stresses Gower's concern for the law, and his placing it above the power of kings--a position Gower derived from Bracton. "Only insofar as 'king' is a metaphor for the governance of the soul does Gower allow for an absolute sovereignty. And even here the 'king' is more an administrator under divine, natural, and positive laws than an absolutist" (p. 129). [PN. Copyright the John Gower Newsleller. JGN 6.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A.. "Social Conscience and the Poets." In Social Unrest in the Late Middle Ages: Papers of the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. Ed. Newman, Francis X. Binghamton, NY: CEMERS, 1986, pp. 113-148. 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 Social Conscience and the Poets. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available CEMERS, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 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 Commentary and bibliography through 1985. Continues on pages 2399-2418, updating and replacing the section in J. E. Wells, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916) and its supplements through 1951. Author/Editor Author/Editor Fisher, John H. Hamm, R. Wayne Beidler, Peter G. Yeager, R.F Published Fisher, John H. and R. Wayne Hamm, Peter G. Beidler, and R. F. Yeager. "John Gower." In A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500, Volume VII. Ed. Severs, J. Burke. Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1986. Pp. 2195-2210. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism 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 John Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Archon Books. 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 1986 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review CA "is a highly complex poem," Wetherbee asserts, "though it employs a minimum of overt artistry." The spareness of its style, of its treatment of narrative, and of its diction has made critics "take for granted the impeccable orthodoxy of Gower's artistic intentions"; and the hierarchical orderliness implied by its structure has been taken as expressive of the "essential character" of the poem. The bulk of CA, however, consists of tales, "complex in themselves, and made still more so by the complexity of their interrelation. All are ostensibly illustrations of the poem's moral argument, but . . . few make their points in a straightforward way" (pp. 241-42). Some of their complexity derives from the "dual perspective" that characterizes Genius: servant to Venus, he also bears traces of the priest of Nature of Alain de Lille, and he is able to "see his subservience to Venus in relation to a prelapsarian model of human behavior." Thus the morals of the tales often serve only as a foil to "Genius' intuitively more sympathetic reponse the the story he is telling," yet Genius is also "intuitively aware that the failings for which he shows such tolerance reflect an underlying failure of reason, will, and vision; and this, though he does not recognize it as such, is a result of the Fall, a measure of man's alienation from a once harmonious relationship with nature and with his fellow humans" (pp. 243-44). Wetherbee illustrates the complexity of the moral argument of the poem with a detailed analysis of the tales in Book 1. He provides several examples in which the circumstances of the tale either subvert, or nullify, or broaden, the intended moral, often because of the changes that Gower has introduced in retelling it. In other cases, it is the details that Gower omits that provide the best evidence of the inadequacy of Genius' moralization. Many of these tales, he observes, are concerned with a man's encounter with a woman, and in many of these, Genius' sympathy for the male character governs his morality and results in the obliteration or obscuring of the moral situation of the woman. Wetherbee goes on to suggest that "male misperceptions of the feminine, and the moral and psychological problems they dramatize, are the unifying element in Book I of the Confessio, Gower's way of focusing his treatment of the sin of pride" (p. 255). Only in the final tale of the "Three Questions" is the woman given an "unambiguously positive role," and while "the story and its explicit moralitas are still imperfectly united, as in the earlier tales, . . . here at last they are in sympathy" (p. 260). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wetherbee, Winthrop Published Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Genius and Interpretation in the 'Confessio Amantis'." In Magister Regis: Studies in Honor of Robert Earl Kaske. Ed. Groos, Arthur. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986, pp. 241-260. ISBN 0823211614 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 Genius and Interpretation in the 'Confessio Amantis'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Fordham University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 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 This slim volume consists of an brief introduction by the editor, and eight essays on scribal practices and the reconstruction of authorial language in late Middle English, five by Samuels, two by Smith, and one coauthored. Six were previously published between 1972 and 1985, and another was given as a paper at the New Chaucer Society Congress in 1988. They are reprinted exactly as they first appeared. There is some degree of disjointedness and repetition as a result, but also an opportunity to trace the steps in the process of detection by which the authors have separated out scribal and authorial strata of language in the MSS they examine. One of the key elements in their work was provided by Doyle and Parkes' identification of other MSS copied by scribes "B" and "D" in the Trinity Gower, in their 1978 essay in the Neil Ker Festschrift. Another was Samuels and Smith's own study of "The Language of Gower," reprinted in this volume (pp. 13-22) from Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 92 (1981), in which they demonstrate that the orthography of the Huntington and Fairfax MSS of CA must be virtually identical to Gower's own. In his 1983 essay on "Chaucer's Spelling" (in the present volume, pp. 23-37), Samuels compares the orthography of scribes "B" and "D" in the Trinity MS to the authentic Gowerian spellings in Fairfax in order to discover each scribe's own characteristic habits, and then proceeds to separate the scribe's forms from Chaucer's in the copies that they made of CT. In the two essays that follow (pp. 38-69), Samuels studies the work of scribe "B" (in an essay that first appeared in 1983) and Smith studies that of scribe "D" (in his 1988 New Chaucer Society paper), again with the knowledge of Gower's authentic spellings as a base, in order to sustain Doyle and Parkes' conclusions on the identity of the hand in the manuscripts they attributed to these scribes in face of the attacks on their methodology made by Vance Ramsey. The volume also contains Samuels' essays on "Chaucerian Final '-E'," "Langland's Dialect," and "Spelling and Dialect in the Late and Post-Middle English Periods." The only other essay to refer to Gower is also the only one that has not appeared before, Smith's study of "Spelling and Tradition in Fifteenth-century Copies of Gower's Confessio Amantis" (pp. 96-113). Smith makes two important observations about the orthographical tradition of CA MSS: first, that the distinctive language of the archetype was preserved far more strongly than one would expect or that happened in contemporary copies of CT, a fact he attributes to the status as auctoritas that Gower seems to have enjoyed; and second, that there was only slight influence from the "Chancery" forms that were to become the basis of the written standard. In the last part of his essay he takes up the question of the textual transmission of CA, and observes that the MSS of the groups that Macaulay labelled "first recension, unrevised," "first recension, intermediate," and "second recension (b)" seem to derive from an exemplar with a number of North-West Midlands features. His suggestions on how this situation arose appear to accept Macaulay's explanation of the order of appearance of these groups. In fact, his observations are consistent with other evidence that Macaulay got the order wrong, and that the groups he thought were first in origin were actually those furthest removed both in time and place from the poet himself. The Appendix to this essay contains a valuable list of the MSS of CA with notes on the language forms of each. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Samuels, M.L. Smith, J.J Published Samuels, M.L. and Smith, J.J. "The English of Chaucer and His Contemporaries." Aberdeen: The University Press, 1988 ISBN 0080364039 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 English of Chaucer and His Contemporaries. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 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 Brown endorses the traditional view that Gower's tale of Virginia is based on Livy (p. 40), but he believes that the case for Chaucer's use of Livy remains unproven, and that the details that Chaucer could not have taken from RR, which served as his principal source, more likely came from another medieval text. Gower's version provides many of the necessary details and could well have been available to Chaucer when he wrote his tale; but a more likely source is provided by Pierre Bersuire's translation of Livy (completed in 1355), which supplied not only the details that RR lacks but also the emphasis on virginity that Chaucer shares with Livy, a concern that is diluted in Gower's version as he draws instead a lesson for the king on pursuing virtue and common profit. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Brown, William H., Jr. Published Brown, William H., Jr.. "Chaucer, Livy, and Bersuire: The Roman Materials in The Physician's Tale." In On Language: Rhetorica, Phonologica, Syntactica; A Festschrift for Robert P. Stockwell from his Friends and Colleagues. Ed. Duncan-Rose, Caroline and Vennemann, Theo. London: Routledge, 1988, pp. 39-51. ISBN 0415003121 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, Livy, and Bersuire: The Roman Materials in The Physician's Tale. 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 1988 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 A total of 32 of the 118 quotations with which Jonson illustrated his "English Grammar" are drawn from CA, 6 more than from Chaucer and far more than from any other source. That number is itself an indication of Gower's standing in the early seventeenth century. Yeager examines Jonson's work more closely in order to assess some of the reasons for that esteem. Gower appears in Jonson in the company of some illustrious names: Chaucer, Lydgate, Fox, Jewell, Norton, More, Lambert, Ascham, Cheke, Lord Berners, and the King James Bible (pp. 229-30). The quotations, Yeager suggests, are chosen to illustrate and to advance a certain notion of style, privileging a plain vernacular. Thus Chaucer is represented by the "lower range of his poetic voice" (p. 231); and Gower appears even plainer, and seems to have been a better example of Jonson's ideal style than any of the other authors from whom he quotes. Jonson almost certainly knew CA from one of Berthelette's editions rather than from Caxton's, and may have been influenced in his view of Gower by the emphasis on editorial and linguistic correctness in Berthelette's letter to his readers, and by the printer's praise of the poet's "olde englishe wordes and vulgars" in the dedication to Henry VIII (p. 233). Berthelette's praise of CA's "potential to effect moral improvement" (p. 234) also no doubt appealed to the humanist in Jonson, and justified the poet's appearance in the company of Ascham and the Bible. The perception of Gower as a proto-humanist may also have been aided by Berthelette's account of Gower's sources, which resembles the range of writers that Jonson himself drew upon for his Grammar, and by his Latinity, emphasized in Berthelette's printing of the Latin verses and prose glosses in the same column as the English text. Jonson gave considerable attention to the models he drew upon, Yeager argues, because of the circumstances under which the Grammar as we know it was composed, late in his life, after the loss of a considerable body of his work in a fire in 1623, and "when so much of posterity's assessment must have seemed to him to teeter in the balance" (p. 237). For the conception of the Grammar itself, Jonson was heavily indebted to de la Ramée ("Ramus"), whose own work is studded with examples from the most illustrious Latin authors. Jonson's choice of the twelve English authors that he cites indicates that he held them in equivalent esteem. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 17.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "Ben Jonson's English Grammar and John Gower's Reception in the Seventeenth Century." In The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English In Honor of Marie Boroff. Ed. Tavormina, M. Teresa and Yeager, R.F.. Cambridge: Brewer, 1995, pp. 227-239. ISBN 0859914801 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 Ben Jonson's English Grammar and John Gower's Reception in the Seventeenth Century. 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 1995 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 a lively and thought-provoking essay, Guthrie uses Bakhtin's notions of polyglossia as a way of approaching the complex effects of Chaucer's metrical variety and his response to the linguistics diversity of late fourteenth-century England. His foil through most of his discussion is Gower, who is found to be more rigid metrically (as we already knew), but who also feels constrained to keep his French and his English separate from one another rather than to force them into confrontation. Some of Guthrie's empirical observations on Gower's meter in contrast to Chaucer and also to contemporary French poets such as Machaut are useful contributions to our understanding of Gower's verse. Both the real value of his study with regard to Chaucer and also the irritating reductiveness of much of his use of Gower are represented, however, by passages such as this one: "Gower's line is ruled by ergon, the submission of linguistic material to the authority of an abstract metrical system. The presence of French words in either his English or his French line makes it a bilingual ergon, but essentially it is no different from a monolingual one. Its faith is in the ultimate tractability of words. Chaucer's line is ruled by energeia, the animation of linguistic material in tension with a concrete metrical system based in the material itself; 'no ideas but in things.' Its faith is in the ultimate vitality of words. Its metrical complexity is rooted in its linguistic complexity and its capacity for polyglossic perspective and laughter, the two prerequisites of what Bakhtin calls novelistic discourse ('Prehistory' 50" (p. 99). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 17.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Guthrie, Steve Published Guthrie, Steve. "Dialogics and Prosody in Chaucer." In Bakhtin and Medieval Voices. Ed. Farrell, Thomas J.. Gainesville: University of Florda Press, 1995, pp. 94-108. 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 Dialogics and Prosody in Chaucer. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Florda Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 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 Driver examines Caxton's 1483 edition of CA with reference to contemporary productions in both MS and print. Her scholarly detective work solves a number of riddles and fills in a number of significant gaps. Her most important conclusion regarding Caxton's Gower is to place it in its political context. She dates the printer's interest in Gower to a period of stability in the 1370's when he enjoyed the favor of those surrounding Edward IV, and his printing of CA to the period of rapidly shifting allegiances in the first year of the reign of Richard III; and she suggests that Caxton's choice of the Lancastrian dedication announces an early adherence to Henry Tudor. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Driver, Martha W Published Driver, Martha W. "Printing the Confessio Amantis: Caxton's Edition in Context." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 269-303. 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 Printing the Confessio Amantis: Caxton's Edition in Context. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 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 Edwards examines the nine MSS containing excerpts from CA, including three that have only very brief passages and six that contain one or more entire tales. This number of excerpts is much smaller than that for either Chaucer or Lydgate, and Edwards speculates that one reason may be the greater difficulty of detaching a passage from Gower's poem. Of the known excerpts, only one preserves a portion of the frame dialogue. Among the rest, the tales that are excerpted are placed in new contexts, sometimes according to discernible design: CUL Ee.2.15 includes most devotional pieces; Takamiya 32 is a collection of romance narratives; and CUL Ff.1.6 (the "Findern MS") shows a particular interest in stories about women. (One small correction: it appears from Edwards' tabulation of the excerpts on p. 267 that Takamiya 32 includes most of "Nebuchadnezzar's Punishment" in addition to "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream," and that the former should thus be included among the tales that are excerpted more than once on p. 259.) [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, A. S. G. Published Edwards, A. S. G.. "Selection and Subversion in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 257-267. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 Selection and Subversion in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 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 adds another valuable chapter to her on-going series of studies of the MSS of CA. Here she examines the presentation of the Latin apparatus in Bodleian MS Ashmole 35, with glances for comparison at Manchester, Chetham's Library MS A.7.38, both of Macaulay's "recension one." Chetham retains the Latin verses, but replaces the Latin glosses with an abbreviated mix of Latin and English. Ashmole omits the Latin altogether. The verses, the portion of the apparatus that is most resistent to loss in other copies, are simply omitted; and the glosses, while still in red to mark them off from the rest of the text, are entirely in English, and while often based on the Latin that they replace, they also draw from the English text of the poem, as can be seen in the numerous instances in which the gloss and the poem differ. Echard makes some fascinating deductions from the Ashmole glossator's many additions and revisions. Overall, she concludes, where the original Latin apparatus was intended to present an alternative voice in confrontation with the English text, the glossator has eliminated the confrontation, and he has opted for the English. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân Published Echard, Siân. "Glossing Gower: In Latin, in English, and in absentia: The Case of Bodleian Ashmole 35." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 237-256. 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 Glossing Gower: In Latin, in English, and in absentia: The Case of Bodleian Ashmole 35. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 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 White looks at a number of cases in CA in which we are apparently invited to have sympathy for a less than completely virtuous character. Amans and the siblings Canace and Machaire win sympathy because they are the victims of love; moreover, none commits a "positively willed evil action" (p. 222), and no one else is injured by their errors. Mundus is a more difficult case, and Genius' apparent sympathy might be explained as ironic. Irony does not account for the sympathy shows Ulysses in "Ulysses and Telegonus," however, for Genius' explicit commentary on the story in entirely orthodox. Our satisfaction with Ulysses' trumping of Circe's enchantments (a reading that Fanger, in the preceding essay, clearly does not share) derives from an admiration for triumphant cleverness that escapes the confines of morality. White finds the same willingness on Gower's part to allow the tale "to flourish along lines not determined solely by moral concerns" (p. 233) in the pleasure we take in the "insouciant daring blasphemy" of Mundus' deception of Paulina (p. 222). Gower "is interested, like Chaucer, in writing good stories, and knows, like Chaucer, that though a good story can be a moral one, it can alternatively, or in addition, offer pleasures that have little to do with morality and which indeed are morally dubious" (p. 233). And as a final example of his point, White cites the fabliauesque tale of "Geta and Amphitrion." [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor White, Hugh Published White, Hugh. "The Sympathetic Villain in Confessio Amantis." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 221-235. 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 Sympathetic Villain in Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 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 Fanger compares Gower's version of the tale of Circe and Ulysses (Macaulay's "Ulysses and Telegonus") to his sources in Guido and Benoit in order to explore each author's differing use of the nexus of magic, knowledge, power, and eroticism. Gower's differs from the earlier versions in important ways. His Ulysses is never successfully beguiled by Circe, and his impregnation of her occurs as part of the contest of enchantment by which he contrives his escape, in which he enchants Circe rather than vice versa. The resulting tale is more like Ovid's, but the change is dictated primarily by Gower's intended moral on the dangers of all forms of knowledge when indulged in for their own sake. Gower also alters the dream so that the mysterious figure, who speaks of the fatal consequences of an existing love, alludes more directly to Ulysses' relationship with Circe than to his relationship with Telegonus, an alteration which is further extended in Lydgate. Gower holds Ulysses responsible both for his misuse of Circe and for his failure to interpret the dream, consistent with the emphasis on personal responsibility for one's actions that characterizes the entire poem. Fanger concludes by examining the nature of moral conflicts in the poem. Rather than setting reason against desire in an opposition in which one or the other must prevail, Gower emphasizes the proper and improper uses of reason, either to control desire or to serve it. One consequence is that while Gower is by no means free of contemporary antifeminism, a woman like Circe is never blamed either for her own rape or for the seduction of a man like Ulysses. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fanger, Claire Published Fanger, Claire. "Magic and Metaphysics of Gender in Gower's 'Tale of Circe and Ulysses'." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 203-219. 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 Magic and Metaphysics of Gender in Gower's 'Tale of Circe and Ulysses'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 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 Aers explores the fissures in VC rather than its unity. His target is a large one, the view of Gower as a coherent as well as comprehensive moral and political philosopher first advanced by Coffman and Fisher (whom Aers does not cite) and more recently reaffirmed by such writers as Minnis, Yeager, Olsson, Simpson, and Scanlon. Aers slyly lays out some of the contradictions among those who defend the coherency of Gower's thought, but he give most attention to the contradictions within Gower's own writing. In VC, he finds it impossible to resolve Gower's advocacy of an evangelical pacifism in Books III and VI with his "unironic celebration of aristocratic violence" (p. 190) in his advice to King Richard to follow the example of his father. Such a contradiction, he points out, was encouraged by the medieval church, where it had become "normalized and internalized" (p. 192). It is allowed by the structure of VC, in which the "units . . . are paratactically sealed off from each other rather than brought into dialogue. . . . [VC's] paratactic mode becomes a powerful impediment to moral inquiry, to sustained critical reflection on the difficulties that are raised. The mode protects the poet from having to confront sharp contradictions in his ethics, let alone from having to explore their sources in the traditions he inherits and the culture he inhabits" (p. 193; his italics). The same failure can be found in Gower's treatment of the church in CA, in which the poet alternately condemns the church for the degeneracy of its practices and for the mystification of its claims of spiritual authority and upholds the church against the Wycliffites whose criticisms he echoes. "Are we being invited to cultivate ironic reflections on the grounds of all doctrine, on the grounds of all claims to unfeigned, uninvented authority in matters concerning the divine?" (p. 200). No, Aers concludes; to a "paratactic mode" corresponds a "paratactic moralism" (p. 201). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Aers, David Published Aers, David. "Reflections on Gower as 'Sapiens in Ethics and Politics'." In Re-Visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 185-201. 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 Reflections on Gower as 'Sapiens in Ethics and Politics'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 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 VC is a monster, Salisbury asserts in its defense. Against those who have resisted both its patchwork use of extracts from many sources and its lack of adhesion to a single generic model, she sees it as an artfully constructed assemblage, a new, monstrous body formed from the dismembered bodies of the past, serving both "mostrare" and "monere," to show and to warn about, the monstrous political structures from which the monstrous events of 1381 arose. This is another essay that is impossible to summarize with any justice. It combines a close reading of chosen passages, calculated to show how Gower has selected his sources and how he has both altered the context of the lines he has borrowed and also invoked the context in which they first appeared, with a bold re-vision of the form of the entire poem, which she supports by reference to etymology, to Gower's use of the "body" of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and to the illustrations of the archer shooting at the world found in several of the MSS. She also, of course, invokes the analogy of other literary models, including RR and the Cento Vergilianus de Laudibus Christi of Faltonia Betitia Proba, whose importance to VC was first noted by R.F. Yeager. Salisbury has gone much further than Yeager in linking Gower's formal procedure to the subject and content of his poem. Her essay is bold and thought-provoking, and repeatedly challenges us to take a fresh and more thoughtful look at VC. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Salisbury, Eve Published Salisbury, Eve. "Remembering Origins: Gower's Monstrous Body Poetic." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 159-184. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Remembering Origins: Gower's Monstrous Body Poetic. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 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 a brief but suggestive essay, Sadlek examines Gower's allusions to the "labor of love" within the framework of contemporary ideologies of labor. The fourteenth century was a time of intense interest in work issues and in the nature of labor, which is reflected in an expansion of the lexicon and in the use of terms such as "besinesse" and "occupacion" with a new, largely positive connotation. Gower's poem, Sadlek argues, represents a "site of action" in which conflicting contemporary ideologies are simultaneously present. He identifies a "traditional medieval ideology of work" in the frame of the Seven Deadly Sins and its numerous branches. In Book 4, "aristocratic voices" defend idleness as a form of labor in the case of love, and knighthood as a more appropriate form of labor for worthy men. There is also the "voice of a new work ethic, which insists that legitimate work much also produce concrete results" (p. 157). None of these can be identified exclusively with either Genius or Amans. A different set of issues emerges in the poem's conclusion, in which both Amans and Venus revert to a definition of "love's labor" as successful procreation, a notion rooted in RR but also consistent with a "production oriented" work ideology. Gower criticizes wasteful idleness in love, Sadlek concludes, but he does so from a complex position that represents the changing labor ideologies of his time. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sadlek, Gregory M Published Sadlek, Gregory M. "John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Ideology, and the 'Labor' of 'Love's Labor'." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 147-58. 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 John Gower's Confessio Amantis, Ideology, and the 'Labor' of 'Love's Labor'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 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 Bullón-Fernández examines the relation between clerical and lay authority in CA, using as her focus the tale of Constance, which she situates in the context of late medieval power struggles between kings and both popes and parliaments. Gower reduces the role of patriarchal ecclesiastical authorities in the tale, including that of the pope. In their place, he offers Constance. She is not only the daughter of the emperor, but figuratively also his wife (e.g. in providing him with an heir) and his mother (in the lines describing his reaction on being reunited with her, CA 2.1524-27), a "riddle" which recalls Mary's relationship with Christ and the Church's relationship with both God and the Christian community. Gower thus represents the church in a female figure, subordinate to and dependent upon lay masculine power. But he does not do so uncritically. Gower elsewhere uses father-daughter incest to condemn absolutist political power. The incestuous connotations in "Constance" offer a commentary on the pretensions of absolutism and "its fantasy of self-reproducing, in other words, incestuous, royal power" (p. 143). Thus at the same time that the tale supports lay claims to power (with regard to the church), it also suggests the need to delimit them (by implication with regard to parliamentary authority). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María Published Bullón-Fernández, María. "Engendering Authority: Father and Daughter, State and Church in Gower's 'Tale of Constance' and Chaucer's 'Man of Law's Tale'." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Ashville, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 129-146. 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 Engendering Authority: Father and Daughter, State and Church in Gower's 'Tale of Constance' and Chaucer's 'Man of Law's Tale'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed