16 100 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 Putter describes his aim as a consideration of "the use of the word 'thing' in a range of Middle English writings (Gower, Chaucer and mystical authors)." He "argues that the vagueness of the word can paradoxically be a source of strength. Gower in his "Confessio Amantis" and Chaucer in "Troilus and Criseyde" use 'thing' with a lively sense of its power to conceal and tantalize, and in mystical writings and Chaucer's 'Second Nun's Tale' its blankness becomes suggestive of the darkness of God." (63). Putter is particularly intriguing in his application of Derrida's notion of "true secrets," Lacan's 'l'objet petit a," and Žižek's argument that the "paradox of desire" is that if "we mistake for postponement of the 'thing itself' what is already 'the thing itself,' we mistake for the searching and indecision of desire what is, in fact, the realization of desire," (68); and equally if not more informative in his animadversions on the meanings of "thing" apparent in Middle English usage. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Putter, Ad Published Putter, Ad. "The Poetry of 'Things' in Gower, 'The Great Gatsby,' and Chaucer." In The Construction of Textual Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. Ed. Ghose, Indira, and Renevey, Denis. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2009, pp. 63-82. ISBN 9783823365204 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 The Poetry of 'Things' in Gower, 'The Great Gatsby,' and Chaucer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Gunter Narr Verlag, 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 Johnston's essay is a sophisticated analysis of the motif of incest and its relations with literary form and literary tradition in Shakespeare's (and George Wilkin's) "Pericles," but it has almost nothing to say about the life or poetry of John Gower: the "Gower" of his title is the choric figure of the play, a complicated device: "Perhaps the least dramatic and at the same time the most explicitly medieval of Shakespeare's innovations in the play" (385). Johnston discusses at some length Chaucer's widely-accepted, putative allusion to Gower in the "Man of Law's Prologue," but not the poet Gower or his works--not even his "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre"--except to state that this account in the "Confessio Amantis" "served as Shakespeare's principal source" (385), that the Chorus speaks in the "very metre the historical Gower" used in CA (386), and that Gower, like Chaucer, tells a tale of Constance in a frame narrative (394), discussing only Chaucer's version. Johnston does comment very briefly on the relation between Gower's and Shakespeare's respective versions of the incest riddle of the story, saying that the riddling form in Shakespeare "constitutes a presence through insistently foregrounding a form of absence" (402), and arguing that Chaucer is, analogously, an absent presence in the play: "Behind Shakespeare's depiction of Gower there always looms the invisible figure of Chaucer" (396). Gower, it might be said, is present but absent. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Johnston, Andrew James. Published Johnston, Andrew James. "Sailing the Seas of Literary History: Gower, Chaucer, and the Problem of Incest in Shakespeare's 'Pericles'." Poetica: Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 41.3-4 (2009): 381-407. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sailing the Seas of Literary History: Gower, Chaucer, and the Problem of Incest in Shakespeare's "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nolan's argument is complicated, nuanced, and consequently quite difficult to do it justice in a brief summary. Her focus is "on the relationship of historical thought to literary form as a way of assessing what aspects of historicist discourse and practice remain critically energetic and analytically central to medieval literary study" (63). Working with three examples--Augustine's discovery of a "giant's tooth" in the "City of God," passages from Ovid's "Ars Amatoria," and Gower's image, at the beginning of Book II of the "Vox Clamantis," of his creative process as honey gathered from many flowers, or shells found on the beach, an image taken verbatim from Ovid (70)--she lays out as necessary an understanding of the past observed not merely backwards from the present, nor as if past and present were the same, but as an object of study both itself and in relation to the present as well as part of it. Her description of how this relates to Gower also captures much of her larger argument: "When Gower . . . appropriates Ovid's art, he does so as a way of reflecting on his own poetic practice. Like the Romans who gather shells, extract what's beautiful in them, and transform that extraction into a symbol of power, Gower gathers words from his predecessors, detaches them from their contexts, and forces them to make meaning in a new way. This account of Gower's poetics, as a form of imperialism, wrought under the sign of deference to the very classical "auctores" whose words he has gathered and reused, fundamentally rewrites the standard narrative of Gower's history-writing in the "Vox Clamantis." It has long been thought that the version of the fourteenth century found in the "Vox" is so ideologically driven, so wedded to a conservative vision of medieval society (the hierarchy of the three estates), that it utterly lacks nuance, self-reflection, and the capacity to accept social change . . . . The example of the gathered shells thus illustrates the way in which Gower determinedly sustains a tension between deference to Latin authority (here, Ovid) and the display of poetic skill embodied in the fearless abandon with which he redeploys classical words and images while ruthlessly exploiting both their past and present meanings. The brilliance of this particular display lies in the fact that Gower has chosen a passage from the "Ars Amatoria" whose Ovidian meaning constitutes a critique of its Gowerian use: Ovid deploys the gathering of shells to illustrate the triviality of modern forms of imperial expression, from the color purple to well-groomed ladies. If Gower aligns himself and his own gathering of words with these Roman practices, he must also accept the critique sedimented in the line he has adopted. By doing so, Gower forges a poetic 'middle way'--a practice of engaging the past that treats it with care, but without kid gloves. This middle way is a mode of using the past while allowing it to speak freely: Gower may manipulate Ovid's poetry for his own ends, but he retains the exact wording of Ovid's verse about shells" (81-82). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura. Published Nolan, Maura. "Historicism after Historicism." In The Post-Historical Middle Ages. Eds. Elizabeth Scala and Sylvia Federico. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. Pp. 63-85. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Historicism after Historicism. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Yandell focusses on a rarely discussed tale, that of "Ahab and Micaiah" from Book VII, as an illustration of how Gower's use of Biblical tales in the CA "could blur the lines between court poet and prophetic advisor, and between secular and spiritual courts," offering him "opportunities for subversion" both to support the king's decisions . . . and challenge the justice behind his actions (without exposing himself to treasonous punishments)" (153). Noting that the story was infrequently mentioned in medieval texts, Yandell concludes that Gower included it for a purpose: "in part as a way of showing that the decisions of a proper ruler, like God, are always justified, even in situations where the method of achieving justice might be questionable" and also to show that rulers in need of advice should seek "good answers only in those willing to come forward and speak boldly" (160). For "the reigning Richard II and Henry IV, [that figure] is Gower himself" (160). Thus the tale is "subversive on many levels," as is the CA itself, which "provides public support of Richard and Henry as a way of helping to ensure patronage from the throne, but at the same time it has the power to reach a wide audience with a message that questions the dangerous aspects of policies from the throne" (164). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yandell, Stephen. Published Yandell, Stephen. "Bearers of Punishment and Reward: Ahab's Prophets in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Enarratio: Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 16 (2009): 153-65. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bearers of Punishment and Reward: Ahab's Prophets in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In a section on Shakespeare's "Pericles," this article has extended analysis of Gower's reception in early modern English print and drama, with little on the CA per se. Gieske refrains from enumerating Shakespeare's "direct debts" to Chaucer and Gower at the verbal level, focusing rather on the "structural and narratological . . . the ways Shakespeare's post-1600 plays react to medieval antecedents as they experiment with alternative principles of construction" (85). His approach engages not only with the medieval sources, but with "Renaissance" Chaucer and Gower as Shakespeare would have known them in print (85, 95). Three plays are chosen for analysis: "Troilus and Cressida," the "kaledeidoscopic . . . chaotically structured" "Pericles" (86, 87), and "The Two Noble Kinsmen." The "capaciousness" of "Pericles" is prefigured in Robert Greene's "Vision" of 1592, where the sleeping poet is visited from beyond the grave by Chaucer and Gower. The "merry"-appearing Chaucer speaks for literature valued as "solaas," while the stern, Cato-like Gower makes the case for moral "sentence," with Gower preferred by the dreamer (96, 97). Both "ancient" poets defend their perspective by producing a sample poem, with an "adaptation" of the Confessio's "Apollonius narrative" voiced by Gower (101). A slightly different, equally prestigious "Renaissance Gower" is found in the Preface to Berthelette's 1532 edition of the CA, where Berthelette promotes the poem as "pleasant" and "easy," but also having "great auctorite perswadynge unto vertue" (99-100). Shakespeare's Gower "diverges" from the "dour moralist" of Greene's "Vision" (100), but more importantly, Shakespeare uses the "cultural capital" (99) of Gower's early modern reputation to authorize an experimental new dramatic genre prefigured in The Tale of Apollonius. The playwright "redeploy[ed] . . . vast ranges of time and space . . . [blending] the resources of capacious medieval narrative" with contemporary stage presentation (101,102). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gieskes, Edward. Published Renaissance Papers 2009, ed. Christopher Cobb (Rochester, NY: Camden House/Boydell & Brewer, 2009), pp. 85-109. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Chaucer of All Admired the Story Gives": Shakespeare, Medieval Narrative, and Generic Innovation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay explores the two fifteenth-century Iberian manuscripts of Gower's "Confessio Amantis," first detailing the twentieth-century discovery of the two manuscripts, and second, based upon peculiar physical elements and content of the manuscripts, proposing the possible identities and motivations of the Castilian and Portuguese patrons of the translations. Yeager begins by narrating the twentieth-century discovery of Escorial MS g.II.19 and Madrid MS Real Biblioteca II-3088. Gower links the impetus of the translations to John of Gaunt's invasion of Spain in 1386, the marriage of his elder daughter Philippa to king João I of Portugal in 1387, and the marriage of his daughter Katherine (Catalina) to prince Henry (Enrique) III, the son and heir of Juan I of Castile, in 1388. Yeager argues the Portuguese translation was most likely made for João I, given his (and his wife Philippa's) love of literature. The purpose of the Castilian translation, however, is not as clear. Yeager suggests these manuscript versions in particular would not have been meant for a royal personage, at least based upon the physical aspects of the manuscripts, given their plain and modest format and layout. Both of these manuscripts, Yeager suggests, represent "workaday versions" of the poem, which may be of particular scholarly interest since they "provide tangible evidence that the 'Confessio Amantis' was known, was read, and was in demand outside of the royal families, beyond Castile and Lisbon even to Africa, by lower-ranking Iberian readers in some numbers" (97). The essay concludes with a discussion of further avenues of research awaiting the study of these manuscripts, including the relationship between the CA and late medieval and early modern Iberian literary production, Philippa of Lancaster's possible connection to the Portuguese translation, and possible parallels between Gower's popularity in Iberia and that of Christine de Pizan, whose "Le Livre de trois virtues" was also translated into Portuguese. [BWG. Copyright, The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 16 (2009): 91-101. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Iberian Footprint: The Manuscripts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Akbari summarizes her book as follows: "'Idols in the East' explores the continuities linking medieval and modern discourses concerning Islam and the Orient in order to unearth the roots of modern Orientalism, and to examine the categories, hierarchies, and symbolic systems that were used to differentiate the Western self from its Eastern other" (1). In chapter 1--"The Shape of the World"--Akbari traces the paradigm shift that started in the twelfth century and culminated in the fourteenth century in which the properties of heat and cold, traditionally associated with the south and the north respectively, were transferred to the east and the west. This resulted in "the production of a binary opposition of East and West, the first a torrid climate populated by irascible people having weak, swarthy bodies, the second a cool climate populated by rational people having strong, fair bodies" (15). Akbari draws attention to Gower's brief descriptive geography in Book VII of CA, which is "after the forme of Mappemounde" (VII, 530). Even though Akbari does not dwell long on Gower she describes Gower's "Mappemounde" as an "extraordinary recasting" of "mappa mundi" conventions (47). She notes that Gower follows the conventional tripartite division of Asia, Europe, and Africa, in which Asia is the largest continent and is "defined in terms of the sun" but that he also unusually defines Asia as "coterminous with the Orient itself" ("Of Orient in general / Withinne his bounde Asie hath al," VII, 554-55). Akbari further states that Gower follows "Augustine, Isidore, Hrabanus Maurus, Vincent of Beauvais, and Bartholomaeus Anglicus" in the division of the tripartite world into two parts: "Orient and Occident, occupied by Asia, on the one side, and Europe and Africa on the other" (47). Commenting how "this two-part division of East and West is in tension with the competing binary opposition of frigid north and torrid south," she demonstrates how Gower invokes the two-part division of the world into east and west and positions the west as aligned with cold and the east with "overwhelming heat, understood in both a literal and a moral sense" (48): "In occident as for the chele, / in orient as for the hete" (VII, 582-83). Akbari concludes by placing Gower in a collection of "certain medieval texts [and authors]," like Bartholomaeus Anglicus and Chaucer, that participate "in the construction of a cold, dispassionate, northerly Occident" (48). [TZ. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Akbari, Suzanne Conklin. Published Akbari, Suzanne Conklin. Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2009), pp. 46-48. 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 Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100-1450. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Although to some degree confined by her format, Watt nonetheless manages to go well beyond the standard demands of the "Companion form" (i.e., a little biography, some attention to the full oeuvre, general remarks on style and content) to offer a number of intriguing and original insights, especially regarding the extent of Gower's influence on fifteenth-century poetics. The chief concern of that century, as she sees it, is "the connection between vernacular poetry, politics, and patriotism," and in this they follow Gower's lead "even more than Chaucer['s]" (155). She utilizes this triad to examine the "Confessio Amantis," acknowledging its "apparent disunity--the dual foci on the ethical-political and the erotic" (157), which she partially (indeed, generously) explains away as "Gower's playfulness" [158]--and contesting any notion that "Gower adheres to a conservative gender ideology," citing his empathetic treatment of women, of which the case of Canace is offered as a prime example (158). Watt traces this connective triad in compact but provocative assessments of Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes" and Lydgate's "Fall of Princes," finding evidence of Gower's unacknowledged influence in both. In the "Regiment," the Beggar in her view borrows from Genius, and Hoccleve's political position in significant ways echoes "the Gower of the late, pro-Lancastrian propaganda poem, 'In Praise of Peace'" (160). In the "Fall" and in the "Regiment," "a number of the same stories as [in] 'Confessio Amantis'" appear, "including the famous Tales of Lucrece and Virginia as well as other political narratives" (161). Other similarities between the "Fall" and the CA include "lengthy discussion of vice and virtue" in each, and the prominent presence of Alexander the Great, shared with both the "Regiment" and the CA. Watt's most startling assertion, however, is that an "unexpected aspect of Gower's influence on Lydgate" is "their shared fascination with salacious stories," particularly those dealing with incest (161-62). Thus, "while Lydgate owes as [sic] least as much to Gower as does Hoccleve, he is even less willing than Hoccleve to admit it" (162). Watt does see however that "in one crucial respect, Hoccleve and Lydgate diverge from Gower" (163): unlike Gower, who saw writing in English as a "development from his previous work in French and Latin" (163), for Hoccleve and Lydgate English is their only medium--which goes a long way toward explaining their expressed fondness for Chaucer. But she concludes: "Nevertheless, in terms of real, if unacknowledged influence, Gower remained second to none" (163). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watt, Diane. Published Watt, Diane. "John Gower." In Larry Scanlon, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100-1500. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 153-64. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Brown identifies the topic of his essay as "the way in which the use of literary images in secular writing becomes embroiled in the [late-medieval] controversy over religious images," particularly how the "radical ideas promoted by the Lollard followers of . . . John Wyclif" (308) are reflected or refracted in Gower's 'Vox Clamantis' and in the portrait of Chaucer found in manuscripts of Thomas Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes." Brown finds engagements with the controversy by each author to be "contradictory" (312): both "ostensibly adopt and articulate one position (different in each case), [while] their literary practice points in another direction" (318). Gower's contradiction, Brown argues, lies in the clash between the poet's stated, though restrained, opposition to religious images in VC II.10--at points, "remarkably similar" in attitude to the Lollard "A tretyse of ymagis" in London, British Library, MS Additional 24202--and his depictions in Book I of the rebels of 1381 where "where images of his own sprout and flourish in abundance as if from some 'Vox clematis'" (311). Brown acknowledges that the "customary explanation" for the vehement imagery in Book I is that it was written after the 1381 Uprising--Books II-VII, written before--but he goes on to suggest that the "sharper and fuller perceptiveness" (311) inherent in the dream-vision genre evokes a kind of reflective interiority in Book I--not inconsistent with contemplative meditation--by which Gower "abrogated to himself the creation and control of elaborate, awe-inspiring, vivid representations of a world turned upside-down" that both is, and is not, consistent with his "Lollard-leaning view on the functions of images" later in the work (312). The image of the Cross, Brown argues, complicates Gower's treatment of images, as does the dedication of VC to Archbishop Thomas Arundel, enemy of the Lollards. Similar intricate contradictions, Brown shows, haunt Hoccleve's use of the Chaucer portrait as an "image designed to stir reading (or listening) memories" (313), "analogous to the use of images in religious meditation" (314). Neither writer is a "crypto-Lollard" (312) in Brown's analysis, but each rejected images while deploying them, struggling "to reconcile the imperatives of their social existence (as producers of literature within a network of patron, audience and political faction) with the often contradictory and uncomfortable priorities that develop as a consequence of reflective writing" (318). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Brown, Peter. Published Brown, Peter. "Images." In Peter Brown, ed. A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture, c. 1350-c. 1500. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Pp. 307-21. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Style, Rhetoric, and Veersification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Images. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Rothauser synopsizes her essay as follows: "Medieval authors describe not only the presence of water near and in cities, but also the use of waters by the citizens. We see water being used primarily in three roles in these texts: 1) a defining element; 2) a protective barrier; and 3) a cleansing agent. In depictions of historical or fictitious earthly cities, we see water used in these functions individually, or perhaps dually, suggesting an important topos for water, but not a formulaic use of it. When all of these roles appear in one description, we find the perfection that exists in the celestial city of 'Pearl.' But when these roles are subverted, we see the apocalyptic nightmare of John Gower's London in 'Vox Clamantis.' It is through the author's manipulation of water in these three roles that we can see how medieval authors may express their concept of the urban space" (246). Rothauser considers a variety of medieval texts--including descriptions of London from William Fitz Stephen, the London "Letter-Books," and Lydgate's "Troy Book"--but Pearl (along with "St. Erkenwald") and VC (at times accompanied by "Mirour de l'Omme") are the texts she assesses most consistently, observing allegorical idealizations in "Pearl" and distortions or inversions of these ideals in Gower, but leaving what they reveal about ideas of urban space not sharply articulated. When discussing water as a "defining element" of urban depiction, she argues that in VC (and in MO) it "does not define the city itself, but rather Gower's preferred social hierarchy between city and country," so that, in the cities, water "much like the peasants . . . must be constrained" (257). Similarly, water offers no urban protection in VC, where the gates in the vision of London are breached and its walls destroyed by the "flood" of peasants (264). Moreover, the "normative function" of water as cleansing agent is inverted when the nurturing fountains of Gower's city are bloodied and rendered pestilent (269). At the end of Book 1, however, through a figurative version of water as the "baptismal medium" (270), Rothauser argues, social order is restored and the dreamer's apocalyptic vision approaches closure through "God's manipulation of water" (272). Here, and elsewhere in her argument, Rothauser discloses less about Gower's "concept of the urban space," her stated goal, than she does about his notions of the moral dimensions of social order. If the two are somehow inextricable or analogous, as they may well be, clarification of their relations would be helpful. [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rothauser, Britt C. L. Published Rothauser, Britt C. L. "'A Reuer … Brighter Þen Boþe the Sunne and Mone': The Use of Water in the Medieval Consideration of Urban Space." In Albrecht Classen, ed. Urban Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age. (Berlin: De Gruyter; 2009). Pp. 245-72. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "A Reuer--Brighter Þen Boþe the Sunne and Mone: The Use of Water in the Medieval Consideration of Urban Space. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Pearsall's concern is the "comparative neglect of vernacular text illustration by art historians" and the attention paid by literary scholars primarily to the relation of words to image, "as if the significance of the image began and ended in its fidelity to the text" (197). Here he presses instead for "more consideration to be given to two other factors: the importance of the idea of the book (rather than the text) in the choice and disposition of illustrations; and the possibility that pictures may have their own significance, deriving from their own historical apparatus of visual convention, that may go beyond or against the grain of or contradict or have nothing to do with the texts they illustrate" (197). Often, illustrators had constraints put upon them by supervisors--an example being Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 902, a manuscript of Gower's "Confessio Amantis," where "clearly written in the margin of fol. 8 beside where the picture is now: Hie fiat confessor/ sedens & confessus coram se genufiectendo" (197). Pearsall for the most part takes examples from manuscripts of Chaucer's works, but concludes with further discussion of Bodley MS 902, in particular the confession miniature which portrays Amans as an old man, in company with Genius. This shows, Pearsall argues, that "someone, whether the artist or the person who gave him his instructions, had evidently read enough of the poem to know of this startling dramatic revelation [i.e., that Amans is old] and chose the literal truth rather than the literary subterfuge which drives the narrative of the poem. It is fidelity to the text of an extraordinary kind, fidelity to the text which actually gives the game away, and ruinously anticipates the moment upon which the poem depends for its moral impact. It is a very odd picture, and unique" (206). Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 307, fol. 9 has the same picture, "but this is reversed copy of the Bodley picture and therefore not an independently idiosyncratic choice but a mere production economy" (206). [RFY. Copyright, John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek. "Beyond Fidelity: The Illustration of Late Medieval English Literary Texts." In Marlene Villalobos Hennessey, ed. Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott: English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators. London: Miller, 2009. Pp. 197-220. Published Pearsall, Derek. Gower Subject Background and General Criticism Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confession Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Beyond Fidelity: The Illustration of Late Medieval English Literary Texts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Reid, Lindsay Ann. Published Reid, Lindsay Ann. Bibliofictions: Ovidian Heroines and the Tudor Book. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Toronto, 2009. vii, 284 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A74.08(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Review Reid's dissertation "explores how the mythological heroines from Ovid's 'Heroides' and 'Metamorphoses' were catalogued, conflated, reconceived, and recontextualized in vernacular literature; in so doing, it joins considerations of voice, authority, and gender with reflections on Tudor technologies of textual reproduction and ideas about the book" (ii). One of Reid's recurrent concerns is how Gower's "Confessio Amantis"--along with works by Chaucer and Lydgate--influenced Tudor understandings of and approaches to Ovidian texts and, more generally, ideas about books as material and conceptual objects. In particular, for Reid, the CA presents the "putative authors" of the "Heroides" as "sources of tangible, historical documents, and the complaints of a number of mythological heroines are likewise posited as written, circulating texts. 'Heroides' 1, 2, 7, and 11 are redacted and worked into Gower's narratives about Penelope, Phyllis, Dido, and Canace, and Gower digressively adapts 'Heroides' 13, the epistle of the 'lusti wif" of 'The worthi king Protheselai' ([Laodamia] 4.1906, 1901), in the midst of a story about Ulysses." Laodamia's epistle serves as Reid's "representative example of the cameo appearances that the 'Heroides' often make in Middle English literature" (152), arguing that in CA "we sense that Gower's Laodamia is not merely, 'like' Ovid's Laodamia, a letter-writing character. Rather, as his description of the letter and its contents confirms, Gower's Laodamia is in the process of writing and sending 'Heroides' 13" (153), and exemplifying how "an aura of assumed materiality and historicity as well as an exterior layer of narrative context" (156) was carried into Tudor understanding of Ovidian epistles. [MA] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Bibliofictions: Ovidian Heroines and the Tudor Book. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This thesis explores issues regarding the oft-debated 'discovery of the individual', specifically in relation to the literature of the late medieval period. Critical debates concerning whether a medieval person was able to conceptualise a sense of individual self that was distinct from social norms, the accepted models or personae of being that were instantiated in culture and propagated as patterns around and within which a life should be led, have become confused because they have not properly addressed the related question of whether that awareness led to a specific ideology of 'individualism', in which, akin to modern Western notions of the self, to be a person uniquely distinct from all pre-existing forms of being was affirmed as desirable . . . . Chapter two [pp. 105-98] discusses John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' This chapter contests claims made by recent critics that Gower's poem shows that the human faculty of reason is enough to correct personal sin and error. Instead, it is shown that the 'Confessio' advocates a much more traditional, even theologically extreme, position concerning the route via which the fallen human condition might achieve its goal of spiritual salvation." In Smyth's reading of CA, human reason is limited and "divine revelation is necessary" (178), so that "Hope lies not in the capacity of man to save himself, but simply in the willingness to have faith that there is a guiding benevolence that encompasses the confusion and division, and that it can and will bring men, and perhaps society at large, to their salvation" (177). [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smyth, Benjamin Michael. Published Smyth, Benjamin Michael. Errant Individualism in Late Medieval English Literature: The Poetics of Failure. Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Liverpool, 2009. Dissertation Abstracts International A81.01(E). Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Fully accessible via https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3174137/. 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 Errant Individualism in Late Medieval English Literature: The Poetics of Failure. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Art historians pay less attention to illustrations in literary manuscripts than they do to those in religious texts--psalters, books of hours, bibles, etc. Literary scholars, on the other hand, pay significant attention, but generally focus on connecting the illustration to the text, as an aid to interpretation. Pearsall argues "for more consideration to be given to . . . the importance of the idea of the book (rather than the text) in the choice and disposition of illustrations; and the possibility that pictures may have their own significance deriving from their own historical apparatus of visual convention, that may go beyond or against the grain of or contradict or have nothing to do with the texts they illustrate" (197). Illustrators' instructions, sometimes verbal, sometimes sketched out or written in margins (as in the case of "Confessio Amantis" MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 902), and often copying generic models, need to be considered (198). The supervisor, the scribe, nor the illustrator may have read the text; illustrations may have been included "to heighten the value of the book as a salable product and an object of prestige to the owner" (198). Various illustrated manuscripts of Chaucerian texts provide most of Pearsall's examples. Pearsall devotes pp. 205-07 primarily to two "pictures that Gower himself seems to have stipulated as the pictorial program for the poem": Amans confessing his sins against Love to Genius, and the Dream of Nebuchadnezzar. "So what we have in the 'Confessio' is an authorial program of illustration designed to articulate the moral and formal design of the poem" (206). His examples are taken from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 294 and various versions of Nebuchadnezzar noted by Gareth Spriggs (q.v.). MS Bodley 902, with its white-bearded Amans, is exceptional, in that it "gives the game away" (206). Pearsall notes that the same picture appears in Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 307, though this "is a reversed copy of the Bodley picture, and therefore not an independently idiosyncratic choice but a mere production economy" (206). In his closing remarks, Pearsall comments without elaborating that "pictures may, as in certain manuscripts of the 'Confessio Amantis,' insist on a programmatic reading of a text which the text itself may not seem to carry through" (208). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek. Published Pearsall, Derek. "Beyond Fidelity: The Illustration of Late Medieval Literary Texts." In Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott: English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers, Illuminators (London: Harvey Miller, 2009), pp. 197-208. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Beyond Fidelity: The Illustration of Late Medieval Literary Texts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Wharton "examines how some Middle English writers bring the conventions of estates literature together with an emerging and evolving 'literature of sovereignty' and thereby identify the individual as both a political subject and a target of regulatory authority" (abstract, n.p.). She argues that notions of self-governance found in legal works, especially Henry Bracton's "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae," reflect English ideas of royal responsibility for social and political order and, in turn, affect understanding and development of political subjectivity for individual members of the traditional three estates. Trained as a lawyer as well as a literary scholar, Wharton reads literary texts alongside legal discourse for ways that they "flatten out the hierarchical or categorical relations among the estates into a series of fungible metonymies for an underlying public obligation that seems to bind everyone equally, and in doing so bring the individual subject to the forefront as a target for regulation and a potential agent of reform" (101-02). She adds nuance to traditional uses of estates material in literary criticism and aligns the estates literature with efforts to define legal responsibilities of king and subject alike, considering Chaucer's "General Prologue" and "Man of Law's Tale," Langland's "Piers Plowman," Wycliffite discourse, "Dives and Pauper," Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes," and others. In her treatment of "Confessio Amantis," Wharton considers its status as a mirror for princes, its engagement with estates satire, the Tale of Constance, the relation of Book VII to the whole, and the rededication from Richard to Henry--all as evidence of a developing concern with individual sovereignty in civic as well as moral affairs. [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wharton, Robin. Published Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Georgia, 2009. vi, 302 pp. Fully available via https://openscholar.uga.edu/record/7013?ln=en&v=pdf (accessed February 23, 2026). Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Literature of Sovereignty in Late Medieval England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Kane focusses primarily on Langland and Chaucer, drawing most of his examples from their works. He mentions the "Confessio Amantis" as a "tour de force" poem about sin, describing it as a model of how a sustained renunciation of unrequited love in the form of an oral confession leads Amans to practical virtue. [CEB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kane, George. Published Kane, George. "Poets and the Poetics of Sin [1989]." In Daniel Donoghue, Daniel, James Simpson, Nicholas Watson, eds. The Morton W. Bloomfield Lectures, 1989-2005. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Press, 2010. Pp. 1-19. 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 Poets and the Poetics of Sin [1989]. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 1989 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Davenport, W. A Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Published Davenport, W. A. "Dreams in Gower's Confessio Amantis." English Studies 91 (2010), pp. 374-97. ISSN 0013-838X Review [*Ed. note: We reproduce here the author's own abstract, since as a summary of his argument it is difficult to improve, though it gives an inadequate sense of the range of observation, the subtlety, or the depth of engagement with the Confessio Amantis that are manifested in this fine essay.] "Gower's name is not prominent in accounts of fourteenth-century English dream poetry and yet Confessio Amantis, though not composed as a dream poem, is full of dreams and Gower makes imaginative use of dream as part of the psychology of his central figure, Amans. This essay explores the variety of Gower's dreams. The dream of Nebuchadnezzar is used in the Prologue to establish the theme of division in history and in individual human life and this would seem to exemplify the conventional idea of the dream as cryptic revelation with an authoritative interpreter. The tales which Genius tells to teach Amans also include many examples of the oracular dream. And yet once one examines some of these dreams Gower's sense of their force appears surprisingly complex: the tale of 'Ceix and Alceone' shows dream as a staged illusion and the elaborate guile of Nectanabus confirms the link between dream and deception. False dreams and night-time deceits form a recurrent motif. In parallel to Gower's fictional dreams runs the dream experience of Amans himself who daydreams about the beloved and both enjoys the pleasure of wish-fulfillment and suffers the agony of frustration in his night-time dream life. The included dream poem of Youth and Age which brings Confessio Amantis to a close confirms Gower's reliance on dream both as a theme and as a structural device whereby he returns from illusion to the clarity of his own waking reason. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Dreams in Gower's 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 Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, Isabella Neale Published Yeager, Isabella Neale. "Did Gower Love His Wife? And What Has It to Do with the Poetry?" Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic-Literary Studies 73 (2010), pp. 67-86. ISSN 0287-1629 Gower Subject Minor Latin Poetry Biography of Gower Review [Includes additional notes by R. F. Yeager.] Fisher left us with a portrait of a decrepit Gower, entering into a marriage of convenience in his old age with a woman whom he needed to tend to him as a nurse. Yeager demonstrates how much this view, like so much about Gower's life, rests upon mere speculation, and how easy it is to construct a different view of Gower's reasons for entering into marriage. The references to his debility, she points out, begin much earlier than the time of his marriage, and he lived for at least 18 years after first describing himself as "old, Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Did Gower Love His Wife? And What Has It to Do with the Poetry? 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 Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Peebles, Katie Lyn Published Peebles, Katie Lyn. Medievalism's Inheritance: Early Inventions of Medieval Pasts. Ph.D. Dissertation. Indiana University, 2010. ix, 309 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A71.08. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Minor Latin Poetry Review "This dissertation examines how and why medievalism--the use of elements from the European Middle Ages in social commentary--began in the Middle Ages itself. . . . Each chapter focuses on an author experiencing political crisis: William of Malmesbury (c.1095-c.1143), John Gower (c.1330-1408), Sir Thomas Malory (c.1405-1471), and John Aubrey (1626-1697). These writers constructed medieval heritages out of available historical fragments, narratives, and their own dreams in order to resolve contemporary issues. . . . The basic process of 'medieval' medievalism is the same as the process that has been established in post-medieval periods: to make the past instrumental in cultural debates, these writers compared the terms of the chosen medieval period to the immediate concerns of the present. However, early medievalism is more weighted to a search for continuity and metaphorical constructions of cultural heritage in order to naturalize certain kinds of violence and mitigate losses of the past. William of Malmesbury and John Gower make lessons from the past obvious in attempts to secure a more peaceful future. Both Malory and Caxton were concerned with asserting a stable transmission of heritage that could transcend cycles of violence and limits of the book marketplace. Aubrey's use of medievalism in early modern scientific historical projects set a pattern for the continued intimacy of heritage and folklore studies, and of medievalism and medieval studies" (vi-vii). Peebles summarizes her discussion of Gower as follows: "the second chapter addresses John Gower's attempt to rescue and revitalize certain British traditions of rulership, particularly the proper relationship of a king to his people. The tone of Gower's medievalism veers between fear in the 'Vox Clamantis,' wistfulness in the Tale of Three Questions [from Confessio Amantis, and optimism in some of the late Latin poems. I argue that the tension in Gower's medievalism, which transformed his experiences of surviving the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, and the usurpation of Richard II into fearful visions and hopeful dreams of virtuous reform, comes from a dialectic of kings and subjects in which women are best positioned to lead to reconciliation through wise counsel" (15). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Medievalism's Inheritance: Early Inventions of Medieval Pasts 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 Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "'Reading Emotional Bodies' utilizes the history of emotions, phenomenology, and gender theory to argue for a culturally specific performance of love in medieval English literature. Texts such as Sir Launfal' and 'Ywain and Gawain' reveal an English performance of love and its ties to performances of masculinity that differ from their Old French sources. The selections of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' found in Cambridge University Library MS Ff.1.6 offer further support for an English performance of love as an emotion. Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde' presents a critique of late medieval feminine embodiment and the bodily expressions of love and the 'Legend of Good Women' not only supports Chaucer's critique found in the 'Troilus,' but also subverts the culturally acceptable and expected literary presentation of women." Author/Editor Author/Editor Beck, Christian Blevins Published Beck, Christian Blevins. "Reading emotional bodies: Love and gender in late medieval English literature." PhD thesis, State University of New York at Binghamton, 2010. 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 Reading emotional bodies: Love and gender in late medieval English literature 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 Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Many critics have seen 'Confessio Amantis' as a work of reformist rhetoric that, drawing deeply on medieval Aristotelian conflations of ethics and politics, urges readers toward personal moral reform as the crucial means by which to heal the body politic. In such a view, the moral and public interests on full display in 'Mirour de l'Omme,' 'Vox Clamantis,' and elsewhere remain central to Gower's purpose in 'Confessio.' However, while 'Mirour' and 'Vox' also foreground religious concerns, 'Confessio' is often seen as "secular" in a modern sense. I argue in this dissertation that 'Confessio' indeed bears strong affinities to Gower's other religious-ethical-political works, and that the main differences that set it apart from them must be understood in connection with Gower's decision to write this work 'in oure Englissh.' Notwithstanding its debt to aristocratic culture, 'Confessio' imagines a broader and more popular audience than do 'Vox' and 'Mirour.' Gower's novel language choice has major implications especially for Confessio's uncharacteristically delicate handling of religion. Chapter 1 examines Confessio's Ovidian debt and suggests that Confessio's many invocations of 'Metamorphoses,' given that poem's fourteenth-century reception, align 'Confessio' with Ovidian universal satire in a way that suggests totalizing religious-ethical-political synthesis. However, 'Confessio' departs from the mainstream of fourteenth-century commentated Ovids by stripping 'Metamorphoses' of its clergial patina and, crucially, adopting a markedly lay stance. Investigating Gower's attitude to English vernacularity, chapter 2 notes Confessio's association of translation with decay and demonstrates that scientific and theological passages in Gower's English works adopt a lower register than analogous passages in his Latin works. Chapter 3 investigates the probable causes of these downward modulations, comparing Gower's sense of linguistic decorum to those discernible in contemporary English vernacular theology. Chapters 4 and 5--on metamorphosis and art, respectively--argue that Gower finds in Ovidian writing rich resources particularly adaptable to the most delicate of Gower's rhetorical tasks in Confessio: to address, as layman, a lay audience on matters that are unavoidably, and indeed largely, religious. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that Gower's voice of lay religious critique plays an important role in the histories of laicization and secularization." Author/Editor Author/Editor McCabe, T. Matthew N Published McCabe, T. Matthew N. "Ethics, Rhetorical Accommodation, and Vernacularity in Gower's Confessio Amantis." PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2010. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Ethics, Rhetorical Accommodation, and Vernacularity in Gower's Confessio Amantis 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 Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Antonio Cortijo Ocaña continues with his long-term project of editing the Portuguese version of the "Confessio Amantis. In this case, he puts together the edition of book VI, thus culminating a process started in 2007, when the text itself was made available together with an introductory comment on the contents of the book, its sources and the translation (Antonio Cortijo Ocaña. "El libro VI de la Confessio Amantis." eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 8 (2007): 38-72. (See the review in the Gower Bibliography online - http://gowerbib.lib.utsa.edu/). The article now published in the Revista de literatura medieval rounds off this first edition by providing the Portuguese text with a profuse annotation mainly intended to show the differences with Juan de Cuenca's Spanish translation, and occasionally with the English original. Those interested in a more visual parallel with Gower's original may also want to resort to the side-by-side Portuguese-English texts published by Cortijo in eHumanista, in the section devoted to the ongoing Confessio Amantis Project (http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/projects/Confessio%20Amantis/index.shtml). As this online edition includes the above-mentioned annotation apparatus, it allows a thorough view of how the two medieval translations of the Confessio Amantis relate to the English original--an approach that Cortijo has been consistently pursuing in his project, and which is highly valuable for further studies on the Confessio and its Iberian versions. http://www.ehumanista.ucsb.edu/projects/Confessio%20Amantis/VIII%20Spanish%20Translation.pdf. √ No introduction – Spanish text (verse layout) – Some annotation, comparing with English and Portuguese texts. [AS-H. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio Published Cortijo Ocaña, Antonio. "El Libro VI de la Confessio Amantis." Revista de Literatura Medieval 22 (2010), pp. 11-74. ISSN 1130-3611 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource El Libro VI de la Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Fredell's concern is to join the "gathering consensus (whose genesis is credited to Peter Nicholson)" seeking to refute the "elaborate three-stage creation story for the 'Confessio'" (1) posited by Gower's first editor, G.C. Macaulay that has guided Gower studies for over a century. Macaulay argued that there were three states of revision evident in the known manuscripts of the "Confessio," and that these corresponded to developing "phases of disenchantment with Richard II and enchantment with the future Henry IV, from 1390 to 1393" (1). As Fredell notes (and Nicholson's meticulous studies [1984, 1987, 1988] have shown), "[Macaulay's] argument depends upon a miniscule number of variants and glosses offered in evidence, and manuscript witnesses that contradict the model directly. Similar problems entangle the variants on Richard in 'Vox Clamantis'" (1). The "truths" told by the manuscripts, thus, are "inconvenient for scholars making political arguments that require evidence of Gower's disillusionment with Richard during the 1390's" (1, fn. 3). Fredell proposes a very different--and no less elaborate--explanation for the manuscript evidence: "Textual variants, marginalia, and layout indicate Lancastrian producers first issued versions dedicated to Henry, 'then created manuscripts of "Confesso" as artifacts' of the earlier Ricardian period"(1) [emphasis mine]. Thus for Fredell, "any pre-1399 version of the 'Confessio' is a speculative reconstruction at best whose first witnesses long post-date the Henrician version; that the Henrician version survives only from the time that Henry seized the throne of England; and that the surviving versions of the Ricardian 'Confessio' thus are very likely influenced by the Henrician version, not the other way around" (19). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fredell, Joel Published Fredell, Joel. "The Gower Manuscripts: Some Inconvenient Truths." Viator 41.1 (2010), pp. 231-50. ISSN 0083-5897 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 Gower Manuscripts: Some Inconvenient Truths 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 Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In retelling the story of Apollonius of Tyre, Gower added the passages emphasizing Antiochus' and Apollonius' grief at the real or apparent death of their wives. In their different responses, Lim argues, in this essay heavily informed by Judith Butler's analysis of the discursive construction of family and of the constitutive power of loss, Gower explores how grief either threatens both the nuclear family and the properly gendered roles on which it is based or reaffirms the family through socially constructed rituals. Gower is alone in attributing Antiochus' incest with his daughter specifically to his grief at the loss of his wife rather than to his encounter with her suitors. His turn from protector to predator illustrates the necessity of some device to hold a ruler's power in check, and thus both the force and the perpetual necessity of social conventions. Apollonius' grief is described at greater length as he is completely overcome, and he too temporarily loses power both as ruler and as father. He re-establishes his family, however, by "socializing his grief in a controlled and structured manner" (343). As he places his wife's coffin into the sea, he assures her proper burial and commemoration in a letter in which he also resumes his authority as king. He places his daughter in a foster family, reasserting the nuclear ideal, and he explicitly anticipates her future marriage with his promise not to shave his beard, reaffirming exogamic family relations in contrast to Antiochus' abuse of his daughter. And he leads a solemn public mourning for his wife upon his return to Tyre, uniting his grief to that which they endured at his departure and reaffirming his status as their ruler. The narrative thus assumes a paradoxical form, for it "allocates more space to elaborating scenes of loss and memorialization than depicting interactions among Apollonius, his wife, and Thaise as a family, and in this manner, the integrity of the family unit depends upon representations of loss. Not only does loss constitute the individual in specific ways, it also determines how the family is thought of as a 'natural' unit of society" (343). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lim, Gary Published Lim, Gary. "Constructing the Virtual Family: Socializing Grief in John Gower's 'Tale of Apollonius of Tyre'." Exemplaria 22 (2010), pp. 326-48. ISSN 1699-3225 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 Constructing the Virtual Family: Socializing Grief in John Gower's 'Tale of Apollonius of Tyre' 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 Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In "Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature," Roger Ladd traces representations of merchants in later medieval English literature, "from the antimercantilism of William Langland's 'Piers Plowman' to the promercantile charity of the York Mercers' 'Last Judgement'" (157). Ladd is interested in the peculiar "ideological dialectic" of medieval merchants, "caught between the demands of their commerce and the church's skepticism of their financial practice" (20). The introductory chapter surveys some of the medieval and modern debates over the roles of merchants within communities, and grounds those theoretical debates in nods to historical mercantile figures such as Nicholas Brembre. Subsequent chapters are devoted to "Piers Plowman" (Chapter 2), Chaucer (Chapter 4), early fifteenth-century texts such as "The Book of Margery Kempe," "The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye," and the "Tale of Beryn" (Chapter 5), and the York Cycle (Chapter 6). Of particular interest to Gowerians is Ladd's third chapter, "The Mirour de l'Omme and Gower's London Merchants," in which Ladd suggests the poem is a kind of apologia for merchants. Ladd posits that "the poem's direct engagement with merchants' point of view suggests that Gower at least prepared for the possibility that merchants would read his poem" (50). The strength of Ladd's analysis stems from his interrogation of mercantile diction in the poem suggesting an audience that would "understand the business register" (54) at work, so to speak. For example, Ladd astutely examines Gower's use of terms such as "bargaign" or "essier" to foreground his critique of the merchants, and Ladd supports his analysis with deft references to documentary evidence in guild records and legal documents where such terms are used contemporaneously in the mercantile community. While these close readings are illuminating and crafty (pun intended), Ladd misses an opportunity to apply the import of such an argument to our understanding Gower's possible audiences. As Gower scholarship becomes more and more interested in the multilingual-nature of Gower's works, and of Gower's cultural environment, such studies can only further our understanding of who may have been reading Gower's non-English writings. While Ladd mentions briefly such debates over Gower's readership (and medieval readerly practices generally), his perceptive textual analysis would appear to have greater import on that issue than is covered. [BWG. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ladd, Roger A Published Ladd, Roger A. "Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature." New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010 ISBN 978-0-230-62043-8 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 Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Palgrave Macmillan, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Hume, Cathy Published Hume, Cathy. "Why did Gower Write the Traitié?" In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 263-75. Gower Subject Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Review Agreeing with others' recent rejection of the once-general theory that Gower wrote the Traitié as a wedding present for his wife, or as "a clever virtuoso French reworking of the Confessio" (266) to which it is attached in many manuscripts, Hume finds a clue to Gower's motivation in the balades' focus on adultery. "What is most striking, in my view," she notes, "is that [the Traitié] "shows signs of being addressed to a reader (or readers) who is (or are) already engaged in adultery" (267). Indeed, "there are several indications that the point at issue is not embarking on adultery but carrying on with it, failing to repent of it, or failing to stop when warned" (267). Another clue Hume pursues is "the poem's [i.e., the Traitié's] preoccupation with kings" (269). Observing that the Mirour de l'Omme also names many kings, she finds "striking similarities" with the treatment of David there and in the Traitié balade XIV (268), including God's punishment on the adulterous ruler and his people, bringing the former low and suffering upon the latter (269-70). She then examines a theory first proposed by Gardiner Stillwell in 1948 that perhaps Gower intended Edward III and Alice Perrers as his targets, countering the problem of so early a composition date as October 1376-June 1377, when Edward died, with the assertion that no hard evidence exists to pinpoint when Gower wrote the Traitié (273). The choice of French, then, "would be readily explained by [it] being the dominant language of Edward's court" 274). But there are other possibilities too. "Another . . . is that the intended addressee is John of Gaunt, the other notorious royal adulterer of the period"--a suggestion she credits in a note to "Mark Ormrod . . . in conversation" (274). If reforming either of these "royal" adulterers was Gower's purpose, then "the envoy, the prefatory French prose and the concluding Latin [are] all a way of deflecting our attention from the daring agenda and addressee of the original poem" (275). "If so," she asks further, "the reason for this smokescreen would be Gower's desire to give his elegant (if rather hectoring) ballade sequence a longer life once its original purpose had been superseded: events moved on, whether or not Gower ever delivered the poem to either Edward or Gaunt, and the poem could no longer stand on its own" (275). The answer to such questions, Hume concludes, is beyond us, but we can at least "reject Gower's claim that it [the Traitié] was originally composed with 'tout le monde' ('all the world') in mind" (275).] [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 Why did Gower Write the Traitié? 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 Bowers re-examines the chronology and the historical setting of Gower's and Chaucer's major works, particularly Chaucer's LGW, in order to reassess their literary relationship and also to offer a rather novel view of their respective reputations at the end of the 1390's. Following Paul Strohm and Kathryn Lynch, he places the composition of the F Prologue of LGW after 1392. Coming that late, it reflects Chaucer's use both of the Prologue to CA and also of Clanvowe's Boke of Cupide. Chaucer's borrowing, Bowers suggests, is consistent with his rewriting of Gower's tales of Florent and Constance in WBT and MLT, and Bowers describes the portrayal of the Man of Law as a friendly caricature of Gower himself. His revision of the LGW Prologue, Bowers claims, "reflects Chaucer's insecurity at the court of an increasingly volatile monarch" (286), and he contrasts Chaucer's "retreat" (286) into a "'closet' project not meant for courtly readers" (282) with Gower's cultivation of the Lancastrians, by which he became "temporarily their most-favoured poet" (287). It was Gower's "preeminence as the London author of English, Latin and French poetry during the 1390s," Bowers concludes, that served "as impetus for Chaucer's competitive, creative responses in his Canterbury Tales but also in his Legend of Good Women" (287). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bowers, John Published Bowers, John. "Rival Poets: Gower's Confessio and Chaucer's Legend of Good Women." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 276-87. 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 Rival Poets: Gower's Confessio and Chaucer's Legend of Good Women 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 Galloway finds a "devastatingly sceptical scrutiny" of earlier literary dream-visions in what is likely the first instance of a dream in Gower's writing, the portrait of Somnolence in MO 5180-96. "If a dream vision is supposed to be a disturbing revelation, here it is a comforting fraud. If it is traditionally brought on by a dreamer falling asleep in the lap of nature's bounty, here it is the result of a willed desire to remain in bed. . . ." (294). The same themes – the tension between transcendent authority and self-serving purpose and between rationality and mere appetite – Galloway also finds in the major dream episodes in both VC and CA. In VC 1, which is ostensibly about the rebels' surrender of reason to sensual desire, the poet's overt and conscious shaping of the dream, including a displacement of Nature from her central roles, creates "an unsettling analogy between the rebels' deforming appetite and the writer's literary manipulation" (196). Gower characterizes his vision as a "waking sleep," which "epitomizes his difficult balance between a writer's own desires and those of the disruptive social world that he is analyzing, and between a self-conscious emphasis on control and a claim to transcendent inspiration" (298). In CA 4, Amans' wish not to awaken from his gratifying fantasy of being with his beloved placed appetite securely over visionary authority and ominously anticipates Ceix and Alceone's own responsibility for "the horrible outcome of their story" (302). Gower's shifts of emphasis amount to a major reassessment of the dream-vision form, one that, by undermining its own claims, contributed to its demise, but echoes of Gower's explorations of "intellection driven by appetite" (302) can be found, Galloway concludes, in later English literature outside the dream-vision tradition. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Galloway, Andrew Published Galloway, Andrew. "Reassessing Gower's Dream-Visions." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 288-303. 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 Reassessing Gower's Dream-Visions 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 Driver considers Gower's afterlife in the form of the choric figure in Shakespeare's "Pericles." The play itself, she notes, draws upon both Gower's "Apollonius of Tyre" and his "Constance." Shakespeare's choice to cast Gower and never to give more than a passing reference to Chaucer stems from their respective reputations in Shakespeare's day and may reflect either Shakespeare's own Roman Catholic leanings (the evidence for which Driver surveys) or Gower's reputation as a moral teacher. It is as teacher that Gower is most commonly portrayed in modern productions, though sometimes without reference to his real biography. Driver gives greatest attention to a 2004 production at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in which Gower was portrayed by an actress, Brenda Wehle. The resulting shift of focus to the agency of the female characters in the play, Driver maintains, is not inconsistent either with the story or with its original setting in CA, which "in some sixty-five stories celebrates women's strength, power, patience under adversity and in some cases their resistance to culturally constructed gender roles" (324). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Driver, Martha W Published Driver, Martha W. "Conjuring Gower in 'Pericles'." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 315-25. 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 Conjuring Gower in 'Pericles' 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 This volume contains twenty-five essays selected and fully revised from seventy-eight papers read at the 2008 International Congress of the John Gower Society 1408-2008: The Age of Gower, in conjunction with Cardiff University Centre for the Study of Medieval Society and Culture, and the Department of English at Queen Mary University of London, who acted as hosts. [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dutton, Elisabeth, Hines, John, and Yeager, R. F, eds. Published Dutton, Elisabeth, Hines, John, and Yeager, R. F, eds. "John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition." Westfield Medieval Studies, 3 . Cambridge: Brewer, 2010 ISBN 9781843842507 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Federico. Sylvia. Published Federico, Sylvia. "Queer Times: Richard II in the Poems and Chronicles of Late Fourteenth-Century England." Medium Aevum 79.1 (2010): 25-46. ISSN 0025-8385. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Federico examines the "idea of royal queerness" in English literature produced between the mid-1380s and the early 1390s (i.e., before the Lancastrian propagandists), exploring how details of literature by Chaucer, Gower, Walsingham, and Henry Knighton "uncannily predict[s]" Lancastrian depictions of Richard II. By disturbing our ideas of past, present, and future, Federico suggests, the literature can be seen to participate in "queer historicism" (26). Used by Lancastrians, but not invented by them, the "discourse of the king's perversion" has "Edwardian precedents" that "brought the word 'sodomite' into the later fourteenth-century narrative of failed kings" (33). Subsequently, Federico argues, no pre-Lancastrian writer actually accused Richard of sodomy, but they engaged the "cultural discourse of sexual misrule . . . as a kind of code with which to speak about unnatural politics" (33), Chaucer doing so in "The Miller's Tale," Maidstone in his "Concordia," and Gower in Book VII of CA, where Lechery is postponed as a topic and Politics takes its place temporarily. Warnings against womanish behavior recur in Book VII, and in the plough imagery and oblique reference to unnaturalness in lines 4215-25, Gower "seems to warn against the specifically queer type of lust we have come to associate with Richard II" (40). Furthermore, Federico suggests, Gower's seriatim revisions to CA, while not indicating that he was a "closet Lancastrian," show that he "entertained the desire for another," duly fulfilled when Richard was replaced by Henry, a "less legitimate but preferable man" (41). [MA.Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 27.1]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Queer Times: Richard II in the Poems and Chronicles of Late Fourteenth-Century England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay is virtually identical to the previously published essay of the same title (In "Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c.1100-c.1500. }Ed. Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn and Collette, Caroline and Kowaleski, Maryanne and Mooney, Linne R and Putter, Ad and Trotter, David. (York: York Medieval Press, 2009, pp. 135-45.) In it, Yeager sums up the most important of his earlier work on Gower's use of French and adds some new details, particularly on the "Traitié." MO, he believes, was written in two stages: the largest part of the work was composed in French on the model of Henry of Lancaster's "Livre des Seyntz Medicines" and for the same aristocratic audience; the concluding prayer to Mary, however, was added to make the work more suitable for the Austin canons of St Mary Overeys with whom Gower had taken up residence after 1378. CB is the later of Gower's two ballade collections as evidenced by its use of an envoy, and conceived as a response to the popular "Livre des Cent Ballades," it was addressed to an audience of "French chevalier poets" (142) of the sort with whom the future Henry IV associated during the early 1390s. The "Traitié" is the earlier composition. As evidence of its readership, Yeager reconsiders the identity of the "Quixley" who names himself as the author of the English translation in BL MS Stowe 951. Rather than the small landowner chosen by MacCracken, Yeager offers instead a Robert de Quixley, prior of Nostell Priory, near York, between 1393 and 1427. Nostell was also house of Austin canons, suggesting both the nature of Gower's original readership – identical to that which Yeager proposes for the completed MO--and the means of transmission to the translator. The very fact of the translation also attests to the decline in the use of French after 1399. Yeager notes that Gower's only known composition in French after Henry's accession is the pair of ballades that preface the CB in the sole surviving manuscript, dedicating the collection to the new king, and there, his reference to the Latin verses that follow the two ballades as being in "perfit langage" is itself a comment on the status of French and Gower's choice to use either English or Latin for all of the work he composed during the final decade of his life. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R. F. "John Gower's French and His Readers." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John and Yeager, R. F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 304-14. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Manuscripts and Textual Studies Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's French and His Readers. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ganim explores the different forms of medieval cosmopolitanism, reaching the conclusion that both cosmopolitanism and anti-cosmopolitanism could and did exist at once in many situations in the Middle Ages. This, he suggests, is a useful reminder to not misunderstand these aspects of the Middle Ages as monolithic. Ganim examines the presentation of the Middle Ages in three post-Cold War texts: the film "Destiny" (1999), the novel "Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree" (1993), and the novel "Dictionary of the Khazars" (1984). He asserts, "They represent a turn towards the Middle Ages after the Cold War, and they do so in the context of how we should accommodate differences within and between cultures, and how human rights can be extended, defended, or negotiated in those different cultures" (7). The fictionalized Middle Ages represented in these texts depict "the Middle Ages as uncertain, as complex and divided as the present," not as a paradise "but a continual double of the present" (10-11). Ganim proceeds to offer a history of medieval cosmopolitan thought, explaining that medieval political thought was less concerned with exterior forces than with managing internal affairs: "it never quite gets around to thinking about the other" (14). Ganim then discusses the beginning stages and current moment of work on medieval cosmopolitanism before providing his own readings of "Troilus and Criseyde," "Confessio Amantis," and "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville." Ganim suggests that Gower, in the Prologue to CA, "consistently argues away difference," opting instead to advocate for the eventual unity at the end of time, even as he seems to deny the possibility of ultimate unity because of the "innate divisions within each human" (23). Ganim concludes that medieval political thought made no distinction between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism: "Thus, individual writers and thinkers in the Middle Ages could be both xenophobic and cosmopolitan, both curious and closeminded, either at particular points in their careers or, more typically, within the same text" (25).] [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ganim, John. Published Ganim, John. "Cosmopolitanism and Medievalism." Exemplaria; 2010; 22(1): 5-27. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cosmopolitanism and Medievalism. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Jose's abstract is as follows: "This thesis discusses presentations of madness in medieval literature, and the ways in which these presentations are affected by (and effect) ideas of gender. It includes a discussion of madness as it is commonly presented in classical literature and medical texts, as well as an examination of demonic possession (which shares many of the same characteristics of madness) in medieval exempla. These chapters are followed by a detailed look at the uses of madness in Malory's "Morte Darthur," Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and in two autobiographical accounts of madness, the "Book of Margery Kempe" and Hoccleve's "Series." The experience of madness can both subvert and reinforce gender roles. Madness is commonly seen as an invasion of the self, which, in a culture which commonly identifies masculinity with bodily intactness, can prove problematic for male sufferers. Equally, madness, in prompting violent, ungoverned behaviour, can undermine traditional definitions of femininity. These rules can, however, be reversed. Malory's "Morte Darthur" presents a version of masculinity which is actually enhanced by madness; equally divergent is Margery Kempe's largely positive account of madness as a catalyst for personal transformation. While there is a certain consistency in the literary treatment of madness--motifs and images are repeated across genres--the way in which these images are used can alter radically. There is no single model of madness in medieval literature: rather, it is always fluid. Madness, like gender, remains open to interpretation." Chapter 5, pp. 180-218, is on Gower--CA primarily, with occasional reference to VC. She summarizes her argument thusly: "There is no one unifying pattern of madness in the 'Confessio Amantis,' as we have seen with other authors: rather, madness occurs in a number of different, but interconnected, ways. Gower, unique among the authors I examine, uses madness primarily as a political metaphor. However, this use quickly becomes intertwined with those other connotations of madness: bestiality, unrestrained sexuality, gender slippage. If the 'Confessio Amantis' is a hybrid text, part confession, part mirror for princes, part collection of exempla, then Gower's uses of madness are a fitting match for this hybridity" (180). [RFY. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Jose, Laura. Published Jose, Laura. "Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval Literature." Ph.D. diss. Durham University, 2010. Supervisor: Corinne Saunders. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/217/ Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Madness and Gender in Late-Medieval Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Carlson's essay is difficult to summarize. His own attempt, in his published abstract, reads as follows: "The English writer John Gower (d. 1408) fashioned parts of his Latin poem on the peasant revolt of 1381 out of materials taken from Ovid: topics from the post-relegation verse and 'Heroides' colour a long section shaped by the matter of Achaemenides from the 'Metamorphoses' and concluded with the matter of Carmentis from the 'Fasti'. The analysis establishes the quality of Gower's knowledge of the Ovidian corpus and his skill in deploying references to Ovid for his own literary-political purpose" (293). In essence, the article provides an extended set of footnotes to Book I of the VC. Carlson identifies line-by-line (and sometimes word-by-word) Gower's Ovidian borrowings from several works, most from "Tristia" and "Ex Ponto," and shows how he adapted them to suit his description of the Peasants' Revolt. Anyone studying, or even planning to read, the "Visio" would do well to begin with this essay. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R. Published Carlson, David R. "A Fourteenth-Century Anglo-Latin Ovidian: The 'Liber Exulis' in John Gower's 1381 'Visio Anglie' ('Vox Clamantis' I.1359-1592)." Classica et Mediaevalia 61 (2010): 293-335. Gower Subject Vox Clamatis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Fourteenth-Century Anglo-Latin Ovidian: The 'Liber Exulis' in John Gower's 1381 'Visio Anglie' ('Vox Clamantis' I.1359-1592). Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Breen's trope on Gower's line in her title notwithstanding, her study of MS Bodley 581--a geomancy produced for Richard, but "like Gower's dedication of the 'Confessio Amantis' [which she assumes was in fact presented to the king] it was in all likelihood a failed gift" (123), because the manuscript shows no signs that Richard opened it--her essay has very little to do with Gower. Rather, it focusses on "Piers Plowman" and the "Secretum Secretorum." She notes that Gower "groups geomancy with sorcery but does not condemn it outright" (140); that although Bodley 581 "is not literary in any traditional sense of the term, it does occupy some of the same cultural terrain" as "Piers Plowman" and "the more courtly works of Chaucer and Gower . . . . In the 'Confessio Amantis,' Genius introduces geomancy and proscribes it at the same time, describing its practice and mythical origins even as he warns against it" (159). Breen sees the compiler of Bodley 581 seeking "solutions for many of the problems of morality and readership addressed by Chaucer, Gower, and Langland--although by different experimental means" (160). By creating a book capable of being read without formal instruction, the Bodley 581 compiler in effect envisions Richard as representative of "the emergent reading public of late fourteenth-century England" (160), a readership that of course was Gower's as well. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Breen, Katharine. Published Breen, Katharine. "A Different Kind of Book for Richard's Sake: MS Bodley 581 as Ethical Handbook." Chaucer Review 45 (2010): 119-68. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Different Kind of Book for Richard's Sake: MS Bodley 581 as Ethical Handbook. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In this M.A. thesis Whisman addresses similarities between aspects of Milton's characterizations of Sin and Death in "Paradise Lost" and parallel characterizations in Gower's MO. He describes "common threads" (34) among several classical and Christian precedents, and explores possibilities that Milton may have known Gower's French poem, despite the fact that it was generally unknown (unacknowledged?) until G. C. Macaulay (re)discovered the only surviving manuscript of the poem in 1895, publishing his edition of it in 1899. Delight in his topic--and a touch of exuberance--is evident in Whisman's title and recurs throughout his study. He deals in many "possibilities" as he steers quickly through his secondary research, commenting on the biographies and literary status of his two poets, Milton's knowledge of CA, Spenser's possible use of CA in his "Faerie Queene" (for the Deadly Sins), the possibility that Milton could read French, Macaulay's discovery, J. S. P. Tatlock's 1906 discussion of parallels between the characterizations in MO and "Paradise Lost," John's Fisher's speculations about the physical location(s) of the MO manuscript, John Steadman's possibility that Basil's "Sixth Homily on the Hexaemeron" was a common source, and ongoing scholarly hesitancy about claiming any direct influence. Whisman adds several possible--but strained--verbal echoes between the texts and, wisely, refrains from asserting influence, direct or mediated. He does assert, however, that if direct influence were ever established, or even if a common source (beyond their "primary source," the Bible) were to be found, it would demand that we "rethink the composition" of PL (47) and "help to return Gower to a prominent place in English studies" (48). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Whisman, Derek K. Published Whisman, Derek K. "A Devil of a Coincidence: Study on Milton and Gower." M.A. Thesis. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2010. Open access at http://hdl.handle.net/10919/42655 (accessed January 22, 2023). Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Devil of a Coincidence: Study on Milton and Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In large part, Bakalian's essay is an extension of her 1998 dissertation and 2004 book-length study, "Aspects of Love in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'," reprising many of her useful generalizations about reason, nature, and female responsibility for their own rational love, and echoing her discussion of the Tale of Alceone in the CA, in which Gower "illustrates a woman who enjoys a marriage of passionate love moderated by reason" (83). Much of what is new here pertains to the "Tale of Rosiphelee" in which the protagonist "uses her reason to turn towards love" (82) and becomes like Alceone, Bakalian claims, insofar as both characters use reason to "change their worlds and achieve their desires" (83). Bakalian's technique is impressionistic appreciation of the "deftness that is Gower's hallmark" (92), underpinned by interpretative commentary and connections with analogous accounts. The "sources for Gower's Rosiphelee tale are various," Bakalian observes, "but Rosiphelee herself is Gower's own creation" (85); she then goes on to find similarities between Gower's protagonist and Chaucer's Man in Black from "Book of the Duchess," his Criseyde (discussed twice), Gower's own Amans, his Rosemund, and the fairy interlocutor of Rosiphelee's tale. Thoughtful solitude characterizes Rosiphelee for Bakalian, and the tale is made "so special" because Rosiphelee "manages to stay focused" and self-aware even when the fairy disappears suddenly, leaving the protagonist to choose to love in a "powerful ending to a romantic tale" (93). Turning to Alceone's tale, Bakalian observes that the protagonist does not speak at all, "yet she speaks through her actions which support Gower's message of truth in marriage." When Alceone's husband departs, "Gower conveys emotion brilliantly in this realistic and intelligible farewell scene" (96) through tears rather than through speech, while Alceone's later "traditional speech actions" are those of a "doting and dutiful wife . . . even in her new shape as a seabird" (97). Such claims--and there are more like it--will raise many pro-feminist eyebrows, but commenting further on several other female characters in CA, Bakalian insists that "Gower eliminates all anti-feminist and anti-matrimonial rhetoric" from the CA and "promotes women and marriage consistently in the poem" (99). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bakalian, Ellen S. Published Bakalian, Ellen S. "Using Reason to Change Their Worlds: The Tale of Rosiphelee and the Tale of Alceone in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.'" In Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010. Pp. 82-112. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Using Reason to Change Their Worlds: The Tale of Rosiphelee and the Tale of Alceone in John Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review With Chaucer as its focus, the paper surveys Chaucer's use of impersonal verbs, sorting them by syntactic and lexical criteria. It enumerates differences between Chaucer's usage and those of Gower and Langland. Based on an admittedly small data base, the paper does not draw any larger conclusions about Chaucer's practices or linguistic history, though it does suggest that his usage is more "sensitive" than that of his contemporaries. [TWM. Copyright, John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ohno, Hideshi. Published Ohno, Hideshi. "The Impersonal and Personal Constructions in the Language of Chaucer." In Osamu Imahayashi, et al. eds., Aspects of the History of English Language and Literature: Selected Papers read at SHELL 2009, Hiroshima. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2010. Pp. 115-29. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Impersonal and Personal Constructions in the Language of Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Pearsall here offers a crash course in how to read a manuscript for what it can reveal beyond the text, using the Wollaton Hall "Confessio" manuscript (WLC/LM/8) as evidentiary case. Pointing out that MS WLC/LM/8 would "stand at the very heart of the best manuscript tradition of the 'Confessio,' were it not for the absence of decoration and illustration" (60), Pearsall discusses ownership (briefly, deferring to Kate Harris's "Ownership and Readership" study), the scribe's work, including ruling of lines, punctuation, rubrication, and correction (60-65); textual identity (i.e., "recension" issues) and likely period of production (65-67). Importantly, Pearsall argues that "the reputation of the Stafford MS (now San Marino, CA, Huntington Library MS Ellesmere 26 A 17) as exceptionally early in date and possibly a presentation copy for Henry, earl of Derby, is questionable. It may be no earlier than MS Fairfax 3, completed early in Henry IV's reign, and its text, though good, is inferior to that of MS Fairfax 3, especially in its carelessness with regard to metrical final -e" (67). [RFY. Copyright, John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek. Published Pearsall, Derek. "The Wollaton Hall Gower Manuscript (WLC/LM/8) Considered in the Context of Other Manuscripts of the 'Confessio Amantis'." In Ralph Hanna and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2010. Pp. 57-67. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Wollaton Hall Gower Manuscript (WLC/LM/8) Considered in the Context of Other Manuscripts of the "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Like so many reference works being produced in the past few decades, the volume contains a number of signed chapters on different point of focus around its broad topic. There are seven overall sections: I) Literary Production, II) Literary Consumption, III) Literature, Clerical and Lay, IV) Literary Realities, V) Complex Identities, VI) Literary Place, Space, and Time, and VII) Literary Journeys. Each contains five signed chapters, in addition to a prologue by Treharne ("Speaking of the Medieval") and an Epilogue by Walker ("When did the 'Medieval' End"). Most Gower scholars will be unsurprised to learn that Gower lags well behind mentions of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and even John Lydgate. Indeed, many of the references to Gower (and also to these other poets) are as part of the following lists of "usual suspects:" "Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate" (27, 112); "Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate" (29, 64, 589, 728); "Chaucer, Gower, and Langland" (61, 80); "Langland, Gower, Chaucer and Hoccleve" (489); "Chaucer, Langland, Gower, and Lydgate" (542), or just "Chaucer and Gower" (587). More detailed discussions of or allusions to Gower appear in several chapters, however. In "The Professionalization of Writing," Simon Horobin uses the "Trinity Gower" as an example of sorting out the different scribal hands in a "Confessio Amantis" manuscript and other contemporary texts (59-65). Similarly, Siân Echard, in "Insular Romance," goes into a brief discussion of Gower's trilingual oeuvre (162-63), and in "Writing Heresy, and the Anticlerical Muse," Mishtooni Bose goes into some detail about the participation of the "Vox Clamantis" in anticlerical tropes concerning land ownership (284) and use of a prophetic tone (291-92). Alison Wiggins includes Gower and his background in her discussion of London in "London Poets" (541-42); Ralph Hanna refers to him as a "gentryman" (127), and Stephen Kelly mentions his depiction of the 1380 rebels as "braying monsters" (371). [RAL. Copyright. John Gower Newsletter. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Treharne, Elaine, ed. Walker, Greg, ed. Green, William Green, assistant ed. Published Treharne, Elaine, and Greg Walker, with the assistance of William Green, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Gower Subject Background 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 The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review It is no news to Gowerians that R. F. Yeager values Gower's poetry, but this essay articulates why he thinks everyone should do so, summarized in his closing comment: "what ought to distinguish Gower the Poet, with his fluency in three languages, Italianate ambition and, as his output suggests, indefatigable energy, is his repeated insistence in work after work that poetry should serve society. Poetry should make things better. If a poet fulfilled his role well--and readers read with care--then poetry probably did" (492). Yeager neither ignores nor shrugs off comparison with Chaucer--that recurrent motif of much Gower criticism and commentary--but opens it out at points to comparisons with Dante, with Langland, and with Milton, and uses these comparisons to establish the depth of Gower's desire for lasting poetic fame ("Italianate ambition"), his audience awareness, his social politics, and his multiple voices (trilingualism, "vox populi," "vox clamantis," open "speak[ing] to power" [487], "English vocal range" [491], etc.). Yeager considers form as meaning in Gower's three major works and in a range of less frequently considered ones: "In Praise of Peace," "Cinkante Balades" XLIII, and, from among the shorter Latin poems, "Quicquid homo scribat," "Est amor," "Ecce, patet tensus," and the possibly spurious "Eneidos bucolis." In these readings, Yeager attends to Gower's biography, linguistic subtleties, narrative and prosodic techniques, sources, historical contexts, critical traditions, and more. Notable, too, are Yeager's recurrent enlivening glimpses of Gower as a person when, for example, "[i]magining Gower imagining" his audience before taking "quill or stylus in hand" (481), when observing moments of personal sorrow and "grace" (486) in Gower's Latin lyrics, or when showing that "even when harnessed for service most public poetry was, for Gower, a living means of self-expression as well" (487). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. " Published Yeager, R. F. "The Poetry of John Gower." In Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell; 2010. Pp. 476-95. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Biography of Gower Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetry of John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This volume collects twenty essays on five Canterbury tales (Miller, Wife of Bath, Shipman, Merchant, and Pardoner), spanning Beidler's career-long engagement with Chaucer. All but one have been previously published, most since 2000, but a few hearkening back to the 1970's. Two compare Chaucer's versions to Gower's in narratives both tell: "Transformations in Gower's Tale of Florent and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale" (pp. 72-90), which appeared first in R.F. Yeager, ed., Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange (Victoria, BC: University of Victoria Press, 1991, 100-14, rev. JGN), and the single essay to be published here for the first time, "The Owl Similies in the Tale of Florent and the Wife of Bath's Tale," pp. 105-15. The essay expands on the paper of the same title Beidler delivered in London in 2008, at the inaugural Gower Society Congress. His focus is "the striking image of a man hiding like an owl after he marries an ugly old bride" (p.105) which Gower and Chaucer both include. Chaucer borrows this image from Gower ("Gower's tale both preceded and influenced Chaucer's," p. 108) but, Beidler argues, "Gower and Chaucer make quite different uses of the owl similes in their tales and . . . the simile is more organically integrated by Gower than by Chaucer" (p. 108). Gower compares Florent to an owl that travels by night in order not to be seen with his unattractive bride (p. 110). Florent's shame is of a piece with his entire character as Gower limns it, Beidler shows. "For Florent, it is all a question of hiding his wife--by banishment to an island, by cover of night, by closed doors, by clothing--so that 'noman' can see how he has aligned himself with so ugly a bride. Significantly, the two are wedded not in the daytime, as was typical for a wedding, but 'in the nyht' [CA I.366] (p. 112). Beidler also notes the analogous significance of Florent's choice: for a man so motivated primarily by reputation, to have the world think his wife hideous would be a frightful fate indeed. Chaucer's nameless rapist-knight is "never once . . . said to be concerned about his worldly fame or his reputation among others" (p.114). Moreover, because Chaucer's Loathly Lady accompanies the knight to Arthur's court, to claim her promise when her answer prevails--unlike her counterpart who waits for Florent to return--there is no question of keeping the marriage a secret. "Chaucer's knight's hiding like an owl, then, has nothing to do with concealing either his bride or his marriage . . . . Rather . . . [he] hides like an owl for no other reason than that he wants to avoid having to look at his ugly bride between his morning wedding and the approaching night when he must pay his marital debt to her" (pp. 114-15). Beidler concludes that, because "owls by nature hide during the day to avoid being seen . . . not . . . to avoid having to look at their wives" (p. 115), the simile is less naturally adapted by Chaucer from Gower's more fully complementary original. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beidler, Peter G Published Beidler, Peter G. "Chaucer's Canterbury Comedies: Origins and Originality." Seattle: Coffeetown Press, 2011 ISBN 9781603810913 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's Canterbury Comedies: Origins and Originality Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Coffeetown Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The volume makes available in published form Faccon's 2007 dissertation, "La Fortuna de la Confessio Amantis en la Península Ibérica: Estudio Comparativo de las Traducciones y Edicíon de MS Madrid, Real Biblioteca, II-3088 (rev. JGN 37.2). She presents a transcription and palaeographic discussion of Books I-IV in the Portuguese MS, a critical edition of those Books, a discussion of the courts of Castile and Portugal as literary environments for the translations of Portuguese and Castilian Confessios; includes a chronology of "references, studies and editions" of the Spanish and Portuguese translations from 1433-38 through her own doctoral defense in 2007 (pp. 32-35). Along with the text, readers may find useful the palaeographical section, for its reproduction of elements of the quite difficult Portuguese hand, as well as the full-page reproductions of selected folia (e.g., fol. 65v, p. 153), in black-and-white.] [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Faccon, Manuela Published Faccon, Manuela. "Fortuna de la Confessio Amantis en la Península Ibérica: el testimonio portugués." Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarius de Zaragoza, 2011 ISBN 9788415031352 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 Fortuna de la Confessio Amantis en la Península Ibérica: el testimonio portugués Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Prensas Universitarius de Zaragoza, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "For late medieval English writers, temporality, the experience of living in time, proved a powerful tool. Manipulations of temporality allow authors to reshape the past, present, and future in order to create sophisticated literary meditations on political power. For example, Yorkist texts such as the "Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV" rely on a presumption of temporal continuity when they depict the Lancastrian Henry IV's usurpation of the throne sixty years earlier as a violent break in English history--a break that only the advent of Edward IV could make right. I show that these works not only rely on temporality as a thematic concern (as in the case of Edward IV), but also engage with this concept through their form. These works create their own textual temporalities, thereby enlisting readers in their politically-inflected understandings of human history. Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' reveal the power, dangers, and limitations of textual temporalities produced through form. Both poems sustain multiple temporalities within their borders, and both rely on linear narrative to structure the reader's engagement with these temporalities. 'The Canterbury Tales' concerns itself with the English present, mapping its relationship to the past and uncovering the omissions, rifts, and acts of violence required to construct this present. 'Confessio Amantis,' in contrast, focuses on the present as it becomes the future, anticipating the immanent collision of history and eternity. Occupying the charged time of the end, the 'Confessio' longs for temporal unity inaccessible in the present. In its search for a new Arion, the 'Confessio' calls on the formal properties of poetry to set time right, to render whole its hybrid mixture of genres and times." Author/Editor Author/Editor Meyers, Alyssa Published Meyers, Alyssa. "Telling Time: Temporality and Narrative in Late Medieval English Literature." PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2011. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. 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 Telling Time: Temporality and Narrative in Late Medieval English Literature Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The Trentham MS (British Library Add. MS 59495) is well known to Gowerians. It contains our only texts of "In Praise of Peace" and the "Cinkante Balades" as well as copies of the "Traitié" and some of the minor Latin poems, and it is expressly addressed to the newly crowned Henry IV. Its contents are usually examined separately, however. Bahr studies the manuscript as a whole, but not as the simple product of Gower's attempt to honor and flatter the king. He treats the collection itself as an independent aesthetic object, and he argues that the choice and the arrangement of the texts open up interpretive possibilities that both enrich the reading of each separate work (in many cases running counter to their ostensible meaning) and that add up to a whole that is different from, and greater than, the sum of its parts. Justification for treating the book as a single object is provided by the evidence of its careful design. Though diverse in contents, it is not difficult to find continuing themes, in particular a recurring emphasis upon kingship; the texts are provided with links that help tie them into a coherent whole; and there is a striking symmetry in the arrangement of the texts, as Bahr illustrates in his outline on pp. 225-26. The "Cinkante Balades" stand at the center, and the three texts on either side answer to each other either formally or thematically or both. The most surprising correspondence is that between "In Praise of Peace" and the "Traitié," standing opposite one another in the manuscript, Gower's only two independent compositions in rime royal, and each containing precisely 385 lines. That pairing, and the differences that exist between these two works and the other pairs, draw our attention to the possibility of reading each work in light of the other rather than taking each solely on its own. In this broader reading, not everything is as it seems to be. The celebration of Henry at the beginning yields to hesitation, reservations, ambivalence at the end, suggesting a tension between initial hopes and darker possibilities. Bahr finds the same sort of ambivalence emerging from the opening texts themselves when they are viewed in relation to Gower's own earlier writings. As has been noted before, "In Praise of Peace" reverses the roles of Solomon and Alexander from their use as examples in "Confessio Amantis," suggesting an instability and a "tension between moral idealism and political reality" (231) that might apply to Henry too. The opening of "Rex Celi Deus" repeats lines used in a passage laudatory of Richard II in Book VI of "Vox Clamantis," invoking in a different way the possibility of a fall. The "Cinkante Balades" at the center of the book also constitutes a rewriting, in this case of authorial history, since Gower had twice before (in "Mirour de l'Omme" and at the end of the "Confessio Amantis") turned away from the composition of lyrics about love. Bahr's discussion of the "Cinkante Balades" emphasizes the connections it offers between the "bon amour" that it celebrates and the peace and political harmony that Gower urges in "In Praise of Peace" and the subtle ways in which ambivalences in the treatment of love itself undercut some of the ostensible celebration. In the two works that follow, "Ecce patet tensus" offers a blind and tyrannical Cupid as a mirror image to Gower's real king, and the "Traitié" continues the emphasis upon kingly conduct while also, by its juxtaposition of exempla, raising more questions about the virtuous force of love. If these latter texts have a relevance to Henry, Bahr observes, they do so only in the context of the manuscript as a whole in which they are contained. But his evidence, which we have only barely summarized here, lends strong support to his conclusion regarding the manuscript's "codicological form": "My larger argument about Trentham . . . is not that it conveys a specific 'message,' or is 'about' a specific figure. It is an artfully constructed meditation on the multiple natures and implications of kingship, and the very complexity of its construction serves to acknowledge both the visceral pleasure of using aesthetic modes to grapple with such vitally important questions and the impossibility of creating clear-cut 'propositional content' as answers to them" (261). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bahr, Arthur W Published Bahr, Arthur W. "Reading Codicological Form in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011), pp. 219-62. ISSN 0190-2407 Gower Subject In Praise of Peace Minor Latin Poetry Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz 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 Reading Codicological Form in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gilbert Maghfeld, "ironmonger, credit broker, and moneylender" (65), is already known to literary scholars for his financial dealings with both Chaucer and Gower. He was also cited by Manly as the possible model for Chaucer's satiric portrait of the Merchant. Galloway takes a broader view, using Maghfeld's surviving account book (which records his transactions with the two poets) as the starting point for an investigation of the ways in which mercantile practices and "technologies" (69) inform late fourteenth-century English poetry, even when the poets are not directly discussing either merchants or commerce. After summarizing Maghfeld's career, pointing out the many connections between his and Chaucer's worlds, Galloway discusses the metaphors of credit, debt, and accounting in "Piers Plowman," suggesting that Langland had a more sophisticated understanding of mercantile commerce than he has been given credit for, and he examines Chaucer's use of the vocabulary of accounting and moneylending, particularly in the Wife of Bath's and Shipman's Tales. The points of intersection between Maghfeld and Gower are provided by Maghfeld's 1392 loan to Gower to purchase a "cheste" and Maghfeld's acceptance of a copy of Brunetto Latini's "Trésor" as security on a loan to a certain Francis Winchester in 1393. Only in the "Mirour de l'Omme," Galloway notes, might Gower have directly addressed members of the merchant class regarding their profession. The "Confessio Amantis" contains little direct reference either to London or to commerce, and its references to money and contracts, "the basic technologies of mercantilism" (106), are not marked by satire or even by direct connection to the mercantile class in which they arose. The poem "participates more dynamically in such technology," Galloway asserts (106), in its repeated references to "chestes" or "cofres," the basic tool for both security and shipment at that time. In the discussion of Avarice, the "cheste" becomes the focus for the meditation on "use" versus hoarding. In the tale of "The Two Coffers," the grumbling courtiers are cast as "nervous merchant venturers," equally concerned with making the correct choice and with the profit that they might thereafter win. And in "Apollonius of Tyre," the "cheste" is a coffin, but it becomes the means of transporting the treasure that it contains, not without regard to the risk that is entailed. Gower may have viewed his own poem as a type of "treasure," imitating the form and purpose of Latini's "Trésor." It is also a type of account book, of "love's winnings" (110); and in its use of rhetoric, it demonstrates a power of language analogous to a merchant's, to commute and transform the experience with which it is concerned. In his final section, Galloway discovers an important biographical connection between Maghfeld and Thomas Usk, who in his previously undocumented role as sheriff's clerk served four writs upon the moneylender in 1383. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Galloway, Andrew Published Galloway, Andrew. "The Account Book and the Treasure: Gilbert Maghfeld's Textual Economy and the Poetics of Mercantile Accounting in Ricardian Literature." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011), pp. 65-124. ISSN 0190-2407 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 The Account Book and the Treasure: Gilbert Maghfeld's Textual Economy and the Poetics of Mercantile Accounting in Ricardian Literature Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Stegner asserts that in the "Confessio" "Gower represents a recuperative form of forgetting in order to signal the difficulty of reconciling auricular confession with narratives of desire" (489). Unlike the many who see Amans as more bewildered than sinful, and his confession as a deliberate amorous trope, Stegner treats Gower's Lover as a Christian sinner in need of penitential healing, and thus seeks to "reveal the deep pressure between the penitent's memory of past transgressions and his reformation through confession" (489). This allows Stegner ultimately to project the methodology of Amans' restitution as a blueprint for social recuperation: "Gower's concentration on the social . . . extends his understanding of memory to include productively forgetting the limitations of human agency. In holding on to and letting go of his memories, Gower indicates how remembering an English society bound together in unity first depends on forgetting the divisions that fracture the kingdom. This focus on forgetting present conflicts and remembering a unified past takes on a particular significance in the tumultuous political climate in which the 'Confessio' was composed and revised. In this sense, Gower uses memory and forgetting as one possible strategy for reconciling England's Ricardian past with its Lancastrian present and future" (507). The bulk of the essay, however, is very little about healing a fractured society; rather, Stegner focusses on the "Tale of Apollonius" in Book VIII and its presentation of incest, arguing Genius chooses the tale in order that Amans recognize himself (and his own "incest," which Stegner is hardly alone in stretching to define as "a synecdoche for amatory desire" [497] generally) in Apollonius, the better to turn the Lover toward reason, and away from "kinde." "Kinde" Stegner reads very darkly, as "bestial," in the pejorative sense, rather than "natural," as animals are, and so sinless in their irrationality. This move is essential for Stegner to complete his turn, which he does in a single, breath-taking leap: "Genius condemns the undercurrents of amatory desire by following the common medieval comparison of incest to the sexual behavior of animals" (498). Only when Amans can "forget" he ever experienced love's pull (while, like Apollonius, remembering the trial-beset journey to enlightenment), can he become a "John Gower" who "gestures toward [an] Augustinian conception of the individual mind's ascent through sensory perception to memory itself and finally beyond it to a form of mystical contemplation of God" (506-07). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stegner, Paul D Published Stegner, Paul D. "'Foryet it thou, and so wol I': Absolving Memory in 'Confessio Amantis'." Studies in Philology 108 (2011), pp. 488-507. ISSN 0039-3738 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 'Foryet it thou, and so wol I': Absolving Memory in 'Confessio Amantis' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Faccon, Manuela Published Faccon, Manuela. "Il testimone mutilo della traduzione castigliana della 'Confessio Amantis'." eHumanistica 18 (2011), pp. 366-84. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Review This Italian article by Manuela Faccon focuses on the only manuscript of the medieval Spanish version of CA, the "Confysion del Amante," translated out of the Portuguese. Her main purpose is to explain the lacunae in the translation (Book IV, chs. 17-26), which she undertakes both through a very detailed codicological examination of the manuscript and by comparing the omissions in Spanish with the Portuguese "Livro do Amante," where there is no textual gap. The thorough description of hands, layout, inks and watermarks of the "Confysion," as well as the edition of the Portuguese fragment intended to show what is missing in Spanish, are materials drawn from Faccon's dissertation, a comparative study and a critical edition of Books I-IV of the Portuguese and Spanish texts (Universitá degli Studi di Verona 2007; published in Zaragoza 2011; see the reviews in JGN 28.2 and 30.2). Here, after revision, Faccon very succinctly suggests the possibility that this fragmentary codex could be a composite of two different copies of the Spanish "Confessio" (381). Some further exploration of it would have been welcome, however, as hers is here only a suggestion, with no proof put forward. Fortunately, the increasing scholarly attention on the Iberian versions of the CA is giving us an opportunity to know these texts and their manuscripts better: some members of the Gower Society heard the paleographer Mauricio Herrero's in-depth study of the manuscript presented as a plenary lecture at the II Gower Congress in Valladolid in 2011; a revised version of his talk will be published in a collection of essays forthcoming from the University of Valladolid Press. [AS-H. Copyright JGN 31.2] 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 Il testimone mutilo della traduzione castigliana della 'Confessio Amantis'. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's choice to write in English, McCabe argues, is reflective of the poem's ambitious new moral project, to define a lay spirituality, accessible to a vernacular audience, free of clergial mediation, and focused on the immanence and accessibility of grace. McCabe's thesis touches on virtually every important issue in the recent criticism of the CA, and he can be found both drawing from and also drawing careful distinction from such scholars as Middleton, Simpson, Scanlon, Copeland, Wetherbee, and Mitchell, among several others. His argument is both wide-ranging and very closely grounded in the text, and it offers a novel view of what might be considered some of the most familiar aspects of the poem. Chapter one, on "Gower's Ovidian Voice in English," makes two main claims. First, the separate but parallel ways in which both the Prologue and the main body of the poem engage with the "Metamorphoses" helps establish the link between the larger concerns for moral and social reform of the former and the more personal amatory themes of the latter; and second (here following Wetherbee), Ovid provided an authoritative source that could be confronted directly, without mediation. In defense of the first claim, he points to the common emphasis on mutability and change (e.g. in the example of Nebuchadnezzar) and with political and psychological "division." To support its link to the "Metamorphoses," he traces the Prologue's depiction of the fallen world to the description of primal chaos with which Ovid's poem begins. He also draws an interesting link between the discontinuous argument in the Prologue and the "discontinuities and ruptures" that mark Genius' description of love. In support of his second claim, he draws a persuasive contrast between the CA and earlier medieval moralized retellings of Ovid, which substitute the glossator's authority for the poet's. Ovid speaks to us directly in the CA, McCabe asserts, and especially in the tales of metamorphosis, leaves the reader with implications that cannot be constrained even by Genius' moralization. Chapters two and three look more closely at the implications of Gower's choice to write in English. In chapter two, "English Writing and Lay Theology," McCabe detects no attempt on Gower's part to elevate the vernacular or to displace the authority of Latin. The form of the poem, he points out, preserves the hierarchy of languages, with Latin maintaining its position at the top. Gower chooses English as "an alternative medium," not only appropriate to the subject matter but also, both because of its marginal status and because of the much broader implicit audience, "likely to achieve quite different results" (89). One difference can be seen in the more reserved claims Gower makes in the opening of the CA about the reliability of the medium and the effectiveness of books, compared, for instance, to passages in VC. A more revealing difference lies in his treatment of theological subjects in the CA, which in contrast to both of Gower's earlier long poems are less abstract, less concerned with the subtleties of doctrine, and more indebted to the liturgy than to academic or clerical discourse, emphasizing "good works and due observance of traditional church practices, . . . the core of lay religious experience" (95). In chapter three, "At the Limits of Clerical Discourse," he extends the argument to embrace the other expository sections of the poem, notably Book VII and the discussion of the history of the sciences in Book IV, in both of which he finds a similar tentativeness, an awareness of their "belatedness" with regard to Latin, a similar refusal to draw upon clerical discourse, either to replace it or to claim its authority, and a similar accommodation to his vernacular audience. But far from being forced by circumstance, McCabe insists, Gower embraces his role as "burel clerk" (which he glosses as "lay," 68) and betrays his "enthusiasm for the intimate power available in the mother tongue" (101). In all three long poems, Gower appeals to the "vox populi" and he criticizes the clergy, and he "shows himself equally eager in all three poems to revitalize Christian doctrine of self and society" (116) by "finding out alternatives to clerical learning" (121). McCabe finds the key to Gower's method in the CA in the two most explicitly theological tales in Books I and II (which also provide their conclusions), "The Three Questions" and "Constantine and Sylvester." The first is marked by the inversion of weak and strong and by the exaltation of Humility, following the example of Christ, the paradox of whose incarnation (the doctrine of "kenosis") was an important theme in other fourteenth-century vernacular religious texts (121). "Constantine and Sylvester" privileges "bodies and actions" over "ideas and doctrines" (138). Together, the two tales provide a model for both the elevation of the vernacular and for the constitution of an accessible vernacular theology. Chapters four and five seek to define more precisely the nature of the poem's vernacular spirituality by examining key sections in which theological issues are not presented as explicitly. In chapter four, "Kinde Grace," McCabe returns to Ovid, particularly to the tales of metamorphosis, first as punishment, then as reward. These tales are significant first because in the very mystery of the transformations they invite a readerly response that is primarily affective and that cannot be contained by Genius' attempt to moralize, and second, because of the vagueness of agency yet the essential rightness of the outcome, they seem to display the immanence of grace in Nature, which is also to say that it is constantly present and accessible without the mediation of clergy. Love, implicated in Nature, is also shown to be linked to grace, but by way neither of allegory nor of moral prescription. "Rather, by emphasizing the provisional character of earthly love, these particular stories keep earthly love as their primary concern, but they additionally sacralize this love, thus encouraging readers to see spiritual realities that lie less beyond any textual sensus literalis than beyond earthly love itself" (190). In chapter five, "Ethics, Art, and Grace," McCabe turns to the conclusion to the poem, and he offers a reading of Amans' "beau retret" that reconciles his failure to achieve his love with the essentially optimistic theology of the rest of the poem. Amans' confession is marked in part by his effort to learn the "art" of love that will enable him to find success. The final and longest tale of the poem, "Apollonius of Tyre," is also concerned with "art," the "how to" not just of achieving love but also of ruling a kingdom; and it demonstrates how humans grow wiser through experience. The tale is also dominated by chance and unpredictability beyond the control of the best efforts of any human. The happy ending is brought about by Providence, acting, finally, in cooperation with the virtuous efforts of the characters. "On its own, art is inefficacious because good fortune does not depend finally on learning. However, in its penultimate movement through the wanderings of Apollonius, the poems affirms as a necessary coadjutor with providence a kind of learning that is reduced to the status of an improvisatory, inherently fallible art" (214-15). Such a trajectory provides a model for the final experience of Amans, whose lack of success with his lady is a reminder that failure is part of learning, and that no art can guarantee success. Amans' impotence is his final disqualification for love, and as such, it stands as a figure for all earthly love. But the ending is also a demonstration of the mysteriousness of grace, as Amans' rejection by Venus opens the way to a love that "mai noght faile" (CA VIII.2086). McCabe's conclusion emphasizes the "oblique didacticism" (227) yet strong moral commitment of Gower's "middel weie." "Gower's love ethic, like Ovid's, celebrates its evasion of textual capture, but ends not in despair but in grace" (230). McCabe's argument attributes both a greater subtlety and a greater complexity to the CA than we are accustomed to as it stakes out its own "middel weie" among recent readings of Gower's moral project. It is going to help shape our discussion of the poem for many years to come. [PN. Copyright JGN 31.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor McCabe, T. Matthew N Published McCabe, T. Matthew N. "Gower's Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the "Confessio Amantis"." Publications of the John Gower Society, 6 . Cambridge: Brewer, 2011 ISBN 9781843842835 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 Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry 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 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "The CA opens with its author's pledge to: "wryte of newe som matiere essampled of these olde wyse." Expressing a commonplace among writers of vernacular literature in late medieval England, John Gower describes authorial activity as the process of translating and assimilating pre-existing narratives. This dissertation argues that such conceptualizations of authorship were embraced by illuminators of vernacular literature in their burgeoning notion of invention before the ascendance of print: as translation and compilation provided a model of creativity founded on the alteration of models, illuminators located an ideal congenial to both the restrictions and freedoms of their own profession. The centerpiece of the study is Pierpont Morgan MS M. 126, a manuscript of the CA produced c. 1472 and made for Edward IV and his Queen Consort, Elizabeth Woodville. Although it has been acclaimed as one of the most impressive extant manuscripts of Middle English literature, it has never been the subject of a major study. The aim of the dissertation is to recognize and restore to the illustrator the power of his position between the conception of a text and the consumption of a book. Part One focuses on the illustrator's interactions with the textual voices of the CA, demonstrating how the images in nineteen manuscripts of the poem, including the Morgan CA, address the identity of the author of the poem (Chapter One); and how miniatures in the Morgan CA reinterpret its Ovidian narratives (Chapter Two). Part Two shifts attention to the illustrator's confrontation with his patrons. Although their impact on the production of this manuscript appears to have been minimal, I observe how, as patrons they furnished a visual context for the Morgan CA from within their own library of illustrated historical manuscripts (Chapter Three) and books on science (Chapter Four). Produced just before Caxton printed his first book in Westminster in 1476 and standing at the threshold of standardization, this manuscript offers a complex glimpse into the variance that epitomized creative activity in illustrated vernacular manuscripts." [JGN 33.2 and 34.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Drimmer, Sonja Published Drimmer, Sonja. "The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination: John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' (Pierpont Morgan MS M.126." PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2011. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination: John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' (Pierpont Morgan MS M.126. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, Robert R Published Edwards, Robert R. "Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late-Medieval England." Swiss Papers In English Language and Literature: SPELL 25 (2011), pp. 51-73. ISSN 0743-7226 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis In Praise of Peace Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review For Edwards, "John Gower is arguably the paradigmatic author in late-medieval England" (57). He seeks to defend this claim via a replacement, and hence a redefinition, of the relevant critical terminology. Rather than adopting the standard dichotomy of the past thirty years, of "exegesis and pedagogy" and the attempt to align authorship in the Middle Ages with "the influence of Latin traditions on European vernaculars" (52), Edwards proposes "a second set of terms--imitation and refusal--to complement exegesis and pedagogy as sources for describing medieval authorship" (52). By the former, Edwards intends a practice of "reproducing, revising, and reimagining canonical sources" with the ultimate goal of producing "an original copy that rivals yet remains subordinate to its models." (53) The contradiction inherent in this framing of purpose necessitates "refusal . . . a literary strategy that relocates authorship within a new set of terms, as a possibility strategically denied in favor of other possibilities of invention. Refusal thus repositions authors and their works with respect to literary canons, institutions, and tradition. As a gesture of difference, it also points toward the stakes of authorship in the domains of society, politics, and culture" (53). Edwards' strong claim for Gower rests upon his view, developed here in outline, that the Latin prose commentaries found in the Confessio Amantis, whether copied in the margin or into the column of text, represent Gower's adaptation of the commentary tradition by transforming its essential neutrality into interrogation. Such positioning allows Gower a form of authorial space throughout; his staged withdrawal from the poem's fiction--Amans then "John Gower," then John Gower who put pen and ink to parchment--is precisely the refusal necessary to establish authorial status. This occurs, Edwards points out, when Gower self-consciously emulates himself in his later works. On a lesser scale, the balade sequences, the minor Latin poems, and "In Praise of Peace," replicate the French-Latin-English "cursus" of his earlier, larger M), VC, and CA--the three big books, in other words, on which the head of Gower's tomb effigy rests, looking for all the world like a classical "auctor" (62-63). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 32.2] 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 Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late-Medieval England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Ovid, in his 'Ars amatoria,' adopts the didactic framework in order to elevate the tradition of Latin love elegy and make a name for himself as a poet. In contrast, three of his most famous medieval successors--Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower--invert the balance, exploiting the subject of love to instruct their readers in other topics, such as religion, philosophy, and morality. This shift in balance is related to the practice of 'ethical reading,' which emerged in medieval 'grammatica' as a way of approaching classical authors by emphasizing the ethical (and thus educational) potential of their texts. Previous scholarship has established the ethical focus of medieval grammar education and the ways in which that ethical focus influenced medieval readings of classical texts, but this scholarship has rarely continued on to discuss the influence of grammar education on medieval authors. Andreas, Jean, and Gower first encountered imaginative literature in the medieval curriculum, where the texts of classical authors were used to teach students the Latin language. In the grammar classroom, they would have been taught interpretive methods that trained them to identify the utility of what they were reading, whether that utility was conceived of in philological, ethical, philosophical, or even theological terms. Conditioned to read imaginative literature for these didactic purposes, Andreas, Jean, and Gower discovered, in Ovid's 'Ars amatoria,' a text that used love as a platform for didacticism, and a model around which to build their own literary inventions. The literary works that they created--Andreas's 'De amore' (late 12th c.), Jean's continuation of 'Roman de la Rose' (late 13th c.), and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' (late 14th c.)--are dense, challenging, and multilayered texts that illustrate the process of learning through reading and dialogue, and use the literary discourse of love to teach their students the art of reading." [JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Farber, Annika Published Farber, Annika. "Ethical Reading and the Medieval 'Artes amandi': The Rise of the Didactic in Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower." PhD thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 2011. 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 Ethical Reading and the Medieval 'Artes amandi': The Rise of the Didactic in Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Edwards argues that "modern scholarship has focused on the historical foundations of medieval authorship in exegesis and pedagogy," both of which "show how texts and authors were framed externally within a dynamic literary culture in the high and late Middle Ages. Authorship functioned internally as well, as a condition of literary meaning that complements the conditions of intelligibility within Latin and vernacular literary systems. To understand the internal dynamic of authorship, we need to supplement exegesis and pedagogy with an understanding of imitation and resistance. Imitation traditionally forms character and style from canonical models, and it provides a means to compose equivalents to canonical models by reproducing, rewriting, and reimagining them. At the same time, it generates an impossible demand for authorship--an original copy that remains subordinate to its source. For this reason, resistance emerges as the necessary correlate of imitation. In late-medieval England, John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, poets recognized as authors by their contemporaries and by each other, demonstrate the productive reciprocity of imitation and resistance. Gower builds an edifice of authorship around his works and poetic career yet writes himself out of his most ambitious literary project at the end of the "Confessio Amantis" and then refuses his own dismissal in a sequence of minor works. Chaucer punctuates his repeated gestures toward authorship with equally insistent denials and omissions. These occasions for refusing authorship are by no means identical, but they point toward and alternative history of authorship that recognizes its contingency and continual renegotiation." [RRE/RFY. Copyright John Gower Society eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, Robert R Published Edwards, Robert R. "Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late Medieval England." Swiss Papers In English Language and Literature: SPELL 25 (2011): 51-73. ISSN 0743-7226 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 Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late Medieval England Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Keohane examines Gower's maritime vocabulary in the CA. His scope thus does not include "To King Henry IV In Praise of Peace" nor any of the French or Latin poems--though he suggests further attention to the MO would likely be fruitful, and hints at a subsequent, expanded study forthcoming. He notes: "A survey of phrases and terms that refer to nautical technology in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' reveals familiarity with a primarily Anglo-French, large-ship tradition while hinting at a possible direct experiential connection with elements of Iberian or Mediterranean trade networks" (103). He classifies four contexts for Gower's nautical imagery: "in the setting of the Ricardian Prologue; when retelling maritime scenes drawn from earlier sources; as imagery of love; and in incidental observations" (105). He also compares Gower's use of specific nautical terms to Chaucer's, concluding that the latter's is generalized and unspecific, except in cases (e.g., the "Man of Law's Tale") where Chaucer clearly borrowed from Gower (118-21), thus lending support to the claim that Gower's version was Chaucer's first source. "Gower's use of nautical terms . . . often shows a level of technical awareness surprising in a landsman . . . . All of Gower's type-specific vocabulary refer only to technologies that would have been used on large sailing ships of the time" (111). By contrast, "Chaucer only superficially employs any maritime vocabulary" (119). Detailed discussion of the terms "luff," as a verb (114-15), "reef," as a verb (117-18), and in particular the term "topseilcole"--a form derived from "topsail" at a time when "as far as we know, English ships--indeed all the ships of the Northern European tradition--[had no] topsails in their rig until almost fifty years after Gower's death" (113). "The image of John Gower that emerges . . . is one of a man thoroughly familiar with a primarily Anglo-French, large-ship tradition" (112) but also, and more provocatively, Keohane argues for Gower's direct, first-hand knowledge of Iberian and Mediterranean shipping, an idea that draws strength from the Iberian translations of the CA. Gower's knowledge of ships extends beyond mere close observation of vessels in the Thames from his wharf in Southwark, or a keen ear for multi-national sailors' speech in the City. "To use ['reef'] properly," as Gower does, "the poet would require at least some additional understanding of the mechanics of sailing and related nautical practice" (117-18). Similarly, "the practice of luffing can really only be observed from the deck of a ship" and likewise "the appreciation of a topseilcole . . . is something that is noticed when a ship is underway. It is a memory retained by a sailor and not a landsman. These are the words and thoughts of a participant in maritime life, not those of an outsider" (118). Keohane speculates that many of Gower's targeted audience(s) may have been among the rising merchant class, individuals who, like Gower, would have known shipping through trade (121-22), and concludes by noting "the John Gower revealed in the maritime vocabulary of the Confessio Amantis is thus a man who was conversant with the language and technology of Anglo-French as well as Mediterranean ships and shipping. He was likely connected by both political and economic networks to the Iberian Peninsula, probably though his Lancastrian sympathies but possibly through the wool trade" (123). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Keohane, Colin J Published Keohane, Colin J. "'He fond the schip of gret array': Implications of John Gower's Maritime Vocabulary." SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 18 (2011), pp. 103-27. ISSN 1132-631X 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 'He fond the schip of gret array': Implications of John Gower's Maritime Vocabulary. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The poems that are assembled in this superb new volume are the two long additions that Gower made to the original six books of the "Vox Clamantis": his nearly hysteric depiction of the 1381 peasants' uprising (which received its title, "Visio Anglie," from Maria Wickert, who first deciphered the layers of composition of the VC), and the "Cronica Tripertita," his post-usurpation Lancastrian propaganda piece on a very different assault on Richard's rule. The justification for bringing them together lies not just in their later composition but also in their shared departure from the original moralizing schema of the VC to "something else, effectively more satiric. On these two occasions, Gower wrote contemporary history" (David R. Carlson's introduction, p.8). These are certainly the portions of the work that will be of greatest interest to our students, and the value of the service that Carlson and Rigg have performed is heightened by the exemplary way in which they have executed it. Both texts have been freshly re-edited. Where Macaulay used a single manuscript for both (Oxford, All Souls College, Oxf. 98) in the belief that it was "certainly written and corrected under the direction of the author" (Works 4.lxi), Carlson uses Dublin, Trinity College MS 214 (Macaulay's T) for the "Visio" and Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 92 (Macaulay's H3) for the "Cronica" (the only copy in which the Cronica appears apart from the Vox), in both cases seeking to represent what he deduces to be the earliest rather than the most revised state of the text.(For his choice of Hatton, see his 2007 essay, reviewed in JGN 28 no. 1.) At the same time, Carlson's record of variants from other manuscripts is much more complete than Macaulay's is. Carlson has also provided a whole new set of explanatory notes. In the "Visio," these are mostly concerned with tracing the source of Gower's borrowings. Macaulay identified most of the passages that Gower took from Ovid, but later scholars traced many additional lines to works such as the "Aurora" and the "Speculum Stultorum," for which we now rely on the notes in Stockton's translation. Carlson has few new citations to add (though there are some, e.g. section 1, lines 25 and 26), but where both Macaulay and Stockton tend to provide only the line references to the source, Carlson provides a complete quotation, highlighting the borrowed words in boldface, and when appropriate, a translation, and he also provides perceptive commentary on the choices that Gower made, both in selecting and in altering his borrowings. His commentary on the "Cronica" is more extensive and even more valuable, providing a detailed explanation of the events to which Gower alludes and of the relation between Gower's account and other sources, particularly the "Record and Process of the Renunciation and Deposition of Richard II" (which Carlson has also edited for PIMS) on which Gower's poem seems largely to be based. If the text and notes are not already enough to make this volume worth owning, we also have A. G. Rigg's verse translation. The unrhymed elegiac couplet of the "Visio" he renders in blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameters), and the leonine hexameters of the "Cronica," with their disyllabic internal rhyme ("Isla tripertita, sequitur que, mente perita") he puts in rhyming hexameter couplets. And in both cases, to the extent that I can judge, the translation enhances rather than detracts from the sense of the original. The effect is best illustrated with an example. Here's Stockton's literal translation of "Cronica" 3.186ff. (a passage I chose almost at random): "With the situation like this, the King remained where he remained before, until his whole following trembled uneasily. Such highly inexperienced men rarely become prompt in action; similarly, all these men hesitated to be helped from any source. Fortune then turned her wheel away from them and remained blind while the King crossed over the seas. His own guilt cast [him] back into those snares which he had fashioned; he was to be ensnared when he reached the shores of his fatherland." Here is Riggs' version of the same passage (and a little more): "While things stood thus, the king still stood as he before / Had stood, until his court was fearful all the more. / Thus few are quick to act, by ignorance dismayed; / All equally have doubts from whence might come their aid. / Then Fortune turns her wheel aside, far off from these, / And blindly waits until the king should cross the seas. / His crimes now drove him to the snares that he had set; / When he seeks home, he'll be entangled in the net. / Yet nonetheless, where winds propelled him for their sport, / Fate gave to him his own and predetermined port. / Wild Wales received the royal ships within her quays, / But quickly let them go, in view of Richard's deeds. / The king cast lots and ordered troops to be enrolled, / But got no help where he no favours had bestowed. / On seeing this, some smiled and murmured quietly, / But others wept for sorrow, grieving inwardly. / The royal pomp declines, since happy times have gone; / All quickly turn aside and will not fight, not one." Stockton's will still have its uses, but it reads like a translation. Rigg's is more accessible; it is more like the experience of reading Gower's poem; the verse engages the attention in a way that prose cannot; and it is difficult to see that anything has been lost. Rigg has given the students who become interested in these poems a chance to see that Gower's Latin is not as dry as dust, as they might otherwise have supposed. Let's hope that PIMS doesn't wait too long to issue an affordable paperback edition. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R., ed. Rigg, A. G., trans. Published Carlson, David R., ed., and A. G. Rigg, trans. John Gower: Poems on Contemporary Events: The "Visio Anglie" (1381) and "Cronica tripertita" (1400). Toronto and Oxford: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and Bodleian Library, 2011 ISBN 9780888441744 (PIMS); 9781851242900 (Bodleian Library) Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Minor Latin Poetry Vox Clamantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Cronica Tripertita 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 Poems on Contemporary Events: The Visio Anglie (1381) and Cronica tripertita (1400) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies and Bodleian Library, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review With the publication of this volume, the companion to Yeager's edition and translation of "The Minor Latin Works" (see JGN 26, no.1, April 2007), every last shred of Gower's writings in French and Latin is now available in modern English translation, for which some professional Gowerians are likely to be just as grateful as their students. In addition to the "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz" and the "Cinkante balades," Yeager has included Quixley's early 15th-century English translation of the "Traitié," with its own introduction, plus a helpful "Note on Gower's French" by Brian Merrilees (which will be most useful to those who already have some familiarity with Middle French). For the two main works, Yeager provides an introduction, the text with an "en face" translation, explanatory notes, and textual notes. The introductions summarize Yeager's valuable earlier work on the dates and intended audiences of these poems. He places the "Traitié" earlier than is usually supposed, closer to the date of the composition of the "Confessio Amantis," and the "Cinkantes balades" not much later, in the very early 1390s. The French texts of the poems are enough to make this volume worth owning, since otherwise they are available only in Macaulay's hard-to-find edition. Together with the textual notes, they appear to be taken directly from Macaulay, though I could not find any description of Yeager's editorial procedure. (The text of Quixley is taken from MacCracken's 1909 edition rather than from the surviving manuscript; see p. 163.) The explanatory notes often provide a valuable supplement to Macaulay's, tracing more of Gower's references back to their source, but they are stronger on the patristic background to some of the doctrines expressed in the "Traitié" than they are, for instance, on the allusions to contemporary vernacular poetry in the "Cinkante Balades." The portion of this volume that will no doubt get the heaviest use, however, will be the translations. As in his volume of Gower's shorter Latin works, Yeager offers a line-by-line translation that does not aim to capture the poetic qualities of Gower's verse but that does serve the needs of the student who is trying to make sense of the original. As an illustration, here is Yeager's translation of number 35, one of the best known of the balades because of its recollection both of Chaucer's "Parlement of Foules" and of the opening of the "Confessio," 1.100-07: "St. Valentine, greater than any emperor, / Holds a parliament and assembly / Of all the birds,who come on his day, / Where the female takes her mate /5/ In proper love; but by comparison / Of such a thing I am unable to have my own part: / Whoever remains alone is unable to have great joy. / As the phoeniox is alone in its home / In the region of Arabia, /10/ Just so my lady in the place of her love / Remains alone, where whether I wish it or not, / She has no care about my supplication, / Because I know not how to find the pathway of love: / Whoever remains alone is unable to have great joy. /15/ Oh how Nature is full of favor / To those birds who have their choice! / Oh if, instead of my state, I might be / In just that same situation as theirs! / Nature is more capable than reason is, /20/ And in my state it senses very well the path: / Whoever remains alone is unable to have great joy. / Each gentle tercel has her falcon, / But I am lacking what I want to have: / My lady, it is the end of my song, /25/ Whoever remains alone is unable to have great joy." One has to have sympathy with any translator: there are always a countless number of choices to make and at each point, some reader is likely to be dissatisfied. With Gower, some of the challenges stem from the fact that French was not his native language, and he often seems uncertain both about his morphology and about his syntax. There is also always the question of how literal one should be. I have a number of quibbles with Yeager's translation which I have discussed with him, and the main difference between us is that I tend to be more literal where he sometimes bases his translation on his understanding of the poem as a whole and on his desire to eschew what he terms "the clunky." Here are my differences in this balade. In line 6, "D'ascune part ne puiss avoir la moie," I take d'ascune part to mean simply "nowhere": "Nowhere am I able to have mine [i.e., my companion]." En droit de, which Yeager translates as "because of" in line 5 and "instead of" in line 10, I would translate in the more general and usual sense of "with regard to" in both cases. In line 13, I would take sique as "so that" rather than "because." Line 20, "En mon estat tresbien le sente et voie," I would translate "In my condition very well do I feel and see it." And in line 22, I would put "his" falcon rather than "her": a tercel is by definition a male, and Gower wrote "sa faucon" rather than the usual "son," substituting the natural gender of the bird for the normal grammatical gender of "faucon." (Yeager, in our correspondence, justified his translation by pointing to line 4.) Differences such as these occur throughout CB. I find the translation of the "Traitié" to be closer to what I expect on the whole, but there are a few bones to pick there as well. Yeager will be making some revisions in the on-line version of this edition, but these few issues do not detract from the value of this volume, and it will be a welcome addition to our libraries. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society 30.2} Author/Editor Author/Editor Gower, John Published Gower, John. "The French Balades." TEAMS Middle English Text Series . Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2011 ISBN 9781580441551 Gower Subject Cinkante Balades Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The French Balades 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 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nolan's focus is on Book I of the "Vox Clamantis," first deemed the "Visio" by Maria Wickert, who showed that it was composed later than the six Books following, which were subsequently attached. Her argument is a wide-ranging one, and difficult to summarize. At its core is the idea that the Rising of 1381 acted on Gower as a kind of personal and aesthetic crucible, out of which he came to forge a poetics altogether new and different from that which governs the "Mirour de l'Omme" and the last six Books of VC. This early poetic Nolan terms "a Boethian account of the relation between self and society, individual and community, dramatized in part by a dialogue between the narrator and Wisdom" (p. 113), and she says it is present alongside a parallel Ovidan account in the "Visio." By "Boethian" Nolan apparently has in mind Gower's sense of the poet as guardian of the established social and cosmic orders--the Gower, in other words, of "comun profit" who speaks from a disembodied space and time. At one edge, this "Boethian" voice is (or seems to be) the "vox clamantis in deserto" persona most commonly recognized by traditional Gowerian scholarship. Nolan, however, offers several dualities by way of illustrating her point."Boethian/Ovidian" is just one; she also makes use of "the poetics of attachment/detachment" and "the poetics of disclosure and closure" (passim., but see especially p. 132), all of which seem to translate into Gower's recognition that the best poetry must involve the heart as well as the head. She like others sees in the "Visio" the Ovidian cento and, by much thoughtful and pointed analysis of selected passages shows that, for the majority of Gower's readers as for Gower himself, those centonic excerpts would have conjured up their original Ovidian context, and hence Ovid's passionate embrace of things living. The effect of this is to "puncture the surface of the poem, producing openings in the text through which readers can access Ovid's verse in all of its complexity and multivalence" (p. 115). Ovid thereafter comes to represent the involvement of the poet's emotions with his art, the healing value of which (both for poet and for society at large) in Nolan's view Gower is forced to discover by the violence of 1381. She keys on the emergence of Arion at the end of the "Visio," treating it as a bridge to the larger figure in CA, and also most persuasively as evidence of Gower's developing sense of himself as man and poet, whose emotions have significance, not only to him, but also as a means of uniting all living things in common purpose and harmony, i.e., Arion's music. Gower comes to see this as a way not merely to heal society, but to improve it. In the "Visio," Nolan finds him working this out--and recognizing his kinship as a poet even with the peasants at their most bestial: "The Rising, too, is kind of disclosure; it is a form of resistence to the closure embodied in social hierarchy and repression. It revealed possibilities; it exposed injustices; it opened closed doors and disclosed emblems of power within. Gower's poetics of disclosure is called into being by the demands of the peasants for self-determination; his narrator is created by the crisis the rebels brought about. Their demands were shocking--not least, Gower suggests, because self-determination was the obsession of clerks and poets" (p. 133). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura Published Nolan, Maura. "The Poetics of Catastrophe: Ovidian Allusion in Gower's 'Vox Clamantis'." In In Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann. Ed. Cannon, Christopher and Nolan, Maura. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011, pp. 113-33. ISBN 9781843842637 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 The Poetics of Catastrophe: Ovidian Allusion in Gower's 'Vox Clamantis' 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 2011 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 Why is it, Windeatt wonders, that swooning is so common in medieval and early modern visual and literary art (the former depicting primarily the Virgin), and seldom probed by modern scholar/critics? While he never directly answers that question, he nonetheless does many others, picking out swoons and cataloguing them according to many types and purposes as he traverses, first painting, then literature from the bible to "The Court of Love" (ca. 1535). Gower furnishes him with a clutch of examples, all (per his title) from the "Confessio Amantis." These can be charted as follows: "Grief and shock of confronting another's death and mourning over a body": Thisbe discovering the lifeless Pyramus faints (III.1455)(p. 218) / "Swoons of recognition register shock at separation and loss, at partings and abandonment": Medea parting with Jason (V.3647); Ariadne (V.5466-67) / "Situation in which pleas and petitions for pity are voiced, or complaints and lamentations uttered": Canace (III.232-34) / "The widespread convention in medieval texts of multiple and serial swooning": Ariadne (V.5467); Apollonius (VIII.1060, 1077); Constance (II.846, 1063) / "Instances where a swoon registers . . . a self-absenting from something abhorrent": the king's daughter confessing to her father's incestuous rape in "Apollonius" (VIII.332); Lucretia (VII.4986) / "Swoons induced by shock and fury lead on to resolution, whether just or unjust": Procne (V.5788/5792-93). Windeatt also asks "Does the cumulative incidence of swooning across medieval literature suggest that, for this bodily practice at least, cultural attitudes to human behaviour have shifted perceptibly?" (p.224) He cites Anaxarete's frequent swooning over the dead Iphis as one of many "cases where instances of swooning were added to medieval versions of stories from earlier times and different cultures . . . [which] might be presented as evidence that a demonstrative sensibility is more pleasing to medieval taste than to taste before or since" (p. 224). "Swoons," he goes on to say, "become inseparable from the medieval stereotype of a lover's conduct," an example of which is Amans' swoon (VIII.2449) "when Venus intimates that he is too old for love" (p. 225). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Windeatt, Barry Published Windeatt, Barry. "The Art of Swooning in Middle English." In Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann. Ed. Cannon, Christopher and Nolan, Maura. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2011, pp. 211-30. ISBN 9781843842637 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 Art of Swooning in Middle English 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 2011 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 sets out to identify the available major editions and translations of Gower's works. Macaulay's magisterial four-volume edition of the "Complete Works" (1899-1902) is no longer in print in its entirety, but volumes 2 and 3,"The English Works," continue to be published under the auspices of the Early English Text Society, and Volume 1, "The Latin Works," and Volume 4, "The French Works," are now available online in "Google Books." Peck's own recent three-volume edition of the complete "Confessio Amantis" in the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series (METS) is designed for classroom use. As with other METS volumes, it is available not only in print, but also in an electronic version (free to individual users). Peck's edition contains "all the Latin epigrams and marginal Latin paraphernalia of the manuscript along with English translations by Andrew Galloway; and extensive marginal glossing of words that are likely to be difficult for modern readers" (9). The introductions, bibliographies, and explanatory and textual notes are also extensive. Of the Latin works, Eric Stockton's translation of the complete "Vox Clamantis" and the "Chronica Tripertita" is no longer in print. It should be noted, however, that the "Visio Anglie" (Book 1 of the Vox) and the "Chronica Tripertita" have been newly edited by David Carlson and translated by A.G. Rigg in "John Gower: Poems on Contemporary Events," (see rev. JGN 30.2 [Oct 2011], 9-10); this work appeared too late to be discussed in this volume. Burton Wilson's translation of the "Mirour de l'Omme" (1992) is still in print. Peck also discusses the available editions and translations of Gower's shorter works; all of these have appeared relatively recently, and among their number, the "Cinkante Balades" and "Traitié," as well as "In Praise of Peace" and the shorter Latin poems have been edited and translated in METS volumes. [Kurt Olsson Copyright. The John Gower Society. Copyright. JGN 31.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A Published Peck, Russell A. "Texts for Teaching." In Appoaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Languge Association of America, 2011, pp. 7-16. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Texts for Teaching Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Languge Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Nicholson focuses on works about Gower, including several important overviews of his literary career that have appeared in book-length studies and in essays such as those gathered, for example, in Siân Echard's recent "Companion to Gower." He identifies major bibliographies (by Yeager, Nicholson, and, again, Echard), and briefly discusses Gower's sources for the "Confessio." Most of this essay, however, attends to the critical tradition, not only major book-length studies extending from those by Wickert, Fisher, Schmitz, Gallacher, and Peck to the present, as well as important essay collections, but also major issues. Nicholson frames the latter with a brief discussion of Macaulay's introduction, C.S. Lewis's "Allegory of Love," and Fisher's "John Gower" and the issues these scholars raise. The fullest consideration is devoted to scholars who qualify Lewis's account of the poem and seek to address Gower's seemingly problematic treatment of love in a moral frame. In recent decades, that discussion has led to a spirited critical debate regarding "the poem's paradoxes and inconsistencies" (23). In the last analysis, "the 'Confessio Amantis' has served as a mirror of the preoccupations of its readers. Some extol its complex but coherent plan, others celebrate its fractures, but all find it worthy of study and exploration" (24-25). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Nicholson, Peter Published Nicholson, Peter. "The Instructor's Library." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 17-25. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Instructor's Library Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 short chapter identifies major access points to bibliographical information in the web pages of the John Gower Society, the New Chaucer Society, and the Medieval Academy of America. Gastle mentions the online editions of Gower's works and also observes that excerpts of Gower's works are available in the Online Medieval and Classical Library and the Harvard Chaucer page. Additionally, he directs our attention to Gower manuscript material available online, specifically, sample pages of the CA and VC in Glasgow MS Hunter 7 and MS Hunter 59, respectively, and a large collection of whole pages and enlarged images of miniatures in Pierpont Morgan "Confessio" manuscripts M125 and M126. Finally, he identifies valuable library databases including "JSTOR" and "Project Muse," and several medieval study sites: "Labyrinth," "ORB" ("Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies"), the "Middle English Compendium," the "Middle English Dictionary," and Luminarium." [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gastle, Brian W Published Gastle, Brian W. "Electronic Resources." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 26-28. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 Electronic Resources Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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, Pearsall argues, "has suffered throughout the centuries from his proximity to the greater poet," Chaucer. Indeed, "the label 'moral Gower," that Chaucer "stapled to him" has powerfully, but not entirely justly "shaped his reputation" (31). Pearsall claims that "'moral Gower' is not all there is . . . or even the most important of his claims upon us. For it is above all as a poet of human feeling that readers will remember Gower, both in the portrayal of the delicacy of love's courtesy and the fineness of love-feeling in the confessional 'frame' and also in the deep engagement with the conflicts of love's experience in the exemplary stories that make up the bulk of the poem. . . At times the pressure of feeling behind a story, the exactness and comprehensiveness of Gower's human sympathy, will set up a conflict with the moral of the story expounded by Genius or, more explicitly and brutally, in the Latin marginal summary that accompanies it" (31-32). Pearsall suggests that among the "discerning readers" of Gower who reach beyond "dutiful eulogizing" are Hoccleve, Lydgate, Sidney, Spenser, Jonson, and Shakespeare. Shakespeare made Gower the speaker of the prologue and linking passages in "Pericles," and though "there is little similarity in their treatments of that story, . . . the influence of Gower's narrative, of patient virtue ultimately blessed by providence, on Shakespeare and the movement toward the last plays should not be underestimated. Similiarities and contrasts of these kinds offer practical opportunities for teaching" (33). Gower's reputation fell into decline in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and he "remained a byword for tedious moralizing throughout the nineteenth century," but with Macaulay's edition in 1899, "a truer estimate of Gower's poetic ability began to emerge" (34). "The greatest rewards . . . now are likely to be in the independent stories . . . [for] they are often to some degree painfully unresolved," meant "to test and strain ideas of moral certainty" and in that regard come close to "Chaucer's most finely wrought narratives. . . . Some of the richest experiences of study and teaching are in the comparison of the two poets' narrative techniques" (34). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearsall, Derek Published Pearsall, Derek. "Teaching Gower's Reception: A Poet for All Ages." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 31-34. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Teaching Gower's Reception: A Poet for All Ages Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Arguing that "few writers discuss the mutually supportive roles of medieval social structure with the clarity and moral forthrightness of John Gower," Lightsey maintains that this poet "can play a vital role in providing students with a solid base in the underlying concerns upon which estates literature is founded" (36). When his approaches to social position are incorporated into larger discussions of medieveal social hierarchy, his work shines in mutual illumination among the other great poets of his time, such as Chaucer and Langland" (37). In the undergraduate classroom, Lightsey thus introduces Gower as part of a unit on Ricardian authors which includes the prologues from the "Confessio," the B text of "Piers Plowman," and the "Canterbury Tales." He supplements this reading of Gower with handouts from Stockton's translation of the "Vox" and selections from Burton Wilson's translation of the "Mirour." In the end, "to understand Gower's approach is to understand what was typical of the time, to have a baseline from which to measure the many other approaches to the genre of estates literature" (41). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lightsey, Scott Published Lightsey, Scott. "Social Class in the Classroom: Gower's Estates Poetry." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 36-41. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Social Class in the Classroom: Gower's Estates Poetry Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 his British and medieval survey courses, Peck has taught Gower as a proto-humanist writer who distinguishes himself in five humanistic endeavors. 1) Gower evaluated "the ancients on their own terms," which paradoxically requires "translation of ethical and moral issues into 'our language.'" 2) He uncovers the complexity and "subtleties of reading as a mental, incorporative process," and, as a notably practical humanist, Gower recognized that "every reader functions as an individual perpetually making choices and drawing conclusions according to a combination of past experience and memory, strongly overshadowed by personal biases." 3) He drew upon "the rapid advance of empirical thought in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries," exploring "how the human brain works in conjunction with the senses to construct images . . . plots . . . and conclusions" and how it "works to effect both literary production and readerly reception." 4) Gower recognized, in keeping with his social humanism, that the "individual is part of a human estate" and "a social entity" with "an innate responsibility--a kingdom to justify outside oneself as well as within." 5) Because "these mental phenomena are linguistic and rhetorical," Peck contends, Gower observably understood that "the processes of making a good end" require "a transformational shift relative to another place" and "an adjustment requiring a different kind of voicing" (42-43). These endeavors, so introduced at the outset, are then richly exemplified and elaborated in subsequent sections of Peck's essay. The last point, however, may warrant a brief explanatory note. Peck had earlier described the "dark conclusion of the poem" where "Amans, though he has heard much and often responded intelligently, falls back into the confusion of his original biases and appears to have learned little" (49). Now the poet provides a shift in voicing, however, "to disengage the reader from the retelling of the plot" (50). Thus, "old John Gower [is sent] back to his books . . . to study moral virtue," and "this directive redefines the purposes of the protagonist, extracting him from his fiction so that he can make a more definitive concluding pronouncement" (51), a resolution to pray upon the points of the shrift and for the welfare of England. [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A Published Peck, Russell A. "Teaching the 'Confessio Amantis' as a Humanist Document of the First English Renaissance." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 42-53. ISBN 9781603290999 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 Teaching the 'Confessio Amantis' as a Humanist Document of the First English Renaissance Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 essay describes Gower's exploration of the links between practices of medicine and confession, especially in the like roles played by the physician and priestly confessor and the linkage of cures through storytelling. The connection between physical and spiritual healing is not new with Gower. As early as the beginning of the eleventh century, an influential book by Burchard of Worms introduced questions confessors might ask penitents; the book was entitled "Corrector, or Physician." The parallel in question-asking is suggestive of Venus's telling Amans she can apply no medicine if he does not describe his love "maladie," his "Sor," specifically in a conventionally confessional framework, to her priest. Palmer describes the connection at length, and where the relationship might be particularly suggestive in the classroom is in the stories of the CA: "Genius's [spiritual and physical] healing has taken place through storytelling" (58), Palmer argues, and it would be helpful to understand, perhaps through a single, well-chosen example, how this might have worked. Palmer takes his epigraph from John Arderne's fourteenth-century medical treatise, "It behooves a physician to know how to tell delightful and instructive tales that make patients laugh" (33) holds special promise; if Genius's, unlike Arderne's, are not for the most part designed to "make patients laugh," however, in what sense might they produce a genuinely curative effect? [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Palmer, James M Published Palmer, James M. "Bodily and Spiritual Healing through Conversation and Storytelling: Genius as Physician and Confessor in the 'Confessio Amantis'." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. NewYork: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 53-58. ISBN 9781603290999 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 Bodily and Spiritual Healing through Conversation and Storytelling: Genius as Physician and Confessor in the 'Confessio Amantis' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Boboc, Andreea Published Boboc, Andreea. "Teaching Gower and the Law." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian, W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 59-66. ISBN Modern Language Association of America Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Review Boboc suggests a number of approaches to teaching Gower and the law to upper-division undergraduates and graduate students. She usually begins her own course by introducing students to major legal resources, often by having them research a legal topic within a particular field of law (e.g., medieval law of contract, maritime law, natural law) as a preface to discussing a particular tale from the "Confessio Amantis." She draws on existing "interdisciplinary engagements with law and literature" for models (here her example is Sebastian Sobecki's chapter on Apollonius, maritime law, insularity, and identity). She introduces brief histories of medieval connections between law and literature, identifies challenges in pursuing interdisciplinary work, and offers a prospect of moving into the field of "new legal history" or the exploration of linkages among legal history, social science, and cultural and literary texts. More specifically, Boboc suggests, "medievalists can contribute to [this history] by engaging with what Bruce Holsinger has called 'vernacular legality'" or "the strategic manipulation of legal discourse by vernacular writers, who contribute to legal imagination and legal discourse by responding (sometimes correctively) to existent legal practices" (60). Relevant here is "the legal bilingualism of the 'Confessio'" and Gower's decision variously to use Latin or vernacular English "to discuss legal procedures and offenses" (61-62), and, further, sometimes to identify a legal phenomenon by its technical name and sometimes to describe it phenomenologically and withhold the name. Boboc sees additional prospects for teachers in using "the body of scholarship on Gower's audiences and multilingualism to discuss the relationship between language and truth, especially in the light of Richard F. Green's 'Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England'" (62). Near the close of her essay, Boboc introduces "hard cases," using the instances of Medea and (more briefly) Orestes, for example, to explore the question of "whether homicide is ever justified" (62). In another vein, she suggests drawing "on Giorgio Agamben's biopolitical theory of sovereignty to investigate the dangers posed by kings to their subjects whenever they reduce subjects to 'bare life'" (65). In particular, "sovereign power challenges the moral and legal order because sovereignty belongs to the law but, at the same time, paradoxically constitutes itself outside it" (65). Gower's works create an opportunity for fertile conversation on a range of other legal topics as well: "What counts as truth or evidence or a fair punishment? How do emotions influence the practice of justice? What are the legal duties of a leader? When does the law oppose justice?" (66). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] 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 Teaching Gower and the Law Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Coleman suggests that Gower's best hope for the "Confessio Amantis" was that it be left "to the worldes eere / In tyme comende after this." Recognizing that many important issues in the poem can be handled only by close textual reading, she argues that on occasion the best way to open a medieval text is through performance. After briefly discussing the theory and practice of medieval public reading, Coleman introduces several classroom performance exercises that she has found successful. In suggesting readings such as the performance of speeches by Genius and Amans in the confessional dialogue, or of a tale, or (for graduate students) of linked English text and marginal Latin gloss, Coleman constructs a series a questions for the performers and for the audience, asking what the passages, specifically as performed, contribute to the experience of the poem. She tailors her questions to each of these scenarios and finally explores the possibilities for a larger performance-based final project, which may include filming. [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coleman, Joyce Published Coleman, Joyce. "Teaching Gower Aloud." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 67-76. ISBN 9781603290999 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 Teaching Gower Aloud Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Donavin in teaching Gower seeks to evaluate his "voice" in the "Confessio Amantis" by means of medieval composition theory. In particular, she approaches the poem by studying Gower's invention ("the power of suggestion in Richard's II's commission of the poem and the formation of content through resources" [79]), arrangement (particularly "the context for each tale provided by the confessional frame" [80]), and style (specifically the commitment to "the superiority of plain speech" [81]). Gower's narrative voice in speaking directly to the reader in the prologue to the CA "shatters into a variety of speakers who utter their lines in a variety of tones and languages," and "students are eager to sort out some reasons for these vacillations in narrative voice. Review of the Rethorique section in CA, book 7, and of some basic principles of Ciceronian orations promote the understanding that invention, arrangement, and style are rhetorical offices that solicit, confine, and characterize the poet's voice" (81-82). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Donavin, Georgiana Published Donavin, Georgiana. "Hearing Gower's Rhetoric." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 77-82. ISBN 9781603290999 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 Hearing Gower's Rhetoric Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Koff observes that in the CA "Gower's reformist voice has disappeared, . . . as has any vehement intervention into the moral or social values of the tales Genius tells" (84). Instead, Gower has introduced "'measured measures' of a storytelling discourse that promises social harmony by asking its readers to participate in the evaluation of values at a certain narrative distance" (83). His "ongoing, unruffled voice . . . is, for him, a perfect mode for breaking not the surface of a text but the concepts the text speaks" (84). In short, Gower "values form that works against itself," thereby creating "the intellectual space in which moral and social problems can be brought to readers" (84). This, in Koff's view, effectively makes Gower more accessible to students. For example, Gower's tale of Tereus and Progne, unlike its counterparts in Ovid and Chaucer's "Legend of Philomela", "removes a narrator's volatile response to his own work within that work itself" (85). Gower's teller is not present "in prepossessing ways" (85); in other words, he "deconstructs our expectations from the beginning" (87). By contrast, Chaucer in the "Legend of Good Women" already "assumes answers to questions not yet asked" (89). Koff sees as one possible explanation for this difference "something of the anxiety of influence that Gower's presence, which has yet to be valued by us, may have awakened in his friend" (90). While "teaching Gower clearly requires setting his work in the literary circles of his own day," in this essay Koff argues that in those circles Gower "may have led rather than followed" (90). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Koff, Leonard Published Koff, Leonard. "Gower before Chaucer: Teaching Narrative and Ethics in 'The Tale of Tereus'." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 83-90. ISBN 9781603290999 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 before Chaucer: Teaching Narrative and Ethics in 'The Tale of Tereus' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 argues that "Gower's trilingualism . . . can in fact frame a survey course, becoming a touchstone and recurrent point of reference" (91). She presents that frame in four modules--of material culture, manuscripts, multilingualism itself, and authority--to be spread across a syllabus, with each to be offered in a class or part of a class session. The first unit, on material culture, begins with a discussion of Gower's tomb. Whereas "Lydgate lacks both a monument and a tradition" and "Chaucer's monument is of a piece with the desire of later tradition to canonize him . . . Gower's tomb is clearly the poet's own statement, his summary of his poetic career, his staking of his own posterity" (92). This discussion leads to a brief account of recent archaeological studies of the tomb, Southwark, and Saint Mary Overeys, and Gower's positioning as, for example, a city poet. From the three books serving as the pillow for poet's head in the effigy, Echard advances to a discussion of Gower's mastery of three languages, the books in which they are employed, and the manuscripts in which they appear: of particular note are the surviving Gower manuscripts that "combine more than one language," and especially "the Trentham manuscript, a collection of pieces in Latin, French, and English" (94). Echard then treats the changing status of each of these languages in the culture of fourteenth-century England and concludes by exploring Gower's quest of his "poetic authority" or "right and obligation to speak" (96) by means of his very choice of language. [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân Published Echard, Siân. "Gower's Triple Tongue (1): Teaching Across Gower's Languages." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 91-99. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies 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 Gower's Triple Tongue (1): Teaching Across Gower's Languages Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Of Gower's two French "balade" collections, the "Cinkante balades" represent "the sole examples known of sequentially linked poems written by an Englishman, in English or French, before Philip Sidney's sonnet sequence 'Astrophil and Stella'" (100); the eighteen "balades" of "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz," on the other hand, "are topically, not narratively, connected: all are concerned to establish the nature and role of sanctified marriage, most particularly by warding off adultery" (100). These collections together "furnish a solid keystone for fruitful discussions of late medieval multilingualism and an across-the-channel aesthetic and intellectual influence and exchange," particularly with poets of the stature of Guillaume de Machaut and Eustache Deschamps. The "Cinkante balades" can enrich discussions of medieval love poetry and its legacy; they are well-crafted poems and many "can be amusing, even moving, in their depiction of affairs of the heart" (100). As with the poems of the "Traitié," their short length makes them particularly adaptable to the syllabi of surveys. The "Traitié" in several of its aspects invites comparison with the "Confessio Amantis," which it follows in many manuscripts: it contains, in capsule form, a number of exempla also appearing in the "Confessio," including, for instance, the stories of Hercules and Deineira and of Tereus and Progne, and like the "Confessio," it is presented with Latin prose commentaries in the margins. It should be noted finally that the "Traitié" and the "Cinkante balades" are available, with translations, in an inexpensive TEAMS edition. [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F Published Yeager, R. F. "Gower's Triple Tongue (2): Teaching the 'Balades'." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 100-03. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Triple Tongue (2): Teaching the 'Balades' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 the traditional understanding of textual criticism is that it aims to bring stability," Kelemen maintains that "studying textual criticism is itself profoundly destabilizing to mass-culture notions of textuality" (104). Knowing that, students through the exercises Kelemen assigns come to understand how textual questions may elicit literary discussions. His goal is not to produce "budding editors but to produce readers who are aware of the ways in which their texts are mediated and what that mediation means" (107). Through these exercises, designed "to challenge the notion of the infallible text" (104), "students come to realize that, to edit well, one will need to understand the text and the work very, very well" (107). Thus led through "flexible and scalable" exercises of transcribing, collating, and editing proper, and then of introducing the edition, students come to recognize that in this setting "the point is not the product so much as the process" (109). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kelemen, Erick Published Kelemen, Erick. "Learning Gower by Editing Gower." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 104-09. 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 Learning Gower by Editing Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 The "Confessio Amantis", Mitchell argues, "is not easily assimilated to the typical repertoire of concepts and practices that belong to academic criticism" (110), and he asks why: "The lush 'ordinatio' ('arrangement') of the manuscript page, the varied discourse (amatory, dogmatic, and scientific), and the diverse representational strategies (literal and allegorical) all command attention. How can all the matter hang together?" (110-11) With guidance from Foucault and Bourdieu, he suggests, students can come to understand how Gower's poem "does all the merely functional things that are supposedly subliterary while inhabiting a specialized cultural field of the late fourteenth century," how "Gower belongs to an alternative literary experience" (112), and how his work, in its unique status, can inspire serious study. Indeed, Gower, as "both prophetic iconoclast and droll provocateur" (113), has produced a difficult poem that offers many "teachable moments." In it, students can find and productively examine, for example, "mimetic and didactic strategies [in] any number of exemplary cases," including especially those manifesting "incongruous moralization." After posing several additional, potentially fruitful questions about different features of liminality in Gower's poem, Mitchell observes that "Different aspects of the work will be illuminated depending on the theory of difference brought to bear--for example, intertextuality, bricolage, dialogism, or hybridity" (116). More broadly, "the multiplex nature of the work and the circumstantial, improvisatory reader-response provoked by it need theorizing generally" (117). Mitchell's closing comment summarizes what may make Gower so eminently teachable: "Gower's work stands apart from corrupting routines and rationalizations of its own time--and ours. It does not merely inhabit a different field of cultural and literary production; it can produce a new cultural field and redefine what literature can do." (117). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mitchell, J. Allan Published Mitchell, J. Allan. "Teaching Gower's Liminal Literature and Critical Theory." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 110-18. 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 Teaching Gower's Liminal Literature and Critical Theory Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 describes the syllabi of two courses, the one a senior-level course (which she has already offered) on medieval sexualities; the other a junior-level course (which she has planned) on family ties in medieval literature. Neither course focuses exclusively on Gower, but tales from the "Confessio Amantis" are prominent in each. The first course emphasizes theory. A unit on sex and gender opens with readings from Toril Moi and Judith Butler, and examines Gower's tales of the False Bachelor, Eneas and Dido, Ulysses and Penelope, and Florent, as well as Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale. The second unit, on heterosexual desires, is divided into three sections: virginity, sex and marriage, and heterosexual perversions (i.e., rape and incest). Readings in this part of the course include works by Gayle Rubin, Butler again, and Ruth Mazo Karras, and the literature features tales by Gower and Chaucer, many of them parallel stories (some now drawn from Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women"). The third unit focuses on homosexual desires. Readings in theory are taken from Butler, Michel Foucault, and Carla Freccero, and literary texts include Heldris de Cornuälle's "Roman de Silence" and materials from the case of John Rykener, a male transvestite prostitute in fourteenth-century London, as well as Chaucer's Miller's Tale and Gower's tales of Iphis and Achilles in Book 4 of the "Confessio." The proposed 300-level course, on Family Ties in Medieval Literature, does not emphasize readings in theory, but does take a (new) historical and anthropological approach to the subject and still includes extensive background reading. Again, Gower and Chaucer are the dominant literary figures studied. The course has units on husbands and wives, parents and children, and siblings, and a fourth one called "beyond the biological family" (e.g., sworn brotherhood). Gower is represented in the first unit by his "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz" and the tales of Florent and Ceix and Alceone, the second, on parents and children, by his tales of Apollonius, Constance, Virginia, Achilles, and Orestes, the third, on siblings, by stories of Canace and Machaire, and Tereus, Philomene, and Progne. The last unit, on sworn brotherhood, features "Amis and Amiloun." All of these units are enriched by the comparisons with others, not only Chaucer, but also writers such as Chretien de Troyes. [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María Published Bullón-Fernández, María. "Gender, Sexuality, and Family Ties in the 'Confessio Amantis'." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 119-26. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gender, Sexuality, and Family Ties in the 'Confessio Amantis' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Kruger, Steven F Published Kruger, Steven F. "Postcolonial/Queer: Teaching Gower Using Recent Critical Theory." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 127-35. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Review Kruger shows how "Gower could play an important role in advanced undergraduate seminars on medieval gender and sexuality or on nation and (post)coloniality" (127). After offering a shortened list of basic theoretical readings for such a course, he identifies sites in Gower's works where theory might be introduced most productively. He arranges his presentation according to a series of topics: 1) Hybridity. Gower's trilingualism, for example, points to "complex power dynamics in play when different cultures and languages come together in colonizing situations" (129). 2) Identity. Gower's "writing constructs a sense of identity, a sense of the subject both as interested and deeply implicated in the historical and [especially in the "Confessio Amantis"] as possessing a complex internal life" (130). 3) Sociality/Sexuality. This ranges from Gower's representation of the "animal-like, hardly human mob" of peasants in the 'Vox' as resonating" with postcolonial critiques of discourses that ontologize natives as less than human" (132) to the poet's placing individuals into social worlds as providing an occasion for questioning, for example male-male cooperation and conflict, or for asking whether there are "spaces (e.g., in the Apollonius story)] where Gower also considers the possibility and implications of female homosociality as an alternative social space" (132). 4) (Trans) Nationalism. England, for Gower, may or may not "correspond to the kind of nation defined in contemporary theoretical formulations" or "bear any of the features, for instance, of [Benedict] Anderson's 'imagined communities" (133). 5) Periodization. "Gower himself consistently uses historical material to think about his contemporary world. Do Gower's reflections help us think about our own contemporary situation?" (134-35) "To what extent [do] the medieval world and modernity in fact stand separate from each other--generally, and more specifically, in relation both to international/(post)colonial relations and to gender/sexuality" (134). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 239-46. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Postcolonial/Queer: Teaching Gower Using Recent Critical Theory Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 compares treatments of fraud in three Canterbury tales with selections from Gower's Latin and French poems: the Miller's account of Nicholas's lie about a second Nowell's flood is juxtaposed with Gower's account of the Whisperer in "Vox Clamantis"(trans. Stockton, 216-19); the Reeve's characterization of Symkin as a cheater is studied next to a condensed criticism of fraud in the "Vox" (Stockton 214-16); and the Cook's Prologue and Tale is seen in the light of Gower's account of fraud in the "Mirour de l'Omme" (trans. Wilson, 330-49). These texts, together with summaries of actual contemporaneous cases tried before the court of the mayor and aldermen, testify to "a suspicion of commerce shared by writers and many ordinary Londoners" (137) in the period. [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E Published Bertolet, Craig E. "Gower and 'The Canterbury Tales': The Enticement to Fraud." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 136-42. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis 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 'The Canterbury Tales': The Enticement to Fraud Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Dean compares the Tale of Florent with Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale and the anonymous fifteenth-century "Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell." Gower's tale, he writes, "addresses issues of self-governance when one must adhere to one's word--maintain one's trouthe--under trying circumstances. To varying degrees, these issues arise in the three versions of the story . . . and a fruitful entrée into discussion version is to have students . . . detail the differences in the versions of the tale they are reading" (143). A table compiled by one of his students, here presented in an appendix, provides an example of the basis for such ethical distinctions and refinements as Dean makes over the course of his essay. Noting that the ethical issues emerging in the Wife's Tale are 1) justice, and 2) "power, manipulation, and dominance in human relationships" (145), Dean asks how Gower shifts the focus to other issues in his version; in his view, "Florent comes very close to falling to 'murmur' and 'compleignte'--engaging in pride and grumbling because he expects his reputation to be damaged" (146). In this contrast, "what students can come to understand is that if Gower . . . emphasizes honor and gentilesse and turning 'inobedience' into 'obedience,' Chaucer's "storyteller stresses inward transformation and repentance" (149). As distinct from these two writers, the author of the "Wedding" maintains a certain distance from these matters and instead has Ragnelle "expose the fragility of courtly virtues" (155). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dean, James M Published Dean, James M. "The Hag Transformed: 'The Tale of Florent,' Ethical Choice and Female Desire in Late Medieval England." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 143-58. ISBN 9781603290999 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 Hag Transformed: 'The Tale of Florent,' Ethical Choice and Female Desire in Late Medieval England Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 first reminds us, with due acknowledgement to Peter Nicholson, that Gower, not Chaucer, was the first redactor of the tale in Nicholas Trevet's "Chronicle," and it was he who distilled it into the form with which we are more familiar. While referring to Trevet at various junctures of his essay, then, Yeager focuses on the differences between the tales of Gower and Chaucer, and, just as importantly, between their tellers. Students can usually "see that the Man of Law is not 'Chaucer'" (162): this pilgrim "is an active teller, one of the most intrusive, in fact, in 'The Canterbury Tales'" (162), and one who is clearly "trying to win a free dinner at the Southwark Inn" (163). In the "Confessio Amantis," Genius is also an "authorial screen," but the temptation to mistake him . . . for "Gower" seems to be much greater, and consequently harder to banish" (162). His role is to "enlighten Amans . . . who, for most of Gower's poem, is the only other 'real' persona we encounter" (163). Obviously, this "framing fiction . . . will raise quite different demands" for storytelling than does Chaucer's, and thus considering the tale of Constance "in context," Yeager focuses on Gower's "poetics," or what he does with imagery and language that distinguish his treatment of the subject from that of others. The use of particular words and images repeatedly, in a variety of contexts and for different purposes, over the course of his treatment of Envy, the section of the poem that includes his tale of Acis and Galatea as well as that of Constance, reveals "what is exclusively and characteristically Gower's (163). In the end, his "Constance, by design a part of a very different, intentionally exemplary form of narrative [than Chaucer's], remains more 'constant' and loses not an ounce of her integrity or any of her value as a model of obedient virtue" (170). At the same time that virtue here garners a rich "poetic" analysis, then, the tale manifests the "unique, multilayed exemplarity of Gower's" which is what "we strive to teach our students . . . to see and to appreciate knowledgeably" (170). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R. F. Published Yeager, R. F.. "'The Tale of Constance' in Context." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 159-71. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies 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 'The Tale of Constance' in Context Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Noting that "at least twenty-five of Gower's tales [in the "Confessio Amantis"] can be traced, directly or indirectly, to the 'Metamorphoses'," and "several others are drawn, wholly or in part, from the 'Fasti,' the 'Heroides,' and the 'Ars amatoria'" (172), Wetherbee frames an analysis of Gower's use of those stories by considering in broad terms how the poet deals with Ovid's irony. Gower's own framework--his apparatus of Latin marginalia and head verses, combined with the English text--"produces a continual tension," and "the net effect is finally to make clear how fully Gower shares Ovid's vision of a world rendered chronically unstable by ill-governed human desire" (173). Thus, "if Genius at times appears comically obtuse in seeking to wrestle an Ovidian tale into yielding the moral he needs, it is often possible to hear in the tone of phrasing of his lesson a hint, such as Ovid himself frequently gives, that such a judgment may be beside the point, that a Narcissus, a Canace or Anaxarete, even a Medea, is better viewed with sympathetic understanding" (173). Wetherbee then models an approach that respects this influence by analyzing one of these stories, the tale of Narcissus. Further remarking that "Gower's appropriation of Ovidian fable has affinities with Chaucer's, Wetherbee suggests that here students may "draw comparisons between the two, separate and apart from the more common comparisons of narrative idiosyncrasies" 174). A case in point is how "the comic ineptitude of Genius, so often a foil to Ovidian sympathy, can remind us of the narrator of Chaucer's 'Book of the Duchess,' the grumpy insomniac who whiles away a sleepless night reading a tale from Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'" (174). Such examples open an approach, a range of questions and a resource that can help others in the teaching of the "Confessio." In addition to pointing briefly to a few other Ovidian examples from the poem, Wetherbee finally considers two episodes in the "Confessio" that are based upon the "Achilleid" of Statius. These, the poet's "only direct engagements with non-Ovidian classical poetry" (177), he adapts in turn "to his Ovidian concern with aggressive desire" (178). [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wetherbee, Winthrop Published Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Gower Teaching Ovid and the Classics." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 172-79. ISBN 9781603290999 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 Teaching Ovid and the Classics Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed