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 VC is a monster, Salisbury asserts in its defense. Against those who have resisted both its patchwork use of extracts from many sources and its lack of adhesion to a single generic model, she sees it as an artfully constructed assemblage, a new, monstrous body formed from the dismembered bodies of the past, serving both "mostrare" and "monere," to show and to warn about, the monstrous political structures from which the monstrous events of 1381 arose. This is another essay that is impossible to summarize with any justice. It combines a close reading of chosen passages, calculated to show how Gower has selected his sources and how he has both altered the context of the lines he has borrowed and also invoked the context in which they first appeared, with a bold re-vision of the form of the entire poem, which she supports by reference to etymology, to Gower's use of the "body" of the statue of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, and to the illustrations of the archer shooting at the world found in several of the MSS. She also, of course, invokes the analogy of other literary models, including RR and the Cento Vergilianus de Laudibus Christi of Faltonia Betitia Proba, whose importance to VC was first noted by R.F. Yeager. Salisbury has gone much further than Yeager in linking Gower's formal procedure to the subject and content of his poem. Her essay is bold and thought-provoking, and repeatedly challenges us to take a fresh and more thoughtful look at VC. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Salisbury, Eve Published Salisbury, Eve. "Remembering Origins: Gower's Monstrous Body Poetic." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 159-184. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Remembering Origins: Gower's Monstrous Body Poetic. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Hain, Ludovici. Published Hain, Ludovici. Repertorium bibliographicum, in quo libri omnes ab arte typographica inventa usque ad annum MD . . . etc. Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1826, I, ii, 490. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Review Prints Caxton's colophon from 1483 edition of CA.[RFY1981]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Repertorium bibliographicum, in quo libri omnes ab arte typographica inventa usque ad annum MD . . . etc. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1826 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 her dissertation on the theme of exile in medieval English narratives, Lawler follows Mary Metz Gwin (1987; Auburn dissertation) in treating Amans' trajectory in Gower's "Confessio Amantis" as a form of "spiritual journey" (101)--for Lawler, an essentially "ironic" (102) one that indicates the need to abandon courtly affection as a means to self-recovery. Comparing Amans with Chaucer's Troilus, Lawler argues that each lover jeopardizes his soul through worldly love and must abandon it for "higher matters": "Just as devotional lyrics remind Christians that they should exile themselves from the temptations of the world," Lawler observes, "so too do some love poems reiterate this belief" (103). [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lawler, Jennifer L. Published Lawler, Jennifer L. Representations of Exile in Early English Literature: 1100-1500 A.D. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Kansas, 1996. 241 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A57.07. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. 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 Representations of Exile in Early English Literature: 1100-1500 A.D. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Aers sets out to assess "some major literary representations of the 'third estate'" (335) and consider how these representations reflect and foster ideological assumptions about class. In his analysis, both Langland and Chaucer interrogate traditional social hierarchy, although in different ways, while Gower (in Book 1 of VC) and Walsingham affirm it and, in doing so, reflect and promote the common late-medieval reaction to the Uprising of 1381 (Peasants' Revolt). Gower's depictions of lower-class people as bestial and anarchic, Aers asserts, indicate his "unselfreflexive, violent hatred" of these people "whose actions are seen to be conflicting with the traditional ideal of the social order" (345); like Walsingham's, Gower's social view is "unreflective, dogmatic, and appallingly self-righteousness" (347). [MA; Cited in JGN 10.1, without an abstract]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 154-63. Author/Editor Author/Editor Aers, David Published Aers, David. "Representations of the 'Third Estate': Social Conflict and its Milieu around 1381." Southern Review (Australia) 16 (1983), pp. 335-49. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Representations of the 'Third Estate': Social Conflict and its Milieu around 1381. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1983 Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 Brief mention of Gower as a trilingual poet who "gave up" Latin and French and who, with Chaucer, contributed to the "supremacy" of "East Midland English." [RFY1981; rev. MA]. Published Pancoast, Henry S. Representative English Literature from Chaucer to Tennyson. New York: Holt, 1893, p. 24. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Author/Editor Author/Editor Pancoast, Henry S. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Representative English Literature from Chaucer to Tennyson. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1893 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The salient example of the "righteous heathen" as Grady intends it is the Roman emperor Trajan, whose apparent salvation after having lived and died a pagan comes via the intercession of Gregory the Great--a legend retold many times, and differently, throughout the Middle Ages, and one that caused theologians, Thomas Aquinas among them, no end of headaches explaining. Fortunately, in his introductory chapter, "The Rule of Exceptional Salvations," Grady makes clear, relatively brief work of the history and the problems related to this spiritual "promotion" (1-14). He addresses the CA in his chapter 4 (101-21), "The Rhetoric of the Righteous Heathen," (arguing that this "rhetoric . . . helps to organize the most difficult transition" in the poem: "Alexander's education by Aristotle is the prime example of the pedagogical relationship of ruler and sage on which Gower's idea of court poetry fundamentally depends, and the 'well-tutored Alexander' stands at the center of the 'Confessio' and Gower's conception of him." Yet, Grady notes, there are "several dangers inherent in this late-medieval rhetoric of exemplarity," and Gower, aware of them, "moving from the penitential model of book 6 to the Fürstenspiegel of book 7 . . . draws on the structural resources of the virtuous pagan scene to control these anxieties and to manage the intersection of the amatory and the political in his poem." (15) In his discussion of Books VI-VII, Grady situates Gower between Malory and the Chaucer of Troilus, finding closest comparisons between Troilus' apparent apotheosis at the end of that poem and Gower's use of "the pedagogical relationship between two virtuous pagans" (i.e., Alexander and Aristotle): "Like Chaucer, facing at the end of 'Troilus and Criseyde' a difficult transition from courtly love to Christian prayer, Gower at this point in the 'Confessio' finds the convention of the righteous heathen the means to move from love to politics; if his gesture is less spectacular (and the results less compact) than Troilus's apotheosis, it is just as crucial to the structure of his poem, and just as dependent on the contemporary discourse of the virtuous pagan." (121) In his concluding chapter, "Virtuous Pagans and Virtual Jews" (123-32), Grady takes up the "Tale of the Jew and the Pagan," found in Book VII in six manuscripts of the type Macaulay called "second recension." Grady's approach to the tale employs François Hertog's "rule of the excluded middle, a strategy that permits a narrative trying to represent alterity to handle more than two terms (i.e., self and other) at once." (125) In Grady's reading, "in order to express adequately the alterity of the Jew," Gower transforms the normal triad "Jew-Pagan-Christian" into a duality: "the pagan is temporarily assimilated into the field of Christian ethics, and the middle term--a non-Christian but nevertheless morally admirable paganism--is essentially elided." (125) Grady's conclusion to Gower's solution is highly critical: "But in making an anti-ecumenical ruthlessness a supposed tenet of Jewish law and contrasting it with the laudable mercy of another non-Christian, this noxious little anecdote implies that the praise of pagan virtue is structurally dependent upon the denigration of Jewish vice" (125). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Grady, Frank Published Grady, Frank. "Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England." New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 ISBN 978-1403966995 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Representing Righteous Heathens in Late Medieval England Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Palgrave Macmillan, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Martin surveys the few tantalizing references to the existence of MSS of the Confessio Amantis in Scotland before 1600. From them she infers that Gower's poetry was known and "was regarded as appropriate reading matter, or at least a fashionable addition to the library, for the intellectual elite, and the landed but also urban classes of late medieval and early modern Scotland" (563). The bulk of her essay, however, is concerned with tracing the influence of the CA in three Scottish works, each of which use it in a different but equally informed way. The anonymous prose "Spectacle of Luf" (1492) is framed as a dialogue between an old knight and his son on the dangers of the latter's subjection to love. The lessons, with their accompanying exempla, are divided into eight sections. The epilogue contains several detailed recollections of the ending of the Confessio. As the aged narrator abandons the didactic role of the main body of the poem, moreover, the ending recalls some of the ambivalences of Gower's conclusion and even "confronts the uncomfortable prospect considered by Gower . . . that maturity does not always bring a natural release form moral waywardness" (567). The reactions of the younger man to his father's lessons also recalls the stubborn persistence in love of Gower's Amans. Both works "therefore ultimately question the usefulness of the advisory genres to which they belong, foregrounding the power of readers to deflect the instructional intentions of authors in pursuit of validation of their own desires" (569), and they also draw a link between a lack self-governance in the ruler or ruling class and the resultant dangers of social disorder. Gavin Douglas' "Palice of Honour" (c. 1501) actually mentions Gower (in the company of Chaauer and Lydgate) by name. In part 1, the narrator's encounter with Venus contains recollections both of the opening of the CA and of Gower's "Tale of Rosiphelee." Like Gower, Douglas portrays his narrator "as one drawn perilously to the attractions of Venus's court, yet highly unsuitable for it, and unwelcome to its deity" (572), though the result is the narrator's rejection of love rather than a supplication for Venus's aid. And the narrator's second encounter with Venus, in part 3, recalls the conclusion to Gower's poem. "In both Confessio Amantis and The Palice of Honour, . . . the narrators are urged to use their literary skills in more fitting ways than writing about erotic love, in the service, respectively, of moral virtue and virtuous honour" (574). John Rolland's "Court of Venus" (c. 1560) also cites Gower by name, invoking him as an authority on how to avoid the dangers of subjection to Venus. It also imitates Gower in its conclusion, as the elderly narrator is expelled from Venus's court, but like "The Spectacle of Luf," it "returns to the problematic implications of the close of the Confessio Amantis" (576) that stories like those told by Genius "rarely succeed in convincing lovers to reform themselves," and it "leaves the reader with the problematic image of the poet-narrator as the reluctant outcast from Venus's court rather than the source of moral and ethical exemplarity" (576). Each of these three works also draws from other authors and "do not constitute a tradition," but as Martin notes in her conclusion, "they do give a clear indication of a Scottish habit of reading the Confessio Amantis that does not have an exact equivalent in contemporary English literature" (577). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 29.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Martin, Joanna M Published Martin, Joanna M. "Responses to the Frame Narrative of John Gower's Confessio Amantis in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Scottish Literature." Review of English Studies 60 (2009), pp. 561-77. ISSN 0034-6551 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Responses to the Frame Narrative of John Gower's Confessio Amantis in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Scottish Literature. 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 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 central contention of Collette's study is that Chaucer's work is best viewed as produced "in a moment of literary and cultural hybridity, when . . . the courtly conventions of love poetry were consciously melded with a broader definition of love's 'thousand formes.' . . . This notion of love is closely linked to what . . . English termed common profit in late fourteenth-century vernacular literature. As Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' demonstrates, love becomes a trope through which to examine right action, and charity becomes a template for creating a more just polity." (1) She cites a humanist impulse underlying this widening of love's scope, taking account of Italian predecessors (Boccaccio, Petrarch), French fellow-travellers (Machaut and Christine de Pizan), but also reflecting a native strain present in the court of Edward III, led by Richard de Bury, and a circle including Thomas Bradwardine, Walter Burley, Richard FitzRalph and Robert Holcot. Her study presents "a comparative reading of these authors' work . . . how all adapt and shape well-known stories for their own cultural purposes." (5) The section on Gower ("John Gower: The Personal and the Political" 59-68) includes detailed discussion of those tales of women also told by Chaucer in 'Legend of Good Women': Pyramus and Thisbe, Medea, Dido, Ariadne, Philomela, and Lucrece. Her findings take on a general character, as follows: "The structure of the 'Confessio Amantis' is overtly didactic, the alignment between exemplar and moral point always articulated. Gower's examples, however, are often expressed in rich poetry, while Chaucer chooses an opposite course: the naked text, brief narratives which pare down the stories so that what details and elements of plot remain achieve significance for the reader without interpretive directives from the author." (61)] [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Collette, Carolyn P Published Collette, Carolyn P. "Rethinking Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women'." Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press/Boydell and Brewer, 2014 ISBN 9781903153499 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 Rethinking Chaucer's 'Legend of Good Women' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available York Medieval Press/Boydell and Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Lindeboom, Wim Published Lindeboom, Wim. "Rethinking the Recensions of the Confessio Amantis." Viator 40 (2009), pp. 319-48. ISSN 0083-5897 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review Lindeboom's long essay marks another attempt to make sense of the confusing evidence concerning the dating, the revision, and the publication of the "Confessio Amantis." Because he moves back and forth from one question to another, it is impossible to summarize his essay point by point, but one can pick out some of the main threads. Lindeboom reconsiders the significance of the dates that appear in the text and marginal notes of the different versions of the poem; he re-examines the evidence supporting Macaulay's classification of the many surviving copies into different "recensions;" he offers some new suggestions about the relation between the various alterations and revisions in the poem, the political events of the last two decades of the fourteenth century, and Gower's (presumably) shifting relations with his patrons; and he reconsiders the implications of Gower's suggestion to Chaucer, which appears in some versions of the poem, that he offer his own "testament of love." Much of his essay is devoted to dismantling what he considers the "preconceptions" (p. 348) of Macaulay and Fisher, and many of his criticisms, particularly with regard to the conclusions that they and others have drawn from the various dates that appear in the margins, have been stated before and are worth consideration. In many cases, however, it is difficult to say that the alternative views that he offers are any less speculative. He dismisses as improbable, for instance, the notion that Gower could have become disenchanted with Richard II in the early 1390s, as Fisher maintained, but he makes much of a supposed hostility between Richard and his cousin Henry during the same period, which, he insists, would have made it impossible for Gower to consider dedicating his poem to Henry at this time (331). He also argues that dedicating a poem to Henry that contains a long discussion of the education of a king (which is how he characterizes the purpose of Book 7) would have been "an essentially seditious political statement" (337) if Richard were still king. He then sees hints of a threat to Chaucer in the invitation to write a "testament of love," a comment that he interprets as a reminder of the fate of the unfortunate Thomas Usk, author of a poem of that name, who was beheaded in 1388 (338-44). Lindeboom's arguments lead him to suggest that portions of the poem, such as the address to Chaucer, date from earlier than has been supposed, but that others, such as all of Book 7, may be late additions, inserted only when Henry had become king. At the same time, he declares it "reasonable to assume" (326) and "in all likelihood" true (344) that the poem was intended to be presented orally long before it was circulated in manuscript form. This inference, however, is based on the analogy of arguments made about the "Canterbury Tales" (a work much more easily divisible into individual "performances" than is the CA) rather than on any evidence offered from the CA itself. (In disagreeing with Coleman over Henry IV's knowledge of Latin in his note 31, Lindeboom complicates his case further by, in effect, dismissing one of the strongest arguments on which her case for oral presentation is based.) In the end, we are left not knowing precisely which version of the poem Lindeboom is trying to date: some early "oral" version or one of the written ones? And a version that contained which parts of the poem as it is now known? In dismantling the poem in this way, Lindeboom pays virtually no attention to the manuscript evidence. It is not merely that he seems not to have examined any manuscripts on his own. He simply passes over the fact that Book 7, which he wants to believe was added for Henry, appears in all surviving copies of the poem in which Henry is not even mentioned. In another vein, while attacking Macaulay's notion of the three "recensions," he appears to adopt without reservation Macaulay's conclusions on the order in which the three different "versions" of "recension 1" arose (e.g. on 324 and on 334, where he calls the "unrevised version" "the earliest one"). He cites a 1985 essay by the reviewer in support of the notion that the differences among these three versions are mostly scribal in origin (322), but he overlooks the conclusion that follows (and hence the principal burden of that essay): that Macaulay got the order wrong, and that the one he called "unrevised" was actually the last in order of time, manifesting the highest degree of scribal corruption. At another point (331) Lindeboom offers the suggestion that the "intermediate" version might in fact be the earliest version of the poem. This suggestion is based on a completely mistaken account of the contents of the different "versions" that he offers on 324, where he claims that in the "intermediate" and "revised" versions, the lines in which Richard II and Chaucer are named are replaced with the passages less favorable to England and more favorable to Henry. This is simply wrong. One has to suspect that Lindeboom has confused the "intermediate version" with "recension two" and the "revised version" with "recension three," but one can't be sure. And that is true about much in this essay. One will find here a summary of some of the many questions that we are still debating about the origin and development of the poem, but we are still far from any clear and definite answers. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 29.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rethinking the Recensions of the Confessio Amantis. 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 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 Fonzo's is a book with a mission. She contends that for reasons specific to each, the works of Langland, Gower, and Chaucer have been mis-read, largely through what she terms "retrospective prophecy": that is, a tendency to mistake "hindsight for insight," leading to claims "that a text anticipated a future historical event or movement, especially insofar as they may perpetuate myths of an always-improving historical timeline" (8). In order to correct this, her "book undertakes the excavation of the critical traditions of reading Langland, Gower, and Chaucer as prophetic in order to recover the complex and creative prophetic personae that they themselves sought to cultivate, often in defiance of rather than compliance with the discourse of political prophecy" (11)." She addresses Gower in chapter three, "Henry IV and the Ex Post Facto Construction of a Prophetic John Gower," pp. 70-103. Her reading of Gower is that he "actively adopted" political prophecies, whereas Langland "teasingly invoked and ridiculed them . . . and Chaucer avoided them entirely" (6). Fonzo's final paragraph conveniently sums up both chapter and book: "Despite the fact that no conclusive manuscript evidence supports the idea that Gower predicted Richard II's fall from power, the poet has remained a prophet in contemporary criticism for a cluster of interrelated reasons. First, both Gower and the Lancastrians were promoting this perception of the poet. Second, Gower's prophetic reputation has a cumulative effect. For instance [Malcolm] Parkes has based his perceptions of when Gower altered the 'Vox' upon [G. C.] Macaulay's interpretations of when Gower revised the 'Confessio.' Third, there remain very few editions of Gower's works, and the most prominent of those that do exist have been edited by people championing the perspective of a prophetic Gower. Fourth, the nature of Richard II's rule is still debated among historians, largely because we cannot tell which parts of history have been obscured by Lancastrian propaganda. Gower is often conscribed into this debate as either a witness to Richard's tyranny or an opportunistic traitor and foil for the supposedly loyal Ricardian poet, Chaucer. Fifth, the 'red herring' recension of the 'Confessio' that Gower happened to have originally dedicated to both Richard and Henry has served as a source of confusion for later scholars attempting to understand the circumstances surrounding its composition. Sixth, because Gower's works are either not in English or prohibitively long, they are rarely granted a prominent place on the syllabi of most English courses. Those who study and teach Gower's works cannot make the case for his importance solely from canonical relevance. Gower is important, much criticism tells us, because he had an uncanny talent for diagnosing problems in his country's general populace and leadership. Finally, audiences of any period rarely expect authors to be as crafty as Gower appears to have been in his prophetic self-fashioning. Gower's efforts to depict himself as a sage authority have cemented his reputation as a keen political observer but overshadowed his other literary accomplishments" (103). It is suggested that alongside Fonzo's book three essays by Peter Nicholson could be profitably read: "Gower's Revisions in the Confessio Amantis" ("Chaucer Review"19 [1984]; "The Dedications of Gower's Confessio Amantis" ("Mediaevalia" 10 [1984]; and "Poet and Scribe in the Manuscripts of Gower's Confessio Amantis" in Derek Pearsall, ed., "Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature" (1987). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fonzo, Kimberly. Published Fonzo, Kimberly. Retrospective Prophecy and Medieval English Authorship. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 Retrospective Prophecy and Medieval English Authorship. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 his review is occasioned by the publication of volume 4 of Macaulay's edition of Gower (the Latin Works), Spies focuses primarily on Macaulay's general opinion of Gower's politics. Spies agrees with Macaulay's favorable assessment of Gower's switch in allegiance away from Richard II, and lists some of the criticisms traditionally leveled against Gower (from Colley Cibber to Karl Meyer). Spies provides more criticism, however, of Macaulay's views on the supposed quarrel between Chaucer and Gower. Spies feels that the Man of Law's opinion of Gower is shared by Chaucer, and he questions Macaulay's argument that Gower only struck the greeting to Chaucer from the later recensions to create room for other material. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Spies, Heinrich Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Published Spies, Heinrich. "Review of Macaulay's The Complete Works of John Gower, vol. IV." Englische Studien 35 (1905), pp. 104-109. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1905 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Review of Macaulay's The Complete Works of John Gower, vol. IV Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Houlik-Ritchey considers the implications of the omission of Gower's references to "Saracens" in the Castilian translation of the CA by Juan de Cuenca. Her close reading reveals considerable paradox in Gower's attitude, as he evidently finds justification for the Roman emperor's harsh reprisal in the tale of Constance in Book 2 but has Genius note the sanctity of even Muslim souls in his comments on crusading in Book 3, and also in his ambivalent portrayal of the Sultaness, Constance's first mother-in-law, who sets Constance adrift after the slaughter at the feast, but also carefully makes sure that she has sufficient provisions on her boat. The term "Saracen" itself, however, clearly denotes difference, and by implication either moral depravity or a threat to the author's and readers' Christian culture, and because of its use in earlier medieval romances, "evokes the realm of fantasy, of an aggressor against which violence is always permissible because it is always necessary" (183). The Castilian text removes the link between the Sultaness' villainy and her religion by referring to her only as "la mala vieja" ("the evil old woman"), and in the passages in which Genius considers the morality of the crusades, it uses the more generic "infiel" ("infidel") where Gower uses "Sarazin." Juan de Cuenca is obviously less concerned with "fantasies of religious aggressors threatening Christianity" (183), and although his version of the poem too is marked by the triumph of Christianity, both in the conversion of Northumberland and in the ethic that makes it possible to condemn killing even of one's enemies, the long history of Jews, Christians, and Moslems living side by side on the Iberian peninsula, while not necessarily bringing about an ideal of mutual tolerance, "created an environment in which anxieties about one's religious neighbors did not take the same form as in late medieval England" (186). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Houlik-Ritchey, Emily Published Houlik-Ritchey, Emily. "Rewriting Difference: 'Saracens' in John Gower and Juan de Cuenca." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 171-89. ISSN 0210-9689 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 Rewriting Difference: 'Saracens' in John Gower and Juan de Cuenca Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 Youngman, William Auther. Published Ph.D. Dissertation. Cornell University, 2014. Open access at https://ecommons.cornell.edu/handle/1813/36190 (accessed February 3, 2023). iv; 248 pp. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Minor Latin Poetry Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Influence and Later Allusion Review Coining the phrase "senex style" in his dissertation, Youngman studies the "the function of old age as a textual and metaphorical category" (6) as expressed in "a particular rhetorical and stylistic set of practices that surround seemingly commonplace illustrations of old age, but mark these texts as resistant to the narrated restraints of what they describe of age" (7). He "traces the paradoxical treatment of old men from the Reeve in 'The Canterbury Tales' to John Gower's reanimated role in Shakespeare's 'Pericles' . . . , [i]ncorporating fifteenth century authors, such as Thomas Hoccleve, and scribes and printers, such as John Shirley and William Caxton, together with Chaucer, and Gower. . . . By focusing on a set of elements, which although shared are deployed differently, [Youngman] contend[s] that authors and speakers employ in new ways a paradoxical set of characteristics in depictions of old men taken from classical literature. . . . [T]his examination of senex style demonstrates how the figure of the old man bridges categories of language and body, by examining non-normative and less-than-able selves that are defined not only by bodily impairments but also rhetorical postures of disability and prosthesis" (ii). Youngman's treatment of Gower includes discussion of the juxtaposition of CA with several of Chaucer's lyrics in British Library MS. Additional 22139, Gower's use of senex style in CA and in "Quicquid homo scribat," and the use of the choral Gower as revision--a form of textual prosthesis--in "Pericles," where "Shakespeare reads Gower closely to the way I read him, as poeta senex, practitioner par excellence of senex style" (187). [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 Rewriting Old Age from Chaucer to Shakespeare: The Invention of English Senex Style. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Sharp examines Gower's approach in Book VII of the "Confessio Amantis" in terms of "deliberative rhetoric" (257 and passim), examining Gower's incorporation of a rhetorical understanding into the counselling purpose of that section of the poem. Sharp argues that "Gower's positioning of his discussion of rhetoric within the genre of the mirror for princes, or Fürstenspiegel, suggests that he understood rhetoric as an inherently political practice and that the knowledge contained under the category of rhetoric was instrumental for the governance of a kingdom" (257). He contextualizes this alongside medieval adaptations of Aristotelian rhetorical understanding, and the broader genre of "the offering and acceptance of counsel between lord and vassal" (258), arguing that "Gower depicts rhetoric as a hierarchical system specifically adapted for the monarchy in its melding of rhetorical practice with Aristotelian virtue ethics. Thus, his 'Confessio Amantis' represents an important and overlooked contribution to medieval rhetoric" (258). Sharp foregrounds "how Gower accounts for the ambiguity, contingency, and sensibility of language within his theory of deliberative rhetoric" (259), making a case to identify that theory of rhetoric in terms of Gower's practice in Book VII. Sharp engages significantly with Gower's rhetorical understanding of late medieval approaches to Aristotelian ethics, such as Latini and Aquinas (260), arguing that the exempla featured by works like the CA are analogous to the "habituation" to virtue called for by Aristotle (261). Sharp further notes the association of sensory desire with the vices Gower critiques throughout the CA, to associate Gower's rhetoric in Book 7 to the need to manage speech and language (265). Sharp argues that Gower thus relates the moral goals of Fürstenspiegel to the rhetorical goals of his verse, ultimately focusing on an endorsement of "chasteté" (266). Gower's retelling of the Lucrece story illustrates a sovereign's potential use of language interactions to create the possibility of "deliberation and political intervention" (267), tying details of the narrative to figures in the story with power negotiating ambiguity and contingency for "individual or common profit" (267), and overall makes a reasonable case for the rhetorical complexity of this portion of Gower's poem. [RAL. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sharp, Joseph. Published Sharp, Joseph. "Rhetoric and Chastity: Gower's Depiction of Rhetorical Practice in the Lucrece Myth." Journal for the History of Rhetoric 25, no. 3 (November 2022): 257–78. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rhetoric and Chastity: Gower's Depiction of Rhetorical Practice in the Lucrece Myth. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review No rhetorical tradition taught at Oxford until fifteenth century; no vernacular literary consciousness of tradition during this same period, save in the works of Chaucer and Gower. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Murphy, James J. Published Murphy, James J. "Rhetoric in Fourteenth-Century Oxford." Medium Aevum 34 (1965): 1-20, and p. 12n63. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rhetoric in Fourteenth-Century Oxford. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1965 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Daniels argues that Gower, like Chaucer, was likely indebted to the medieval rhetoricians. Gower's familiarity with the Poetria Nova of Geoffrey de Vinsauf is clear from two passages in the VC. Gower's syllabic play with the name Clemens (a "headless name" without the prefix "in") is likely modeled on Geoffrey's play on the name of Pope Innocent III. Similarly, a passage thirty lines earlier in the VC (3.925-26) about a shepherd's responsibility towards his sheep appears influenced by a similar word play in the Poetria Nova. Admittedly, in Book 8 of the CA Gower claims to have little knowledge of rhetoric, but Daniels shows that an earlier version of the same passage (3054-66*) includes two different rhetorical devices. Given Gower's knowledge of Geoffrey de Vinsauf, as well as the rhetorical portions of Brunetto Latini's Tresor, Gower's admission is likely ironic, and is in fact a rhetorical technique itself (disparagement or "diminutio"). The rest of the article aims to prove Gower's knowledge of rhetoric by a detailed listing of the rhetorical figures (see page 66 for the entire list) that occur in his poem "In Praise of Peace." However, Daniels concludes that while the poem includes "a considerable use of rhetorical ornament" (73), the "infrequent use of the tropes" (73) is noteworthy. The reason is that Gower eschews a "gravis stilus" (73) in favour of "simple and moving verses" in harmony with the theme of the poem, namely the humility of Christ. Daniels therefore concludes, "The rhetorical element in Gower is a measure of his artistry, and he employed rhetoric with taste and discrimination" (73). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Daniels, Robertson Balfour Published Daniels, Robertson Balfour. "Rhetoric in Gower's 'To King Henry the Fourth, in Praise of Peace'." Studies in Philology 32 (1935), pp. 62-73. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification In Praise of Peace Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rhetoric in Gower's 'To King Henry the Fourth, in Praise of Peace' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1935 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 Comtois, Sister Cecile de la Providence. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review A close reading of MO that attempts to establish Gower's dependence for structure, narrative, word-play, etc. on rhetoric books, and uses the material to interpret the poem in a general way. Includes as appendices lists of rhetorical devices in the poem. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Published Comtois, Sister Cecile de la Providence. "Rhetoric in John Gower's 'Speculum Meditantis'." Ph.D. Dissertation. Fordham University, 1953. Unrestricted access available at https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI10992942/. Accessed August 28, 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1953 Title A name given to the resource Rhetoric in John Gower's "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 Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Comtois begins by briefly surveying the medieval rhetorical tradition with which Gower was familiar before turning to a discussion of how Gower's work fits within the medieval "speculum" tradition finding innovation in Gower's use of French for the work, given the predominance of Latin in the "speculum" tradition. The remainder of the dissertation focuses upon Gower's use of the rhetorical tropes in the poem, especially amplification and abbreviation and other stylistic decisions indebted to rhetorical techniques. Comtois includes three appendices: one (supplementing Chapter 3) listing all lines where she sees examples of amplification and abbreviation, a second (supplementing Chapter 4) containing a list of "figures of words", and a third (also supplementing Chapter 4) listing indications in the poem of examples of "figures of thought." [BWG. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Comtois, Cecile de la Providence. Published Comtois, Cecile de la Providence. "Rhetoric in John Gower's 'Speculum Meditantis'." Ph.D. Dissertation. Fordham University, 1953. Dissertation Abstracts International 80.2. Full text available at ProQuest. Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rhetoric in John Gower's "Speculum Meditantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review As her title indicates, Copeland's study is concerned with the relation between medieval translation and the traditional systems of rhetoric and hermeneutics, as they were inherited from classical authors and redefined during the Middle Ages; and with the ways in which vernacular translations appropriated some of the "cultural privilege" of the Latin academic discourse that shaped and informed it. Her opening chapters trace the interaction between rhetoric and hermeneutics as discursive constructs during the late classical and medieval periods; she then examines the vernacular translations of Ovid, Martianus Capella, and Boethius, which grow out of the Latin exegetical tradition but which reveal varying sorts of relationship to the source text. Her final chapter, on "Translation as rhetorical invention," treats Chaucer's Prologue to Legend of Good Women and Gower's Confessio Amantis. CA represents the furthest extreme of the development she describes: Gower adopts the exegetical structure of its predecessors, but that structure becomes so dominant that it accentuates the differences between Gower's text and its sources (hence CA is rarely examined as a "translation"). Gower's debt to the exegetical tradition includes his two "prologues," the marginal commentary, the ordinatio of the text, and the figure of Genius, who functions as a projection of the author, "a disguise for the author's auto-exegesis" -- all of which provide an interpretive framework within which the tales are to be read, and to which they are subordinated. The structure that dominates -- the principal means by which Gower reshapes his inherited material to his own moral purpose -- is the compilatio, with its accompanying divisio and ordinatio. Gower's use of divisio is evident not just in the classification according to the Seven Deadly Sins but also in the structure of Book 7; this book, a survey of human knowledge with emphasis on ethics, provides a hermeneutical key to the entire CA, integrating the poem on several levels while it shifts the thematic focus from the individual sinner to the need for common profit. But while divisio provides both a hermeneutical procedure and an epistemological system, it also used in CA to describe the discord and fragmentation of society, of history, and of language. Gower's own use of the vernacular is implicated, of course, in the fragmentation of language; while Latin culture seeks to contain disorder by an aritificial transcending of time and place, CA provides its own example of the divisioun that it condemns. But Gower adopts the ordering apparatus of divisio textus as a way of healing this divisioun, turning a hermeneutical tool into a form of ethical action, in so doing reconceiving the function of academic discourse and augmenting the value of the vernacular as a vehicle for social reform. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 11.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Copeland, Rita Published Copeland, Rita. "Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts." Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literatures, 11 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cambridge University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Olsson argues that in Chaucer's CT and in Gower's CA the apparently simplistic exemplum "becomes a complex form" (186). Olsson begins by pointing out that even in Gower's MO we already have a variety of exemplum types. The form can encompass the similitude or "homoeosis" (e.g., the tale of Ulysses and the Sirens), the precedential exemplum (e.g, the story of Codrus), the use exemplars (in part 3 of the MO), or the complex and meditative mode used in the final section of the MO, the life of the Virgin and Christ. Of particular interest in this overview are Olsson's comments on the overlap between exemplarity and allegory. In the CA, the exempla "demand our attention because the referent – which can be, beyond a specific idea, an auditor or speaker – does not always suit the narrative and because the tale and its referents can both be drawn into a fiction" (194). For example, the Tale of Rosiphelee suits the needs of Amans in Book 4, but is contradicted by the final message of the book. The reason is that in Book 4 love is judged according to nature, whereas in Book 8 the standard is reason (195). The exemplarity of Gower's stories thus "rests on the rhetoric: As the context of argument changes, tales and ideas assume a new value in the whole, and the result is an integral and more adequate insight into the complexity of human experience, as well as a fuller grasp of what a 'reule' demands. . . . In Gower's rhetoric, as in Chaucer's, the story often encourages the quest of a truth which is greater than that expressed in the tale itself" (196). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Olsson, Kurt O Published Olsson, Kurt O. "Rhetoric, John Gower, and the Late Medieval Exemplum." Medievalia et Humanistica 8 (1977), pp. 185-200. ISSN 0076-6127 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification 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 Rhetoric, John Gower, and the Late Medieval Exemplum Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 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 "John Gower and other Aristotelians like him enquired into how speech convinced each individual to behave morally and thus to rule himself, his kingdom, or world rightly" (157). Thus for Donavin, the key to the structure of the Confessio Amantis is a proper understanding of Aristotle's "Rhetoric" as filtered for Gower through Roger Bacon, and especially the "Commentary" of Giles of Rome, as well as "possibly through one of the numerous abbreviations of the "Rhetoric" in medieval English manuscripts" (158). Despite the fact that "scholars have been reluctant to acknowledge the influence of Aristotle's "Rhetoric" in fourteenth-century England . . . because English university statutes do not mention the text until the fifteenth century . . .common sense dictates that the 'Rhetoric' had some influence over intellectual conversations about persuasive language" (159). Through his legal studies, Gower could have acquired "a much broader understanding of Aristotelian rhetorical appeals and their political applications than is offered in his basic source, 'De regimine principum'" (160). But from Giles' "Commentary" Gower would have discovered an Aristotle with a "new psychological emphasis to rhetorical studies" which placed him in the company of Cicero and Boethius in the connection of persuasion and ethics (161). A good deal like James Simpson ("Sciences and the Self") in her contention that the CA "portrays an Aristotelian psychomachia of invention, a scene in which Reason and Will conjoin to produce morally compelling speech" (162). Focusing her discussion on Book VII, Donavin finds "the purpose of Book VII's section on 'Rhetorique'" to be to "highlight the discipline in order to underscore [Gower's] own discursive assumptions for the entire poem" (168). "Through Aristotelian rhetoric, mediated by Giles of Rome, John Gower modeled a psychomachia of persuasion and taught in the 'Rhetorique' section of Book VII its high principles. Like Roger Bacon, Giles of Rome, and later Francis Bacon, Gower in the Confessio Amantis preserves an Aristotelian form of discourse that heals the soul and offers hope to the kingdom" (173). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1} Author/Editor Author/Editor Donavin, Georgiana Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Published Donavin, Georgiana. "Rhetorical Gower: Aristotelianism in the Confessio Amantis's Treatment of 'Rhetorique'." In John Gower: Manuscripts, Readers, Contexts. Ed. Urban, Malte. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2009, pp. 155-73. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 Brepols, 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 Title A name given to the resource Rhetorical Gower: Aristotelianism in the Confessio Amantis's Treatment of 'Rhetorique' Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Burrow's study of the hallmarks of Ricardian poetry makes frequent reference to Gower. Such typical features as "pointing," personification, a predilection for narrative, the exemplary mode, and the enclosure of poetic material in a framed story -- these are all amply illustrated by examples from Gower. For example, Gower shows "felicity, wit, and even profundity" (83) in his application of morals to his stories. What generally sets Gower apart is his style, which Burrow, in the tradition of Warton, Macaulay, and Lewis, calls "Augustan." In other words, at his best Gower writes in a plain style that is "free from constraint or stiffness, smooth and without a trace of effort" (29). Yet Gower's fastidiousness and desire for correctness also meant that his style frequently became "threadbare" (31), and thus Burrows concludes, "It is as if the English language was not yet rich enough to support the sacrifices which an exclusive doctrine of correctness demands" (31-32). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burrow, J. A Published Burrow, J. A. "Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Gawain Poet." London: Routledge, 1971 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the Gawain Poet Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Routledge, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 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 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 Eberle provides a valuable list of "all texts known to me which were commissioned by or addressed to" (as opposed to known merely to have been owned by) King Richard II. Her list contains only 14 items. As she discusses them, she notes that they provide a better indication of how Richard might have wanted to see himself than of what he was, but she also provides valuable suggestions on what each work reveals about Richard's own interests and knowledge. Among the recurring themes she finds are an interest in the Secretum Secretorum and an emphasis on sapientia over fortitudo in the description of the king. Among the very small number of works of literary character on this list appear the original version of Book 6 of VC (the second item) and the entire CA (item 3), which "can be read as an extended discussion of the issues raised in the letter to Richard in the Vox Clamantis, combining an exalted view of royal prerogative with an equally exalted ideal of the moral and religious virtues required of the king" (236). The thirteenth item is the volume of his own poetry that Froissart claims to have presented to the king in 1395, a book that has since disappeared. Eberle notes that the loss "demonstrates the danger of assuming that our records of Richard's manuscripts, even of elaborate presentation copies, are at all complete" (249), but on looking over the list of books that are known to have appealed to Richard, one can't help wondering if both Gower and Froissart might not have misjudged the likelihood of the king's interest in their poems [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 24.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Eberle, Patricia J. Published Eberle, Patricia J.. "Richard II and the Literary Arts." In Richard II: The Art of Kingship. Ed. Goodman, Anthony and Gillespie, James. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999, pp. 231-253. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard II and the Literary Arts Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Clarendon Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1999 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 Fonzo, Kimberly. Published Fonzo, Kimberly. "Richard II's Publicly Prophesied Deposition in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Modern Philology 114 (2016): 1-17. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Review Fonzo reprises the question of why so many manuscripts of the "Confessio Amantis" produced after the deposition of Richard II present the first recension of the poem, dedicated to Richard, rather than the later versions dedicated to Henry. She locates her answer in Gower's self-stylization as a prophetic poet, a persona he used in "Vox Clamantis" and revived late in his career with the "Prophesy of the Eagle," for example, but which, Fonzo maintains, was also found in (or imposed upon) the CA and promoted by the Lancastrians after Richard was deposed: Gower's commentary on kingship in the CA was regarded, with tendentious hindsight, as prophecy or prediction of "Richard's imminent downfall" (8). Fonzo reviews the manuscript evidence for the prevalence of the first recension, links it with Derek Pearsall's notion of "standard" manuscripts of the CA, and argues that the Lancastrians promoted the version dedicated to Richard as part of their broader program of presenting Richard's rule as corrupted by youthful counsel, fated for failure, and worthy of usurpation. Drawing her material largely from CA Book VII, Fonzo shows that Gower's narratives of, for example, "Ahab and Machaiah," "David and Saul," and even the account of Gower's meeting Richard on the Thames could be, and seemingly were, read retrospectively as prophetic critiques of Richard's rule and predictions of his downfall rather than the way Gower probably intended them initially, that is, as "vox populi" reminders of a king's proper agency. After the deposition, Gower "cultivated a poetic voice that was more emphatically prophetic and critical of Richard II" (15), and the CA was read accordingly as justification of the usurpation, foreseen and inevitable. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard II's Publicly Prophesied Deposition in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database 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 Begins by reviewing the history of the notion that Chaucer and Gower had a falling out and quarrelled with one another through their poetry during the 1390's. She asks why the idea of a quarrel has appealed so strongly to scholars for more than two centuries: "What desire might it fantastically fulfill?" (p. 132). And she suggests that the underlying assumption is that "aggression is necessary to the articulation or assertion of a strong, coherent character, an identity" (p. 132). Such an assumption is dangerous, she argues, for the consolidation of masculine identity in a male-dominated culture takes place through the elimination of, and therefore at the expense of, the feminine; and there is a continuity between this habit of thought and the violent eradication of female identity and autonomy in rape. As a step towards the creation of other sorts of relationships between men, Dinshaw turns to Gower's tale of Philomela and Chaucer's T&C, and uses the first as a gloss to the second in order to construct a reading that "does not obfuscate but rather clarifies the fact and the threat of violence to women's bodies" (p. 136). Gower typically describes Tereus' rape of Philomela as an anomalous, bestial act, avoiding judgment of similar, but socially sanctioned, "gender-assymetrical acts" such as Tereus' marriage to Procne; and as elsewhere in CA, he treats the crime as an offense of one man against another. The sisters' revenge has an ironic appropriateness: through rape, Tereus reinforces his own identity, "thus violently refusing mortality and disaggregation," but in consuming his own son, "he destroys his own legitimate chance at life beyond his own decay" (pp. 138-39). In the metamorphoses with which Gower concludes the tale, finally, the violation of the woman is transformed, in Philomela's song, into the lyric conventions of amorous suffering. The story of Procne and Philomela lurks behind the action of Book 2 of T&C. The nightingale's song serves as the harbinger to Criseyde's dream of the eagle and the exchange of hearts, which anticipates the romantic love talk of the following books. But the dream puts the violent mutilation of the woman before our eyes. And Gower's tale helps us understand that courtly love discourse also "encodes the bodily violation and destruction of a woman" (p. 141). Taking the two poems together, she concludes, reveals the "violent obliteration of the woman" that each tends to conceal, and using the two texts in conjunction, rather than as rivals, also provides a model for a more productive sort of relationship among men. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 11.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dinshaw, Carolyn Published Dinshaw, Carolyn. "Rivalry, Rape and Manhood: Gower and Chaucer." In Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. ELS Monograph Series (51). Victoria, B.C.: English Literary Studies, 1991, pp. 130-152. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Rivalry, Rape and Manhood: Gower and Chaucer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available English Literary Studies, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The notes to the long-awaited revision of Robinson's Chaucer have been completely redone by a large team of well-known Middle English scholars, and if they do not provide a precise guide to current views of Chaucer's relationship with Gower, they do offer some idea of what students will be learning about Gower in their Chaucer classes for the next few years. Many will be pleased that the theory of a quarrel between the poets is given short shrift in this edition, both by Martin Crow and Virginia Leland in their biographical introduction (p. xxiii), who refer to "structural reasons" for Gower's removal of his compliment to Chaucer (CA 8.2941 ff.), and by Patricia Eberle in her notes to the Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale (p. 854), who points out the present uncertainty about the dating of Gower's revisions. (Robinson also dismissed the likelihood of a quarrel in his note to LGW G 315). Gower is given extensive coverage, however, either as a source or as an analogue for a great many passages in Chaucer's work, particularly in CT. CA is included in the discussion of contemporary tale collections in the General Editor's introduction (p. 3), but is omitted from the list in the notes on pp. 795-96. In the discussion of the General Prologue Gower is cited only once as a possible source, for GP 435-37 (from MO 8338-43), but illustrative passages are cited from all three of his major works in the notes to the portraits of the Monk, the Clerk, the Sergeant of the Law (as he is called), the Doctor of Physik, the Parson, the Plowman, and the Summoner. Gower is also cited in the notes to a number of the tales; e.g. KnT 2129, MLT 161, 302-8, 1183, WBT 1109, et al.: without a precise count, the number of such references seems much larger than in Robinson's edition. Of the four tales that have close analogues in CA: Both Benson and Patricia Eberle come down in favor of Gower's priority for the tale of Constance (pp. 9, 856-57), and to Block's list of nine passages that Chaucer borrowed from Gower Eberle adds the entire scene of Constance's departure from Northumberland, MLT 834-68. In his comments on the Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale Benson suggests that "perhaps Chaucer is teasingly challenging his friend to a storytelling contest parallel to that in which the pilgrims are engaged" (p. 9); while Eberle (p. 856) provides an excellent note on the complexities involved in inferring a reference to Gower. Christine Ryan Hilary declares, a bit surprisingly, that "Chaucer knew and probably echoes" Gower's tale of Florent in WBT, citing Chaucer's line 1081 and CA 1.1727-31 (pp. 872-73). She also compares WBT 1073 to CA 1.1587. She doesn't cite Fisher, however, the one scholar who would most certainly agree on Chaucer's borrowing. (Benson lists Gower's tale only as an analogue, p. 11.) Larry Benson asserts that Chaucer knew Gower's tale of Virginia before writing his PhysT (p. 14), but David Benson lists Gower's tale only as an analogue and concludes that "there is no convincing evidence that Chaucer drew on any earlier version except RR" (p. 902). Larry Benson includes Gower's "Phebus and Cornide" as one of the possible sources for Chaucer's MancT (p. 20), and V.J. Scattergood cites in a favorable context Hazelton's suggestion that Chaucer's tale is a parody of Gower's (p. 952). Colin Wilcockson cites Gower's "Ceix and Alceone" only once in his notes to BD (p. 968), not as an analogue but as containing the metamorphoses that Chaucer omits. Benson's introduction to The Parliament of Fowls (p. 383) cites Gower's 34th and 35th balades in a list of contempary Valentine's Day poems. John M. Fyler's notes to HF include a reference to Tatlock's belief (1907) that MO 22129-52 might be based on HF 1573-82 (p. 988). The notes to LGW by M.C.E. Shaner and A.S.G. Edwards (pp. 1059-75) reflect some of the complexity of the relationship between this poem and CA. They note that the "Flower and the Leaf" passage in CA 8.2468 "may be an imitation" of LGW F 72, while LGW G 315 "may be a friendly jab at Gower." Among the tales, Gower's Cleopatra "is probably based" on Chaucer's (p. 1066), particularly for the details of her death (LGW 678-80, 696-702); and Chaucer's and Gower's stories of Thisbe "seem related, but it is hard to say which came first" (p. 1067), in both cases echoing Robinson. Gower is cited only as an analogue for Chaucer's tales of Medea, Lucrece, Ariadne, Philomela, and Phyllis. No note is made of Root's suggestion (1909) that Chaucer's Lucrece may have been based on Gower's, and though other parallels are noted in this legend, no reference is made to one of the most interesting similarities between the two poems, Lucrece's swoon before she is violated by Tarquin (LGW 1815-17; CA 7.4986-87). Several other parallel passages from MO, VC, and CA are cited in the notes to LGW, many of them drawn from Fisher. Laila Z. Gross takes note of Fisher's account of the many parallels between Chaucer's "Lak of Stedfastnesse" and Gower's CA Prol. (p. 1086), and Stephen Barney lists Fisher as a general source on Gower's relation with Chaucer in his note to T&C 5.1856-59 (p. 1058). Otherwise Fisher is quite remarkably neglected in this edition: there is no reference, for instance, to his belief in Gower's influence on the conception of GP and the Marriage Group or to his identification of the Eagle in HF, and while he is cited (p. 1059) for his belief that LGW was written at the request of the queen, the rest of his proposal, that LGW and CA were written for the same commission in 1385, passes without notice. Despite the inevitable unevenness and inconsistency in a work involving so many different hands, the editors on the whole have done a commendable job of presenting the most useful scholarship on Chaucer in a clear and compact form. One small but revealing example of their care will cause some pleasure for those of us who decide to cite from this volume: except in the case of "Boece," which has been freshly edited by Ralph Hanna and Traugott Lawler, the editors have arranged the prose texts on the page so that the line numbers are the sa as in the edition that they are replacing. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society JGN 6.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Benson, Larry D., ed. Published Benson, Larry D., ed. "Riverside Chaucer 3rd ed." Boston, MA.: Houghton Mifflin, 1987 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Riverside Chaucer 3rd ed. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Houghton Mifflin, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review As Russell points out, the CA was translated "first into Portuguese prose by Robert Payn, an Englishman attached to the household of Queen Philippa – John of Gaunt's daughter – and thence into Castilian by Juan de Cuenca" (26). The terminus ante quem for the Portuguese translation must be 1438, for Philippa's eldest son, King Duarte, had a copy in his library when he died in that year. Duarte also mentions the CA in the prologue to his Leal Conselheiro. It may be from the latter work that Juan de Cuenca first heard of Gower's poem. Of Juan de Cuenca little is known. He came from Huete, and Russell points out that the town was part of the settlement of John of Gaunt's Castilian claims in 1388. Of Robert Payn we know that he was a significant figure at the court of Philippa, and we know that he was still alive at the end of 1430. He probably made his translation after leaving the Queen's service and taking on an ecclesiastical office. We also know of a Thomas Payn who may have been Robert's father, and the quality of Robert's translation makes it seem likely that the family were not fresh arrivals in Portugal but belonged to the well-established English colony in Lisbon. Russell feels that the dedication to Richard II in the first recension – used for the translation – would have given little offense to a Portuguese audience, even after Richard was deposed. Yet the translation was likely made before 1399 or after 1415. Russell favours the latter possibility. He ends with some comments on the possible influence of Gower on later Iberian literature. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Russell, P. E Published Russell, P. E. "Robert Payn and Juan De Cuenca, Translators of Gower's Confessio Amantis." Medium AEvum 30 (1961), pp. 26-32. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Robert Payn and Juan De Cuenca, Translators of Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1961 Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 CA 4.234-43, under the rubric "Lachesse," Gower tells the story of how Robert Grosseteste lost seven years' worth of work on a magical head of brass because of a single moment of neglect. Macaulay's note to the tale mentions just one analogue (for which he does not provide the date), and notes that similar magical powers were attributed to Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus. Breeze provides a great deal more information about the appearance of tales of talking heads, made of brass and other materials, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The earliest version he cites is from William of Malmesbury, who attributes the magical head to Pope Sylvester II. Other analogues are found in French, Italian, and Spanish, and Breeze collects a number of interesting allusions from Welsh authors. The head is attributed in these stories to Virgil, to Albertus Magnus, and to Stephen of Tours, among several others; the tradition linking it to Roger Bacon seems to have been particularly viable, but only from the mid-sixteenth century on. Among the versions that Breeze describes, Gower's seems to be the earliest to attribute the head to Grosseteste (the analogue Macaulay cites was written c. 1502), and also the first in which the head is destroyed because of the owner's own neglect. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 10.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Breeze, Andrew Published Breeze, Andrew. "Roger Bacon's Head of Brass." Trivium 23 (1988), pp. 35-50. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Roger Bacon's Head of Brass Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 argument of this essay," Cooper states (50), "is that repetition should be included among the family resemblances that trigger the imaginative response that signals 'romance,' even for works that might otherwise fall outside its boundaries, or at least to push those boundaries beyond what one might think available; and that one of the most striking of those repetitions is multiple sea voyages." In "The Voyage of St. Brendan," Chaucer's "Man of Law's Tale," and Gower's Tale of Apollonius (with a glance at Shakespeare's "Pericles" in the closing pages), Cooper assembles three texts to argue that, although they are not universally accepted as romances, they share features that ought indeed so classify them. She looks carefully at the sea journeys of Brendan and his monks, Chaucer's Custance, and Gower's Constance, along with both poets' source in Nicholas Trevet's "Chronicle," finding in them all a "sense of divine control behind the sea voyages of the various saints' lives and romances" (54) that for her marks these narratives as of a type. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cooper, Helen. Published Cooper, Helen. "Romance Repetitions and the Sea: Brendan, Constance, Apollonius." In A. S. G. Edwards, ed., Medieval Romance, Arthurian Literature: Essays in Honour of Elizabeth Archibald (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2021). Pp. 46-60. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Romance Repetitions and the Sea: Brendan, Constance, Apollonius. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Robins offers an ambitious argument grounded in contemporary theoretical models to account for the nature and purpose of the frequently remarked diversity of voices and of types of narrative in CA. He works from the inside out, starting with "Apollonius of Tyre." Gower's setting of the romance within a moralized frame invokes "dramatically opposed strategies of reading" (p. 158), one represented throughout the poem by Amans and the other by Genius. Romance, he claims (citing Bakhtin) is the mode of random narrative contingency, and of unseen external forces as opposed to individual agency; but Genius, in his focus on the conclusion of the tale, invokes an opposing "temporality of moral necessity" (here Robins cites Ricoeur) according to which "internal moral disposition will determine the outcome of external events" (p. 161). Amans believes he lives in the first mode, subject to the arbitrary whims of his lady, while Genius unsuccessfully attempts to resee his life in exemplary and moral terms. Genius' very attempt is paradoxical, for exemplary instruction is itself an "external force," the efficacy of which depends upon a pre-existing internal disposition. This "paradox of exemplarity" is illustrated in Amans' assertion that the lesson of "Apollonius" does not apply to him. Throughout the poem he repeatedly rejects the analogical reasoning of the exempla, and Genius is unable to overcome his objection. This "interrogation of the grounds of exemplarity" is the "theorem" of the poem (p. 165), and Gower pursues his exploration by opposing different kinds of tales and different ways of reading. A precedent for his procedure can be found in the Nicomachean Ethics, which invokes "competing patterns of how behavior might be understood," by "internal ordering of the soul" or by the "external gifts of Fortune" (p. 167). Gower deals with this philosophical issue in literary terms, by experimenting with different kinds of narrative, culminating in "Apollonius of Tyre." This tale also contains in its recognition scene a model for the conclusion of CA. As Thaise attempts to reason with her father, external promptings fail, but the internal predisposition that stems from their natural blood relationship works to bring about Apollonius' transformation. The scene keeps the dynamic between external and internal in clear focus, but Robins rejects Olsson's recent argument on the efficacy both of Thaise's words and of Genius' teaching. This last exemplum is ineffectual for Amans, who is brought to his senses only by the forced recognition of his old age. At this point Amans does move from one model of self-definition to another, from the external evaluation (his lack of success) to the internal (he is no longer capable of being "amans"). But it is not a simple matter of choosing one narrative mode over the other. Amans is caught between the two, neither of which is adequate to his case, and in casting off the "romance" view, he does not commit himself to the "exemplary," for it is "unresponsive to lived experience" (p. 175). He is thus "finally positioned as a subject who has to adjudicate between the competing narrative modes that constitute his ability to think about himself" (ibid.). The reader, Robins argues, is put in the same position as Amans, beginning with the Prologue of the poem, which in its invocation of exemplum, chronicle, and complaint, serves "to bring the readers to an admission that their own predicament of making sense of the world is bound up in competing narrative understandings of temporality" (p. 177). The subject-position that is created for the reader is "not equivalent to a romantic notion of a fully autonomous interior self, for reflection is seen as participation in discursive modes shared by society and preceding the individual. And yet this situation differs from the postmodern, decentered subject for which the self is an illusion created by language, for Gower dearly holds to the belief in an interiority from which to choose between, or at least to feel and endure, competing narrative options. The ground upon which to order one's thoughts, desires, and actions, is constituted rather by an activity of first-person enunciation" (p. 178). At the end of the poem, Amans/Gower resumes both his proper name and his personal history as a writer. "Able now to review and give shape to the experience of having read his own life through and against available narrative patterns, the character/narrator recognizes that he occupies an individual position of ethical responsiveness, and his readers are spurred to realize that they too can articulate their course of engagement with various models of self-conception" (ibid.). In conclusion, Robins asserts, "Gower is not primarily concerned to represent the subjectivity of a character, but rather to provoke the subjectivity of the reader, to create the conditions whereby a reader can come to understand the site he or she occupies at the intersection of incommensurable modes of narrative self-conception. The "Tale of Apollonius," bearing the pattern of ancient romance into the fourteenth-century culture of exemplarity, becomes one of the told Gower strategically manipulates for implementing that purpose, a purpose which, however, can only be a gambit for Gower, for he knows that he cannot guarantee the success of his strategy of provocation no matter how earnestly he wishes to secure it" (pp. 180-81). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 17.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Robins, William Published Robins, William. "Romance, Exemplum, and the Subject of the Confessio Amantis." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (1997), pp. 157-181. 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, Exemplum, and the Subject of the Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 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 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 Even in "Constance," Wetherbee affirms, Gower is more concerned with social difference than with religious difference; like "Apollonius of Tyre," the tale offers a universally applicable "integrity of conduct which in this tale happens to be congruent with the heroine's role as an embodiment of Roman Christianity, but which Gower is at pains to represent largely in social, rather than religious terms" (22). He finds the poem to be shaped not by the historical opposition between Christianity and other faiths but by a broader opposition that Gower himself constructs, between Rome, as a site of "wise government," "stable institutions," and "justice" (24), and the world of "ceaseless random movement" of knighthood and chivalry (25) which Gower depicts in the many tales in CA associated with Troy. Gower's Trojan characters have little of the epic dignity of their classical counterparts. To cite only highlights of Wetherbee's analysis: in the tale of "Orestes," "the anti-social aspect of knightly conduct is presented as a function of chivalric education itself" (27); "Paris and Helen" "reveals a society betrayed by its inability to acknowledge the reckless desire to which it owes its origin, and committed by its blind pursuit of that desire to inevitable dissolution" (36); and "Ulysses and Telegonus" reveals "the ultimately self-betraying character of the chivalric life as Gower understands it" (36). The "defining instance" of the opposition that Wetherbee finds is the "Tale of the False Bachelor," in which the Roman knight's pursuit of chivalry . . . cut[s] him off from the stable center of his world" (24). "Rome may or may not be the religious and political hub of the universe," he concludes, "but it is the cultural center around which the world of the Confessio is organized and thus an essential aspect of the identity of the 'wel menynge' lover" (39-40). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wetherbee, Winthrop Published Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Rome, Troy, and Culture in the Confessio Amantis." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 20-42. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Rome, Troy, and Culture in the Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review A CD ROM featuring readings by Brian W. Gastle, Clara Pascual-Argente, and Tiago Viúla de Faria of the "Confessio Amantis" 2888-*3114 in (respectively) Middle English, Castilian, and Portuguese. The accompanying book includes an introduction detailing Gower's life and work by Sáez-Hidalgo and Yeager in contemporary English, with translations into modern Spanish and Portuguese. The readings are accompanied by the selected CA text, presented in Middle English from the edition of G. C. Macaulay, the Castilian ("Confesión de amante") from that of Carlos Alvar, and the Portuguese ("Confisyon de Amante") from the edition of Antonio Cortijo Ocaña. Luis Delgado, perhaps Spain's foremost performing expert on medieval music, provides appropriate musical accompaniment, playing a variety of period instruments in arrangements both original and historic. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, ed, Yeager, R. F., ed. Published Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Royal Entertainments: The Poetry of John Gower in the Fifteenth Century (English, Portuguese, and Castilian Courts). Valladolid: International John Gower Society, 2012. 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 Royal Entertainments: The Poetry of John Gower in the Fifteenth Century (English, Portuguese, and Castilian Courts). Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Sanders collocates four texts in his essay: Gower's tale of "Canace and Machaire" from CA 3.143-336, Chaucer's SqT, the episode of Amavia and Mordant from the Faerie Queene, Book 2, and Spenser's adaptation and completion of SqT in FQ Book 4. The entire episode of Amavia, her lover, and her child Rudddymane has a number of parallels with the story of Canace as Ovid depicts it in the Heroides, but as Amavia dies, Ruddymane bathes in the blood flowing from her breast, a detail that Sanders points out Spenser could have found only in Gower's version. In his retelling of the tale, Gower transforms a dramatic monologue into a third-person narrative, but maintains the moral bearings of Ovid's version: "Gower's appropriation of Ovid's pagan text takes advantage of its psychological astuteness to dramatize the medieval view of relations between the mind and nature when the Christian law of temperance and forgiveness was lacking" (p. 201). In his retelling, Spenser eliminates the woman's father (Ovid's Aeolus), and transfers his fury to the woman herself; he also has Guyon rescue the innocent baby, an act of mercy that compensates for Aeolus' wrath. His adaptation of Chaucer is somewhat more complex. Sanders argues that SqT, about a rather different Canace, is also an attempt to rewrite Gower's and Ovid's story: no other tale of Canace is known, and Chaucer's heroine is also provided not with just one brother but with two, raising the potential at least for another lapse into incest. The Squire, having heard Gower's tale misrepresented in MLIntro, anticipates objections to his tale from one of the Man of Law's middle class companions. He carefully provides his Canace with the means to protect herself from the failings of Ovid's and Gower's heroines, and he shifts the theme from youthful innocence to a concern for truthfulness and secrecy, but he is interrupted nonetheless, by the Franklin (in the manuscripts that provide the base for all modern editions) or by the Merchant (in Thynne's editions). Spenser would have sympathized with aristocratic Squire's prerogative to shape the tale in his own way. In FQ 4 he follows the Squire's example by carrying the transformation of the tale even further, by placing Canace in a setting within reach of Christian values. And his resolution of the conflicts of the story emphasizes the tempering of the extremes of love and hate, echoing the rescue of Ruddymane by the figure of Temperance in Book 2. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 11.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Sanders, Arnold A. Published Sanders, Arnold A.. "Ruddymane and Canace, Lost and Found: Spenser's Reception of Gower's Confessio Amantis 3 and Chaucer's Squire's Tale." In The Work of Dissimilitude: Essays from the Sixth Citadel Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Ed. Allen, David G. and White, Robert A.. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1992, pp. 196-215. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ruddymane and Canace, Lost and Found: Spenser's Reception of Gower's Confessio Amantis 3 and Chaucer's Squire's Tale Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Delaware Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1992 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Brief references to Gower as "flat" poet, with "smooth, unvarying line" which "glides." [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Knight, Stephen. Published Knight, Stephen. Ryming Craftily: Meaning in Chaucer's Poetry. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1973, pp. 9, 31. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ryming Craftily: Meaning in Chaucer's Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Newman, Jonathan M Published Newman, Jonathan M. "Satire of counsel, counsel of satire: Representing advisory relations in later medieval literature." PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2008. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review "Satire and counsel recur together in the secular literature of the High and Late Middle Ages. I analyze their collocation in Latin, Old Occitan, and Middle English texts from the twelfth to the fifteenth century in works by Walter Map, Alan of Lille, John of Salisbury, Daniel of Beccles, John Gower, William of Poitiers, Thomas Hoccleve, and John Skelton. . . . In the first chapter I introduce the concepts and methodologies that inform this dissertation through a detailed consideration of Distinction One of Walter Map's "De nugis curialium" . . . . Chapter two looks at how twelfth-century authors of didactic poetry appropriate relational discourses from school and household to claim the authoritative roles of teacher and father. In the third chapter, I focus on texts that depict relations between princes and courtiers, especially the Prologue of the "Confessio Amantis" which idealizes its author John Gower as an honest counselor and depicts King Richard II (in its first recension) as receptive to honest counsel. The fourth chapter turns to poets with the uncertain social identities of literate functionaries at court. Articulating their alienation and satirizing the ploys of courtiers--including even satire itself--Thomas Hoccleve in the "Regement of Princes" and John Skelton in "The Bowge of Court Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Satire of counsel, counsel of satire: Representing advisory relations in later medieval literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 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 The Anticlaudianus is not the usual point of reference for studies of CA, and vice versa. The originality of the juxtaposition is one measure of the provocativeness and occasional brilliance of Simpson's vigorous and ambitious new study, which offers radically novel readings of both poems at the same time that it draws them together in an intriguing exploration of the nature of the humanist poetics of the Middle Ages. It is not possible here to summarize Simpson's entire argument, particularly on the Anticlaudianus. Readers will find what Simpson himself disarmingly labels a "preposterous solution" to the problems posed by the form of Alain's poem (which involves taking the two major sections into which it falls in reverse order) that renders the poem considerably more subtle, but that needs to be considered and evaluated by those more familiar with Alain's text. With reference to CA, Simpson's main points can be summarized as follows: (1) The entire poem must be conceived as a psychological allegory between two faculties of the same soul, Amans representing the Will (or alternatively Desire), and Genius Imagination. Simpson means this quite seriously: in chapter 8 he even describes the tales that make up the bulk of the dialogue as being summoned forth by Amans' Imagination from his memory of his own previous reading. The way in which Imagination serves the Will and is originally called forth by the Will explains many of Genius' most obvious limitations, particularly his encouragement of Amans' passion. (In support of his argument, Simpson cites particularly egregious examples of Genius' "pedagogy"; and as a source for Genius' voice in the poem, Simpson invokes the Ovidian praeceptor amoris of the Ars and the Remedia.) But though Genius serves Desire, he is not limited by Desire. During the course of the poem he invokes images and "information" that bring about both his and Amans' psychic restoration, and true to his function as Imagination, he finally serves successfully as a bridge between Will and Reason. (2) Like Anticlaudianus, the poem offers a program of instruction in the medieval "sciences" which gives priority to politics as the point of mediation between ethics and cosmology as well as a model for ethical "self-rule." Genius thus becomes increasingly rational as he moves from instruction on love to the citation of examples from the political domain, and as shown in Simpson'a analyses of the second half of Book 3 and of Book 7, politics serves as the vehicle for drawing Amans himself to greater personal knowledge and therefore greater self-control. (3) The form of the poem is thus a mirror of the formation of the soul. Simpson uses the multiple senses of ME "informacioun" as the model for his (and Gower's) conception of poetic form: in the process of transmitting "information" or knowledge (particularly on the proper hierarchy of the sciences), the poet "informs" or gives shape to his poem, and also "informs," both educates and gives "form" to, his reader. (4) Again as in Anticlaudianus, the actual protagonist of the poem is the reader himself. (The male pronouns are used advisedly; neither poet seems to have given much thought to female readers.) Since there is no stable authority figure in CA, the reader must participate in the construction of the meaning, and the process of "formation" with which the poem is concerned is not so much represented in Amans as it is enacted in the reader. Each of these proposals could be, and should be, the subject of considerable serious discussion. To take only the first: it is one thing to say that Anticlaudianus, in which one character is called "Ratio" and another "Fronesis" or "Prudentia," is a psychological allegory, and another to make the same claim of a poem in which the major characters are called "Genius" and "Amans." What is our standard for the validity of such a reading? Simpson's argument relies on his analysis of the multiple senses of "information" in chapter 1 and on his observations on the shortcomings of some of Genius' lessons. But does the opening scene of the poem, in which Amans prays to Venus and Venus then summons Genius to hear Amans' confession, really depict something so simple as the evocation of Imagination by the "concupiscent will" (p. 254)? As justification for the notion that Amans represents Will or Desire, Simpson quotes no less than three separate times the same passage in Book 4 in which Amans asks Genius for instruction in the craft of love (pp. 135, 150-51, 178) as if it were the defining moment in their relation. There are an abundance of other equally significant passages, however, that cannot easily be subsumed under so limited a notion of Amans' role. It is difficult to think of "Will," for instance, as being the site of the conflict between Wit and Will that Amans describes in Book 3 (see Simpson, p. 179-80). It is difficult to see how the faculty of Will can also be characterized as a senex amans who is subject to delusion (see Simpson, p. 160). And it is even harder to conceive of Desire responding to Genius' inquiry whether he has even been guilty of Rapine by saying, in one of the more striking passages of the dialogue, "Certes, fader, no; / For I mi ladi love so" (5.5532-33). If Amans is perhaps alternately the faculty of Will and a more fully constituted human subject engaged in a "confession," why is it necessary to consider him a faculty at all? If Amans is not merely a faculty, moreover, there is no need for believing Genius to be one. Simpson's argument on the deficiencies of Genius' instruction amounts to little more than the observation that his lessons (particularly at the beginning of a book) do not contain everything that he teaches by the end. There is thus a progression to his instruction, as we might expect from any teacher. The reduction of the poem to a psychological allegory may solve some problems, but it certainly introduces a considerable number of others. Simpson's insistence on the pervasiveness of the allegory helps justify his attempt to align CA with the Anticlaudianus, and it also underlies his argument on the reader's participation in the construction of meaning. It is not essential, however, to his argument on the poem's theme. His invocation of the centrality of the "science" of politics (which owes much, as he acknowledges, to Porter's essay in Minnis' Responses and Reassessments [1983]), offers a useful mediation between the Lewis-Bennett-Minnis school on the one hand and the Coffman-Fisher-Peck school on the other. (He rejects entirely the argument that the poem teaches Amans to transcend human love, represented by a large group of critics, most recently by Olsson [1992].) His reading is considerably more nuanced than Porter's is, moreover: it includes a recognition of the need to reserve a place for human desire both in the person and in the polis, and it attributes to Gower at the end a mixture of optimism over the possibility of reconciliation and integration, both in the soul and in the state, and some skepticism about the actual perfectability of real humans. His comparison of Gower's work to Alain de Lille's is particularly instructive in this very regard. The formal similarities go only so far. More interesting are the contrasts Simpson finds, for they do more to help place Gower as a poet of his own time. Where Alain is aligned with Plato and Vergil, Gower's sympathies are with Aristotle and Ovid. Alain is epic, elitist, and absolutist, calling for submission to a higher power; Gower is elegiac, consensual, constitutionalist, calling for reconciliation and mutual restraint, both personally and politically. The Gower that he presents is a more complex and more humane poet than we have become accustomed to in recent criticism. And if Simpson's argument on the reader's role and on the presentation of the "sciences" in the poem carries weight, then Gower is also much more sophisticated a poet than we imagined. His case deserves our close attention. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 15.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Simpson, James Published Simpson, James. "Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus and John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 25 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 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 Sciences and the Self in Medieval Poetry: Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus and John Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cambridge University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 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 According to Mitchell, Confessio Amantis is one of the many works of medieval literature with which Scott was familiar, but Scott's attitude towards the poem was evidently typical of his time. "He read it, certainly, but except for the Tale of Florent and some lines from Book VI referring to the Tristan-story [6.467-75?] (which he quotes in the note to II.1 of Sir Tristrem [the ME version, which he edited in 1804]), it made little impression on him; on the whole he found in 'dull'" (p. 37; the source for the last quotation is not specified). Scott edited the works of Dryden in 1808; and in his headnote to Dryden's translation of the "Wife of Bath's Tale" he cited both "Florent" and The Marriage of Sir Gawaine: "What was a mere legendary tale of wonder in the rhyme of the minstrel, and a vehicle for trite morality in that of Gower, in the verse of Chaucer reminds us of the resurrection of a skeleton, reinvested by miracle with flesh, complexion, and powers of life and motion" (p. 36). Interestingly enough, Scott does not appear on any of the available lists of Gower allusions and commentary. The bibliography is not large, and the example of Scott suggests that there are still other references to be identified. See Macaulay, Complete Works, II, viii-ix; Heinrich Spies, "Bisherige Ergebnisse und weitere Aufgaben der Gower-Forschung," Englische Studien, 28 (1900): 163-74, 207?8; Spies, "Goweriana, 1. Weitere Hinweise auf John Gower in der englischen Literatur," Englische Studien, 34 (1904): 169-75; Spies, rev. of Macaulay, Complete Works, IV, Englische Studien, 35 (1905): 105-06 and n.; Fisher, John Gower (1964), pp. 1-36; N.W. Gilroy-Scott, "John Gower's Reputation: Literary Allusions from the early fifteenth century to the time of 'Pericles'," YES, 1 (1971): 30-47; and Derek Pearsall, "The Gower Tradition," in Gower's Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments (1983), pp. 184-94.] [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mitchell, Jerome Published Mitchell, Jerome. "Scott, Chaucer, and Medieval Romance: A Study in Sir Walter Scott's Indebtedness to the Literature of the Middle Ages." Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987 ISBN 0813116090 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 Scott, Chaucer, and Medieval Romance: A Study in Sir Walter Scott's Indebtedness to the Literature of the Middle Ages. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University Press of Kentucky, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Scribe D," so named because his is the fourth hand in the Trinity MS of CA (Cambridge, Trinity College R.3.2), was identified by Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes, in their groundbreaking essay of 1978, as having also participated in or as having been the sole copyist of 10 other MSS, including seven other copies of CA. He was evidently closely associated with another scribe, designated as Delta, whose six known MSS include another copy of CA. "Scribe D," Kerby-Fulton and Justice write, "(even without any help from Delta) is responsible for the largest identifiable corpus of vernacular Ricardian literary manuscripts extant today. As has often been noticed, they are all 'quality' manu-scripts, created mainly, it seems, for armigerous patrons. But what has not been noticed is that predominant among these patrons is a particular class of reader: parliamentarians and high-ranking civil servants associated with early Lancastrian Westminster. The portfolios of these two scribes, in fact, give us a window on the tastes and interests of an audience of Westminster lawmakers of varying ranks" (217). This group of readers "bears a striking resemblance to those Anne Middleton hypothesized in her classic Speculum essay: an audience concerned with the 'middel weie,' the common profit, and the 'public voice,' a savvy and assertively contemporary audience that sought the most recent and topical versions of the vernacular texts they cared for" (222) Among the productions of these two scribes, the authors take a particularly close look at Princeton University Library MS Taylor 5. They deduce from D's role in correcting the pages that he did not write that he ought probably be credited with supervising the entire production; and they note, among his strategies for pleasing his intended clientele, the substitution on f. 1 of the more up-to-date, revised dedication. Among the different lines of inquiry that his role suggests, they choose to discuss his and Delta's work "as an exercise in literary entrepreneurship, in the marketing of Ricardian literature" (223). In that respect, the prominence of Gower and Trevisa – 12 of their 17 known MSS – cannot be overlooked. "Taken together, the English Polychronicon and the Confessio Amantis make a striking couple: in the reflection of the other, each looks even more clearly and powerfully to reflect a repertory of historical exemplarity. If we add Trevisa's De Proprietatibus, which Scribe D copied, we might expand our definition of the category slightly to speak of works of secular exemplarity – works defining, by exemplifying, the conditions of public virtue and political efficaciousness" (225). The scribes' work also reveals a confidence in and respect for the vernacular, not only in the quality of the copies themselves but also in D's avoidance of the hierarchy of scripts that is usually employed to distinguish vernacular passages from Latin. The role of these scribes suggests, the authors assert, that "the reading, the 'reception,' of Ricardian literature, even when that literature was 'courtly,' did not merely happen, did not simply perpetuate itself by its mere appeal or through an agentless market, but that it was shaped by, and around the interests of, some of the scribes to whom we owe a good many of our important texts" (226). They return to the Taylor MS for a concluding consideration of D's possible use of illustrations as part of his marketing strategy, enhancing the authority of his text, as well as incidentally revealing an astute reading of Gower's poem. [PN Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 22.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn Justice, Steven Published Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn and Justice, Steven. "Scribe D and the Marketing of Ricardian Literature." In The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe, and Gower. Ed. Hilmo, Maidie and Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. E L S Monograph Series (85). Victoria, BC: English Literary Studies, 2001, pp. 217-237. 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 Scribe D and the Marketing of Ricardian Literature Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available English Literary Studies, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Scribe D" is one of five scribes who worked on the copy of CA that is now Trinity College, Cambridge MS R.3.2, as identified by Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes in their celebrated 1978 essay, and his hand has been found in eleven other MSS, including seven more of CA, two of CT, and one of PP. On the basis of the spellings found in these copies, his origins have been traced to the SW Midlands, specifically to Worcestershire. Horobin and Mosser argue, however, that the SW Midlands forms in his copies of Chaucer and Langland derive not from his own dialect but from the spellings of his exemplars, a conclusion consistent with data that Jeremy Smith has presented from Scribe D's copies of Gower. D appears to have been remarkably conservative in his attitude towards his exemplars, an observation that may require a reconsideration of the chronology of his work. It also suggests "a considerable tolerance of dialect variation within London English, indicating that the establishment of a London standard language was a later, and more gradual phenomenon, than has previously been considered" (304). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Horobin, Simon, Mosser, Daniel W Published Horobin, Simon, and Mosser, Daniel W. "Scribe D's SW Midland Roots: A Reconsideration." Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 106 (2005), pp. 289-305. ISSN 0028-3754 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Scribe D's SW Midland Roots: A Reconsideration Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review From Dwyer's abstract: "I argue in this dissertation that scripts are media that serve literary interpretation. . . . Chapter 1 finds that scribes heavily relied on artful, creative, and often rhetorically powerful language to communicate about scripts to the broader world. . . . Chapter 2 focuses on one example of the figurative language scribes use to label and think about script: the term 'bastard,' . . . find[ing] that 'bastard scripts' are those which exhibit the careful combination of 'high' calligraphic features with 'low' cursive ones that can be read for particular literary effects. Analyzing the variously rendered 'bastard scripts' of the early manuscripts of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Chapter 2 ultimately finds that the different ways scribes 'bastardized' scripts uncover a medieval 'bastard poetics,' aided by the poem's own 'bastard' combination of 'high' Latin verse with 'low' English couplets. . . . Chapter 3 investigates how scripts can portray the affective stances their literary texts assume, more specifically intimacy. Focusing on secretary, a script imported to England from French-speaking territories of Europe, I examine its uses in three case studies: a manuscript of Guillaume de Machaut's multi-form poem "Le livre dou Voir Dit," John Gower's ballade sequence the "Traitié," and several early manuscripts of Christine de Pizan. Chapter 3 finds that secretary, in both French and Anglo-French contexts, when it triangulates with language (French) and form (epistolary lyrics or prose), facilitates what I call 'secretarial reading,' wherein the reader is encouraged by the apparent simplicity of secretary's cursive aspects to recognize and engage with intimacy in the texts at the level of content, genre, or the author's literary persona. . . . Chapter 4 argues for the possibilities of script as a facilitator for reading in a continuous process. It focuses on a single case study, an early fifteenth-century manuscript of "Piers Plowman," copied by an apparently 'amateur' scribe, Thomas Tilot. Tilot's script starts out as a highly formal textualis, but slowly decreases in calligraphic effort until it fully becomes a rapid cursive. This calligraphic diminuendo epitomizes scribal 'amateurishness' through its disinterest in absolute uniformity and consistency, which I argue offers a visual reading of the many moments of upheaval, destabilization, and narrative unraveling in "Piers Plowman" itself. Chapter 4 ultimately offers a method of close reading medieval texts that takes script more fully into account alongside lexis, diction, and meter, concretizing this dissertation's arguments about the interpretive power scripts hold for literature." Chapter 2 is evidently a version of Dwyer's "Bastard Hands: Fifteenth-Century Scripts and the Processes of Medieval Making." Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 118, no. 3 (2024): 315–47. [eJGN 44.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dwyer, Seamus Published Dwyer, Seamus. "Scripts and Literature in the Manuscripts of England and France, 1370-1425." Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University, 2024. Dissertation Abstracts International A86.01(E). Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Scripts and Literature in the Manuscripts of England and France, 1370-1425. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 "This project looks at confessional moments in three texts from the late Fourteenth and early Fifteenth centuries in which the subjectivities of the central figures shift noticeably in relation to challenges to orthodox behaviors and beliefs, both on a secular and a sacral level: John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,' the anonymously translated 'Partonope of Blois,' and Geoffrey Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde.' In all these confessional moments, which involve secrecy and fear, the interiority of the confessant and that of the confessor contour the confession and reveal potentially subversive and political criticisms. Late medieval English poets use the very discourses of the institutions under scrutiny in order to challenge institutional corruption as well as cultural, social, and political corruption. By bringing an insular mechanism to challenge itself, such as confessional discourse to challenge confessional efficacy, poets enable a dual dialectic in order to illuminate the inefficacy of ideologies, social and cultural codes and structures, and institutional hierarchies; once brought under scrutiny, poets can position various subjectivities through mobile figurations in order to posit reformation on an individual level." [JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Moreno, Christine M. Published Moreno, Christine. "Secrecy and Fear in Confessional Discourse: Subversive Strategies, Heretical Inquisition, and Shifting Subjectivities in Vernacular Middle English and Anglo-French Poetry." PhD thesis, The Ohio State University, 2012. Open access at http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1354665293 (accessed January 23, 2023) Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Secrecy and Fear in Confessional Discourse: Subversive Strategies, Heretical Inquisition, and Shifting Subjectivities in Vernacular Middle English and Anglo-French Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 examines the nine MSS containing excerpts from CA, including three that have only very brief passages and six that contain one or more entire tales. This number of excerpts is much smaller than that for either Chaucer or Lydgate, and Edwards speculates that one reason may be the greater difficulty of detaching a passage from Gower's poem. Of the known excerpts, only one preserves a portion of the frame dialogue. Among the rest, the tales that are excerpted are placed in new contexts, sometimes according to discernible design: CUL Ee.2.15 includes most devotional pieces; Takamiya 32 is a collection of romance narratives; and CUL Ff.1.6 (the "Findern MS") shows a particular interest in stories about women. (One small correction: it appears from Edwards' tabulation of the excerpts on p. 267 that Takamiya 32 includes most of "Nebuchadnezzar's Punishment" in addition to "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream," and that the former should thus be included among the tales that are excerpted more than once on p. 259.) [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, A. S. G. Published Edwards, A. S. G.. "Selection and Subversion in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 257-267. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Selection and Subversion in Gower's Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Prints selections from CA, MO, VC, CB, and "In Praise of Peace" as below; reprinted from Macaulay (1899-1902), with good introduction, notes, glossary, and selected bibliography. From CA: Book I, 1-288, including Latin verses, except between 202-03; "Florent," Book I, 1407-1861; "Canace," Book III, 143-356; "Idleness in Love, Rosiphelee, Love and Arms," Book IV, 1083-1501; 1615-1770; "Lover's Wakefulness, Ceix and Alceone, Cephalus' Prayer," Book IV, 2771-3258; "Jason and Medea," Book V, 3247-4174; "Tereus and Progne," Book V, 5551-6047; "Confessor's Final Counsel, Lover's Prayer and Dream, Lover's Healing and Farewell to Love," Book VIII, 2013-3114. From MO: lines 841-948, 29005-45. From VC: I, 783-816; V, 735-86; VII, 545-66; 637-60; 1289-1302. From CB: 34, 35, 36. From "In Praise of Peace": lines 99-133, 218-24, and 379-85. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Bennett, J. A. W., ed. Published Bennett, J. A. W., ed. Selections from John Gower. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Vox Clamantis Cinkante Balades 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 Selections from John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Prints from CA, Book I, 1-760; 1862-2398; 3053-3446; Book II, 1-220; 2501-2781; 3162-3530; Book III, 1331-1735; Book IV, 983-1139; 1142-1446; 3515-3692; Book V, 1971-2390; 4985-5225; Book VI, 727-1150; Book VIII, 2063-2970. Direct transcription from MS. Fairfax 3, with some revisions of complete edition (1899-1902): viz. I, 665, 1919, 2360; II, 2753; IV, 1170, 1336, 3591; V, 2104, 2167, 5039; VIII, 2408, 2544, 2931. Introduction, glossary from complete edition, somewhat abridged; notes expanded, "being intended for younger students." [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Macaulay, G. C., ed. Published Macaulay, G. C., ed. Selections from the Confessio Amantis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Selections from the Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1903 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ladd begins with the observation that "Estates satire . . . becomes relatively rare in the fifteenth century" (81), which he attributes chiefly to "the expansion of the available reading audience" (i.e., wealthy mercantile readers in English) and the consequent failure of the triadic social model to address concerns exterior to the antiquated "socioeconomic stereotypes" (81). Gower and Chaucer, recognizing that obsolescence, redirect their attention toward critiquing "what people do, rather than who they are imagined to be" (81), even as they adapt the extant estates format in organizing their poetry. This is more true of Gower, in the "Mirour de l'Omme" and "Vox " in particular, than of Chaucer; in the "Confessio Amantis," however, he like Chaucer in the "Canterbury Tales" "relegate[s] focused estates satire to an introductory role in their overall structure" (86). For Ladd, what brought Gower and Chaucer to realize the diminished literary value of estates satire was the shift in readers, away from aristocrats and clericals to merchants--a shift made apparent by recent work of Linne Mooney, Simon Horobin, and Estelle Stubbs tying the manuscripts to scribes affiliated with the Guildhall, and presumably commensurate customers (84-87). Lest they offend these readers with a format that proceeds "downward in social status" (86), they invent individual strategies for avoiding friction. "Gower's response is largely to avoid direct representations of a mercantile elite altogether" (88). As an example, Ladd cites the "Tale of Echo" in Book V, offering expectation of a critique of usury, as it comes under the heading of Avarice, "but Genius in the frame has shifted the focus of avarice from desire for money to desire of other things" (88). Gower is able to employ the vocabulary of commerce in the mythological tale (and in others, such as "Medea"), and criticize "brocours" and fraudulent weights and measures, within that fantasy context, thereby pointing fingers at no one directly. "Gower separates [the travel and luxury associated with the mercantile elite]," rendering moral judgment "by transposing these qualities to a mythological story," while dodging his reader's sense of identity and "open[ing] them up for effective critique" (90). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ladd, Roger A. Published Ladd, Roger A. "Selling Satire: Gower, Chaucer, and the End of the Estates." In Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. James M. Dean. Critical Insights Series. Ipswich, Mass.: Salem Press, 2017. Pp. 81-96. 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 Selling Satire: Gower, Chaucer, and the End of the Estates. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Nolan's analysis opens with a classic example of biblical "sermo humilis," a simple teaching brought to life with a single sensory detail: "whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones . . . shall not lose his reward" (Matt. 10.42, discussed at 111). Nolan proceeds to analyze the same kind of "plain style" in Gower's CA, arguing that this style "is uniquely suited to represent and indeed to recreate sensory experience," together with the aesthetic and instructive values such experience is especially equipped to provide (113, 140). The medium of Gower's English plain style is a smooth and regular verse that never strives for effect or diverts attention from the story (114-19). The poet explains his moral purpose at CA 1.8 ff.: to engage with "the everyday . . . world governed by love" (121), in the plain and literal style required of priest and penitent in the sacrament of confession (121-25). The "Tale of Acteon and Diana" illustrates the riches of the plain style in action. Told by Genius as a warning against misusing the sense of sight, the exemplum places the reader within the consciousness of Acteon as he emerges from a flowery forest into an aptly titled "litel plein," where suddenly--but willfully--he views the naked goddess standing in a well (125-29). A different, morally ambiguous effect is accomplished by a single sensory detail in the passage where Amans describes an imaginary visit to his lady's bed at night: his disembodied "herte" finds her body "warm" (135). As Amans describes his painful return to reason, the imagery of a cold shower evokes the reader's empathy along with moral instruction (139-40). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 36.2]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Nolan, Maura. Published Nolan, Maura. "Sensation and the Plain Style in Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Russell A. Peck and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower: Others and the Self. Publications of the John Gower Society XI (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2017), pp. 111-40. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sensation and the Plain Style in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Batkie, Stephanie L Published Batkie, Stephanie L. "Sentenced to hard labor: Vernacular transformations in the late fourteenth century." PhD thesis, University of Michigan, 2009. Open access at https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/64772 (accessed January 23, 2023). Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review "This project re-characterizes the development of vernacular readership in late fourteenth century England. It offers a fresh heuristic for recognizing vernacular works that ostensibly limit their potential audiences through the use of recondite, Latinate, and otherwise hermetic discourses while, at the same time, making the labored interpretation performed by those readers the center of its textual purpose. It focuses on two poems, William Langland's 'Piers Plowman' and John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,' as examples of texts that are neither open nor easy--on the contrary, they are deliberately difficult. Through them it examines the relationship between vernacular difficulty, laborious reading, and readerly transformation in the context of late medieval devotional culture. Each chapter pairs one aspect of the text with an external, Latinate discourse in order to explore the ways in which the author adapts and re-calibrates it for the purposes of establishing a new form of vernacular reading. . . . Turning to Gower, the third chapter discusses the presentation of alchemy in the poem as an idealized form of interpretive labor that is simultaneously offered as a model for reading and rejected as a physical and textual practice. The final chapter examines the problem of producing accurate and effective language through vernacular confessional discourse in the 'Confessio.' Each transmuted discourse contributes to the 'hermeneutic narrative,' or the interpretive path readers generate as they work their way through the texts. The dissertation shows that the historical importance of these poems lies in their open commitment to the construction of this hermeneutic narrative, while their critical usefulness lies in their ability to highlight similar questions in other contemporary texts. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sentenced to hard labor: Vernacular transformations in the late fourteenth century. 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 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 Describes Gower's tomb, with engravings of vertical and horizontal views; exact facsimiles of inscriptions. Also prints Gower's will in full. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Gough, Richard. Published Gough, Richard. Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain. London: J. Nicols, 1796, II, 24-26. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1796 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bennett's essay deals, per its title, with Gower's "social contexts"--that is, "Gower and his milieu at a key stage in his life and literary career, namely between the late 1360s and the early 1380s, when he assumed a position in landed society" (101). The essay has two parts. In the first, Bennett focuses particularly on two sets of documents: those related to the land transaction known as "the Septvauns affair," which ultimately brought the manor at Aldington into Gower's hands, but not before significant legal embroilment, and an embarrassing forced appearance before parliament for judgment; and a descriptive, primarily genealogical roll written in the 1380s ("possibly" by Gower [111]), which describes in some detail the fortunes of the Northwood family, close neighbors of Gower's at Aldington. Following the roll, Bennett traces the well-connected Northwoods through the generations, showing that Gower crossed paths with several members at different points, most significantly perhaps in 1366, when rents from Horton manor, near Canterbury, and properties in Southwark, were granted to Gower by a Northwood heir (107)--suggesting a family connection of some sort, though the roll provides no evidence for this (110). Bennett captures the interrelations of Kentish landed families, turning up names of importance at various points in Gower's life: Sir Arnold Savage, Sir John Cobham, third Lord Cobham, the Grandison family, and a "cousin from Savoy, Sir Otho de Graunson," the poet (112), well known to Chaucer and probably Gower as well. In the latter portion, Bennett discusses conditions in Kent in the 1360s, when the county served Edward III as a launching point for his army into France--an army in which, Bennett speculates, Gower may have participated "in some capacity" (114). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bennett, Michael. Published Bennett, Michael. "Shades of Gower: Latin Texts and Social Contexts." In Richard Firth Green and R. F. Yeager, eds. "Of latine and of othire lare": Essays in Honour of David R. Carlson (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2022). Pp. 101-19. Gower Subject 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 Shades of Gower: Latin Texts and Social Contexts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Notes similarities between Shakespeare's Sonnet #64 and VC (1)312 and 7.479; Gower's probable source is Ovid, "Metamorphoses, 15, 262. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hussey, Richard. Published Hussey, Richard. "Shakespeare and Gower." Notes and Queries 180 (1941): 386. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion 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 Shakespeare and Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1941 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Along with Greek analogues, Shakespeare used Gower's tale of "Apollonius of Tyre" as a major source for "Pericles."[RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gesner, Carol. Published Gesner, Carol. Shakespeare and the Greek Romances: A Study of Origins. Lexington: University Of Kentucky Press, 1970, p. 88. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare and the Greek Romances: A Study of Origins. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review As the reception history of Gower and his CA clearly shows, Jacobean England knew both the poet and his poem as representing values which were seen as those of an earlier age and quite distinctive from those of Protestant England. Whether through "Greenes Vision," Berthelette's black-letter edition of the CA, Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde," or Gower's tomb at St. Saviour's (Southwark's "theatrical parish"), Shakespeare's encounters with Gower were with the poet representing the moral authority of pre-Reformation, medieval England. Shakespeare's "Pericles," a re-conception of Gower's tale of Apollonius, foregrounds its source's medieval origins. In addition to the dumb show (a form "Shakespeare clearly connected . . . with the past"), Shakespeare highlights Gower's antiquity by embedding Latin within his English lines, clothing the poet in recognizably medieval garb, and placing the poet in the role of a presenter (a role associated with old-fashioned mystery and morality plays) who speaks in an antique register. These purposeful medievalisms provide a moral seriousness essential to understanding the play. And yet, it is these medieval elements that are quickly excised when "Pericles" has been staged in the past 150 years. Without them, however, the play loses its moral cohesion, giving us "sufficient reason to insist on the medieval presence when performing 'Pericles'." [CB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "Shakespeare as Medievalist: What it Means for Performing 'Pericles'." In Shakespeare and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Performance and Adaptation of the Plays with Medieval Sources or Settings. Ed. Driver, Martha W. and Ray, Sid. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009, pp. 215-31. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare as Medievalist: What it Means for Performing 'Pericles'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available McFarland, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Argues that Gower's speeches in "Pericles" are by Shakespeare, and in imitation of CA. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Craig, Hardin. Published Craig, Hardin. "Shakespeare's Bad Poetry." Shakespeare Survey I. London, 1948, pp. 51-56. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Bad Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1948 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Hillman argues that Shakespeare's "Pericles" was more widely influenced by the CA than is previously recognized. He acknowledges Gower's role as "an unusually sophisticated choric function" in the play and accepts the importance of Gower's story of Apollonius (CA book 8) as Shakespeare's primary source. Going further, he explores how and in what ways CA "[t]aken as a whole . . . strikingly furnishes" a precedent for Shakespeare's "use of love themes as a means of exploring larger issues of human spirituality and self-realization" (428). The "tortuous psychic voyage of Amans toward self-discovery" in CA, and the poem's affirmation that "proper behavior at least offers a chance of happiness, while nothing good can come of wickedness," Hillman agues, are echoed in the "pattern of suffering and redemption" (430) in Pericles. Both poem and play indicate the arbitrariness of fortune in human affairs, and Gower's presence in the play serves as a "safety net" (431) for Shakespeare's hero, reminding the audience of the drama that, like Gower's Amans, Shakespeare's Pericles transcends fortune through the gaining and proclamation of his fundamental identity. In each case, "selflessness is explicitly a condition of the renewal of self" (434) and a major step toward acceptance of morality and "reconciliation to the human condition" (435). In a nice turn of phrase, Hillman claims that Shakespeare summons Gower "not only as mouthpiece but also as muse" (437), and he aligns Gower's role in "Pericles" with that of Arion in CA. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hillman, Richard. Published Hillman, Richard. "Shakespeare's Gower and Gower' s Shakespeare: The Larger Debt of 'Pericles'." Shakespeare Quarterly 36 (1985): 427-37. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Gower and Gower' s Shakespeare: The Larger Debt of "Pericles." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Reprints from Reinhold Pauli (1857) "Apollonius of Tyre," CA, Book VIII, 271-2008. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Hazlitt, William Carew, ed. Published [Hazlitt, William Carew, ed.] Shakespeare's Library: A Collection of the Plays, Romances, Novels, Poems, and Histories Employed by Shakespeare in the Composition of His Work. 2nd ed. 6 vols. London: Reeves and Turner, 1875, 4:181-228. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Library: A Collection of the Plays, Romances, Novels, Poems, and Histories Employed by Shakespeare in the Composition of His Work. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1875 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Prints "Apollonius of Tyre." CA, Book VII, 271-2008. Text based on MS. Harley 3490. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Collier, J. Payne, ed. Published Collier, J. Payne, ed. Shakespeare's Library: A Collection of the Romances, Novels, Poems, and Histories, used by Shakespeare . . . , etc. 2 vols. London: Thomas Rodd, 1843, 1:259-312. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Library: A Collection of the Romances, Novels, Poems, and Histories, used by Shakespeare . . . , etc. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1843 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Only two of Shakespeare's plays refer to a source by its author's name: John Gower in "Pericles" (co-authored perhaps with George Wilkins), and Geoffrey Chaucer in "The Two Noble Kinsmen" (with John Fletcher). Both of these tributes are "exceptional" and much remarked on. Bauer and Zirker believe "it makes sense to go a step further" and call these poets Shakespeare's "medieval co-authors" (218). Per Bauer and Zirker, co-authorship could be "diachronic" as well as "contemporaneous," with a long-dead "creative partner[] in the present" shedding light on the "poetics of co-authorship" in these (probably) both co-authored plays (218-19). In the first section, "'Our imagination': Gower and the Audience as Co-Authors of Pericles," the authors explain how Gower as a choric character moves his theater audience through "a process from [hearing] the monologic 'song'[1.0.1] . . . to [co-creating] 'our play' at the end (Epilogue 18)," by calling on the help of "our imagination" (4.4.3), per editor Gossett an "inclusive plural" that should not be emended to "your" (219-220). The playwright(s) participates as "the anonymous agent" who makes the ancient story "for itself perform" (3.0.53) in the minds of the audience (221). By choosing a co-author so distant in time, Shakespeare was able to "de-present" as well as to present the "monstrous lust" of the incest theme, much as Gower's Genius does by explaining the practice as necessary in the time of Adam and Eve, but not in the time of Christ (p. 226; Epilogue 2). By contrast, Chaucer is addressed in the Prologue of "The Two Noble Kinsmen" as the father of the play, but in a spirit of rivalry and fear (229). In parallel fashion, the imprisoned Arcite and Palamon descend from harmonious flights of imagination, to deadly competition for Emelye, who viewed from afar, becomes their mutual brainchild (233). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bauer, Matthias. Zirker, Angelika. Published Bauer, Matthias, and Angelika Zirker. "Shakespeare's Medieval Co-Authors."In Lukas Rösli and Stefanie Gropper, ed. In Search of the Culprit: Aspects of Medieval Authorship. Berlin and Boston: de Gruyter, 2021. Pp. 217-38. 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 Shakespeare's Medieval Co-Authors. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Smith, Bruce R. Published Smith, Bruce R. "Shakespeare's Middle Ages." In Medieval Shakespeare: Pasts and Presents. Ed. Ruth Morse, Helen Cooper, and Peter Holland. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 19-36. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Biography of Gower Review With a certain aptness, given that Smith's essay opens the volume, he takes the notion of "middle" as his point of departure, pointing out how much of Shakespeare's London was medieval, and further that more or less mid-way between the Globe and London city proper stood St. Saviour's Church, with its prominent tomb of John Gower (includes photo, 20). Gower's tomb becomes a reference point, Smith suggests, for what he views as Shakespeare's "medieval" imagination: that is, a "whole-body model of perception" derived from "Aristotle and Galen; more immediately, Aquinas" (28-29): "We can witness the importance of the middle, the domain of imagination and passion, by pausing before Gower's tomb" (29). A description of the decoration follows, leading to: "The imaginative space created here in stone, pigment and gilding is the visual equivalent of the imaginative space created through words in Gower's 'Mirour de l'Omme,' or 'Speculum Meditantis,' written in French . . . ." (29) Noting that on the tomb the MO volume is "the middle of the 'Confessio Amantis' (in English) on the bottom and 'Vox clamantis' (in Latin) on the top." (29) Smith asks: "Is there a hierarchy of languages here, as there is a hierarchy of architectural spaces and states of being? Does the French of fourteenth-century high culture occupy a middle ground between the homeliness of English and the divinity of Latin?" (29) Smith suggests that answering such questions about what Gower expected from his tomb requires a "whole-body model of perception" that must be applied to understanding how Shakespeare understood theatrical space and guided his shaping of plays: "The most important of the implications for the Aristotelian/Galenic model of perception . . . was this: rational judgment [by which Smith means that of Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke 27-28] does not trump kinaesthetic experience. For me, that is the continuity that connects Shakespeare most forcefully with the so-called Middle Ages" (31). He concludes by applying this observation to "the middle plays," examining three very briefly ("Twelfth Night," "King Lear," "Antony and Cleopatra"), and "Hamlet" in greater (but still cursory) depth (31-33). He returns to Gower's tomb to note the "two angel heads that receive the vaulted ribs of Gower's tomb." (33). Although damaged by iconoclasts, "the imaginative surrounds [of the heads] were . . . still intact and gave onlookers an imaginative cue for encountering a vanished past that 'ancient Gower' in 'Pericles' suggests was not yet firmly distinguished from Classical antiquity" (33). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Middle Ages. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Reid "reconsiders a selection of Shakespearean moments that have been widely classified in contemporary scholarship as 'Ovidian'" in order to uncover "the under-acknowledged, spectral presence of the medieval in the making of such moments" (2). "It is," she asserts, "often a transhistorical, polyvocal, and multilingual conglomerate of intertexts that coalesce to form an 'Ovidian' allusion in Shakespeare's works" (4). Gower figures large in her study, throughout. Chapter 1 presents a close reading of the seventeenth-century "Chaucer's Ghoast," whence she derives a central sense of the "ambiguities of 'antiquity' in early modern usage, drawing attention to the profound intersections between the Ovidian, the Chaucerian, and the Gowerian" (6). Chapter 2 is part "reviewing and contrasting the various states of Shakespeare-and-Ovid, Shakespeare-and-Chaucer, and Shakespeare-and-Gower scholarship" (7). The focus of chapter 3 is "the medieval resonances of an 'Ovidian' reference to Ariadne in 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona'" which she traces to Chaucer and Gower (7). Chapter 5 argues that "the 'Ovidian' references to Narcissus evident in the interactions between Olivia and Viola in "Twelfth Night" build not only upon the "Metamorphoses"' Latin account of the youth's self-infatuation, but also upon a strikingly different tradition (featuring a heterosexual rather than a homosexual Narcissus) that seems to have first entered English literary tradition by way of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'" (7). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Reid, Lindsay Ann. Published Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 2018. Gower Subject Inlfuence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This valuable study ". . . deliberately diverges from existing scholarship on Shakespeare's reception of Ovid by looking at yet also [sic] beyond the Roman poet's place of primacy in the humanist schoolroom. It equally diverges from scholarship on Shakespeare's reception of Chaucer and Gower by considering how their spectral presences can be perceived in Shakespeare's texts other than 'Troilus and Cressida,' 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 'The Two Noble Kinsmen,' and 'Pericles'--in other words, those dramatic pieces whose plots have overt Chaucerian or Gowerian analogues" (49). Reid finds that much of what she calls "the under-acknowledged, spectral presence of the medieval" (2) in Shakespeare's work turns out to be from the "Confessio Amantis." She notes especially (chapter 5) that the close affiliations of "the interactions between Olivia and Viola in 'Twelfth Night' build not only upon the 'Metamorphoses' . . . but also upon a strikingly different tradition . . . that seems to have entered English literary tradition by way of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'" (7). By way of making her larger argument, Reid offers a uniquely insightful analysis of the little-known "Chaucer's Ghoast" (which proves to be largely extracts from CA), presenting thereby a compact survey of early Modern readers' engagement with Gower (9-38, and Appendix 1). She finds Gower's "spectre" significantly influential on many well-known Shakespearean scenes (e.g., in "The Taming of the Shrew": "When Petruccio boasts that he is ready to take on a rich wife, whether she be 'as foul as was Florentius' love,' his reference is seemingly to Gower's tale of the knight, Florent, from the 'Confessio Amantis'") (67), and argues for the influence of the CA on Caxton's edition of the "Metamorphoses" (177-78), with major implications, in her view, for much sixteenth and seventeenth century poetry, including Sidney's "Old Arcadia" (esp. 188-92). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Reid, Lindsay Ann Published Reid, Lindsay Ann. Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2018. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's Ovid and the Spectre of the Medieval. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review CA is a source of "Pericles'; may also have influenced "A Midsummer Night's Dream." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Muir, Kenneth. Published Muir, Kenneth. Shakespeare's Sources: Comedies and Tragedies. London: Methuen, 19577, pp. 2, 33, 225. 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 Shakespeare's Sources: Comedies and Tragedies. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1957 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Shakespeare may have shown knowledge of Gower's "Tale of Florent" in "The Taming of the Shrew" I, ii, 69, with a reference to the "foul love" of "Florentius." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Whitaker, Virgil. Published Whitaker, Virgil. Shakespeare's use of Learning: An Inquiry into the Growth of His Mind and Art. San Marino, California: Huntington Library, 1953, pp. 94, 101. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shakespeare's use of Learning: An Inquiry into the Growth of His Mind and Art. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1953 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Shakespeare consulted Gower and Chaucer on occasion; use of Gower in "Pericles" was a conscious archaism and includes parody of Gower's four-beat couplets. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Felperin, Howard. Published Felperin, Howard. Shakespearean Romance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972, pp. 143ff. 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 Shakespearean Romance. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1972 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Brief background, assessment of works, plot description of CA. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Backus, Truman J. Published Backus, Truman J. Shaw's New History of English Literature. New York: Sheldon, 1875. Rev. ed. 1884, pp. 59-60. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Shaw's New History of English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1875 1884 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This study concerns the relationship between signs and phenomena as it is elaborated in selected medieval texts. Part I discusses the basic difficulties of accounting for magical and miraculous phenomena at the level of theory. In Part I.1 I compare the discussions of several modern anthropologists on the topic of magic and cultural translation. Part I.2 is an analysis of the problematics of magic, miracle and sign theory in certain writings of St Augustine. Part II approaches the problems of miracle and magic at the level of practice. The problems which two Anglo-Saxon hagiographers encounter in their attempts to explain and account for individual miracles is discussed in Part II.1. Part II.2 illustrates the function of language in practical magic through analysis of some Old English charms. Part III treats several late medieval attempts to synthesize practice and theory. In Part III.1 I focus on the way natural philosophy is used by Roger Bacon in his attempt to give new legitimacy to the use of words in practical magic. In Part III.2 I look at how another thirteenth-century writer, Henry of Avranches, uses natural philosophy to resolve some of the problems miracles present the hagiographer. Part III.3 discusses the understanding of magic and morality implicit in the fourteenth-century 'Confessio Amantis' of John Gower. My conclusion draws together the main threads of the preceding parts and suggests some alternative ways of looking at the problematics of magic and miracle." Fanger's section on CA (pp. 278-318) addresses how "Gower's coupling of magic with gluttony becomes significant in a cosmological sense: like gluttony, magic seems to represent a type of intemperance with respect to worldly things" (317). She also shows how Gower's views relate to those of Augustine and Roger Bacon, and how, for Gower, magic "is given a place among human properties or powers which are, like speech and language, special, and yet more natural than supernatural; liable to abuse, and yet not wholly diabolic" (318). Author/Editor Author/Editor Fanger, Claire. Published Fanger, Claire. Signs of Power and the Power of Signs: Medieval Modes of Address to the Problem of Magical and Miraculous Signifiers. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Toronto, 1994. ii, 353 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A55.12. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. 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 Signs of Power and the Power of Signs: Medieval Modes of Address to the Problem of Magical and Miraculous Signifiers Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1994 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 note to Book I, line 1002 in his translation of VC, Stockton observed that Gower's comparison of Simon Sudbury to Helenus is "singularly ill-chosen" because "the ancient Helenus was a traitor to Troy." Not so in the sources most familiar to Gower, Van Dijk observes, for both Benoit and Guido refer only to Helenus's predictions about the outcome of Paris's expedition and his attempts to assure that Achilles receive a proper burial. Gower's invocation of Helenus thus implies no implicit criticism of Sudbury, as some who followed Stockton have assumed. Van Dijk attributes the mistake about Helenus's role to a confusion between Helenus and Thoas, the high priest who did betray Troy, whom Gower mentions in CA 5.1831-47, but while Van Dijk may be right about Gower, Stockton wasn't wrong about Helenus, for according to classical sources, Helenus was a traitor who provided crucial information to the Greeks following his disenchantment with the Trojan cause after Paris's death. In his defense of Helenus, Van Dijk also curiously neglects the reference to the prophetic powers that he shared with his sister Cassandra in CA 5.746-62, another positive allusion, also based on Guido and Benoit, that contains no hint of his later treachery. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Van Dijk, Conrad Published Van Dijk, Conrad. "Simon Sudbury and Helenus in John Gower's Vox Clamantis." Medium AEvum 77 (2008), pp. 313-318. 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 Simon Sudbury and Helenus in John Gower's Vox Clamantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 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 Watt, Diane Published Watt, Diane. "Sins of Omission: Transgressive Genders, Subversive Sexualities, and Confessional Silences in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Exemplaria 13 (2001), pp. 529-551. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review Watt considers such tales as "Deianira and Nessus," "Achilles and Deidamia," and "Iphis and Iante" as examples of "transgressive" gender identities, which "cross over and obfuscate the divide between male and female," and of "subversive sexualities," which "challenge societal norms and expose their inconsistencies" (531), and she also examines Amans' relation with Venus, Cupid, and Genius for its latent sexual implications, all as part of an argument that although Gower does not face directly the issue of male homosexuality, he takes a broader and less conservative attitude towards sexual issues than Karma Lochrie is willing to allow (in the book reviewed in JGN 20, no. 2). Watt's final paragraph provides an excellent summary of her conclusions: "Genius's position on gender transgression and subversive sexuality is ambivalent: while 'honeste love' (marriage) and self-governance are praised, transvestism, transgendering, and transsexuality are explored and even, at times, allowed to undermine norms of gender and sexuality. They are treated differently according to context, and according to the ethical issues raised. Hercules is viewed as effeminate because he is besotted with a woman and because, in dressing as a woman, he is guilty of 'Falssemblant.' He can thus be compared to negative exemplary figures like Saradanapulus, or even Ulysses. Achilles's cross-dressing is legitimized by his youth and because his chivalric masculine identity asserts itself. It is not a form of 'Falswitnesse' in so far as he remains true to himself. Iphis, like Penthesilea, is taken as a positive 'masculine' role model. These narratives destablilize not only male/female boundaries but also the oppositions of manliness and effeminacy, the ethical and the unethical, and the natural and the unnatural. Confessio presents the reader with a series of paradoxes: Nature can inspire unnatural desires and actions; it is possible, even desirable, for a woman to behave like or to turn into a man; the most manly of heroes can become effeminate; the most exemplary of figures can behave immorally, and vice versa. Yet, while neither female cross-dressing nor female homosexuality is condemned out of hand, male sodomy remains taboo." And because of Amans' sexually charged relationship with both Cupid and Genius, "one question remains. Is it simply Amans's folly as a senex amans, or a more deeply hidden sin, which ultimately constitutes the 'unwise fantasie' of which he must rid himself?" (550-51). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 21.1] 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 Sins of Omission: Transgressive Genders, Subversive Sexualities, and Confessional Silences in John Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2001 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 Describes the contents of MS. Cambridge University Library Ff.1.6, which includes work by Roos and excerpts from the CA; suggests Gower may have written "Le Song Verte"; notes Roos and Gower use set phrases repeatedly when translating French poetry into English; compares "Medea" story as told by Roos and Gower. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Seaton, Ethel. Published Seaton, Ethel. Sir Richard Roos, 1410-1482, Lancastrian Poet. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961, pp. 92, 96, 270, 350. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Manuscripts and Textual Studies 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 Sir Richard Roos, 1410-1482, Lancastrian Poet. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1961 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Prints "Two Coffers," CA, Book V, 2272-2390; "Phrixus and Helle," Book V, 4243-4361. Reprint of Macaulay (1899-1902); brief biography. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Patterson, R. F., ed. Published Patterson, R. F., ed. Six Centuries of English Literature: Passages Selected from the Chief Writers and Short Biographies. 6 vols. London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1933, 1:28-35. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Six Centuries of English Literature: Passages Selected from the Chief Writers and Short Biographies. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1933 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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, containing descriptions of "manuscripts and early printed books from libraries in and near Philadelphia illustrating Chaucer's sources, his works and their influence," is the catalog of the exhibition held as the Arthur Ross Gallery and the Rosenbach Museum and Library concurrently with the fifth International Congress of the New Chaucer Society. Pages 99-103 describe two parchment manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis, Rosenbach MS. f 1083/29 (ca. 1450) and the Taylor MS (no number) owned by Princeton Universiy Library (ca. 1400-1450). A portrait of Gower from the Rosenbach MS and an example of the hand of the so-called "Scribe D" from the Taylor MS are reproduced as well. [PN. Copyright the John Gower Society. JGN 5.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Anderson, David, ed. Published Anderson, David, ed. "Sixty Bokes Olde and Newe." Knoxville, TN: New Chaucer Society, 1986 ISBN 0933784082 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 Sixty Bokes Olde and Newe Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available New Chaucer Society, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book 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 Comments on Gower as a forerunner of Skelton as a court poet and a caustic, moral satirist. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Heiserman, A. R. Published Heiserman, A. R. Skelton and Satire. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961, pp. 52, 173, 290, 311. 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 Skelton and Satire. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1961 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Skelton thought of Gower as a model of the laureated poet, along with Chaucer and Lydgate. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, H. L. R. Published Edwards, H. L. R. Skelton: The Life and Times of an Early Tudor Poet. London: Jonathan Cape, 1949, pp. 35, 228. 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 Skelton: The Life and Times of an Early Tudor Poet. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1949 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Date of birth; allusions by Chaucer and Lydgate; outline of the CA. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Craik, George L. Published Craik, George L. Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England from the Norman Conquest to the Accession of Elizabeth. 2 vols. London: Charles Knight, 1844, II, 90-101. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in England from the Norman Conquest to the Accession of Elizabeth. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1844 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Oliveira provides a semantic analysis of the verb "muse" in Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and the various ways in which it has been translated in the Iberian versions of the poem. A comparative examination of the source text with the rendering of this term in diverse contexts shows how the translators were capable of understanding and conveying all the nuances of the original, despite the fact that the word was of recent coinage in its usage as a verb in the Middle English lexicon. [AS-H. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Oliveira, Maria do Carmo Correia de. Published Oliveira, Maria do Carmo Correia de. "Sobre muse e a Musa: (Com)textos de sabedoria em 'Confessio' de John Gower e Sua Tradução Ibérica." eHumanista: Journal of Iberian Studies 3 (2003): 1-18. ISSN 1540-5877 (electronic). → pdf Gower Subject Language and Word 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 Sobre "muse" e a Musa: (Com)textos de sabedoria em 'Confessio' de John Gower e Sua Tradução Ibérica. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review 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 Peck examines major and minor poets of late 14th-century England for their attitudes toward the pervasive problems of the time: proper kingship, religious egalitarianism or its absence, attitudes toward the agrarian estate. Chaucer, Langland, and Gower receive prominent treatment within the larger contaxt including Wycliff, John Ball, Clanvowe, the author of "Richard the Redeles." Peck stresses Gower's concern for the law, and his placing it above the power of kings--a position Gower derived from Bracton. "Only insofar as 'king' is a metaphor for the governance of the soul does Gower allow for an absolute sovereignty. And even here the 'king' is more an administrator under divine, natural, and positive laws than an absolutist" (p. 129). [PN. Copyright the John Gower Newsleller. JGN 6.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A. Published Peck, Russell A.. "Social Conscience and the Poets." In Social Unrest in the Late Middle Ages: Papers of the Fifteenth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. Ed. Newman, Francis X. Binghamton, NY: CEMERS, 1986, pp. 113-148. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Social Conscience and the Poets. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available CEMERS, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Kara L. McShane addresses the "Visio Anglie" of Book I of the VC as a "healing narrative" using romance metaphors to conceptualize a healing process following the 1381 Rising. She acknowledges the poem's social conservatism while rejecting many earlier critics' negative reactions to it; Russell Peck's concept of "common profit" provides a framework for her analysis of Gower's reformist expectations. The essay opens with an explanation of the notion of social healing through narrative, which she grounds in Laurence Kirmayer's understanding of narrative as an essential component of recovery from trauma; this model of trauma and recovery then guides her close reading of portions of the "Visio Anglie." McShane argues that Gower anchors his depiction of the trauma of the Rising in metaphors of "voicelessness and bodily fragmentation" (77), indicating a social body traumatized by events. This leads her to an examination of the poet's speaking situation, as voicelessness would be moot without an interlocutor; the imagery of bodily fragmentation then complicates the narrator's situation, and characterizes the trauma depicted in the poem. This sense of voicelessness represents psychological trauma through bodily breakdown of the act of speech, itself metaphorical in a written poem. Gower's "sigh" (80) then articulates the poet's emotional state in reaction to the terrifying events of the Rising, and the resulting challenge to the integrity of the body politic. Once McShane has established the issue of voice in the poem as a response to trauma, she shifts her attention to Gower's use of the metaphor of a rudderless ship at sea, one which she finds common to many Middle English texts, including Gower's own later narrative of Constance. She draws on several scholars' analyses of this metaphor in Gower and elsewhere, and suggests that this particular metaphor is especially helpful for articulating a healing process, because of the "adaptive possibilities" (80) it offers Gower. Like the fragmented body politic, the rudderless ship becomes a metaphor both for the poem's speaker and for England; as the ship becomes the Tower of London, the poem shifts from the narrator's trauma from witnessing the Rising to the state's trauma at being challenged by the Rising. This metaphor thus makes the chaotic nature of the actual Rising legible to Gower's audience, and provides a way to understand how to go forward from such a moment of rupture. She concludes by arguing that the ship image provides both a metaphor of the larger community, and also a model for moving forward with (hoped-for) divine guidance. Returning to the notion of common profit, she argues that Gower uses this articulation of the trauma of the Rising to affirm the notion that the larger society cannot achieve healing and common profit without drawing together to keep the ship of state afloat. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor McShane, Kara L Published McShane, Kara L. "Social Healing in Gower's 'Visio Angliae'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 76-88. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Social Healing in Gower's 'Visio Angliae' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 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 purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which the verbal substantives used in the CA exhibit the syntactic characteristics of the verb. Having noted that in Gower's English the verbal substantive is morphologically distinct from the present participle, the former ending in –ing(e) or –yng(e) and the latter almost regularly ending in –ende, Kanno classifies the verbal substantives in the CA into the following three categories: (1) those functioning as subjects or subject complements; (2) those used as the object of a verb; (3) those used as the object of a preposition. Although in the majority of these cases the verbal substantive performs a noun function within a sentence, preceded by an adjective or determiner and/or linked prepositionally to a following object, Kanno cites three exceptional cases in which the –ing form is modified adverbially. Kanno also demonstrates that when the verbal substantive is placed after a verb phrase (as in the case of "awaiteth upon his comynge" in CA 8.1312), it combines with a preceding noun or possessive pronoun to form a subject-predicate unit called a "nexus." These isolated instances of the -ing form assuming verbal characteristics, however, do little to justify identifying them as a distinctive feature of Gower's syntax, leading Kanno to conclude that the verbal substantives in the CA have more nominal than verbal properties. [Yoshiko Kobayashi] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kanno, Masahiko Published Kanno, Masahiko. "Some Characteristics of the Verbal Substantive in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 9 (1963), pp. 90-98. ISSN 0288-2876 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 Some Characteristics of the Verbal Substantive in Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1963 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 Schueler suggests that Gower gave up the rigid organization of the first few books of the CA (esp. the five-part subdivisions of each sin) in order to create a more life-like, natural dialogue between Genius and Amans. Genius increasingly becomes "the archetype of the garrulous but wise pedant" (18) and so he is particularly given to long digressions. Genius is also no longer simply a priest of Venus. While this leads to some awkward moments in the poem, it gives Gower more scope to discuss all varieties of love as well as natural law. Although Genius is "long-winded and discursive . . . the characters in his tales never are" (21). Schueler sees Gower as "a master of the action type of story" (21). He further praises the poet for his skillful use of the octosyllabic couplet. Not only does Gower generally avoid a "jingling gait" (22), but he also manages to create a distinctive difference "between the plaintive, hurried measure of the Lover's voice and the deeper, slower voice of Genius" (22). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schueler, Donald G Published Schueler, Donald G. "Some Comments on the Structure of John Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Explorations of Literature. Ed. Reck, Rima D. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1966, pp. 15-24. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Comments on the Structure of John Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Louisiana State UP, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1966 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Observes that "[s]elections of Gower appear in only two" manuscripts of Chaucer's CT and that "Gower's and Lydgate's work alone appeared more than once" in such MSS. [RFY1981; revised MA]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Silvia, Daniel S. Published Silvia, Daniel S. Some Fifteen-Century Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. In Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974, pp. 153-63. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Fifteen-Century Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Kuhl's article is primarily about the witnesses in the Cecily Champaign affair, but at the very end he makes a brief mention of John Gower. After suggesting that Chaucer may have owed his guardianship of the heirs of Edmund Staplegate in 1375 to Ralph Strode, Kuhl notes that John Gower too can be linked to Edmund Staplegate. According to the Calendar of Patent Rolls, in 1386 and 1387, "John Gower and Edmund Staplegate were among the purveyors of victuals at Dover Castle" (275). Kuhl suggests that this is Gower the poet, and on the basis of these connections he concludes that "Troilus and Criseyde was dedicated to two friends who were members of the King's faction" (276). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kuhl, Ernest P Published Kuhl, Ernest P. "Some Friends of Chaucer." PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 29.2 (1914), pp. 270-76. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Friends of Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1914 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 is a political philosopher to whom Chaucer dedicates his "Troilus and Criseyde." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wetherbee, Winthrop. Published Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Some Intellectual Themes in Chaucer's Poetry." In George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 75, 87. 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 Some Intellectual Themes in Chaucer's Poetry. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Comments on money Gower borrowed from Gilbert Mawfield; says MO contains some brilliant scenes buried in "a mass of vituperation and preaching." [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Manly, John M. Published Manly, John M. Some New Light on Chaucer. New York: Henry Holt, 1926, pp. 195, 251, 295 Gower Subject Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some New Light on Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1926 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review On Gower's influence on Chaucer, particularly in natural description; judges Chaucer invariably more "poetic" than Gower. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Flügel, Ewald. Published Flügel, Ewald. "Some Notes on Chaucer's Prologue." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1 (1897): 118-35. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Notes on Chaucer's Prologue. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1895 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 translation of Gower's Confessio exists in one manuscript, Escorial g-ii-19, rendered in the Castilian dialect, with some evidence of an Aragonese scribe. The only extant edition is rife with errors of language and transcription, and a rare book as well, thus making the need for a reliable and available scholarly text paramount. Many salient questions remain unanswered about the Castilian MS, including especially its date and origin. Not a holograph, the Escorial copy represents the work of at least two scribes. Their exemplar was an earlier Spanish MS (now lost), itself a translation by one Juan de Cuenca of the work of Robert Payn, an Englishman resident in Portugal who rendered Gower's English into Portuguese. Neither the date of the Escorial MS, nor that of the lost Portuguese translation of Payn, has been established with certainty. Moreno presents the various proposed dates and dismisses them, calling attention to two indications in the Escorial MS itself which seem to fix de Cuenca's works as occurring between 1433 and 1435. The first date is de Cuenca's naming himself, in the first paragraph of his translation, a citizen of the city ("cibdad") of Huete, a technical reference impossible before formal incorporation of Huete in 1428. The second is the translation of Gower's monetary "an hundred pounds" (CA V, 2719) as "six hundred coronas" ("seys cientas coronas"). This Moreno argues could only have come into the Escorial MS as a direct carry-over from the Portuguese, following the establishment of the exchange rate in 1433 by King Duarte of Portugal of reaes and coroas to the English pound in quantities equating a hundred pounds to 612.5 coroas – or "coronas", in Castilian. Hence on internal grounds, Moreno places the date of de Cuenca's version of the Confessio Amantis at 1433-1435. THIS articles also appears under the title "The Fifteenth-Century Portuguese and Castilian Translations of John Gower, 'Confessio Amantis'" in Manuscript 35 (1991): 23-34. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 13.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Santano Moreno, Bernardo Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Published Santano Moreno, Bernardo. "Some Observations on the Dates and Circumstances of the Fifteenth-Century Portuguese and Castilian Translations of John Gower's Confessio Amantis." SELIM 1 (1991), pp. 106-122. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Some Observations on the Dates and Circumstances of the Fifteenth-Century Portuguese and Castilian Translations of John 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 Benson, C. David. Published Benson, C. David. "Some Poets' Tours of Medieval London: Varieties of Literary Urban Experience." Essays in Medieval Studies 24 (2007): 1-20. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Review Benson's set of late-medieval poetic "tours" through London consists of appreciative commentary about William FitzStephen's Latin "Description of London," Gower's "Visio" (Book 1) of "Vox Clamantis," Chaucer's "Cook's Tale," Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes" and "La Male Regle, Lydgate's "King Henry VI's Triumphal Entry," and the anonymous "London Lickpenny." Accompanied by various maps and details of maps from modern reconstructions of the medieval city (and Gower's tomb in color), Benson's essay reads something like the voice-over for a documentary about medieval London, helping to bring the city to life, as it were. Comments about the lives and London experiences of the authors juxtapose details from their works that depict medieval London's topography and sociology, although Gower's allegory in the "Visio" gives "little sense of the city's geography," and the countryside around London is only a "frightening bolt-hole into which the narrator flees in terror" (7) rather than an opportunity, as it is for FitzStephen, to describe various forms of recreation. When Gower compares the Tower of London to a ship riding out a storm it is "[p]erhaps as part of a hallucination" (7), while, for example, Chaucer's reference to Newgate in the "Cook's Tale" recalls "the London practice of parading with mocking music to and from prison and the pillory those guilty of civic misbehavior" (10). These and other contrasting examples--and there are many more--seem to privilege realism over representationalism, although Benson does emphasize the discursive variety that the "theme of London" generates among medieval English writers, closing with a call for "more scholarly attention" to the theme "than it has yet received." [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Poets' Tours of Medieval London: Varieties of Literary Urban Experience. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://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 lacking in imagination, and the author of some dull verse, but nonetheless a skilled maker of rhymes whom Spenser must have read. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Brooks, S. W. Published Brooks, S. W. "Some Predecessors of Spenser." Poet Lore 1 (1889): 214-16. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Style and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Predecessors of Spenser. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1889 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Takes issue with emendations to Reinhold Pauli's text (1857) made by Henry Morley (1889) in the latter's attempt to be true to Berthelette's 1532 version of the CA. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Bradley, Henry. Published Bradley, Henry. "Some Proper Names in the Confessio Amantis." Athenaeum, No. 3213 (May, 1889): 663. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Proper Names in the Confessio Amantis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1889 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Demonstrates that the 18 rhymes from CA cited as false by Thomas Lounsbury (1892) are in fact true ones. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Skeat, Walter W. Published Skeat, Walter W. "Some Rimes in Gower." Academy, no. 1035 (1892): 230-31. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Some Rimes in Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1892 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Schaar, Claes. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Compares Chaucer's version of the tale of Constance (Man of Law's Tale 428ff.) with Gower's (CA II, 682ff.). [RFY1981] Published Schaar, Claes. Some Types of Narrative in Chaucer's Poetry. Lund Studies in English, no. 25. Lund: Cleerup, 1954, p. 77n. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1954 Title A name given to the resource Some Types of Narrative in Chaucer's Poetry. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Stern explores how literary depictions of sound "animate marginalized characters when their voices fail," treating silence in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde," laughter in "Le Roman de Silence," crying in the "Book of Margery Kempe," and music in both Gower's "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre" ("Confessio Amantis," Book 8) and the "Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri" (HA). She tells us that "[e]ven when voice proves to be impossible for myriad reasons, these early literary works showcase marginalized characters that can temporarily rebel, refute, and resist through their authors' orchestration of what I refer to as 'sonic expressions' or the ability to express through sound" (xiv). In Stern's discussion of Gower's tale and its antecedent (Chapter 4), notions of music, literary voice, prosodic patterning, and the auditory imagination of reading and listening audiences complicate and perhaps muddy her concept of "sonic expressions," hazarding confusion, even dissonance. For example, the HA and Gower's Tale "are textual objects that are not sounded objects in a traditional sense. Still, they feature abundant music, performance, and song representations that beg us to consider how these textual features differ from conventional modes of communication, such as voice. In this sense, the text can be both unsounded and musical in its representations of what we might redefine as 'music'" (167). A "reader's engagement," Stern tells us, can "bring to life" the "musical engagements" of the Apollonius accounts because their "vibrational affect takes effect, pulsating from text to reader and back to text again," and "offer[s] ethics to counteract the inherent limitations of the story," especially when readers "attun[e] their thinking ears to the sonic features of the text" (170). Specifically, if we attend "to the sounds that derive from Thaise's/Tarsia's character's musical abilities, we, as readers, can begin to hear not the interpretation of the female voice but a form of musical expression that pulsates from the descriptions of her performances" and helps to "generate a more ethical approach" to these accounts (171). I'm not sure how it is generated by these concerns with sound, but Stern's ethical approach is briskly feminist so that, for example, "Gower's version eclipses the HA's in terms of its delivery of female agency . . . . Gower's rendition is a win for all women" (188). A bit later, Stern tells us that the ending of the HA "resonates with my feminist wishes" (193), while "Gower elects to spend the final pages of his 'Apollonius' story silencing, erasing, and 'fixing' the canonical tradition brought forth by musicality: female agency" (195). At the close of her discussion, Stern states: "Thus, I conclude that these two versions of the Apollonius story should be read thematically for their musical presentations, for to do so is to read Thaise's/Tarsia's character anew. No longer an empty signifier of the female voice, Thaise's/Tarsia's musical performances can be read as detectable and persistent. In imagining Thaise's/Tarsia's melodies, the song's sound can be heard, even in the face of oppressive editing practices. This is the most feminist reading one can make of a textual tradition that offers so little room for women to express themselves" (200-01). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stern, Kortney, Published Stern, Kortney, "Sonic Interventions: Silence, Sound, and Melody in Medieval Literature." Ph.D. Dissertation. Indiana University, 2024. Dissertation Abstracts International A86.02(E). xi, 227 pp. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Sonic Interventions: Silence, Sound, and Melody in Medieval Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Prints "Florent," CA Book I, 1396-1861; "Constance," Book II, 587-1612; reprinting Macaulay. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Bryan, W. F., and Germaine Dempster, eds. Published Bryan, W. F., and Germaine Dempster, eds. Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. New York: Humanities Press, 1941, pp. 181-206. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations 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 Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1941 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Spenser is a writer of didactic verse narrative, like Gower. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hankins, John E. Published Hankins, John E. Sources and Meaning in Spenser's Allegory: A Study in the "Faerie Queene." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921, pp. 9n, 298. 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 Sources and Meaning in Spenser's Allegory: A Study in the "Faerie Queene." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1921