17 100 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 Boyar has studied the production and availability of mirrors in Gower's London, and uses the information valuably to draw conclusions as to the possible intended reading of the concluding image of "John Gower" seeing his image in a mirror. Mirrors were not common items in the Middle Ages, and most--if available--would have had only "hazy reflective properties." "Ultimately," she suggests, "that, more than a revelation through reflective recognition, the Confessio's ending would have proven most resonant for its portrayal of seeing through a complicated medium." [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 35.2 ] Author/Editor Author/Editor Boyar, Jenny Published Boyar, Jenny. "Reflection, Interrupted: Interior Mirror Work in the 'Confessio Amantis'." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 3 (2016), n.p.. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Reflection, Interrupted: Interior Mirror Work in the 'Confessio Amantis'. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 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 Invention of Fire" represents Holsinger's follow-up to "A Burnable Book" (reviewed in eJGN 33.1 (2014) by Michael Livingston). It is the second of a projected three novels featuring John Gower as the central character. In Holsinger's telling Gower is part honest sleuth, relied upon by the great and powerful, part professional extortionist, who makes his living dealing in dirt. As in "A Burnable Book," murder, treason, forgery, prostitution and petty thievery find their way into every cranny and corner of Holsinger's noir London, intertwining with the precise historical detail (for which Holsinger has a fine nose) that is both accurate and workable. In "The Invention of Fire," the moment is 1386, the fire emanates from "handgonnes" just then being developed, in this telling, to effect a coup d'etat, and the results are slaughtered women and children in Normandy, entangled corpses below the Thames-side public privies, and high-level betrayals that, if true, would go far to explain events in parliament and court in that year. Gower, whose progressively deteriorating vision (clearly Holsinger's fortuitous take on the handicap requisite for "private eyes"--think Holmes' cocaine use, Philip Marlowe's drinking) plays a larger part in this second novel than in the first, is asked on the Q.T. to follow a thread that leads him not only abroad (!) where he meets his son, Simon (!!), but more plausibly to the highest and lowest social strata. Like "A Burnable Book," this one is a good yarn, and if it feels a bit thinner and more rushed-out than the first, it nevertheless still offers many pleasures for Gowerians, not the least of which is watching Gower perform as an almost-man of action, while Chaucer (again) comes off as more than a little shifty, a bit of a worm trending cad-ward directly. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Holsinger, Bruce Published Holsinger, Bruce. "The Invention of Fire." New York: HarperCollins, 2015 ISBN 9780062356451 Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Invention of Fire Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available HarperCollins, 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 Book NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Introduces thirteen essays, collected in a special double issue of "South Atlantic Review," all based on work first presented at the III International Congress of the John Gower Society, 2014. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor McShane, Kara L Yeager, R. F Published McShane, Kara L and Yeager, R. F. "Introduction: John Gower's Twenty-First Century Appeal." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 1-5. ISSN 0277-335X 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 Introduction: John Gower's Twenty-First Century Appeal 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 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 Baldo offers a broad and provocative consideration of the role of memory in "Pericles," including the ways in which the adventures of the eponymous king and his family might have suggested to Shakespeare's audience the memory of their national past at a time, following the Reformation, when historical memory was contested and when changes in religion practice altered the relationship to one's ancestors and thus to the past. Gower, in his appearances in the prologue and epilogue to the play, is resurrected from his nearby tomb in order to enact a kind of recovery of the past while also marking its difference, and he does so not just in his archaic language and verse form but also, as a teller of moral stories himself, in the lessons he offers on the use of the past, a practice that Shakespeare imitates in reviving him. "'Pericles' recalls a world where memory's value and sway were more stable than they were in post-Reformation England, and indeed in most of Shakespeare's own plays. Awash in restorations of various kinds, 'Pericles' stages a recovery of not only a particular voice of the late Middle Ages, but also its culture of memory" (172). In contrast to some of Shakespeare's other plays, "memory has the less equivocal function of promoting recovery, virtue, and eventually redemption, and in this respect Shakespeare appears to be following the lead of Gower himself, who in the "Confessio" casts memory as a virtue and forgetting as a source of manifold evils; memory as a source of psychological and political unity, and forgetting as a source of distraction and division" (178). Gower "bestrides the gulf between pre- and post-Reformation England, thereby helping audiences to recollect the very different status that recollection itself held in the period in which he lived and wrote. A bodied memory of late medieval England and a poet of memory who in his own time sought to shake a people out of their mnemonic slumber by teaching them how to recollect the past and thereby achieve psychological and political wholeness, Gower fittingly presides over a public, ceremonial restoration to life of the recently broken and buried culture of memory that not a few of Shakespeare's contemporaries apparently wished to exhume, if only for the two hours' traffic of the stage" (183). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Baldo, Jonathan Published Baldo, Jonathan. "Recovering Medieval Memory in Shakespeare's 'Pericles'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 171-88. ISSN 0277-335X 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 Recovering Medieval Memory in Shakespeare's 'Pericles' 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 In the mid-fifteenth century Osbert Bokenham and George Ashby both canonized the familiar poetic trinity of Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate as "the first rhetoricians" (Bokenham) and "premier poets" (Ashby) of England. Lydgate, the latecomer to this party, makes public and obvious his many appropriations of Chaucer as a poetic father. Edwards takes up the question of Lydgate as a descendant of moral Gower, a "deep source" for Lydgate as a public poet, visible in Lydgate's poetry only in what Lydgate figures as a "poetic trace" (156). Like his two predecessors, Lydgate joins a long tradition of medieval writers constructing fictions of authorship for earlier texts on which they have no claim to be coevals. Chaucer famously uses these constructions as an arena for play and deferral of literary authority from the historian Lollius to Chaucer the pilgrim. Edwards reminds us, however, that Gower asserts his authorship by deploying most of the terms Alastair Minnis has identified for us, and as such asserts a strong claim as a crucial forerunner for Lydgate. In "Fall of Princes" Lydgate himself puts Gower into a different triumvirate with Ralph Strode and Richard Rolle, a grouping that invokes a late-medieval vernacular humanism within which Lydgate created his poetic space. While Gower's meditations on social and political divisions remain unacknowledged in Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes" and "Serpent of Division" (as Maura Nolan points out), Gower's influence lingers in Lydgate's grasp of Lancastrian cycles of crisis at the difficult moment when the minor Henry VI ascends the throne in 1422. In the "Fall of Princes" Lydgate's chapter on Constantine seems to be drawn unacknowledged from Book II of Gower's CA, reshaping Gower's emphasis on pity to assemble the virtue of "royal compassion" that aligns spiritual interests with temporal power in terms that parallel Constantine with Lydgate's patron Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. The tale of Canace and Machaire in the "Fall" also reshapes Gower's version by expanding Canace's complaint to counterbalance the ravages of epic-heroic patriarchy surrounding her. More broadly, Edwards argues, Gower offered Lydgate a mode of address to the powerful in a particular state of being: triumph and conquest. Gower's odes, admonitions, and advice on peace and justice serve Lydgate as both a framework and an idiom for "Troy Book" and "Siege of Thebes." Lydgate's address to Henry V at the end of "Troy Book" deploys terms Gower uses to praise Henry's father: a mighty conqueror whose royal lineage is both secured by descent and ratified by election, but whose condition is always subject to mutable Fortune. While Chaucer remains Lydgate's example for poetic achievement in English, Gower in Edwards' view shows Lydgate how to maneuver rhetorically in the public sphere and amid its great themes of war, peace, and right action. For Lydgate this work does not end with the secular powers, but perseveres in the service of doctrine. [JF. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, Robert R Published Edwards, Robert R. "Lydgate and the Trace of Gower." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 156-70. ISSN 0277-335X 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 Lydgate and the Trace of Gower 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 Although Lydgate's and Gower's politics continue to be popular topics on their own, no real attention has gathered around any relations between the ideas of Gower and his successor in Lancastrian literary circles. Reimer begins with the unassailable point that both poets share an interest in a well-governed society led by a king whose virtuous rule starts with himself, and extends to bringing the estates of society into "good acord" rather than a state of war. Lydgate's only known prose work, "The Serpent of Division," examines Pompey's war with Julius Caesar and the resulting "catastrophic consequences to the nation of princely ambition and bellicosity" using "Gower-like themes" and a "Gower-like use of ancient stories" to understand contemporary politics (145). Both Lydgate and Gower focus on "Division" as a central cause of social breakdown, on prudent peace over rash war, and on the invocation of a mythic poet (Arion in Gower's CA, Amphion in Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes") able to bind up the golden chains of social harmony. Lydgate's two double hagiographies, the "Lives of Saints Edmund and Fremund" (which according to Jennifer Sisk functions as a "speculum regis" for Henry VI), and the "Lives of Saints Alban and Amphibal" (modeled on "Edmund and Fremund") offer a more complex view of virtuous governance in both spiritual and civic terms. Edmund's early reign generates a long passage on the ideals of righteous rule and a well-regulated body politic; still, "the text does not offer a single model of kingship but a set of alternatives, with no clear prioritizing of the one over the other" (147). St. Alban's story begins with the Roman conquest of Britain and the creation of a proto-Arthurian knighthood under the guidance of Emperor Diocletian, whose set of vows champion a similar set of virtues for good governance aimed at the upper classes, with a clear emphasis on common profit and a caution against rousing rebellion--presumably among the hotheads of the Third Estate so memorably personified in Gower's VC. Ultimately the argument here, that Lydgate is like Gower in his vision of good governance yielding a peaceable kingdom, is built with relatively little discussion of Gower himself beyond brief invocations at beginning and end; Gowerians will hear the resonances clearly, nonetheless. [JF. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Reimer, Stephen R Published Reimer, Stephen R. "A New Arion: Lydgate on Saints, Kings and 'Good Acord'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 144-55. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A New Arion: Lydgate on Saints, Kings and 'Good Acord' 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 "England's two dominant legal systems, the ecclesiastical and the common-law, had opposite attitudes towards intentionality," Barrington writes. "According to the Church, intention was all. According to the common-law courts, intention counted for nothing" (134), except, she explains, during a brief period during King Richard's reign when Gower happened to be composing CA. In his poem, Gower juxtaposes and places into confrontation the assumptions from the two systems. "Throughout, Genius adopts a position comparable to the one found in penitential manuals: intention is all. Amans, however, maintains the common-law position that only the deed counts. Only reluctantly does Amans admit the culpability of his intentions even when he is unable to bring those intentions to pass. . . . Genius positions Amans as a penitential confessant, but Amans positions himself as a defendant in a criminal case" (136). As her principal illustration, Barrington uses the lesson on Sacrilege in CA Book 5. In interrogating Amans, "Genius adopts a position comparable to the one found in penitential manuals: the soul is judged by its intentions," while "Amans, in contrast, adopts the position associated with the law courts: the deed, intended or not, is all that counts. When Genius asks Amans if he ever committed sacrilege, the lover repeatedly admits to intending sacrilege but denies doing the deed and therefore sees himself as innocent" (137). Both, however, attribute a significant role to chance in determining whether or not an intent is carried out in deed. Chance also plays a large role in the "Tale of Paris and Helen" that follows. In its disjointedness, the tale resembles a "trial narrative" (140), made up of different accounts provided by different witnesses; and in its focus, finally, on the single issue of sacrilege, it recalls the need for a prosecutor to identify a prosecutable offense. The debate that occurs at the beginning of the tale identifies conflicting views of how the Trojans should proceed, but it links the eventual destruction of the city to the collective intention of the entire populace. Paris is given a kind of claim to Helen, but his ability to enforce it depends upon a series of unforeseen events. Once he sees Helen in the temple, however, he proceeds with conscious intention. But "the Trojans' collective involvement and Paris's intended deed--to abduct Helen--are set aside in preference to a legal model that limits the case to a single, provable deed: Paris's sacrilege. In this way, the tale entangles the penitential and the juridical, allowing Genius to rest his argument on a deed both intended and done" (138). Even such a perspective, however, offers no satisfying explanation either for the war or for the destruction of Troy. "The tale provides a barometer for the increasing difficulty of ignoring intention in the courtroom, indicating why Ricardian courts briefly made an allowance for intention because it invariably impinged on the proceedings and on the jurors' perceptions. Yet, the tale and framework also demonstrate why the courts found it the better part of wisdom to ignore the issue of intention. As long as criminal law was tied to a system of pleading that limited the case to a single issue, finding a prosecutable correlation between deed and intention adds complications that return us to the same problems caused by ignoring intention altogether" (140-41). Barrington's analysis is enlightening, but we do not read Amans' confession in V.7094-7182 in the same way. While he excuses himself from the type of indiscriminate flirting that Genius uses as his example of Sacrilege, Amans freely admits to a different sort of Sacrilege (5.7156), both in intent and deed, with regard to his own lady. This passage does not seem as good an illustration of a difference in understanding between Amans and Genius on the nature of culpability as Barrington suggests. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Barrington, Candace Published Barrington, Candace. "Common-Law and Penitential Intentionality in Gower's 'Tale of Paris and Helen'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 132-43. ISSN 0277-335X 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 Common-Law and Penitential Intentionality in Gower's 'Tale of Paris and Helen' 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 Countering past analyses that read the depiction of alchemy in Book IV of the CA as banal, Fletcher argues for that passage's centrality to the Confessio. Physically at the middle of the poem, Gower's discussion of alchemy is also in her view thematically essential, as it develops the role of human labor as a driving metaphor within the world of the poem. She sees the passage's treatment of the movement "from base to perfection, from ignoble to noble" (119) in metals as symbolic of the larger moral movement of the poem itself. Seeing vice or sin as parallel to the impurities to be purged from base metals, alchemy then becomes a model for Gower's conceptualization of the individual's moral development. Fletcher then goes on to outline critical reaction to Gower's approach to alchemy, noting the parallels to Chaucer's "Canon's Yeoman's Tale," and the apparent error of identifying Jupiter with brass, rather than with tin as in Chaucer. Gower's choice of words, using the term "vice" among other moral terms for the imperfections to be purged, then cements the idea that the passage is at least as philosophical and moralizing as it is alchemical. The term "clergie" to represent the learning required (120) further reinforces her vision of the scene's centrality to Gower's moral approach. Gower's explanation that certain purifications are no longer possible in a less-than-perfect world such as Gower's own, expresses in Fletcher's view the "senectus mundi" theory that James Dean has identified in late medieval culture. She is able to relate this sense of universal decay to Gower's analysis of human moral decay both in the Prologue to the CA and also in a passage in the MO that depicts a similar deterioration in the world. Returning to the dream of Nebuchadnezzar in the Prologue, Fletcher then uses the "error" of brass in the alchemy passage to link that passage to the body metaphor of the "ages of man" in the dream, which she sees as "alchemy in reverse" (125). The brass in the alchemy passage then becomes not an error, but a reference back to the dream image of the Prologue. This linkage of alchemy and a larger view of the world then leads to a more linguistic analysis, as Fletcher moves from the alchemy passage's observation that old alchemical texts are no longer legible to a sense that signification itself is decayed, as are the materials of alchemy and the world itself. The purging of vice in alchemy, even if imperfect, then becomes Gower's solution to this problem of moral decay, when Genius' analysis of sloth overlaps the alchemy passage's use of terms "vice" and "vertu." Ultimately for Fletcher, it is this link between alchemy and moral development that underlines Gower's sense of "the powerful elemental intertwining of mankind, earth, and the heavens" (129). [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fletcher, Clare Published Fletcher, Clare. "'The science of himself is trewe': Alchemy in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 118-131. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The science of himself is trewe': Alchemy in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' 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 William Rogers approaches his extended analysis of the Medea story in the CA with the understanding that Middle English literature often blurred the boundaries between medicine and magic. For him, this particular text encapsulates the slippages between the two. Looking at the way the Medea story addresses the Confessio's larger question of how to "cure" old age and the paradox of the "senex amans," in particular, Rogers presents Medea's approach in terms of its conflation of "old age and old sources" (106). Rogers clarifies the tale's participation in late medieval medical discourse through extended comparison to the treatise "On Tarrying the Accidents of Age," found in Trinity College MS R.14.52--though he carefully concedes that he cannot prove Gower's familiarity with that specific manuscript. Instead he argues that the resonance between Gower's poem and this particular collection of medical texts foregrounds Gower's thinking on rejuvenation of both the old body and the old book, resulting in a "poetics of rejuvenation" (107) that ultimately works considerably better with books than with bodies. Amans' rejuvenation, Rogers argues, proves no more effective than Eson's within the tale. As Rogers details Medea's story, he argues that Gower's approach to her is relatively sympathetic. He sees her power as a metaphor of sorts for the poet's own narrative method. Calling attention to Gower's reliance on the Middle English verb "newe" in his treatment of renewal and rejuvenation, Rogers notes that the usage is shared by "On Tarrying." The details of Medea's rejuvenation of Eson, then, maintain the same overall focus on "humoral balance and re-ignition of a bodily fire" (111) characterized in the medical text. The grim, violent nature of the tale's ending, wherein Eson is deprived of descendants to cherish, becomes cruelly ironic: Eson's renewed youth provides merely "more time to grieve" (113). Rogers then shifts his focus to the other old man requiring rejuvenation in the CA: Amans, or Gower himself. This shows the limits of the "poetics of rejuvenation," as old-age cures work only with old texts and authorities, not with the actual body. Curing the paradox of the "senex amans" by removing the "amans" side of the term cannot provide a satisfactory solution for the old lover's problem. The poem thus reinforces the idea that age is not really reversible, though old sources can be renewed through a poem like the CA. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Rogers, William Published Rogers, William. "Old Words Made New: Medea's Magic and Gower's Textual Healing." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 105-117. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Old Words Made New: Medea's Magic and Gower's Textual Healing 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 Pamela M. Yee investigates Gower's use of illness in "The Tale of Constantine and Sylvester" in Book II of the CA, largely through analogy to recent work in the use of narrative formation in the medical diagnostic process. Yee characterizes a shift from seeing physicians as the protagonists in medical narratives toward Rita Charon's model of physicians attending to patients' own narratives of illness and treatment. She uses the work of Glending Olson to connect this relatively recent paradigm to some medieval medical approaches, though she concedes that Charon's model differs from medieval models. Yee then shifts her focus to Gower, by pointing out that the relationship between Genius and Amans parallels this doctor-patient relationship, with sin and redemption taking the role of medical illness and cure. This sets up her analysis of a tale that maps Amans' analysis of sin through narrative to an actual illness: the emperor Constantine's leprosy. After an overview of previous approaches to this tale, she contrasts the medical approaches of Constantine's court clerks and of Pope Sylvester--the court clerks do not model the use of patient-centered medical narrative theorized by Charon, with the result that their proposed cure, bathing in the blood of the innocent, fails to address the underlying cause for Constantine's illness, and also accentuates the "wider social disruption" (92) of the emperor's illness. Sylvester's approach then does manage to listen carefully enough to Constantine, and thus to model the sort of close attention to story advocated by Charon. This allows Sylvester to identify the underlying moral causes for Constantine's illness, and leads to the solution through moral exempla and conversion to Christianity. Yee's analysis extends Gower's metaphor of medicine for spiritual cure through the "ritualized contact between doctor and patient" (97) of Constantine's baptism. Yee goes on to argue, however, that once Constantine has benefitted from such a healthy affiliation with Sylvester, he ironically reverts to the same poor communication model of his court clerks that nearly led to his blood bath. His forcible conversion of his empire and the problematic Donation of Constantine challenge the very compassion that Sylvester modeled in his cure of the emperor. This reading thus extends the medical paradigm of the contrasting treatments of Constantine's leprosy to the emperor's own authoritarianism, and views Constantine as a failed physician. In contrast, when Yee returns her focus to the frame of Amans and Genius, she is able to explain Genius' roundabout narrative response to Amans' confession as a more successful instantiation of this discursive model of medicine. [RAL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yee, Pamela M Published Yee, Pamela M. "'So schalt thou double hele finde': Narrative Medicine in the 'Tale of Constantine and Sylvester'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 89-104. ISSN 0277-335X 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 'So schalt thou double hele finde': Narrative Medicine in the 'Tale of Constantine and Sylvester' 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 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 In having the righteous pagan in his "Tale of the Jew and the Pagan" express a philosophy based upon the "Golden Rule," Houlik-Ritchey notes, Gower locates the ethical foundations of Christianity in paganism and explicitly rejects its historical roots in Judaism, specifically in the injunction to "love thy neighbor" in Leviticus 19:18, an "alternate ethical kinship" (66) also reflected in the choice of Aristotle and the source of the instruction in CA Book 7. But viewing the tale through the lens of the "neighbor theory" of Kenneth Reinhard and others, Houlik-Ritchey argues that the tale also interrogates so reductive a relationship between Christianity and Judaism. The two men in the tale greet each other as both brothers and strangers, an ambiguous and indeterminate relationship that "marks them as neighbors" (67). While certainly unknown to Gower, the wide semantic field of the term "felawe" by which the Jew defines his own ethical obligation echoes rabbinical debates about the precise sense of "neighbor" in Leviticus 19:18, and "the pagan's astonished reaction to the Jew's speech figures, anachronistically, Christian judgment upon the limitations of Judaism 'as it has construed them'" (70; Houlik-Ritchey's emphasis). The pagan's own creed, moreover, echoes another injunction, to love strangers, in Leviticus 19:33-34. The tale takes place in a "wilderness," a setting in which both men are strangers as well as "felawes" in the sense of "traveling companions," and the men's respective ethical responsibilities are defined in this space removed from civilization yet also fraught with historical resonance, as it is located between Cairo and Babylon, the sites of Jewish exile. "In sum," Houlik-Ritchey concludes, "I argue that Gower's 'Tale of the Jew and the Pagan,' reimagining the origins of Christian ethics to efface its Jewish legacy, pinpoints a source of ambivalence regarding the ethical indebtedness of Christians to Jews that refuses to settle down. As I hope I have shown, the Jew and the Pagan are neighbors, and their ethical codes seem, in ways unforeseen and unintended by each, to share an ethical responsibility for those that chance, circumstance, and the physical world make proximate. Though neither man heeds his creed's call to neighbor-love in quite these terms, those implications of their analogous responsibility to each other are legible to us. The tale, by way of paganism, thus brings into sharp focus Gower's construction of a neighboring relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Gower's Jew and Pagan take us, in the end, back to where we historically began: Christianity's many debts to its Jewish neighbors" (73). Houlik-Ritchey has a great deal to offer to our understanding of this tale, but her essay contains a couple of odd statements (e.g. "Book VII is the book of Justice," 66), and her summary overlooks the pagan's prayer in 7.3300-09* and the implicit intervention of God in response, which one thinks might aid her case that the pagan is a proto-Christian but which would also seem to qualify a bit her emphasis upon the importance of the setting, particularly her reference to the "swift ecological punishment" as the wilderness "stalks the unethical man for the kill" in the form of the lion (72). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Houlik-Ritchey, Emily Published Houlik-Ritchey, Emily. "Fellows in the Wilderness: Neighborly Ethics in 'The Tale of the Jew and the Pagan'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 65-75. ISSN 0277-335X 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 Fellows in the Wilderness: Neighborly Ethics in 'The Tale of the Jew and the Pagan' 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 "frame" of CA, Stoyanoff argues, consists of both the Prologue and the scene in which Amans is finally confronted by Venus in Book VIII and is revealed to be an old man. With this revelation, both Amans and the reader are forced to reassess what they have learned during the course of the confession and to extract the wisdom that has been presented in the guise of lessons on love. The Prologue prepares both the theme of mutability that is most powerfully manifested in Gower's old age and the question of the relation between love and wisdom. Gower appears to be optimistic about the potential of wisdom as an antidote to the instability of the world (Prol. 66-67), but then, as he shifts to the main body of the poem, to give love power even over the wise. But Stoyanoff argues that the Prologue also offers the reader several warnings against deception, and the end reveals that Gower has been able to fool both himself--into believing that he is a young man--and the reader, who accepts his self-characterization, not realizing that the whole confession is a sham. Venus, in the way in which she asks Gower to state his name, reveals that she sees him for what he is all along, and she forces him not just to self-knowledge but to reflection: "old John Gower is instructed to remember how he individually became old--to use the knowledge of a lived life. This directive implies wisdom is gained in this way. The experiences that old John Gower has had through his life merit reflection; in fact, that is what "Confessio" expresses to its reader through the revelatory moment--the need for reflection on the experience of reading the poem" (57). "The revelatory moment of the poem, then, not only reveals Amans as Gower, but it also moves the reader to contemplate what she has read in light of the revelation that it is wisdom for which she should read, not love" (60). In sum, "[Gower's] poetic conceit that wisdom is too weighty and that love is more common has resulted in a dangerous, harmful way of reading that neglects both the body and society. With the revelatory moment, however, Gower remedies the effects of misguided reading by modeling the right way to read. The wisdom of 'Confessio Amantis' lies in its imposition of a reading process through its circular framing. The mutable content of the poem from wisdom to love and back to wisdom leads the reader to a con-structive reading process that acknowledges 'ernest,' game, and the 'middel weie' for which Gower aims (Prol. 17). Wisdom is found in what is read, yes, but wisdom, 'Confessio Amantis' shows its reader, is more often found in how something is read" (61). Stoyanoff's essay is provocative, but one wonders how he would explain the effect of the marginal note at 1.59 ("fingens se auctor esse Amantem . . .") in shaping the reader's response to the "deception" of the confession. It is also regrettable that the constraints of space don't allow him to explore in precisely what ways the interpretation of any portion of the poem might differ in retrospect from how it is perceived before reading the conclusion. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stoyanoff, Jeffrey G Published Stoyanoff, Jeffrey G. "Beginnings and Endings: Narrative Framing in 'Confessio Amantis'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 52-64. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Beginnings and Endings: Narrative Framing in 'Confessio Amantis' 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 Derek Pearsall coined the image of the CA as a "dreadnought" poem, a massive battleship girded with the iron cladding of Latin marginalia. Stadolnik points out that despite the Confessio's fearsome unity in the London manuscripts that define the poem's identity, a number of excerpted versions survive from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries whose purposes may not be intellectual power projection in so overwhelming a form. Kate Harris and Tony Edwards have both trod this ground, noting that such excerpts were probably much more frequent than the survivors indicate (Harris) and that the removal of the tales from their massive penitential framework can have subversive effects (Edwards). Takamiya MS 32 is a carefully-designed and decorated compilation opening with five tales from the CA ("Three Questions," "Procne, Philomela, and Tereus," "Nectabanabus," "Perseus and Demetrius," and "Adrian and Bardus"). These tales are followed by the unique witness for the allegorical dialogue "Speculum Misericordie" and a complete text of the "Canterbury Tales" that has earned this manuscript its more familiar appellation as "the Delamere Chaucer." Closing the volume is a further CA excerpt that combines "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream" (including its Latin headverse) with "Nebuchadnezzar's Punishments." One consequence of this excerpting is the complete removal of moralizing structures imposed in the CA by the Latin marginalia and the commentary of Genius himself in the main text. The scribe in Takamiya 32 goes further by rewriting the final couplet of "Tereus" to replace its moral sting with a bland prayer that things go well for everybody, a move other excerpters such as the Findern manuscript (Cambridge University Library MS Ff.1.6) do not make. An even more elaborate disarming of moral authority occurs in a rewritten prologue and (to a lesser extent) expanded ending for "Demetrius and Perseus," reframing the tale's worth in the safe terms of an antiquarian response to romance. The scribe of Takamiya 32 also rewrites links in the "Canterbury Tales," but to a different end: highlighting the tales to accentuate the pilgrimage frame. Although this complete text of Chaucer's poem has always outweighed the presence of the CA extracts, nonetheless these Gower extracts literally (and, by all indications from its production, intentionally) frame the complete texts here. [JF. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stadolnik, Joseph Published Stadolnik, Joseph. "Excerpting Gower: Exemplary Reading in New Haven, Takamiya MS 32." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 36-51. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Excerpting Gower: Exemplary Reading in New Haven, Takamiya MS 32 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 Driver returns to the scribe Ricardus Franciscus, and to a deluxe manuscript of John Gower's CA written ca. 1470 by this prolific and mysterious scribe. The manuscript is also known for its unique large-scale decorative program, including over one hundred miniatures, examined elsewhere by Driver. The main point of discussion here is evidence from textual editing in Morgan M.126 by Ricardus, in part to examine the theory that Ricardus was a French émigré, and in part to consider reception of the CA in this period. Ricardus is known for his banderoles and elaborately decorated ascenders (in which his name is sometimes inserted); his preferred script, the French "lettre bâtarde," has led some to assume this scribe was himself originally French. Although Ricardus was a remarkably accurate copyist, he has consistent habits in spelling ("Jubiter;" avoidance of thorn entirely and yogh only as the initial letter), preferences for overwriting dialect forms, and a small portfolio of inevitable errors. None of these features, however, has anything notably French about it. Ricardus worked with major English miniaturists such as William Abell, but also copied in French the "Epistre Othea" by Cristine de Pizan in a manuscript decorated luxuriously by the Fastolf Master, undoubtedly a French artist. However, this artist might well have come to England ca. 1450. During this period not only were literary patrons such as John Fastolf travelling to France, but artists from France were also crossing over to England to work on manuscripts with local producers. So Englishness itself is a tricky concept in the book trade during the time of Ricardus: a man who, like John Gower, must include fluency in French as a matter of course. Driver includes a comprehensive list of fifteen manuscripts attributed to Ricardus and a useful overview of the artists associated with these manuscripts. Very little ends up being said about reception of the Ca in the later fifteenth century, an interesting time politically and culturally for the creation of the most lavishly decorated manuscript of the poem that survives. Ricardus, though, remains a key figure in literary book production at the cusp of William Caxton's epochal appearance. [JF. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Driver, Martha W Published Driver, Martha W. "More Light on Ricardus Franciscus: Looking Again at Morgan M. 126." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 20-35. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource More Light on Ricardus Franciscus: Looking Again at Morgan M. 126 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 essay argues that although Gower's meter has not been as widely respected as Chaucer's, it is in fact more regular and merits further study. The focus is final –e, strictly with respect to whether it was pronounced and not in terms of its phonetic value. This –e can arise either from a word's root or as an inflectional ending. Charts of percentages of when final –e appears (or not) for certain words affirm Gower's greater regularity in comparison to Chaucer. Further, this analysis suggests that Gower more than Chaucer tends to duplicate Romance stress patterns in multisyllabic words. The article does not address metrical context (e. g., how scansion might affect realization of a final-e), nor the syllabic irregularity of all late-medieval verse.[TWM. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Werthmüller, Gyöngyi Published Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. "Final -e in Gower's English Poetry, in Comparison with Chaucer's." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 6-19. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject 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 Final -e in Gower's English Poetry, in Comparison with Chaucer's 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 anonymous pamphlet entitled "A Certaine Relation of the Hog-Faced Gentlewoman called Mistris Tannakin Skinker," published in London in 1640, includes at the end a five-page prose translation of Gower's "Tale of Florent" with full attribution to the poet. Patterson uses the pamphlet as one of two principal examples in her examination of the efforts of seventeenth-century Englishmen to use medieval "monster literature" to define their own historicity with reference to the past. "By juxtaposing, mingling, or amalgamating figures of the past with present trends, audiences, writers, and readers could effectively define a 'modernity' that was their own" (284). The inclusion of Gower's tale served a more specific purpose: with it, "the author disrupts the boundary between fact and fiction: while he employs the pamphlet as a medium typically used to report facts, his use of Gower as part of a 'true history' situates Tannakin within the realm of fiction--or, as an early modern urban loathly lady" (302), with the intention of mocking the credulity of the readers. Unlike his other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century appearances, Gower here "is no longer simply a tale-teller or antiquarian but rather an active agent in the production and dissemination of the concept of the 'modern monstrous'--a performative category that intersects a complex web of social anxiety, domesticity, and print culture" (305). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Patterson, Serina Published Patterson, Serina. "Reading the Medieval in Early Modern Monster Culture." Studies in Philology 111 (2014), pp. 282-311. ISSN 0039-3738 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations 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 Reading the Medieval in Early Modern Monster Culture. 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 Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This article studies an aspect of the Castilian CA (or "Confisyon del Amante") which, though pointed out by some scholars before, had never been elucidated: the modifications carried out in some classical stories by the Castilian translator, Juan de Cuenca, when rendering the Portuguese version of Gower's poem. Clara Pascual-Argente identifies the source for those changes in the stories of Frixus and Hellen (CA V.4248-4361 ); Ulysses and Thelogonus (CA VI.1391-1788); Hercules and Deianire (CA II, 2157-2307); and Tereus, Progne and Filomena (CA V.5551-6052). Through a systematic and detailed comparison of these stories in the Castilian Ca on the one hand, and in one of the most popular compilations of Trojan narrations in Iberia, the "Sumas de historia troyana," on the other, Pascual-Argente traces the origin of a variety of modifications, like changes in the names of characters, expansions, abbreviations and rewritings in the tales. Although some of these variations do not affect substantially Gower's narratives, in some other cases Juan de Cuenca follows the text of the "Sumas" in order to eliminate imprecisions, particularly causal and spatial imprecisions which he might have thought obscured the circumstances of the action in the original. Pascual-Argente connects Juan de Cuenca's usage of the "Sumas" for his rewriting of the CA with the Castilian political, cultural and literary context of the first half of the fifteenth century. From a political point of view, she explains the relevance of Hercules in connection with the popularity of the hero in Castilian historiographical and literary texts attempting to bestow classical lineage on the monarchy. Pascual-Argente cogently argues that from a literary perspective the modifications intended to fill causal and spatial gaps are the result of the "mise en prose" of the Gowerian poem: the prose style of the "Sumas" is thus a way of enhancing the narrativity of the tales, and making it closer to contemporary classical prose stories. Finally, the author contextualizes Juan de Cuenca's modifications in the atmosphere of fifteenth-century vernacular humanism. Following Cortijo Ocaña, she perceives a generic shift in the "Confisyon," from a "literaturized confession manual" to a tale compilation, more in tune with the tastes for classical material developed by the new reading elites, particularly by courtly nobility with intellectual aspirations. [ASH. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pascual-Argente, Clara Published Pascual-Argente, Clara. "La huella de las 'Sumas de historia troyana' en la 'Confessio Amantis' castellana." Revista de Filología Española 95.1 (2015), pp. 127-52. ISSN 0210-9174 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations 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 La huella de las 'Sumas de historia troyana' en la 'Confessio Amantis' castellana. 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 Gower's version of the tale of Lichaon (CA VII.3353-69) is short, only seventeen lines, and it omits most of the most vivid and significant details from the source in the "Metamorphoses." Newlin examines Ovid's version and the medieval commentaries on it, particularly the multiple transformations--in Lichaon's character, in Jupiter (in his disguise), in the hostage whom Lichaon serves to his guest, and finally in Lichaon himself, as he is changed into a wolf. Gower's version represents the English author's transformation of Ovid, first into English and then back in to the Latin of the gloss. "For Gower, I would propose, the articulation is the chief metamorphosis, the chief phenomenon (miraculous or not), and the chief display of power--whether divine or authorial. Here, wolfishness is scarcely a corporeal state for creatures, but rather a language. Put another way, the means take privilege over the event, the narration over the narrative . . . . Such a prioritization leads to a curious balance between stasis and movement. The most traditionally dynamic element--plot or action--is suppressed and flattened; the very language that does that suppression, however, is particularly metamorphic and mobile" (625). "Gower's encounter with his primary source is highly articulated, critically astute, and self-aware--what some critical discourses would call transtextual--and expansive (although within a focused, narrow range) rather than incidental . . . . What results is a narrative both successful as a story, as a commentary upon Ovid, and as a meditation upon the art of poetry, whether of Augustan, Lancastrian or perhaps of any place or age" (614). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Newlin, Robert Published Newlin, Robert. "Stasis and Change: Gower's Gloss on Ovid's Lycaon." Journal of English Language and Literature 60 (2014), pp. 613-32. 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 Stasis and Change: Gower's Gloss on Ovid's Lycaon. 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 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 Keohane examines Gower's maritime vocabulary in the CA. His scope thus does not include "To King Henry IV In Praise of Peace" nor any of the French or Latin poems--though he suggests further attention to the MO would likely be fruitful, and hints at a subsequent, expanded study forthcoming. He notes: "A survey of phrases and terms that refer to nautical technology in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' reveals familiarity with a primarily Anglo-French, large-ship tradition while hinting at a possible direct experiential connection with elements of Iberian or Mediterranean trade networks" (103). He classifies four contexts for Gower's nautical imagery: "in the setting of the Ricardian Prologue; when retelling maritime scenes drawn from earlier sources; as imagery of love; and in incidental observations" (105). He also compares Gower's use of specific nautical terms to Chaucer's, concluding that the latter's is generalized and unspecific, except in cases (e.g., the "Man of Law's Tale") where Chaucer clearly borrowed from Gower (118-21), thus lending support to the claim that Gower's version was Chaucer's first source. "Gower's use of nautical terms . . . often shows a level of technical awareness surprising in a landsman . . . . All of Gower's type-specific vocabulary refer only to technologies that would have been used on large sailing ships of the time" (111). By contrast, "Chaucer only superficially employs any maritime vocabulary" (119). Detailed discussion of the terms "luff," as a verb (114-15), "reef," as a verb (117-18), and in particular the term "topseilcole"--a form derived from "topsail" at a time when "as far as we know, English ships--indeed all the ships of the Northern European tradition--[had no] topsails in their rig until almost fifty years after Gower's death" (113). "The image of John Gower that emerges . . . is one of a man thoroughly familiar with a primarily Anglo-French, large-ship tradition" (112) but also, and more provocatively, Keohane argues for Gower's direct, first-hand knowledge of Iberian and Mediterranean shipping, an idea that draws strength from the Iberian translations of the CA. Gower's knowledge of ships extends beyond mere close observation of vessels in the Thames from his wharf in Southwark, or a keen ear for multi-national sailors' speech in the City. "To use ['reef'] properly," as Gower does, "the poet would require at least some additional understanding of the mechanics of sailing and related nautical practice" (117-18). Similarly, "the practice of luffing can really only be observed from the deck of a ship" and likewise "the appreciation of a topseilcole . . . is something that is noticed when a ship is underway. It is a memory retained by a sailor and not a landsman. These are the words and thoughts of a participant in maritime life, not those of an outsider" (118). Keohane speculates that many of Gower's targeted audience(s) may have been among the rising merchant class, individuals who, like Gower, would have known shipping through trade (121-22), and concludes by noting "the John Gower revealed in the maritime vocabulary of the Confessio Amantis is thus a man who was conversant with the language and technology of Anglo-French as well as Mediterranean ships and shipping. He was likely connected by both political and economic networks to the Iberian Peninsula, probably though his Lancastrian sympathies but possibly through the wool trade" (123). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Keohane, Colin J Published Keohane, Colin J. "'He fond the schip of gret array': Implications of John Gower's Maritime Vocabulary." SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 18 (2011), pp. 103-27. ISSN 1132-631X Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'He fond the schip of gret array': Implications of John Gower's Maritime Vocabulary. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review [In grammar, Gower followed insular practices in preference to those of continental French, the Inghams argue. The insular features that they identify are the use of "quell" as a relative pronoun, the use of "qe" or "que" instead of "qui" as a relative pronoun in subject position, and the use of "nul" as a negative marker without an accompanying "ne," all of which are abundantly illustrated in Gower's French verse. While such choices could have been largely unconscious, they note, Gower may also have been aware of how his language differed from that of his French contemporaries, especially in his later works; and citing Yeager (1990) on Gower's attempt to "engage with the continental French poetic mainstream" for the purpose of correcting and reforming it, they suggest that "his linguistic identity as an insular writer came to serve an authorial purpose . . . when he was much less interested in joining his continental contemporaries than beating them." Finally, Gower's use of contemporary insular French, they maintain, demonstrates that Anglo-Norman could serve as a vehicle for serious writing "longer than has sometimes been supposed." [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ingham, Richard, Ingham, Michael Published Ingham, Richard, and Ingham, Michael. "'Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ceo forsvoie': Gower's Anglo-Norman Identity." Neophilologus 99 (2015), pp. 667-84. ISSN 0028-2677 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ceo forsvoie': Gower's Anglo-Norman Identity. 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 CA is a coherent poem, Beer argues, contra those who have celebrated its lack of coherence: the tales and the conclusion lead to a single consistent lesson. And that lesson is about the rejection of love in this world, contra those (such as the reviewer) who have found in the poem a complex but coherent lesson on the ethics of human love. In the conclusion to the poem, when Amans looks into the mirror and sees that he is old, he is also reminded that he must die: that life is transient, and that love is transient as well. This is the absolute that constitutes the final and this defining moral lesson. "Amans must turn away from vice and toward virtue not simply because he happens to be old now but because of the 'last things,' because he will die and be judged and pass into the afterlife. . . . According to Gower, the uncertainty of the world, and the inevitability of death, should drive us to the certainties of the Christian faith, to that invariable abstract form of the good which is God" (240-41). "Amans's love must and will be transcended and replaced by Christian love" (242). To demonstrate how the exempla in the preceding seven books support this lesson, Beer examines a sequence of four tales in Book V (V.4431-5495) and argues that the real lesson in each case differs from the ostensible lesson on Amans' conduct. When Amans complains, in the discussion of Usury, that he receives less in rewards from his lady than he feels he has earned, Genius replies with a statement on the essential arbitrariness of love which concludes, "Forthi coveite noght to faste, / Mi sone, bot abyd thin ende, / Per cas al mai to goode wende" (5.4564-66). "Amans should not covet too fast," Beer writes, "because he will not get what he covets; he should abide his end because one day (whether that day comes soon or not) he will die, and then it will matter a great deal whether or not he coveted too fast" (246). The tale of Echo that follows, while offering a warning against the use of "brocours," also offers, in the figures of Echo and Jupiter, images of the instability and deceptiveness of love, and in Juno, a model for the disillusionment that Amans experiences, as "both of them find out that their own idealized view of their love relationships have been divorced from the truth" (248). As a lesson on avoiding Parsimony, the tale of Babio and Croceus would seem to be irrelevant to Amans, since he has just insisted that his lady will not accept his gifts. The tale is less about material gifts, however, than it is about Babio's--and Amans'--lack of virility (in Gower's source, Babio is clearly old), and the surrounding discussion alludes to the difference between the "gifts" one offers a woman and those that one offers to God. Genius' definition of "Unkindeschipe" (V.4903-05) sounds very much like his earlier description of the arbitrariness of Love's rewards. In the tale that follows, Adrian serves as the example of the sin in question, but the real lesson for Amans lies in Bardus. "This is the story of a man who trusts that he will garner a material reward for his conscious and voluntary service to another person but is instead spurned by that person and rewarded far beyond his desert by those he had not consciously set out to help. . . . Amans, like Bardus, serves devoutly in the hope of a modest reward but he will get nothing from the person he serves. However, the virtue that he displays and nourishes in doing such service (provided it is 'honeste') will garner rewards in heaven" (253). And "while Bardus received an unlooked-for reward in exchange for his good deeds, the tale of Ariadne [which immediately follows] offers the bleak prospect of misdirected devotion going completely unrewarded" (260). Amans' "misguided love leaves him as vulnerable to the assaults of Fortune as was the otherwise reasonable Ariadne, once she had surrendered herself and her agency to Theseus" (259). Genius' final comments to Amans in Book V, while seeming to offer sympathetic encouragement, also contain a reminder of transiency in the allusion to the seasons (V.7823-31) and another anticipation of the final moral lesson in its references to "grace" (V.7832). Genius' role, Beer concludes, is to unfold the lessons of the poem gradually. "Genius is intimately associated with those feelings that have governed Amans, which is why he keeps Amans company for so long, why he is an unstable figure in some ways, and why he departs once those feelings have disappeared. By exploring such feelings in great depth and detail, Genius gradually exposes certain uncomfortable truths about them. He points toward, without quite encompassing, the full understanding of these truths that Amans finally attains when he looks into the mirror: just as that vision brings Amans to knowledge of himself, so Genius's exempla have worked to show Amans the truth about his own condition" (263). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beer, Lewis Published Beer, Lewis. "The Tactful Genius: Abiding the End in the 'Confessio Amantis'." Studies in Philology 112 (2015), pp. 234-63. ISSN 0039-3738 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Tactful Genius: Abiding the End in the 'Confessio Amantis' 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 Author/Editor Author/Editor Warner, Lawrence Published Warner, Lawrence. "Latin Verses by John Gower and 'John of Bridlington' in a Piers Plowman Manuscript (BL Add. 35287)." Notes and Queries 55 (2008), pp. 127-31. ISSN 0029-3970 Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Cronica Tripertita Review Identifies two Latin items on the final verso of BL Add. 35287, a copy of "Piers Plowman" B, as coming from Gower's "Cronica Tripertite" ("Tristia post leta. post tristia sepe," III.1) and "The Prophecy of John of Bridlington" (it is unclear whether they are in the same hand). The presence of the Gower tag here is particularly remarkable given George Shuffelton's discovery that the recto of this folio contains another Gowerian Leonine verse, "Explicit iste liber qui obsecro transeat liber," which introduces the closing envoy of the "Confessio Amantis." The relationship between these two tags remains obscure. In any case, this is only the second known medieval reference to the CrT apart from (?after) that work's initial copying, the other being two marginal verses added into BL Lansdowne 204, fols 196v, 204r, the sole manuscript of the first recension of Hardyng's "Chronicle" (post 1457). [LW] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Latin Verses by John Gower and "John of Bridlington" in a "Piers Plowman" Manuscript (BL Add. 35287) 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 Review Schieberle opens the introduction to her monograph with a reading of Gower's tale of the "King, Wine, Women and Truth" from CA Book VII. She finds that "For Gower, 'King, Wine, Woman, and Truth' has a double function. First [the tale] models the process of advising princes that Gower . . . deploys in the Confessio overall: ethics are derived from historical and literary exempla that illustrate moral principles--here, the connection between women and truth. Second, the story embeds an image of feminine counsel within its account of ethical advising . . . . The conclusion of Gower's exemplum--that women and truth are intimately bound together--strongly implies that counsel itself is a feminized practice, a relationship between a subordinate adviser and a masculine ruler that enables wisdom, or 'trouthe'." (2) Her expansion of the observation forms the central argument of her study: "the connection between women and truth that Gower articulates here is not exclusive to him; various writers, including Chaucer, from the late fourteenth century and fifteenth century found in the notion of feminine counsel a compelling image for their own writing" (2). The following four chapters take up a writer and a work each: Chapter 1, Gower's CA; Chapter 2, Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women"; Chapter 3, Chaucer's "Melibee"; Chapter 4, Christine de Pizan's "Epistre Othea," as rendered by Stephen Scrope. For Gowerians, the most pertinent of these is the first, entitled "Women, Counsel, and Marriage Metaphors in John Gower's Confessio Amantis" (21-60). Schieberle characterizes the CA as "a vernacular mirror for princes that presents a remarkable sensitivity to women . . . . What makes Gower's mirror for princes unique, however, is its interest in women and their contributions both ot political culture and to the individual cultivation of virtue" (21). She offers close readings of two tales--"Florent" and "The Three Questions"--by way of proof for the claim that "Gower links advice to princes with women's counsel in order to imagine a gendered structure of authority and advice in which men and women work in tandem to create a harmonious whole" (21). In contrast to the essentially anti-feminist attitude of Giles of Rome, whose "De regimine principium" Gower knew and adapted, "Gower strikingly depicts women in both 'Florent' and 'Three Questions' as the "only" [Schieberle's italics] individual who can instruct a powerful male" (24). Male counsellors are generally less effective in advising their superiors than are women in the CA. "Men designated as counsellors simply give advice, and whether a superior acts upon it or not determines the outcome and the moral lesson. By contrast, in takes with prominent women counsellors such as 'Florent' and 'Three Questions,' the successful conclusion to the narrative hinges upon the woman's counsel and, in 'Three Questions' on her ability to correct her king without threatening his authority as ruler. Gower's women counsel boldly, whereas male counsellors, even when they are older, sage, and right (as in 'Rehoboam') rarely demand to be heard or correct the king. Only the 'Courtiers and the Fool' offers an exception: male courtiers give their king poor counsel, but the Fool obliquely admonishes him in a surprising contrast (VII.3945-4026). This exception proves the rule: as women generally do, the Fool lacks the expectation of authority or threat that allows him to open the king's eyes . . . . Gower more often uses women to represent the disenfranchised voice of morally and politically responsible counsel not provided by traditional male counsellors" (25). Schieberle develops an argument via word-field studies of "conseil," "avys," and "rede" that for Gower the last term meant both to read a text and interpret it carefully. In macrocosm, this means for the CA that "Gower's complex narratives require readers to reinvestigate Genius's imprecise moral lessons, rather than accept any of his morals as universal truths." His purpose, she believes, is to create a continuing movement to and fro between "fundamental ideals of love and politics." He uses this "mediating space" in "Florent" and "Three Questions" to "promote women counsellors as characters that can negotiate between amorous and political discourses," giving "prominence to women as model counsellors who intervene efficaciously in "political" [italics hers] impasses" (33). She follows these observations with careful readings of "Florent" and "Three Questions" (33-56). Ultimately, she argues, Gower's project is to create a "new vision of the polity" in which the ideal is a harmonious marriage, not a competition for power. She links this ideal with Gower's decision to write in English, and to advise in an oblique rather than a directive fashion, concluding "Gower's evidence that women may often be more effective counsellors than men equally conveys the argument that even though his 'feminized' text does not carry the same immediate authority as its paternal Latin predecessors, the CA's vernacular advice can nevertheless be fundamental in encouraging English audiences to embrace moral virtues" (60). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schieberle, Misty Published Schieberle, Misty. "Feminized Counsel and the Literature of Advice in England, 1380-1500." Turnhout: Brepols, 2014 ISBN 978-2-503-55012-1 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 Feminized Counsel and the Literature of Advice in England, 1380-1500 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 2014 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The following three articles are Santano Moreno's partial publication (prologue and book I) of the "Confisyon del Amante," the Spanish translation of the CA. The editor introduces each article-edition with a brief note giving the most relevant information about the text and the main critical aspects addressed by critics about this version of the CA. The third piece also discusses some aspects of Elena Alvar's complete edition of the text, published in 1990. a) Santano Moreno, Bernardo. "El prólogo de Confisyon del amante de Juan de Cuenca, la traducción castellana de "Confessio amantis" de John Gower." Anuario de Estudios Filológicos 13 (1990): 363-78. http://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/58700.pdf. b) Santano Moreno, Bernardo. "El "libro I" de Confisyon del amante de Juan de Cuenca, la traducción castellana de "Confessio Amantis" de John Gower (I)." Anuario de estudios filológicos 14 (1991): 383-404. http://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/58732.pdf. c. Santano Moreno, Bernardo. "El "libro I" de Confisyon del Amante de Juan de Cuenca, la traducción castellana de Confessio Amantis de John Gower (II)." Anuario de Estudios Filológicos 15 (1992): 305-34. http://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/58767.pdf. [ASH. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Santano Moreno, Bernardo Published Santano Moreno, Bernardo. "Confisyon del amante." Anuario de Estudios Filológicos. 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 Confisyon del amante Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Anuario de Estudios Filológicos, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990 Type The nature or genre of the resource Other 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 No, not that Batman. Stephan Batman was in the service of Matthew Parker, possibly as his household chaplain, and he aided him in the acquisition of his vast library as well as acquiring a collection of books of his own. His "Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation" was published in 1569. It includes a discussion of the Seven Deadly Sins, and under Sloth, a brief version of the story of Dido and Aeneas that Reid argues is modeled on CA rather than any classical source: in it, Aeneas does not abandon Dido when he departs from Carthage but is merely "long tyme absent," and his sloth lies in the slowness of his return, with its ultimate tragic consequence, not in his delaying the founding of Rome. The episode still poses two puzzles, Reid notes: this account of Aeneas' sloth does not fit well with either of the two ways in which Batman defines the sin, and it is "somewhat surprising" that Batman should turn to Gower, given his "rather ambiguous status among sixteenth-century Protestant reformers," in an anti-papist tract (350). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Reid, Lindsay Ann Published Reid, Lindsay Ann. "Gower's Slothful Aeneas in Batman's 'Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation'." Notes and Queries 61 (2014), pp. 349-54. ISSN 0029-3970 Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Slothful Aeneas in Batman's 'Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation' 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 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 Longo offers a study of the complex layers of "voicing" in VC, with special attention to the way in which the addition of the Visio (the present Book 1)--with the addition of the new voice of the reluctant prophet--reinforces the lessons on the need for personal reform in the present Books 2-7, which were written before the events of 1381. The appeals to the authority of the "vox populi" and its association with the "vox dei" occur, she notes, only in Books 2-7. In Book 1, the voice of the "people" is animal-like and cacophonous, and it is contrasted with the "vox celica" that summons Gower to his role as poet in 1.2019. In Books 2-7 he submerges his own voice beneath the authority of his Latinate sources and the appeals to "vox populi." But Longo notes that "the unanimity of this voice is undercut by the very social strains that the poem attempts to overcome" (360). Other references in 2-7 to the plebs and vulgus throw into question whose authority is being invoked and also who is responsible for reform, and force the reader to examine his or her own role and responsibility. Book 1 puts the poet in the position of enacting that self-examination himself, in anticipation of the duty he expects of his readers. Longo pulls together the complex threads in her argument in her conclusion: "The addition of "Vox" 1 to Gower's public outcry enhances the poems call for self-reflection, a personal reform that leads to communal reform. Indeed, the prefatory "Vox" 1 makes the poem's critique even more powerful after the Rising. All the more so after observing the irrationality of rebellious voices, Gower's readers must weigh the voice of the people to whom he credits his criticism of clerical and lay elites. "Any uncertainties over this voice have been matched by uncertainties over the voices of the Rising. With the addition of "Vox" 1 it seems that the poem's "vox dei" contrasts sharply with the animalistic voices of the rebels; but these voices are no less powerful. To evaluate them is to prepare to evaluate the voice of the people Gower cites in the other books. The added "Vox" 1, with its naming of Gower and depiction of the turmoil in "New Troy," hints at the void Gower takes upon himself to fill through "Vox" 2-7's layered voicing. The "vox celica" at the end of "Vox" 1 indeed comes with divine authority and stresses the lack of moral coherence among those Gower believes should preserve order. In the context of the seven-book poem, tensions surrounding the people persist in "Vox" 2-7 and demand careful readers to decide if they will allow rebel voices to dictate the social order or if they will take up the call to reform themselves. "The complete poem leaves the future of civil society up to its reading public; indeed, it calls this public into being through its fraught outcry. If Gower's 'Vox' speaks with the voice of God, it only does so because those who ought to lead by example lack the moral coherence to maintain that civic enterprise, as 1381 would show with devastating consequences. Gower indicates that readers may take up the cause of reform if they learn from history and from the poem's contemporary voice: that is, if they carefully examine the signs of the times and their own culpability. Tensions between the portrayal of the rebels in 'Vox' 1 and the claim to the voice of the people in 'Vox' 2-7 ensure that voicing always points back to the people. For readers to ponder who has the right to reform society is to begin to look to themselves to heal divisions within the body politic" (378-79). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 34.1]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 285-303. Author/Editor Author/Editor Longo, Pamela L Published Longo, Pamela L. "Gower's Public Outcry." Philological Quarterly 92 (2013), pp. 357-87. ISSN 0031-7977 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 Gower's Public Outcry Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Although the bible lists only sons as offspring of Adam and Eve, it also mentions "other progeny," number unspecified. In Book VIII of the CA, Gower names two daughters of Eve as Calmana and Delbora "as the sister-wives of Cain and Abel, respectively." Glaeske examines "Gower's use of Calmana and Delbora within the wider contexts of Middle English literature and medieval literature" in order to show "which other traditions concerning the daughters of Eve were known by a Middle English audience, where Gower accords with these traditions, and where he contradicts them, and might have used other traditions." Glaeske traces the variants of the Eve's daughters narratives through diverse sources, including Greek, Armenian, Georgian, and Old Church Slavonic, as well as the Latin "Vita Adae et Evae," Pseudo-Philo's "Biblical Antiquities," "The Book of Jubilees," "The Cave of Treasures," "The Combat of Adam and Eve with Satan," and "The Book of the Bee." Among Middle English texts including mention of the Adamic offspring, Glaeske reports on the "Middle English Genesis and Exodus," "The Historye of the Patriarks," "The Middle English Paraphrase of the Old Testament," three prose versions of the "Life of Adam and Eve," a Middle English version of the stanzaic "Canticum de Creatione," the "incomplete Auckinleck Couplets," and the "Cursor Mundi." Of these, "besides the 'Confessio Amantis,' the only Middle English texts to name Calmana and Delbora as the daughters of Eve are 'The Historye of the Patriarks' and the 'Cursor Mundi'" (164). There are differences even in these accounts: "'The Historye,' however, does not tell us which sister married with brother; instead, this is noted by 'Cursor Mundi' and 'Confessio Amantis'" (165). "Outside of vernacular versions of the Latin 'Vita Adae et Evae,' the names Calmana and Delbora are recorded within several medieval chronicles, both from the Continent and from England. Middle High German metrical chronicles record both names, as does the 'Weltchronik' of Heinrich von München and the prose chronicle of Jean de Preis. Among the Middle English chronicles their names appear both in the 'Polychronicon' of Ranulph Higden and the English translation made by John Trevisa, as well as the 'Chronica majora' of Matthew of Paris and the 'Eulogium historiarum.' Many of these texts cite their source as Methodius, and Trevisa translated a tract ascribed to him, which does mention the two sisters, but all of these chronicles are largely indebted to the late twelfth-century 'Historia Scholastica' of Peter Comestor, and it is there where we find the earliest mention of Calmana and Delbora as the twin sisters of Cain and Abel" (169). Glaeske concludes that 1) "Gower's use of Calmana and Delbora as the daughters of Eve seems to derive either directly from the 'Historia scholastica' of Peter Comestor, or indirectly from other Middle English texts that use it as source material. Gower does not appear to have known any of the texts of the secondary Adam literature" (169); 2) "Gower's designation of Delbora as the inventor of weaving remains puzzling" (170); 3) "Since Gower appears not to have derived this designation [i.e., weaving] from contemporary Middle English texts, it suggests that he knew other traditions concerning the two sisters, possibly from other insular texts" (170). [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Glaeske, Keith Published Glaeske, Keith. "Gower and the Daughters of Eve." SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 19 (2014), pp. 161-74. ISSN 1132-631X Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and the Daughters of Eve 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 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 As his title suggests, Epstein pursues a double agenda in this essay: linking both Gower's and Chaucer's views on alchemy to their understanding of economics, first of all; and secondly, contrasting their views not just on alchemy, which we already knew were quite different, but on economics too. In his final paragraph, he writes: "Alchemy is, for both Chaucer and Gower, an essential trope for understanding economics. But whereas Gower idealizes alchemy as a vision of natural increase and pure wealth that is the opposite of the monetized economy, Chaucer reviles alchemy as the obscurantist antithesis of both scientific technology and economics, which are logical systems that, while artificial, can only be understood rationally and empirically" (248). It is not a small part of the merit of Epstein's essay that it provides a brief, very clear account of the background, both classical and medieval, to both poets' understandings of both alchemy and economics. The connection between the two in Chaucer's work is a bit more speculative than in Gower's. Epstein makes much of the depiction of the priest who is the victim in "Canon Yeoman's Tale" as an unsophisticated gull in order to portray his lack of understanding of economics as somehow parallel to his susceptibility to the deceptions of alchemy. Chaucer's "scientific" understanding of economics is inferred from his background as collector of customs, his understanding of the nature of financial dealings as revealed in "Shipman's Tale," and the interest in scientific measurement and calculation displayed in his "Treatise on the Astrolabe." It is rather more difficult to demonstrate that these experiences underlay his dismissal of alchemy as false science. Epstein has a bit more to work with in Gower's case since Gower has much to say about profitlessness of the quest for gold in an economic sense in his discussion of Avarice in Book V of CA, in seeming contrast to his approval of the "science," if not the modern practice, of the production of gold by alchemy in Book IV. Epstein explains Gower's allusion to "the time, er gold was smite / In coign, that men the florin knewe" (V.334-35), when there was no deception and no war, as a reference not to some vague Golden Age in the ancient past but to Edward III's minting of gold coins beginning in 1344, which Gower and other contemporaries blamed for the social divisions and other turmoil of their own time. In Book IV, on the other hand, in praising the ancient practice of alchemy, Gower describes it as a natural process, not "transmuting" base metals into some other form but instead restoring them to their purest form. Epstein summarizes the significance of this juxtaposition as he brings his discussion of Gower to a close: "Gower begins Book V of the 'Confessio' with the words 'Obstat auaricia legibus' (Avarice obstructs the laws of nature). He endorses alchemy before he excoriates money because alchemy stands in contrast to mercantilism as a myth of natural wealth. Alchemy in Book IV is everything that money in Book V is not: ordered, organic, bounded by natural extremes, rational, obedient to consistent laws, commensurable, and equitable. One of the qualities of money that most disturbed ancient and modern thinkers was that, through exchange and interest, it seemed to be able to multiply itself, and therefore to create wealth "ex nihilo," without labor or material. But in Gower's understanding, the alchemist's labor leads the material, through "the comfort of the fire," to the ideal form it most desires. "Some of the greatest minds of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries worried that alchemy, by increasing the amount of (natural or synthetic) gold and silver, could destabilize the money economy. Gower seems to have harbored greater concerns about the destabilizing effects of the money economy itself. Alchemy for Gower was a myth of profit without money or exchange, of value that is absolute rather than relative, of wealth that is organic, natural, universal, elemental, and inalienable from the innate value of material. Alchemy allowed him, as it must have allowed many of his contemporaries, to entertain a vision of labor, wealth, and profit while maintaining his belief in a moral social system rooted in ancient concepts of justice and fair exchange. The elixir, Gower says, can refine every metal, 'And pureth hem be such a weie / That al the vice goth aweie' (IV:2555-56). "But, it is also lost. The science itself is true, but we cannot recover it to the modern world, which, even by Gower's time, was thoroughly monetized" (231-32). [PN. Copyright John Gower Society. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Epstein, Robert Published Epstein, Robert. "Dismal Science: Chaucer and Gower on Alchemy and Economy." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 36 (2014), pp. 209-48. ISSN 0190-2407 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 Dismal Science: Chaucer and Gower on Alchemy and Economy 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 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 Edwards argues that "modern scholarship has focused on the historical foundations of medieval authorship in exegesis and pedagogy," both of which "show how texts and authors were framed externally within a dynamic literary culture in the high and late Middle Ages. Authorship functioned internally as well, as a condition of literary meaning that complements the conditions of intelligibility within Latin and vernacular literary systems. To understand the internal dynamic of authorship, we need to supplement exegesis and pedagogy with an understanding of imitation and resistance. Imitation traditionally forms character and style from canonical models, and it provides a means to compose equivalents to canonical models by reproducing, rewriting, and reimagining them. At the same time, it generates an impossible demand for authorship--an original copy that remains subordinate to its source. For this reason, resistance emerges as the necessary correlate of imitation. In late-medieval England, John Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, poets recognized as authors by their contemporaries and by each other, demonstrate the productive reciprocity of imitation and resistance. Gower builds an edifice of authorship around his works and poetic career yet writes himself out of his most ambitious literary project at the end of the "Confessio Amantis" and then refuses his own dismissal in a sequence of minor works. Chaucer punctuates his repeated gestures toward authorship with equally insistent denials and omissions. These occasions for refusing authorship are by no means identical, but they point toward and alternative history of authorship that recognizes its contingency and continual renegotiation." [RRE/RFY. Copyright John Gower Society eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, Robert R Published Edwards, Robert R. "Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late Medieval England." Swiss Papers In English Language and Literature: SPELL 25 (2011): 51-73. ISSN 0743-7226 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late Medieval England Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review At heart, Carlson's essay is a close reading of some key passages from Gower and Chaucer in comparison to their sources: CA 4.3063-64, the brief description of the storm in the tale of "Ceix and Alceone," in contrast to the much longer passage in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 11.474-572; VC 1.1593-2012, another description of a storm, in comparison to the same passage in Ovid; VC 1.1623-38, which incorporates five lines from a different passage in Met., 1.264-82; Gower's "Ceix and Alceone" in comparison to Chaucer's account in "The Book of the Duchess," which omits the final transformation that Gower retains; and VC 1.1231-32, in which Gower atypically turns to Vergil (Aeneid 4.173), in comparison to "House of Fame" 713-20, in which Chaucer atypically turns to Ovid instead (Met. 12.43-46). Carlson's discussion is informed by his own deep immersion in the Latin texts, so that he is able to describe, for instance, how Gower's borrowings from Ovid in VC are selected not just for their imagery but as evocations of the broader context in which they occur, and his comments are illuminating. He frames his analysis within an argument on Gower's efforts to outdo both Ovid and Chaucer, whom he viewed as rivals, as well as an effort to outdo his own earlier youthful work. Thus the briefer account of the storm represents Gower's correction of Ovid's excess, and the comparison to Chaucer betrays an underlying jealousy: "Though Gower was senior, perhaps by as much as a generation, Chaucer arrived earlier as an English poet," Carlson concludes. "Greater, prior success for Chaucer's English writings--evidently widely copied, by contrast with Gower's earliest efforts--may also have engendered a degree of disapprobation in Gower for the younger, less serious, but better-received English writer. Gower's more thoroughly informed Ovidian usage in the "Visio Anglie" represents the superiority of his learning, by contrast with the boy Chaucer. The still more thorough command of Ovidianism, still more subtly expressed, in the final "Confessio amantis" reuse of the Ceyx and Alcione matter--where the Chaucerian ineptitude seems to have offended Gower ('Ther mai no worldes joie laste' topping 'To lytel while oure blysse lasteth')--represents Gower's greater seriousness and knowledge, by comparison with the own, younger self that had engaged thoroughly with the same Ovid, and in the learned language itself, for the "Visio Anglie" section of 1381" (952). [PN. Copyright John Gower Society eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R Published Carlson, David R. "Gower Agonistes and Chaucer on Ovid (and Virgil)." Modern Language Review 109 (2014), pp. 931-52. ISSN 0026-7937 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Agonistes and Chaucer on Ovid (and Virgil) 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 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 Cannon's own earlier studies of surviving fourteenth-century textbooks concluded that, contrary to the testimony of Higden and Trevisa, instruction in literacy at the time that Langland, Chaucer, and Gower all learned to read took place neither in French nor in English but in Latin: "from the beginning of their education children were not only taught to read and write by construing Latin, they were taught to read and write in Latin" (351). Later, each of these poets "needed to move their very understanding of language and its grammar from the Latin forms and terminology in which they learned it to the English in which they were writing" (352). Their consciousness of that process is reflected, he argues, in the use of grammar as a trope in both Langland and Chaucer, and he proposes that "the period at issue here might be best called the 'Era of Grammaticalization.' That designation would describe the way in which English literature of the fourteenth century so often used grammatical concepts and terminology to shape allegory and image that it elevated grammar into something like a literary technique. It would also describe the way such literature hewed so close to the practices of basic literacy training that literary production often proceeded by means of the simplest exercises used to teach children how to read and write" (352-53). Gower figures only briefly in Cannon's essay, in a paragraph on schoolroom translation exercises, "which are most significant to Middle English poetry . . . where they are not anterior to the poem's English but parallel to it, where a poem can be said to unfold as a translation into and out of English for its entire length" (357). He suggests that the Latin of the CA not be dismissed as mere apparatus: "The Latin and English in the 'Confessio' are often precise equivalents, a fact embraced by the scribes who copied the poem and placed both Latin and English together in the main column of text (Pearsall, 'Gower's Latin' 14) or, on one occasion, made the Latin so large and colorful that it appears as if 'the English text is to be read as a commentary on the Latin . . . rather than vice versa' (Echard and Fanger xxvii-xxviii). In all such cases the 'Confessio' takes the form of literacy training, a grammaticalization insofar as it pairs what could be English prompts with their 'Latyns' or Latin prompts with their 'vulgars' for its entire length" (357). [PN. Copyright eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cannon, Christopher Published Cannon, Christopher. "From Literacy to Literature: Elementary Learning and the Middle English Poet." PMLA 129 (2014), pp. 349-64. 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 From Literacy to Literature: Elementary Learning and the Middle English Poet 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 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 Beer argues that "John Gower's Confessio Amantis is a coherent poem, that its bleak conclusion is inevitable, and that the exemplary moral tales in the main body of the poem work to anticipate and prepare the ground for that conclusion." In support of this argument," he analyzes a sequence of tales from book V--the tales of Echo, Babio and Croceus, Adrian and Bardus, and Theseus and Ariadne--in order to show how they function on multiple levels. Ostensibly, they warn against sins of which the hapless Amans is not guilty (and which he accuses his lady of having committed herself); on a deeper level, and with the help of tactful hints from Genius, they warn Amans of the dangers to which his unrequited love may expose him, and of its inevitable end-point. In advancing these claims, Beer contests the views of scholars who have argued for the incoherence of CA, or for a more optimistic view of Genius's advice to Amans. He suggests "that coming to terms with the poem's coherence and bleakness enhances our appreciation of its subtlety and profundity." [LB/RFY. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beer, Lewis Published Beer, Lewis. "The Tactful Genius: Abiding the End in the 'Confessio Amantis'." Studies in Philology 115.2 (2015), pp. 234-64. ISSN 0039-3738 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Tactful Genius: Abiding the End in the 'Confessio Amantis' 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 Second International Congress of the John Gower Society at Valladolid in 2011 prompts Bowden to suggest two areas for future Gower scholarship. The first concerns the possibility that Gower himself might have made an undocumented trip to Spain before undertaking to write CA. Citing the ease with which Margery Kempe was able to visit Santiago de Compostella (rather later), Bowden also points out how descriptions of sea voyages in CA seem to be more closely based on real experience than that in VC, and she notes that while in Spain, Gower could have come into contact with Juan Ruiz's 'Libro de Buen Amor,' with its suggestive invocation of the Seven Deadly Sins and its use of the story of Nebuchadnezzar (both much more briefly than in Gower). Bowden also suggests that the movement of proverbs across linguistic boundaries during the Middle Ages and Gower's own use of the same proverb in more than one of his languages might provide another fruitful ground for further research. [eJGN 34.1 PN] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bowden, Betsy Published Bowden, Betsy. "Gower and. . . Pilgrimage? 'Pamphilus?' Proverbs? Some Promising Preguntas Raised but Far from Answered at Valladolid." John Gower Newsletter 33.2 (2014), pp. 6-13. ISSN 1051-3493 Gower Subject Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and. . . Pilgrimage? 'Pamphilus?' Proverbs? Some Promising Preguntas Raised but Far from Answered at Valladolid 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 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 Santano Moreno, Bernardo Published Santano Moreno, Bernardo. "La traducción de "Confessio amantis" de John Gower." Anuario de estudios filológicos 12 (1989), pp. 253-65. ISSN 0071-1713 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Review After a review of the main studies of the Spanish translation of the CA and the main issues related to it--like the alleged existence of the Portuguese intermediate version--,Santano attempts to date both the only extant Spanish manuscript of the "Confisyon" and translation itself. The manuscript is written, he claims, in a hand similar to the script found in some late-fifteenth documentary records of the city of Huete, the birthplace of Juan de Cuenca, who translated the poem. For the date of the translation, he uses internal evidence. Thus, the reference to Huete as city in the Spanish text provides a post quem dating point,1428, when the town received this new designation. Similarly, the term "corona"--considered a calque from Portuguese--translates the English currency "pound;" Santano points out that this currency was used in Portugal in times of Dom Duarte (1433-38). An English version of this article (slightly modified) was published as: 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/. Title A name given to the resource La traducción de "Confessio amantis" de John Gower Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "My project engages vernacular theology from the perspective of Middle English secular literature, examining how authors shape the late medieval discourse of the mixed life affecting self and community, as well as textual production--the cultural effects of ascetics. I argue that the 'Clerk's Tale,' the 'Confessio Amantis,' and the 'Play Called Wisdom' imagine separate applications of Walter Hilton's 'Medled Liyf' (or mixed life) and evaluate living as a secular ascetic. I contend that contrary to theological and ecclesiastical texts, these writings acknowledge lay piety's ascetic impulse as a secular act, tentatively in the fourteenth century and then more boldly in the fifteenth century." [JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stasik, Tamara Published Stasik, Tamara. "Forms of Living: Asceticism, Culture, and Articulating the "medeled liyf" in Late Medieval English Literature." PhD thesis, Indiana University, 2012. 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 Forms of Living: Asceticism, Culture, and Articulating the "medeled liyf" in Late Medieval English Literature. 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 "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 "This dissertation examines the narrative landscapes of Middle English Ricardian political poetry in light of the split between creation and reception of these literary environments. Environmental descriptions are significant and nuanced political statements in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and William Langland. These authors do not use environment as background or mere scenery because perception of environment is highly political, based upon temporal and cultural distinctions. This dissertation argues that medieval authors seek to focus audience attention upon the figure of the sovereign via textual depictions of the realm. Covert political criticism is activated through the latent cultural power of forests, rivers, and agricultural spaces like fields and gardens. In contrast to these bounded and regulated places, the wilderness serves as an 'a priori' state of political disorder that demonstrates, through its own fluidity and uncontrollable nature, the inherent stability of place. . . . The second chapter argues that Gower's use of the River Thames in the Ricardian Prologue of the 'Confessio Amantis' infuses the work with uniquely English political qualities that the Lancastrian recensions of the poem lack." [JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Johnson, Valerie Published Johnson, Valerie. "Politicizing the Landscape: Ricardian Literary Languages of Power." PhD thesis, University of Rochester, 2013. 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 Politicizing the Landscape: Ricardian Literary Languages of Power. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This dissertation analyzes the function of animal speakers in political poetry by William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, and John Gower, and it claims that late fourteenth-century poets describe the marginalized voices of emerging politicians by using animal expressions and noises. These writers invent a playful yet earnest poetics of acknowledgment in comparing politicians' calls to animal cries. In unveiling novel interpretations of Langland's mouse, Chaucer's goose, and Gower's jay, I argue that the speeches of animals contribute to significant strains within several late fourteenth-century poems, which remain obscure if the reader ignores the signal contribution of the animal. Finally, I study the use of animal speech in the Lancastrian poem, "Richard the Redeless," to understand the ways in which the anti-Ricardian regime appropriated this malleable animal imagery to pursue its own political agenda." [JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fulton, Sharon Published Fulton, Sharon. "Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies of Late Fourteenth-Century England in Non-Human Voices." PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2012. 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 Animal Speech and Political Utterance: Articulating the Controversies of Late Fourteenth-Century England in Non-Human Voices. 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 "Tracing the emergence of the author function in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, during which writers began to name themselves and their other works in their own texts, this project examines the hitherto ignored role that prophetic self-representation played in the construction of medieval authorial personae. Building upon already established connections between classical authorship and prophecy, medieval authors exploited the prophetic subject position in order to clarify their function as mediators between subject and audience. More than a mask from behind which to safely advance political critiques, the persona of the prophet allowed medieval authors to define the nature of their authority and their relationships to their readers. The first half of this project examines the works of two authors, John Gower and Christine de Pizan, who use prophecy to assert their superior analytical skills. Although both authors draw heavily from the tradition of the prophet Daniel, a prophet known for his inspired interpretive abilities, they claim their inspiration from entirely different sources. Gower represents himself as being prophetically inspired by the public voice, which under the maxim, 'Vox populi,vox Dei,' is divine. Gower consistently represents himself as the public prophet of England in the 'Mirour de l'Omme,' the 'Vox Clamantis,' and the 'Confessio Amantis.' Christine de Pizan, on the other hand, promotes her career in the traditionally masculine fields of literature and politics by implying that her gender gives her prophetic intuition. . . . The second half of this project looks at the work of two authors, William Langland and Margery Kempe." [JGN 33.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fonzo, Kimberly L Published Fonzo, Kimberly L. "Late medieval authorship and the prophetic tradition." PhD thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013. Open access at https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/45609 (accessed January 22, 2023). Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Late medieval authorship and the prophetic tradition. 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 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 "Ovid, in his 'Ars amatoria,' adopts the didactic framework in order to elevate the tradition of Latin love elegy and make a name for himself as a poet. In contrast, three of his most famous medieval successors--Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower--invert the balance, exploiting the subject of love to instruct their readers in other topics, such as religion, philosophy, and morality. This shift in balance is related to the practice of 'ethical reading,' which emerged in medieval 'grammatica' as a way of approaching classical authors by emphasizing the ethical (and thus educational) potential of their texts. Previous scholarship has established the ethical focus of medieval grammar education and the ways in which that ethical focus influenced medieval readings of classical texts, but this scholarship has rarely continued on to discuss the influence of grammar education on medieval authors. Andreas, Jean, and Gower first encountered imaginative literature in the medieval curriculum, where the texts of classical authors were used to teach students the Latin language. In the grammar classroom, they would have been taught interpretive methods that trained them to identify the utility of what they were reading, whether that utility was conceived of in philological, ethical, philosophical, or even theological terms. Conditioned to read imaginative literature for these didactic purposes, Andreas, Jean, and Gower discovered, in Ovid's 'Ars amatoria,' a text that used love as a platform for didacticism, and a model around which to build their own literary inventions. The literary works that they created--Andreas's 'De amore' (late 12th c.), Jean's continuation of 'Roman de la Rose' (late 13th c.), and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' (late 14th c.)--are dense, challenging, and multilayered texts that illustrate the process of learning through reading and dialogue, and use the literary discourse of love to teach their students the art of reading." [JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Farber, Annika Published Farber, Annika. "Ethical Reading and the Medieval 'Artes amandi': The Rise of the Didactic in Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower." PhD thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 2011. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ethical Reading and the Medieval 'Artes amandi': The Rise of the Didactic in Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Spencer's treatment of Gower's poetry appears as "Part III" of her fourth chapter in a book-length study which she describes as an attempt "to explain the recurrent use of the Boethian dialogue model in literature concerned with courtly love." She argues that she will "cover new ground on two accounts: first, in considering the use of Boethius as a writer of philosophical dialogues rather than of dream visions and, secondly, in exploring the relationship between dialogue and erotic love and its political implications" (1). Spencer reads the CA as mightily influenced by Froissart's "Joli Buisson de Jonece," in its "use of the 'senex amans' motif and in the denouement . . . which, like Froissart's constitutes a rejection of the literary genre to which the work ostensibly belongs." Gower "also shares Froissart's thematic focus on the internal division of the self and the consequent breaking up of the poetic voice . . . . However . . . Gower's resolution to these problems differs significantly from Froissart's, presenting a far more horizontally inclined, inclusive and philiac vision of caritas and politics" (172-73). "For Gower, the path to truth and enlightenment seems to lie in a descent into detailed examination of the subjective self in its fallen state and the world around it rather that an immediate ascent beyond particular worldly concerns to monologic political preaching or religious contemplation" (173). Spencer's is a rambling study, somewhat over-ambitious in its apparent attempt to encompass the sum of themes and treatments in the CA. The result is replete with turns and reachings-out in multiple directions which do not always interconnect. Most of her conclusions are, perhaps, encapsulated in the following: "Worldly readers and writers, like worldly kings, aspire towards the divine harmony of Arion. However, it is in the nature of their earthly condition that any order they seek to impose upon the diverse, fallen world will inevitably be provisional and susceptible to renewed division . . . . Gower's 'Confessio' resembles Froissart's 'Le Joli Buisson de Jonece' in that it begins as a secular dialogue on 'cupiditas' and ends with a transition to 'caritas.' However, while Froissart's 'Joli Buisson' retains and indeed intensifies the exclusivity innate in the courtly love mode by transfiguring the love of the mortal particular one into the contemplation of the divine One, Gower's 'Confessio' seeks to pass from a blinkered, cupidinous world vision in to a vision of the One in the many and the many in the One . . . . The former approach could be associated with the 'vita contemplativa,' the latter with the vita active. The task of the 'active,' in some senses political writer, like that of the earthly king, is to attain to a universal, harmonious and ordered vision of the world and the common principles which tie its multiple elements together. The writer must seek to overcome his or her own internal divisions, and the subjectivity which divides them from others. Gower's fictional portrayal of his own internal division and cupidity dramatizes the difficulty of attaining to such a unity of self. At the end of the 'Confessio,' when Venus asks Amans' name, he responds, 'John Gower.' It is at this point that the wise, authoritative voice of the Prologue (which clearly belongs to the author of the 'Vox Clamantis') and the naïf limited protagonist of the dialogue finally come together. However . . . Gower proceeds to illustrate, through the Genius-Amans dialogue, just how difficult it is to attain to such perfection and unity. He ends the poem with a note of challenge to his hypocrite 'lecteur' to re-form and re-order the diverse and recalcitrant profusion of narratives left before us in such a way as to avoid falling into the various traps encountered by Genius and Amans" (200-201). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Spencer, Alice Published Spencer, Alice. "Dialogues of Love and Government: A Study of the Erotic Dialogue Form in Some Texts from the Courtly Love Tradition." Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2007 ISBN 9781847181855 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 Dialogues of Love and Government: A Study of the Erotic Dialogue Form in Some Texts from the Courtly Love Tradition. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cambridge Scholars, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Lipton argues that Gower's discussion of marriage in the 'Traitié' is shaped as much by legal doctrine (and his own legal training) as by the sermons and confessional manuals that are more frequently cited and that lie closer to the heart of CA. She notes the prevalence of legal vocabulary in the 'Traitié' and traces the way in which the opening ballades incorporate marriage within an account of the descent of law from divine to natural to positive and from old to new. Both law and marriage, for both Gower and for the writers of the legal treatises that she cites, are regulatory in nature, and they originate in paradise in response to man's fallen condition. The main body of the 'Traitié' is shaped by the "case-based ethical thinking" of Aristotle and Aquinas that was central to medieval legal theory as well, and in contrast to their analogues in CA, the exempla that Gower presents, with their emphasis on punishment, "repeatedly represent transgressions of marriage as occasions for exercising justice rather than teaching moral truth" (495). The address of the poem "a tout le monde en general," finally, reflects an evolving view of the social foundations of law. "The poem makes marriage instead of kingship emblematic of legal principles. Rather than presenting law as a divinely given monarchical prerogative, the balades feature principles of common good and contractual integrity, which are essential to the law as a foundation of wide-ranging social order. The poem thus reflects both a contemporary legal view of marital crime as social and the increasingly broad public participation in English criminal justice" (497). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lipton, Emma Published Lipton, Emma. "Exemplary Cases: Marriage as Legal Principle in Gower's 'Traitié pour les amantz marietz'." Chaucer Review 48 (2014), pp. 480-501. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Exemplary Cases: Marriage as Legal Principle in Gower's 'Traitié pour les amantz marietz' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 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 Review Challenging the received view both of the genesis of Gower's poem and of the poet's relationship with King Richard, Barrington proposes that from the very first, the CA was designed as moral criticism rather than entertainment, adopting a wholly different strategy but continuing the same critique of the king that Gower had expressed in his earlier works, notably the VC. His strategy in the "first recension" of the poem, she argues, consists of three successive transformations of his authorial self: first, from the moral preacher to the courtier poet in the scene that Gower creates in which Richard commissions the poem; then from courtier poet to courtier "tout court," as Gower adopts the role of lover at the beginning of Book I; then from courtier to the aged Gower himself in the conclusion. In each of these transformations Barrington detects implicit or direct allusions to the criticisms that were most often leveled at the king. In the river scene, Gower transforms himself "from a moralizing didactic poet who dourly sings his lines to a courtly versifier who cheerily accepts the king's bidding" (420), but he depicts the king as exercising his power despotically and arbitrarily. The alert reader will recognize the guise and will perceive Gower's own continued presence in the Latin glosses and in the enigmatic epigrams. In 'infiltrating" Richard's court in this way, moreover, Gower distinguishes himself from the king's more flattering courtiers by offering "wisdom" as well as "pleye": "His verse will bear as its outward demeanor the court's sensibilities, but it will be shaped underneath by Gower's call to reform" (422). At the beginning of Book I he adopts the role of Amans, making a transition from "courtly versifier" to "courtly attendant" (423), but only in order to "produce a text that appears courtly while criticizing courtly behavior" (424). In his initial encounter with Venus, Amans' behavior reflects that of the courtiers surrounding Richard who are not worthy, either by birth or upbringing, for the role. His confessions contain repeated allusions to the "delinquencies of Richard's court as Gower's contemporaries perceived them" (426), and Genius reinforces the criticism by allegorizing the different vices of love as courtiers. As others have observed, moreover, many of the exempla are more concerned with governance than with love, and in perhaps its most pointed criticism of the court, Amans fails to realize their application or to profit from them. "In short, Amans's allegorical confession reveals not his own guilt, but rather that of the court" (431). Finally, as Venus unmasks him in the conclusion, "his fictional roles exposed, Gower abandons the role of courtly lover and reclaims his true name and age" (431), and he turns to deliver a prayer that enacts "the fantasy in which Richard is at once and already the ideal king, while at the same time acknowledging the poet's inability to influence the king without divine intervention" (432). "The 'Confessio' is, first and foremost, a didactic poem; it only masquerades as a courtly poem" (431), and that it was directly aimed at the well-known failings of Richard and his court helps explain why it continued to be copied after Henry became king. Barrington's essay offers a new way of viewing the link between love and politics in the poem, and it reads like the brief for a book-length study which we should encourage her to produce. The strength of her argument lies in its coherency, but it does depend upon assumptions about Gower's attitude to the king as much as it does upon her close reading of the poem. As Wayne Booth pointed out long ago, the detection of irony often depends upon knowledge that we bring from outside the text. Barrington draws numerous connections between passages in the CA and complaints of contemporary chroniclers, but in quoting from the VC (e.g. on page 418), she cites passages from the final version of the poem that may not have been composed until after Richard's deposition. This is nonetheless a very important article, and it offers challenges that well deserve our attention. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Barrington, Candace Published Barrington, Candace. ""Personas and Performance in Gower's Confessio Amantis."." Chaucer Review 48 (2014), pp. 414-33. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "Personas and Performance in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 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 sacramental and legal discourses of confession--penance and inquisition--were reinforced by the Church in 1215 on a grand scale and became central to the Church's project of regulating Christian moral codes and behaviors in both the public and private spheres. In the centuries following, however, the applications of these discourses moved beyond ecclesiastical boundaries and into the fields of cultural production. Contributing to a more nuanced understanding of this movement, my dissertation argues that confession transformed the development of vernacular literary consciousness in late medieval England. In my analyses of works by Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, William Langland, Thomas Usk, and Thomas Hoccleve, I demonstrate that these writers synthesized confessional elements from various traditions, including the religious, legal, and erotic, to explore contemporary issues, challenge traditional literary authority based in Latinity, and--most importantly--authorize their own literary productions. In this dissertation, I contend that we cannot properly understand the history of English literature without acknowledging the central role of confession and the confessional authorial voice in the establishment of the English vernacular tradition." [JGN 33.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Lee, Jenny Veronica Published Lee, Jenny Veronica. "Confessio Auctoris: Confessional Poetics and Authority in the Literature of Late Medieval England, 1350-1450." PhD thesis, Northwestern University, 2013. 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 Confessio Auctoris: Confessional Poetics and Authority in the Literature of Late Medieval England, 1350-1450 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Pearman writes: "Much scholarship on Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' has focused on the poem's assertion that poetic narration, represented by Amans' ongoing confession, has the ability to restore the fragmentary natures of social and spiritual bodies. Surprisingly, the role that the (dis)abled body plays in the poem's struggle with fragmentation and integration has been ignored. By focusing on the poem's representation of blindness in the tales of Medusa and Constance, I will demonstrate that the formal structure and thematic explorations of the 'Confessio,' in fact, rely upon the (dis)abled body and its inextricable relationship to narration. Indeed, it is Amans' disabling illness that inaugurates the poem and provides Gower with the vehicle through which to critique the fractured body politic of fourteenth-century England, and it is only through the act of narration that both bodies may be "cured." Using modern and medieval disability scholarship, this paper will posit that the poem's reliance on a topos of disability that creates a "problem" that the poem must then attempt to unify. In particular, the poem fixates on blindness, linking physical and metaphorical blindness to sin, and thus division, and its cure to unification. In the 'Confessio,' this cure is contingent upon the act of confession, of providing a story that unifies the "trouble" of the deviant body. As a result, Gower asserts the poet as the rememberer and re-memberer of bodies spiritual, social, and physical." [JGN 33.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pearman, Tony Vandeventer Published Pearman, Tony Vandeventer. "Blindness, Confession, and Re-membering Gower's Confessio." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 1.1 (2013), n.p. Article 3. 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 Blindness, Confession, and Re-membering Gower's Confessio Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 modern, scientifically based disapproval of artificially sweetened foods was matched, Newhauser argues, by the moral disapprobation of sweeteners in the late Middle Ages, particularly in the works of John Gower. In this wide-ranging essay, Newhauser traces both the changes in diet among the peasantry that resulted from their greater spending power following the Black Death and the growing use of sugar as a sweetener, particularly among the wealthy, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as demonstrated both by commercial records and by the cookery books of the time. For both Langland and Gower, the peasants' emulation of the tastes of their social superiors was one of several signs of the breakdown of society. For Gower as for others, sweetness has a double valence, often used in descriptions of the Virgin, for instance, but also depicted as an enticement to sin. Gower's most consistent use, Newhauser claims, is the latter, "an expression of the deception utilized by evil or the self-deception of the sinner" (755), for instance in MO 505-16, where "sweetness" applies both to the devil's rhetoric and to the temptations of the flesh. And the desire for sweet foods is one of his most common images for the corruption of the contemporary clergy, as Newhauser illustrates with passages from MO, VC, and CA, including this passage from Prol. 325-27, "Delicacie his swete toth / Hath fostred so that it fordoth / Of abstinence al that ther is," that is evidently the first use of the term "sweet tooth" in the English language. [PN. Copyright. JGN 33.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Newhauser, Richard Published Newhauser, Richard. "John Gower's Sweet Tooth." Review of English Studies 64 (2013), pp. 753-69. ISSN 0034-6551 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's Sweet Tooth Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 For Nowlin, the passage in CA 4.2362-2745 that Macaulay headed "The Uses of Labour" actually consists of three separate "chronicles of invention," detailing "the greatest 'inventions' of human culture" (183), and these chronicles, he argues, "allow Gower to speak to the historical project of the "Confessio" as a whole--that is, the historical project of rewriting narratives of the past in order to help restore a fallen present" (183). Gower reveals his interest in historiography and his awareness that "'history' itself is a discursive construction" (184) throughout his works, but particularly in the "Visio" in VC Book 1 and also elsewhere in CA, where he claims "the form as well as the matter of history" (185). The chronicle form does pose a certain dilemma, however, for while offering instructive examples from the past, it also suggests inevitable decay, contrary to Gower's own purpose, as illustrated in the discussion of "gentilesse" that precedes the passage in Book 4 that Nowlin examines. "This, then, is the problem for Gower the chronicler: How can a poet activate the productive aspects of the chronicle form without reintegrating its potentially corrosive elements?" (188). The answer lies in Gower's imitation of "practices in late medieval English chronicles that embed within a historiographic expression a dramatization of the processes of invention. The productive, imaginative, and ultimately generative work of invention counteracts the corrupting effects of chronicle narratives" (188). The model is provided by Ranulf Higden's "Polychronicon" and Trevisa's translation, which offer a model of "invention" both in their principles of selection and arrangement and in the invitation to the reader to participate in the historiographic process. In Book 4, "Gower carefully works through the conflation of historiography and invention characteristic of the "Polychronicon." There, he locates and enacts a compositional process that works to restore the productive potential of the chronicle form and estrange that form from the movement toward discord demonstrated by the history of 'gentilesse'" (192). The details of Nowlin's account of that process cannot adequately be summarized here. In brief, "Gower begins in the first chronicle of invention by emphasizing the form and labor of historiographic production, then by narrating the simultaneous emergence of poetry and historiography from the chronicle of cultural development" (192). Alchemy seems to offer "an analogue for poetic invention" that might be able to "'invent' a way out of the corrosive chronicle form established in the history of 'gentilesse.' But the opposite turns out to be the case" because of the failure of modern alchemists to match their predecessors (195). "Alchemy represents at once the failure of historiographic narration and productive invention" (196). "The final chronicle in book 4 is something of a restart. It focuses specifically on 'our Marches hiere' (4.2633), that is, the Roman tradition that produced Latin grammar, rhetoric, and ultimately Ovid--and by extension, the 'Confessio Amantis'" (197). The operating principle is "congruite" (4.2646): "the Roman chronicle operates through an appositional, congruous organization that combines the tenets of poetic invention with chronicle form. Gower encodes the process of poetic composition into the structure of the Roman chronicle, replacing chronology with inventional topics. He thereby replaces the temporal discord that characterizes the progression of chronicles with a structural system that, by definition, encourages discovery, choice, and possibility" (198). "Here, then, Gower generates a new kind of English poetry, one that invests the chronicle form with a vitality that would seem to have productive consequences for the invention of both historiography and poetry" (199). In conclusion, "These chronicles reveal Gower's working through the central historical problem for the "Confessio"--the effort to salvage the form of historiography along with its matter, but in a 'newe' way. . . . Adapting a fourteenth-century chronicle practice and applying it to his long poem about love, Gower foregrounds the mechanism of poetic and historiographic composition and transforms the force of codified historical progression into productive poetic creation. His chronicles prompt reflection and investigation, but they also suggest how a massive English poem like the "Confessio" might be imagined as self-sustaining, and capable of becoming a kind of imaginative algorithm for poetic posterity. The labor of an English poet-chronicler, the Confessio itself becomes a new kind of chronicle that invents history rather than a poem that merely uses it" (201). [PN. Copyright. JGN 33.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Nowlin, Steele Published Nowlin, Steele. "Gower's Chronicles of Invention: Historiography and Productive Poetry in Book 4 of the Confessio Amantis." Modern Philology 110 (2012), pp. 182-201. ISSN 0026-8232 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Chronicles of Invention: Historiography and Productive Poetry in Book 4 of the Confessio Amantis 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 Review Johnson's book is a rewarding work of literary criticism. It sets out to trace the philosophical and aesthetic function of the "mixed form" (prosimetrum, i.e., the oscillation between lyrical verse and didactic prose) in the "Consolation" of Boethius and its legacy in late-medieval vernacular literary traditions. Through lucid close readings, it also reveals how literary texts enact ethical transformations through their literary form. The chapter on Gower carefully attends to the dynamic relationship between form and content throughout the CA. In her chapter 4, Johnson investigates two facets of the work's mixed nature: its integration of verse and prose, and its use of two mutually informing languages (Latin and Middle English). The chapter treats Usk's "Testament of Love" alongside Gower's CA. Johnson observes how both authors adopt "a mask--a genre-based persona" through which "a sociopolitical critique" with can be launched (166). Johnson reads Gower's sudden shift into rhyme royal stanzas in the verse epistle at the end of the CA as a formal allusion to Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde." Gower, like his contemporary, "uses stanzas [in the epistle] to bumper syntactic units at the level of the sentence," and the formal aspects of this passage set it apart from Gower's use of enjambment elsewhere (192). Through formal juxtapositions and shifts in narrative voice, Gower enacts "a comical revision and reinterrogation" of Boethian modes of consolation (198). The most revealing aspect of Johnson's analysis its attention to the interplay between Latin glosses and Middle English verse in the CA. She deftly reveals how prosimetrum enacts both a formal and linguistic mode of code-switching. Gower's Latin prose glosses showcase the "complexity and alterity" of Middle English verses and present the Middle English as its own sort of "Latin" with a philosophical heft that demands critical unpacking (191). Through its mixed form, the CA effectively breaks down a rigid binary between Latin and the vernacular. Since Johnson's chapter on Gower only discusses the CA, the integrative function of prose and verse in his major Latin and French works remains unexplored. Nonetheless, the book offers fruitful readings of the CA that not only encourage new approaches to literary Boethianism but also restore the importance of form and aesthetics to an understanding of Gowerian ethics. [Jonathan Hsy. Copyright JGN 33.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Johnson, Eleanor Published Johnson, Eleanor. "Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013 ISBN 9780226015842 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Chicago Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Irvin, Matthew Published Irvin, Matthew. "The Poetic Voices of John Gower: Politics and Personae in the Confessio Amantis." Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013 ISBN 9781843842507 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review "The Poetic Voices of John Gower" is an ambitious, wide-ranging, and inclusive study of the characters and tales in CA. The book is a handsome Brewer production of 315 pages, which includes a brief introduction (Chapter 1: "Making and Doing Love"), seven chapters on various issues in the CA, a conclusion ("Identifying Amans"), full bibliography, and even fuller Index. Irvin chiefly explores the characters and stories of the CA from the standpoint of Amans, central persona of Gower the author, but it soon emerges that Amans, whose chief object is his lady, has different goals and objectives from the "Gower" who seeks to guide and educate. Irvin examines the various persons of the CA with help from a philosophical approach based on Brunetto Latini's adaptation of Aristotle's "Ethics," especially the qualities of right reason, prudence, and wisdom: qualities that emerge especially from Gower the author (so to speak). Irvin discovers that the allegedly trustworthy issues of romance literature, including his CA--the topics of "fin amour," love generally, "trouthe," "pite," reason, and others--are not stable and steadfast but contingent, requiring education, negotiation, and interpretation. As Irvin puts it with respect to love, seemingly a universal quality: "the place of love in the world depends on the relationship of prudence and art" (1). Although Irvin treats many characters and situations in the CA, his principal interest is in Amans and his identification as a persona for Gower. He argues that "Gower's poetry dramatizes the intellectual and emotional action of finding his proper place in the world, of making his own presence as writer part of the prudential, political world about which he writes" (27). Hence the personae Irvin analyzes are not just literary characters but, in Maitland's terms, "Moral Personality and Legal Personality." Explaining the relevance of this formulation to the CA, Irvin says: "Gower employs the legal discourse of the persona to bring together prudence and art, wisdom and affect, in a manner that differentiates his work formally from Latini's" (15). According to Irvin's formulations, the personal is the political. The chapters of "The Poetic Voices of John Gower" are well organized and well provided with subheadings. Chap. 2, for example, is titled "The Orientation of the Prologue to the Confessio Amantis," with subheadings "Gower's Double Readership" (clerical and non-clerical audience), "The Failure of Interpretation," and "Arion and the Possibility of Good Government." Irvin does not examine every story in the CA equally. Some merit more detailed discussions than others. Tales that evoke considerable discussion include "The Tale of Florent," in Chap. 3 ("Amorous Persons"); "The Tale of Constance" and "The Tale of Canace and Machaire," Chap. 4 ("Pity and the Feminine"); and "The Tale of Apollonius," Chap. 7 ("The love of Kings"). In his chapter dealing chiefly with "The Tale of Florent," Irvin argues that Gower challenges readers' sense of morality regarding "gentilesse," producing contradictory interpretations that readers, using prudence and wisdom, must decide for themselves. In the following chapter, on Constance and the moral qualities of "pite," the story occasions a "tension" between "duty" and "affect"--requiring that readers sort out the tangle of emotions which the "Tale of Constance" elicits. Irvin's most persistent discussions involve the personae of Gower and Amans or Gower as Amans. Things come together especially in the Conclusion, "Identifying Amans," when Irvin focuses on Book 8, the denouement. In this book, toward the close, as is conventional, Gower discloses his name to Venus in Book 8. This self-disclosure was a staple of French romance literature, of course. Jean de Meun provides his name (in a "prediction") in his continuation of "Le Roman de la rose," which Gower remembers and in some ways answers in his CA. Irvin does not read humorously Venus's explanation to Amans/Gower that he is inappropriate as a lover. Instead, he reads it as a moment of education, of wisdom and schooling, when Amans finally comes to know himself: "Through the knowledge and art of his 'scole,' of this education, Gower's readers can truly know their own personae, and act prudently" (285). A key point about Amans and his education is that any man, any human, cannot and does not act solely on good advice, even if the advice is particularly fitting. In the CA and with the depiction of Amans, there is a concession to humanity and its propensity to sin; it is part of the human condition. As Irvin puts it, referring to the letter that Amans writes to Venus and Cupid pleading for their help: "The letter is a failure for Amans but a success for Gower" (283). That formulation epitomizes Gower's double readership of the CA and the relationship of the persona Amans to the poet John Gower. Amans is a student who must be schooled; Gower is a tutor whose goal, as auctor, is to educate and provide context. Irvin places the letter, and the conclusion of the CA generally, in a very human perspective. Irvin can interpret on several levels, and his close reading often operates on the level of the word. A good example is his discussion of word play in a passage bristling with rime riche from the Prologue. The passage concerns the "wise" and those who "pleye" in a sequence which concerns the meeting of Richard II and "Gower" rendered in a rhetoric display of antanaclasis: So as I made my byheste / To make a book after his heste, / And witte in suche a maner wise / Which may be wisdom to the wise / And pley to hem that luste to pleye (Prologue 81-85*). Irvin explains how the equivocation of the word play, expressed in "antanaclasis" helps support his reading of the CA as a poem working through contingencies--here in a passage concerning dream interpretation. Some may read the passage in the manner of the wise; some may read it in a context of "pleye." The "wisdom to the wise" would seem to be Irvin's clerical readership; the "pley to hem that luste to pleye" would seem to be those who fail to grasp the deeper meaning. The point of the Prologue, according to Irvin, is to trace the world's contingent status to human duplicity and falseness (like Chaucer in his "The Former Age"). Everything is insincere and untrustworthy, including human and political relationships. Even interpretation (hermeneutics) has been infected and compromised. "Therefore, 'wisdom' of the Prologue," argues Irvin, "is not given as doctrine, but is used to stir up emotions by pointing out humanity's own failure to be wise. Prudence has failed, and Gower's art imitates the frustration of the wise observer, the observer who hears the 'vox populi,' and who knows 'lore'" (67). The strength of Irvin's book is its presentation of Gower and his persona as Amans. He chronicles the complexities of the figure who learns about worldly contingency and finally absorbs Venus's lessons, such as they are. Gower scholars are fortunate to possess this extended meditation on Amans and personae. [James M. Dean. Copyright. JGN 33.1]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Poetic Voices of John Gower: Politics and Personae in the Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D. S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Hsy writes: "Toward the end of his life, medieval poet John Gower (d. 1408) composed Latin poetry about his own progressive blindness, and later nineteenth-century Blind readers appropriated Gower's work as part of a platform to advocate for changed perceptions and opportunities for the blind and other people with disabilities. In this essay, I approach nineteenth-century narrative compilations of blind lives (which include Gower's) as transformative acts of literary historiography. These compilers not only appropriate the medieval blind poet to advance their own social and political ends, but they also create a new disability-centered approach to the entire Western artistic tradition. I furthermore argue that Gower's own poetry, when taken seriously as the writing of a self-identified blind poet, adopts highly innovative formal and rhetorical strategies for representing visual impairment, and his writing anticipates aspects of modern disability activism and critical theory. The essay ends by considering the discourses of present-day online venues that seek to make Gower's work more accessible to blind and low vision readers. Such websites invite a more careful consideration of the activist-oriented mode of Gower's blindness poetry and his work as a whole, and these online venues profoundly reorient how we think about the social construction of Blind identity and heterogeneous modes of access in our digital age." [JGN 33.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hsy, Jonathan Published Hsy, Jonathan. "Blind Advocacy: Blind Readers, Disability Theory and Accessing John Gower." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 1.1 (2013), n. p. Article 2. Gower Subject Biography of Gower 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 Blind Advocacy: Blind Readers, Disability Theory and Accessing John Gower Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 When I was asked to review Bruce Holsinger's new novel, "A Burnable Book," for the "John Gower Newsletter," I sat for a few minutes trying to recall the last time John Gower was a featured literary character--outside of the self-fictionalizing within his poetry. In the end I could think of only one fictional Gower of note: the John Gower of Shakespeare's "Pericles," that phantom narrator of the grave who so forcefully directs what Ben Jonson once called a "mouldy tale." It was that Gower, perhaps combined with Chaucer's reference to "moral Gower"--and, in all honesty, the oft-repetitive pontificating that can be traced across Gower's career--that has no doubt painted the humorless and relentlessly severe image of "dour Gower" that is the popular understanding of the man. Thankfully, Gower scholars have fleshed out a more nuanced man behind the famed CA. Even so, Holsinger, a medievalist at the University of Virginia whose academic credentials are beyond repute, imagines Gower as a figure who is even more complicated--"compromised" is the term used by the author (p. 442)--than anything scholarship has yet suggested. The Gower of "A Burnable Book" could hardly be further from the single-minded moralist of old, even if his friend Geoffrey Chaucer bitingly chides him there for being so in his writings. Holsinger's Gower is a tortured father, a manipulating blackmailer, an information-hoarding spy, and at times even a sleuthing detective, who at the behest of Chaucer becomes embroiled in a web of conspiracies. A young woman has been murdered in the fields outside 1385 London. By her moving death (which forms a powerful opening prologue), a mysterious book is lost somewhere in the streets of the city, and in the race to find it the corpses and the conspiracies begin to mount. If Gower fails to find the book and unravel its many intrigues, we learn, the next to die may well be King Richard II himself. Holsinger puts together an impressively large cast of characters for this twisting tale, most of them known to history and familiar to scholars of the period. Arguably chief among them is Chaucer himself, who is (perhaps inevitably?) the more interesting of the poets in the novel: in addition to Gower, we encounter sometime-poet John Clanvowe in Oxford. We spend time, too, in Florence: with the dark figure of John Hawkwood and the ruthless men of the White Company, who lurk in Italy like wolves just beyond the light of the lamp. Most of the book is set in London, however, with a swarm of figures that the non-specialist will likely be troubled to keep straight. Even aside from the king, there are numerous figures of the aristocracy who take part in the tale, including John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford, Robert de Vere, and Michael de la Pole. There are bishops and priests, a curate and a prioress, and more officials of London than you can shake a yerde at--the vast majority of them indebted to Gower as he blackmails them for one sin or another. And then (speaking of sin) there are the prostitutes. Lots and lots of prostitutes. And a great deal of talk (and action) about what went on in places like Gropecunt Lane. There is also (why not?) a "swerver," the transgendered Eleanor/Edgar Rykener, based on the very real John Rykener--to say nothing of the many tradesmen and freemen who take part in the tale. Holsinger's plot amid this colorful cast is a complex weaving and not without its enjoyments--it's hard for a Gowerian not to smile at a sequence of final scenes in which "moral" Gower comes as close to an action hero as he probably ever will--but the unquestionable star of this novel is London itself. In vivid strokes "A Burnable Book" paints the living, breathing, oft-stinking soul of a late-medieval city. Like a narrative version of works like Ian Mortimer's "The Time Traveler's Guide to Medieval England," Holsinger's novel carries us from the fine confections of the royal court to the bloody dissections of a butcher shop--and a great many teeming, filth-strewn streets between. There are, moreover, "Easter eggs" for the educated reader: the walk-on appearance of a clerk named Pinkhurst, e.g., or the reimagining of Gower's boatride across the Thames with the king, during which the idea for the CA was supposedly born. Though these many esoteric intricacies at times threaten to derail the thrust of the actual narrative, the reader "in the know" will surely find in them a satisfying kind of delight. The one constant through it all is John Gower--his distance from our own biased expectations serving as its own measure of how little we really know about the man. Holsinger's morally compromised Gower is unexpected and surprising, and as such the scholars of the John Gower Society will no doubt find "A Burnable Book" a quite fascinating book indeed. And no need to put it to the fire. [Michael Livingston. Copyright. John Gower Society. JGN 33.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Holsinger, Bruce Published Holsinger, Bruce. "A Burnable Book." London: William Morrow, 2014 ISBN 9780062240323 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 A Burnable Book Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available William Morrow, 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 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 Griffiths presents a detailed description of a previously unknown manuscript of selections from CA, for which she is not able to provide the present location because the owner wishes to remain anonymous. (Shall it therefore be known as the "Griffiths MS"?) It consists of 17 folios in double columns of 34 lines. Griffiths describes the hand as "an early form of Bastard Secretary with anglicana influence" (245). She dates it to the first quarter of the fifteenth century (244) and localizes it in the area "around London, Kent, and Sussex" (246). Textually it is most like Royal MS 18.C.xxii (Macaulay's R), a manuscript of Macaulay's first recension, group c. It is unique among manuscripts of extracts from the poem in presenting only a single tale, that of Codrus, on the final folio, and of eliminating all references to the dialogue between Genius and Amans except an occasional reference to "mi sone." It consists entirely of edited passages of moral instruction in both Latin and English, chosen from the Prologue and each book but the last. The compiler's choices suggest both a very personal response to CA and an engagement with the entire poem, and the framing of the collection with a passage from the Prologue on the decline of the world at the beginning and a "discussion of the nature of good kingship" (250) at the end suggests a deliberate intention to create "regiminal work . . . pertaining to ethical government" rather than offering merely "personal improvement" (250). Griffiths provides six pages of excerpts. There is one small slip. In discussing the relation of this MS to other copies, she notes that it includes 1.579-84, "hitherto known only from the Fairfax manuscript" (247). The passage in question appears in all copies that contain that portion of the poem; it is Prol.579-84 that occurs only in Fairfax and its successors. Based on Griffiths account, it appears that this manuscript contains none of the passages that appear in "recension 3" MSS alone. [PN. Copyright. JGN 33.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Griffiths, Jane Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Published Griffiths, Jane. "Gower's Confessio Amantis: A 'New' Manuscript." Medium Aevum 82 (2013), pp. 244-59. ISSN 0025-8385 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Gower's Confessio Amantis: A 'New' Manuscript Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Barrington writes: "Gower's Trentham manuscript allows us to think about pre-modern disabilities in three ways. First, because it encourages Henry IV to restore the body politic disabled by Richard II, we can see the manuscript as presenting itself as a prosthesis able to compensate, even cure, Henry's illegitimate claims to the throne. Here, disability is a condition that needs to be eradicated at best, repaired at least. Second, because the Trentham manuscript reports Gower's blindness, we can examine how it registers that disability. As "Henrici quarti primus" makes clear, Gower's disability allows him to assert his own legitimacy as king's advisor. Here, disability is a means by which Gower asserts his authority. Finally, because the manuscript duplicates poems found elsewhere in markedly substantially versions, we can query how editorial decisions have marked it as a deformed text. Here, apparent disability disappears when digitizing eliminates the need for editorial choices." [JGN 33.1]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Barrington, Candace Published Barrington, Candace. "The Trentham Manuscript as Broken Prosthesis: Wholeness and Disability in Lancastrian England." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 1.1 (2013), n.p. Article 4. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Trentham Manuscript as Broken Prosthesis: Wholeness and Disability in Lancastrian England Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Only Bahr's final chapter, "Rewriting the Past, reassembling the Realm: The Trentham Manuscript of John Gower" (pp. 209-54), deals with Gower, and is very little changed from his article, "Reading Codicological Form in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript," previously published in "Studies in the Age of Chaucer" 33 (2011): 219-62, and reviewed in JGN 31.1 (2012) by PN. [RFY. Copyright. JGN 33.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bahr, Arthur W Published Bahr, Arthur W. "Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013 ISBN 978-0226924915 Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Chicago Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Arner writes: "Deploying conventions from medieval courtesy manuals, Gower's "Visio Anglie" assigned varied degrees of authority to Englishmen and women at the bodily level, a system of signification in which food, physical appearances, and overall comportment were key elements. Echoing courtesy manuals, the "Visio" constructed corporal marks of distinction, interpreted physical signifiers as indices of people's inner character and value, and classified bodies into social groups accordingly. Offering understandings of civility that began with codes of bodily conduct and that expanded to claims about the cosmos, the "Visio"'s corporal regulatory system promoted particular understandings of citizenship and governance that sought to protect the socioeconomic hierarchy in late fourteenth-century England. According to the "Visio," the insurgents in 1381 not only thwarted bodily classifications and threatened to liquidate the attendant systems of social stratification, but they eroded more global differences that subtended civilization itself. Constituting a force of annihilation, Gower's rebels took up and occupied a queer position--not unlike that articulated by Lee Edelman--that imperiled both health and futurity, ultimately demonstrating the need to further disenfranchise and control the non-ruling classes in the wake of the English Rising of 1381." [JGN 33.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Arner, Lynn Published Arner, Lynn. "Civility and Gower's 'Visio Anglia'." Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 1.1 (2013), n.p. Article 5. Gower Subject Minor Latin Poetry Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Civility and Gower's 'Visio Anglia' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Arner, Lynn Published Arner, Lynn. "Chaucer, Gower, and the Vernacular Rising: Poetry and the Problem of the Populace after 1381." State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013 ISBN 9780271058931 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Arner's study makes two large claims. First, as she states in her introduction, she "examines the transmission of Greco-Roman and European literature into English while the ability to read was burgeoning among significant numbers of men and women from the nonruling classes in late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England. This transmission required a dissemination of cultural authority and offered a radically democratizing potential for accessing, interpreting, and deploying learned texts"(p. 2). More specifically her focus is on the numerous and disparate readership among the "upper strata of nonruling urban classes," defined as "the most affluent and powerful layers of the population, beneath the wealthy merchant class, in the approximately thirty largest cities and towns in late medieval England. Regarding London: this category refers, in part, to the rank and file of the greater companies . . . artisans and retailers, including . . . prosperous shopkeepers . . . the master craftsmen and . . . other leading members of lesser companies, including…trained employees in their respective crafts [but excludes] servants or waged laborers." (p. 23) Culling from an array of published sources, in chapter 1 she develops a case that the ability of this group to read English texts has been underestimated--and that these precisely were the major audience imagined by Gower for the CA and Chaucer for the "Legend of Good Women," the text Arner (who is also concerned with how these poems illuminate both poets' treatments of gender) examines by way of example. Indeed, it is to reach these wealthier readers that the former chose English for the CA. Her second claim is that "while Geoffrey Chaucer's and John Gower's writings were key conduits of [Greco-Roman and European literature] into the language of the populace . . . [their] poetry attempted to circumscribe the democratizing potential of this new knowledge and worked to grant certain socioeconomic groups leverage in public affairs, all the while promoting . . . dependency for others . . . . By doing so, [Chaucer's and Gower's] writings participated in determining, at the sites of vernacular poetry and poetics, who could legitimately contribute to the production of knowledge in late medieval England." (p. 2) For Arner, Chaucer and Gower "'both . . . were from the ruling classes' [emphasis hers]." (p. 22); their works transmitted values and "conversance with the Greco-Roman literary tradition" (p. 153) to the "upper strata of nonruling urban classes." These benefitted from their poetry, even as the premises of the work effectively excluded, to variable degrees, the less privileged members of society. Arner (albeit in language often derived from Pierre Bourdieu and Karl Marx), as do many others, argues that Chaucer and Gower had different views of what poetry ought to do: the former "offers an art that guarantees the poet's right to liberal self-expression, without repercussions or accountability. Chaucer engages in cultural pastimes as a game, demonstrating casualness, mannered elegance, and statutory assurance, characteristics that . . . indicate a mastery of culture and signal membership in the elite" (p. 157); and the latter "proceeds as if poetry is a means of social reformation and a vehicle for social engineering." (p. 158) In an interesting rethinking of the more familiar litany of "pedantic Gower/aesthetic Chaucer," Arner finds in Gower's work an "agency" for lower classes via the facility of language (chapter 3); Chaucer, on the other hand, intentionally undermined both this acknowledgement of peasant agency and also Gower's insistence that poetry engage in socially responsible ways. Thus Chaucer "helped to thwart one of the most politically progressive possibilities of Gower's poetry and of similar literature in late medieval England." (p. 160) These arguments of Arner's are sharply rendered in her consideration of time in chapter 3. Despite these different attitudes toward poetry, in Arner's view Chaucer's and Gower's work nevertheless achieves the same end: "English literature from its nascence did not offer a democratization of culture but represented a new means of constructing authority and imposing social control as a form of education. Lacking an appropriate pedigree to become the legitimate inheritors of this cultural tradition, readers from the nonruling classes were still refused entry into the inner sanctum of culture." (p. 160). [RFY. Copyright. JGN 33.1] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer, Gower, and the Vernacular Rising: Poetry and the Problem of the Populace after 1381 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pennsylvania State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Ito, Masayoshi Published Ito, Masayoshi. "On the English Translation (by E. W. Stockton) of 'Vox Clamantis'." Bulletin of College of General Education, Tohoku University 18 (1973), pp. 1-17 [ISSN 0287-8844]. English version in Ito's John Gower, The Medieval Poet (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 139-55. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Vox Clamantis Review In Japanese. Written primarily as a review of E. W. Stockton's English translation of Gower's Latin works, this article also contains a detailed analysis of Gower's Latin style. While acknowledging the invaluable service that Stockton has done to Gower studies by making the VC accessible to a wide audience, Ito argues that Stockton's prose rendering of the VC is not always sufficiently attentive to its stylistic features. There are even passages, according to Ito, where mistranslation results from Stockton's failure to fully appreciate Gower's craftsmanship in his use of various rhetorical devices. The rhetorical techniques that Ito focuses on in this article include irony, paradox, metaphor, and wordplay, but what receives particular attention is Gower's use of antithesis. Line 1760 of Book 1 ("Quo cecidit fragili sub pede forte caput"), for example, involves the juxtaposition of "fragili pede" (weak foot) and "forte caput" (strong head), but this parallel structure is obscured in Stockton's translation as he mistakes "forte" for an adverb meaning "by chance." Similarly, in VC 6.1327-1328 ("Solo contenta moritur nunc fida Medea, / Fictaque Crisaida gaudet amare duos"), Stockton overlooks the opposition between "solo contenta" (satisfied with only one man) and "amare duos" (loving two men), incorrectly translating the former phrase as "laid out in the earth." Stockton's translation of VC 3.153-154 ("I wish to be just, but I am being transformed into anger, and this ensuing anger is destroying my good principles") is also inaccurate because he fails to see that the original lines ("Vti iusticia volo, set conuertor in iram, / Principiumque bonum destruit ira sequens") are built around two pairs of contrasted ideas, "iusticia"/"ira" (justice/anger) and "principium"/"sequens" (beginning/ensuing). Ito makes these and other observations to suggest ways to improve Stockton's translation, but they also demonstrate how frequent recourse to antithesis in the VC serves to hammer home one of the central themes of this Latin poem--the contrast between the degraded society of the present and the noble ideals that existed in a remote past. [Yoshiko Kobayashi; rev. 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 On the English Translation (by E. W. Stockton) of 'Vox Clamantis' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 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 Japanese. Out of the 297 examples of paronomasia found by Ito in the entire VC, 31 are included in the lines borrowed or imitated from such authoritative texts as Ovid's poetry, Peter de Riga's "Aurora," Nigel de Longchamps's "Speculum Stultorum," Gregory the Great's "Cura Pastoralis," and the Vulgate Bible; the rest are Gower's own inventions. Although there are cases in which paronomasia is used merely for the sake of rhetorical ornamentation, Ito finds many instances where this rhetorical device, through its witty juxtaposition of words that are similar in sound but opposite in meaning, becomes an effective means of expressing the conflicts and contradictions that beset English society in Gower's time. Ito thus argues that paronomasia is an important element of Gower's Latin style that he employs to enhance the impact of his social and moral satire in the VC. [Yoshiko Kobayashi; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ito, Masayoshi Published Ito, Masayoshi. "Paronomasia in 'Vox Clamantis'." Bulletin of College of General Education, Tohoku University 6 (1967), pp. 21-35. [ISSN 0287-8844]. English version in Ito's John Gower, The Medieval Poet (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 199-213. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations 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 Paronomasia in "Vox Clamantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1967 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 Japanese. This article presents a prosodic analysis of the rhyme-royal stanzas contained in the "Supplication of Amans" in CA 8.2217-2300 and "In Praise of Peace," with frequent comparison to Chaucer's use of the same stanza form in "Parliament of Fowls," "Troilus and Criseyde," and four tales in the "Canterbury Tales." According to Ito, Gower's rhyme royal is markedly different from Chaucer's in the following respects. First, whereas rhyme royal in Chaucer's poems is freed from the formal constraints of the French ballade to such an extent that it is transformed into a flexible vehicle for verse narrative, Gower's rhyme royal retains close resemblance to the ballade form due to its tendency to form a "tern," or a ballade-like set of three stanzas. Second, unlike Chaucer, who makes effective use of run-on lines and run-on stanzas to create a sense of onward movement, Gower treats the rhyme-royal stanza as a self-contained unit whose integrity is marked by a strong break at its end. Third, while the Chaucerian stanza often conveys a strong sense of a couplet through the end-stopped fifth line, Gower prefers a pause before the seventh line, thus making it resemble the final line of the ballade stanza that functions as a refrain. On the basis of these observations, Ito refutes the widely held assumption about Chaucer's influence on Gower's prosody, arguing instead that Gower's skillful use of rhyme royal in his English poems stems from his own experiments in French balladry in CB and "Traitié." [Yoshiko Kobayashi; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ito, Masayoshi Published Ito, Masayoshi. "Gower and Rime Royal." Bulletin of College of General Education, Tohoku University 12 (1971), pp. 47-65 [ISSN 0287-8844]. English version available in Ito's John Gower, The Medieval Poet (Tokyo: Shinozaki Shorin, 1976), pp. 101-18. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Cinkante Balades In Praise of Peace Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower and Rime Royal 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 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 This is a magnificent volume. The seventeen contributors, most of whom are already very well known to Gowerians, provide an extremely useful guide to the current state of our knowledge of Gower and his work. Anyone with any serious interest in Gower will want to own this book. In her introduction, on "Gower's Reputation" (1-22), Echard identifies five recurring themes in the critical response to the poet: his identity as "moral Gower," his political views, his choice of language, his relation to his sources, and both his personal and his literary relation to Chaucer. She traces these in large part to the poet's own deliberate self-fashioning, to "the qualities that he made central to his own poetic ethos" (17), and she points out how Gower's reputation has shifted over the centuries as each of these has provided either a stick with which to beat the poet (primarily during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) or as an opening to a greater understanding of his work (more recently), as, for instance, critics have taken a broader interest in the implications of "moral," in the complex issues of a poet's self-presentation, and in the political and ideological implications of the choice between Latin and the vernacular. That broadening of understanding is admirably illustrated by the writers that follow, and Echard's essay serves both to situate their contributions and to tie together the diverse approaches of this volume. Whether by accident or design, all but the last of the chapters that follow fall into pairs. The first two are concerned with Gower's biography. John Hines, Nathalie Cohen, and Simon Roffey ("Iohannes Gower, Armiger, Poeta: Records and Memorials of his Life and Death," 23-41) survey what can be inferred from the scant life records (mostly on property dealings) and the references in Gower's own poetry, and then give their greatest attention to the geography of Southwark during Gower's time (they provide some helpful maps), to the layout of the priory church of St. Mary Overie, and to the construction of Gower's tomb, as it appears today and as it was described by 16th century observers. The tomb, they note, "represents a range of facets of a contemporary perception of Gower; several, perhaps all of them, his own model of how he saw himself, or wished to be portrayed" (40). Robert Epstein ("London, Southwark, Westminster: Gower's Urban Contexts," 43-60) discusses the social geography of the three adjacent communities with which Gower had connections. He explores the difficulties of reconstructing Gower's audience, particularly of associating him directly with those who are though to have made up the "Chaucer circle." He also notes some paradoxes in the relation between Gower's writing and his life: that the man who spent nearly his entire life in Southwark should have so little to say about the city, its government, or the majority of its citizens; and that a poet with so little personal or professional ties to the monarchy should be been so preoccupied with the nature and responsibilities of kingship. "Gower's uniquely urban condition," he concludes, "as a non-bureaucratic, non-aristocratic, privately employed professional, allowed him to develop a sense of the poet that was elevated in its autonomy, in its self-regard and in its ambition – but that required a strong and attentive monarch to legitimize his voice and to realize his social visions" (60). Jeremy J. Smith ("John Gower and London English," 61-72) provides a brief but comprehensible account of what we know of Gower's language – a mixture of Kentish and Suffolk forms (consistent with Gower's family background) that would have been "fairly easily accommodated" (69) within the great variety of London speech at the time but that might have struck some as a bit old-fashioned – and equally helpfully, of how we know it. Smith also points to the remarkably conservative character of scribes' spelling habits in the later MSS of CA as an example of the perpetuation of one of several competing "standard" forms of the language, this one serving the very specific purpose of disseminating Gower's text. Derek Pearsall ("The Manuscripts and Illustrations of Gower's Works," 73-97) provides an even more remarkable gathering in one place of what can be said about the appearance, format, arrangement, contents, illustration and decoration, production, ownership, and readership of the MS copies of Gower's works. Pearsall writes not only from long and intimate acquaintance with the books that he describes but also with characteristic sympathy for the scribes (also evident in his essay on the Latin apparatus in the MSS, in the Takamiya festschrift, below). The handlist of Gower MSS on pp. 74-79 will now be our basic point of reference until the appearance of the much awaited Descriptive Catalogue, forthcoming under Pearsall's editorship. The next two chapters treat Gower's reception. Helen Cooper ("'This worthy olde writer': Pericles and other Gowers, 1592-1640," 99-113) discusses the appearance of Gower the poet in Robert Greene's Greenes Vision of 1594 and in Shakespeare's Pericles (1611), and the borrowings from CA in Shakespeare's earlier Comedy of Errors and in a 1640 pamphlet entitled A Certain Relation of the Hog-faced Gentlewoman, called Tannekin Skinker (in which the example of Florent is narrated in order to suggest the possibility of an equally happy metamorphosis for the unfortunate young woman of the title). In Greene's work, Chaucer and Gower are each called upon to tell stories in which the issue of the moral value of literature becomes entangled with the issue of the moral dangers posed by the beauty of the women in their tales. The author awards the prize – for the uprightness of both tale and character – to Gower. Cooper has much of interest to say about how each of these works perpetuated Gower's reputation both as moralist and as storyteller. Siân Echard's chapter on "Gower in Print" (115-35) looks at Gower's reception through his publication history, from Caxton, through Berthelette, Todd, Morley, Pauli, and Macaulay, down to Peck, with a glance at the Roxburghe Club editions and at the editions of selected tales intended for use in the classroom. (Missing, however, both here and in the bibliography on p. 272, is any reference to Macaulay's 1903 edition of selections for "young students," who Macaulay evidently felt wouldn't be too put out either by the Latin glosses and epigrams or by thorn and yogh.) Echard skillfully traces the impact on Gower's reputation not only of the critical commentary included in each edition but also of such matters as typography, layout, and apparatus. She notes that on the whole, Gower has been hurt more than helped by those who have brought his works to print, and while not suggesting that there can be any perfect edition, she has high praise for Peck's. Two chapters focus on Gower's non-English works. R.F. Yeager ("John Gower's French," 132-51), surveys Gower's surviving works in his other vernacular. After giving careful attention to their survival in MS, he has much to say about the quality of both Gower's verse and prose, about the uniqueness of conception of his works, particularly MO and CB, and about the significance of the fact that these works are in French. MO, he notes, has a breadth and ambition unprecedented in any of the works that have been identified as its possible sources, but it is unified, first of all by its "envelope of amorous address " (143), the invocation of "chascun amant" at the beginning and the lyrical prayer to the virgin at the end, and second, by its examination, through is description of the vices and virtues, of good and bad desire. CB has a narrative structure centered on the poet-narrator's decision to absent himself for the sake of his lady's reputation, which leads to a more complete union based on trust and actual devotion rather than mere desire. The resulting tendency towards the typical and the general is appropriate to a poem of exemplary wisdom. CA is not noted for its "richly poetic strokes" (248), Burrow concludes, which is one reason why it may fail to appeal. "In its limitations as well as its strengths, Gower's is essentially a long-poem style" (249), and while long poems themselves have gone out of style, the result can nonetheless be considered true poetry. T In both these works, Gower "use[s] the culture of French courtly writing against itself" (144): he transcends the "essential immorality" (147) of courtly literature and reclaims it for legitimate love. A.G. Rigg and Edward S. Moore ("The Latin Works: Politics, Lament and Praise," 165-80) more briefly situate Gower's Latin writing within the trilingual culture of late 14th-century England and within the traditions of Anglo-Latin writing. They point out that Gower's choice of unrhymed elegiac couplets for VC represented a return to a somewhat old-fashioned practice. VC's focus on politics and history is typical of Anglo-Latin writing of the time, and the "public" quality of the work distinguishes it from the more personal CA and MO. Most of VC attempts rather typically to summon historical evidence in support of the author's moral and political views; the Visio and TC, however, offer a more exceptional re-creation of historical events. The Visio, the authors note, also has important debts to vernacular literature. Ardis Butterfield and Winthrop Wetherbee, in the next two chapters, take up CA's relation to its antecedents. Butterfield ("Confessio Amantis and the French Tradition," 165-80) discusses Gower's relation to Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, and their successors Machaut and Froissart. All these poets, she writes, "are preoccupied by a desire to investigate the relationship between writing and the self, the kind of access a writer has to truth, and how the art of fiction both enables and inhibits this access. In all these writers, the figure of the lover acts as one of the main ways for them to represent the art of writing: the lover generates the poetry, and indeed is often represented as a poet" (165). So too Gower creates a "precarious distinction" (180) between poet and lover before collapsing the two roles at the poem's end, and he also includes Genius as a way of doubling his presence: "Genius is the interlocutor of the author and at the same time an internalized projection of him" (177). The confession frame is also enlisted in the exploration of the topic of identity. "Working within the central tradition of French writers," Butterfield concludes, love "becomes for him, as for them, a way of examining the art of fiction, and hence the multiple art of confessing the self" (180). According to Wetherbee ("Chaucer and Boethian Tradition in the Confessio Amantis," 181-96), the essential ambiguity of naturatus amor in the opening Latin epigram of Book 1 of CA reflects "fundamental questions about the authoritative role of the Latin tradition in forming [Gower's] literary culture" as well as "larger questions about the relation of human life and history to the natural order" (181-82). The uncertainties about man's relation to nature – whether as a "paradigm of order" or as "a kind of cosmic determinism" (184) – can be traced to DCP. Boethius' successors – Bernardus Silvestris, Alain de Lille, and Jean de Meun – depict the contradictions that result in different ways. For Jean de Meun they are manifested in an unresolved dialectic between the Latin Boethian tradition and the love-cult of vernacular poetry. The same confrontation is made visible in the framing of Gower's English poem with its Latin apparatus, which fails to either contain or control the English text. It is also embodied in Genius, who partakes both of the Latin and the vernacular. "He is less a spokesman than a mediator – a mediator, moreover, whose own perception of the standards of 'kinde' and 'resoun' which he holds up to Amans preserves unresolved the ambiguous perspective of the Boethian tradition. . . . Genius participates in both worlds, but he can provide no authoritative bases for reconciling the conflicting claims of Nature and courtly idealism" (190). "Skeptical of its own authority," Wetherbee concludes, "the Latin tradition is thus normative for Gower, a stable framework for his questioning of the values of his own world" (196) rather than authoritatively re-affirming them. Diane Watt and Russell Peck examine CA in rather more traditional terms. Watt ("Gender and Sexuality in Confessio Amantis," 197-213) discusses Gower's treatment of his female characters. She focuses on three tales, "Canace and Machaire," in which, Watt argues, contrary to most published commentary, the children are held responsible for their incestuous relationship and, at least at the beginning, the blame is equally shared between them; "Iphis and Iante," in which the two girls suffer no blame for their desire for one another or for Iphis' cross-dressing before Iphis is transformed into a man; and "Calistona," in which Gower's alterations subtly transform the rape into a seduction for which the woman herself can be held at least in part responsible. Watt reaches two important conclusions: one, "going against the tide of recent gender criticism," as she herself proclaims, that Gower's main concern is ethical, and that "when a writer like Gower writes about women or men, about homosexual or heterosexual desires, or about transvestism or transsexuality, he (or she) is not necessarily discussing something else" (211). And second (echoing an argument also recently made by Ellen Shaw Bakalian; see JGN 23, no. 2), that "the central ethical message of the Confessio Amantis as a whole is that the responsibility for sin or error falls firmly on the individual who commits it, male or female" (213). Peck ("The Politics and Psychology of Governance in Gower: Ideas of Kingship and Real Kings," 215-38) summarizes the argument on the relation between personal and political governance in all of Gower's work, particularly in CA, that he first put forth in his Kingship and Common Profit in 1978. "Gower conceives of the hypostasis between the personal and social through images of kingship, domain, and right rule. Each--the social and the personal--is contingent upon the other and operates through metaphoric interdependence. The king of England is akin to the king of the soul; the state of England is linked to one's sense of personal domain; and right rule is mirrored simultaneously through both sides of the equation" (216). In the longer, second part of his essay, Peck traces Gower's commentary on the effects of royal misrule through VC, MO, TC, and "IPP," and he offers a new attempt to read the dedication of CA to "Henry of Lancaster" as a rejection of King Richard II motivated by Richard's dispute with the city of London in 1392 (cf. Fisher, 116-22). (The reasons for the second dedication are an issue on which Gower scholars are not yet of a single mind. For an assortment of views, see in the same volume pp. 26, 57, 61, 94 n. 45, and 159.) John Burrow, finally ("Gower's Poetic Styles," 239-50) considers the implications of Gower's "correctness," his "purity of diction" and his "plain style," the three terms that occur most commonly in the descriptions and assessments of Gower's style. The first is at least to some extent anachronistic, since there were no fixed standards of correctness in such matters as spelling, one of the features of language in which Gower's MSS are most consistent, in Gower's time. It does apply, however, Burrow observes, to the poet's handling of both meter and rhyme – both for their regularity and for the way in which they conform to spoken language – and to grammar and syntax, where Gower displays an impressive command of periodic syntax, perhaps because of his experience of writing in Latin. Gower's diction is notable for its virtual exclusion of "commonplace English poeticisms" (244) from contemporary popular poetry or from the alliterative tradition, both found in far greater numbers in Chaucer. The "plain style," finally, is best understood with reference to Gower's own comments on "plainness": it is a style unadorned by rhetorical display consisting of "simple words used in straightforward literal senses" (246). The resulting tendency towards the typical and the general is appropriate to a poem of exemplary wisdom. CA is not noted for its "richly poetic strokes" (248), Burrow con-cludes, which is one reason why it may fail to appeal. "In its limitations as well as its strengths, Gower's is essentially a long-poem style" (249), and while long poems them-selves have gone out of style, the result can nonetheless be considered true poetry. The volume concludes with a "Chronology of Gower Criticism" prepared by Echard and Julie Lanz , which in its arrangement is an extremely useful supplement to the exist-ing bibliographies, as well as being more up-to-date. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân, ed Published Echard, Siân, ed. "A Companion to Gower." Cambridge: Brewer, 2004 ISBN 9781843840008 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Companion to Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Amoral Gower" is a rather short book--160 pages of text plus seven of preface. Its physical brevity is worth noting now, since in the future Watt's book may seem to loom much larger in the minds of those who come to know it only from its citation in what will be, doubtless and deservedly, a great many footnotes. Brief it is (to be fully accurate, it also contains 27 pages of notes and 17 of bibliography), but in that space it covers a great deal of ground, in disperse, rapid-fire chapters that, despite the care paid to summarizing and connection, more resemble individual essays or meditations (or, some might say, drive-by shootings) than a single argument. In every way, this is probably a wise strategy. Watt quite rightly perceives "Amoral Gower" to be a door-opening venture, not a final word. Her chief effort is to point up internal contradictions in Gower's poetry--primarily the CA, but with intermittent reference to the MO and the VC--and thereby call into question previous critical determinations that any unifying ethical vision exists in Gower's oeuvre. As she puts it: ". . . while it may initially seem unreasonable to suggest that Gower, or his poetry, rejects or even sidesteps ethical principles, I argue that the tensions, contradictions, and silences in Gower's text [i.e., the CA] expose the limitations of the ethical structures available to him and open up his text to multiple interpretations. A central argument of this study is that the poem destabilizes accepted categories of gender and sex, and that this has a profound impact on Gower's treatment of ethics and politics" (xii). The headings of sections and chapter titles convey Watt's targets, as well as hints of hommage: Introduction: "Social Gower"; Part I: Language: (1) "Gower's Babel Tower: Language Choice and the Grammar of Sex"; (2) "Writing Like a Man: Rhetoric and Genealogy"; Part II: Sex: (3) "Transgressive Genders and Subversive Sexualities"; (4) "Sexual Chaos and Sexual Sin"; Part III: Politics: (5) "Tyranny, Reform, and Self-Government"; (6) "Oedipus, Apollonius, and Richard II"; Epilogue: "Ethical Gower." "Hommage" is important in understanding what matters about "Amoral Gower" (major debts accrue to John Boswell, Carolyn Dinshaw, Georgiana Donavin, Patricia J. Eberle, Sián Echard, Richard K. Emmerson, María Bullón-Fernández, Joel Fredell, Marjorie Garber, Michael Hanrahan, Karma Lochrie, Eve Salisbury, Larry Scanlon, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jan Ziolkowski, and Freud) because in many ways what is new and significant are not Watt's particular observations about Gower's writing--most have appeared elsewhere in print before--but rather two things: first, the happy polyphony she has made, bringing so many voices together so succinctly; and second (by far more importantly) her central assertion that the discord and contradiction she finds in Gower's work derive not from poetic ineptitude but rather from conscientious authorial inclusion of these issues as quintessential elements in his view of the human condition. To put it somewhat differently: "Amoral Gower" proffers a positive reading of examples of chaos, of failure to connect, of truth as simultaneously both sides of the coin, assiduously rooted out of Gower's works in thematic rather than sequential order. Watt strives to supplant the "familiar" cohesive, ethical, and moral Gower with this alternative image, while claiming it as an authorial strategy. This is new, and the result both challenging and valid. More than a few will disagree with Watt's conclusions, but it is a measure of the evolution of Gower studies that the time has arrived when they can be drawn and claimed. Not long ago imagining Gower in Southwark faced with feminist criticism and queer theory was painfully risible. Watt gives Gower a newer face, and creates the suspicion that, just maybe, he would have seen something in it, dark and kindred though it be. [RFY, Copyright JGN 23.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watt, Diane Published Watt, Diane. "Amoral Gower: Language, Sex and Politics." Medieval Cultures, 38 . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003 ISBN 978-0-8166-4027-0 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Amoral Gower: Language, Sex and Politics Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Minnesota Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2003 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 Yeager's essay is about everything that has happened since he and others have labored to get Gower "onto the grid," and he offers the story as a model for others who seek canonical and classroom status for less well-known writers and who, to switch the metaphor, pursue that particular Holy Grail of inclusion in the "Norton Anthology." The events that Yeager recounts here will be familiar to those of us who have been following Gower studies over the years: the publication of the bibliographies, translations, and concordances; the famous MLA session in 1981 that led to the formation of the John Gower Society (and to the creation of the journal in which this review appears); the sessions at Kalamazoo; the institution of the Publications of the John Gower Society through D.S. Brewer; and the new resources that have been made possible by the advent of the Internet. For more recent converts to the cause, this essay will serve as a lesson on the shoulders on which they stand; and while one cannot help being reminded of how central Yeager himself has been to the entire effort, his story is also one of collaboration and of the many hands that have contributed to the seriousness and energy that characterize Gower studies today. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "Off the Grid for Forty Years: Bringing John Gower into the Classroom." Pedagogy 13 (2013), pp. 357-70. ISSN 1531-4200 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 Off the Grid for Forty Years: Bringing John Gower into the Classroom. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 entire CA, Shutters argues, offers "a complex set of meditations on how medieval Christian authors and readers might interpret the classical pagan past," for "Gower does not merely make use of classical source materials in the 'Confessio' but also ponders the limits of their usability" (39). "Whether or not the classical past is ethically usable to a Christian reader," she goes on to say, "requires historical reflection, as the reader must contemplate in what ways pagan antiquity is continuous with or discontinuous with late medieval cultural values" (42). Gower first raises the issue in his two different readings of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in the CA Prologue, but he leaves open the question of whether the reader ought to embrace the classical past or reject it. He makes the choice that the reader must make more explicit by offering "two discrete versions of the classical past" (48) in the stories he draws from the history of Rome and the history of Troy. Echoing Wetherbee, Shutters notes that for Gower, "Rome embodies concepts of social and political cohesion, and Roman leaders sacrifice personal interests for the common good," while Troy (quoting Wetherbee now) is "a world of individuals unified only by the preoccupations and besetting whims of knighthood" (48). Rome offers models of virtuous conduct, in love and elsewhere, or of the rejection of vice, while the Trojan figures in the poem are motivated only by their own erotic desires. "Rome and Troy are [also] markers of different relationships between the classical past and Gower's medieval present. Just as Rome represents cultural cohesion, it also represents historical cohesion. That is, Rome represents a version of the past that can be situated within its historical setting and then made continuous with the present. Troy, through its focus on individual, erotic pursuits, represents a decontextualized mode of relating to the past. The many Troy stories centering on erotic love in the 'Confessio' can achieve their attractiveness only when decontextualized from the larger history of the destruction of Troy. Once placed in their proper historical settings, these stories lead to Troy's downfall . . . . Thus, while Gower's Rome is located within history, his Troy is ahistorical in the sense that it its cut off from future events" (48-49). The most important of the "Trojan" figures in the poem is Venus (who is described in Book 5 as the object of worship of the Greeks but not of the Romans), "since erotic love is frequently the motivation for the chivalric adventures that Gower contrasts against the social institutions of Rome" (51), particularly, of course, in the tale of Paris and Helen. "Taken together, Venus and Troy operate as synecdoches for a classical past associated with erotic, individualistic pursuits that, when appropriately contextualized in their own time, result in tragedy and, when situated in Christian historiography, amount to a benighted, superseded era. Thus the 'Confessio' suggests that to avoid this seductive but ultimately sinful and destructive version of classical antiquity, the good reader must avoid extracting only those moments he or she likes from the wide tapestry of pagan legend and instead locate those moments within the 'longue durée' of both ecclesiastical and secular histories" (52). Yet Gower himself has failed to view the 'longue durée,' as he must have been aware, for instance in his refusal to acknowledge the direct historical link between Troy and Rome. "By using Rome and Troy to contain different versions of the classical past, Gower presents himself as a highly sophisticated reader and arranger of classical antiquity who nonetheless runs up against limits to the control he can impose on classical materials on account of the 'prior meanings' that they convey. . . . Thus Gower writes himself into something of a quandary, which results from his own interpretive practices" (53). He creates two different ways to extract himself from this quandary in the poem's two conclusions. In the first, Venus rejects the narrator Gower, the opposite of what one might expect if the focus were on ethical behavior alone. In contrast to earlier readings, Shutters argues that "the Venus who appears at the end of the 'Confessio' is not successfully incorporated by Christian interpretive strategies, but rather appears as a pagan love-goddess who evades and forecloses such strategies" (55). She is a constitutent of "a fantasy of a pagan past not under the Christian author's control and, as a result, it is a fantasy that complicates the relationship between ethics and history in the poem" (56). Her prompting of the narrator to reveal his actual name, "John Gower," "reverses the pattern established throughout the poem whereby the pleasures of Venus are associated with historical shortsightedness. In Book 8, Venus contextualizes 'Gower' within his own life history and reveals the folly of his pursuit of love." Though this encounter, "Gower draws attention to the relationship between Christian author and classical source materials, and by giving Venus the upper hand, Gower signals a shift in the dynamics that have governed this relationship throughout much of the poem. Venus's contextualizing of Amans as the aged 'Gower' applies not just to the author, however, but to the poem's audience as well. Due to the deep-seated homology between individual, human age and historical time, 'Gower' the old man is also 'Gower' the representative of the Christian era, that is, representative of the final era through which historical time would pass" (56). This "Gower" betrays a reluctance to leave Venus behind, and it is Venus herself who must instruct him "because he is advanced in age, in more than one sense of the term, residing in a pagan love court would be, for him, inappropriate" (58). Here "virtuous behavior is transformed from an ideology to an identity, and . . . this identity becomes a Christian identity cut off from the pagan past" (58). Venus's rejection of the narrator offers one "solution to the obstacles to ethical reading that the classical past raises in the Confessio" and can be seen as a "critique of [Gower's] own method" (61), but it is not the final word, since Gower himself, in offering the poem to his readers, does not leave the world of pagan antiquity behind. In the second conclusion, constituted by the closing lines, "Gower abandons identity-based difference, in which different perspectives and locations in history justify different codes of ethics between pagans and Christians, in favor of ideological difference: Christian love is right, erotic love is wrong, and one must choose between them" (62). "Throughout the Confessio," Shutters writes in conclusion, "Gower rehearses fantasies of continuity and inclusion that link Christians and pagans, but he also rehearses fantasies of leave-taking and rupture, as we see at the end of the poem. Venus's expulsion of Gower rehearses the fantasy that a classical source might inform the Christian author when he needs to extract himself from pagan antiquity, while Gower's choice to leave love behind rehearses the fantasy that the author can cut himself off from non-Christian pursuits. Disengaging from the classical past might seem like an easy solution to the problems that pagan antiquity posed to medieval authors, yet the ending of the Confessio suggests that figuring out how and why medieval Christians did not relate to pagan antiquity was as complex as figuring out how and why they did. In both endeavors, questions regarding ethics and history were at stake" (64-65). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Shutters, Lynn Published Shutters, Lynn. "Confronting Venus: Classical Pagans and Their Christian Readers in John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Chaucer Review 48 (2013), pp. 38-65. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Confronting Venus: Classical Pagans and Their Christian Readers in John Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Meindl is the English translator of Maria Wickert's "Studien zu John Gower" (1953), which, among other things, offered the first important critical analysis of Gower's VC. As he prepares a second, revised edition of his translation, Meindl offers here an essay that is part reminiscence (of his 1970 visit to Wickert's husband), part biography (of Wickert's career and the writing of her ground-breaking work), and part criticism, as he situates her work in the devastation and national self-analysis that followed Germany's defeat in World War II. The portion of Wickert's book that is still cited most often is her careful disentanglement of the different layers of composition of the VC. Meindl is more interested, however, in the reasons that she chose to write about the work and in the passages that she chose to single out for special attention, which stem, he argues, from Wickert's perception of the similarities between the setting in which Gower wrote and her own. "Like Gower, . . . Wickert had survived a time in which men had behaved like beasts, a nation that had long considered itself the heir of ancient Rome had been, like Troy, devastated, and, to use a metaphor often employed also by post-war German poets, a land and its institutions had been battered by a storm of epic proportions. Severe historical trauma led in the immediate post-war period to an investigation of the national psyche that insisted upon the acceptance of responsibility both collectively and individually" (13). Wickert, Meindl speculates, would have found Gower's blame of his nation's leaders, his weighing of individual responsibility for the calamities of his time, and his emphasis on penance and redemption particularly resonant with her own and her nation's experiences, and he credits her with "one small piece" (27) of her nation's recovery. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Meindl, Robert J Published Meindl, Robert J. "The Message of the Ruins: Reading Devastation." Interdisciplinary Journal for Germanic Linguistics and Semiotic Analysis 18 (2013), pp. 13-19. ISSN 1087-5557 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Message of the Ruins: Reading Devastation. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 locus of Hsy's study is London, which he, like David Wallace, Ardis Butterfield, and others of late, casts as a city of many languages, a kind of crucible for "code-switching"--the kind of "shifting between different languages (or identifiable registers of any given language) . . . not only for pragmatic purposes but also for deliberately artistic ends: using different languages to develop distinct expressive registers, to stylize certain types of speech, or to evoke a vivid sense of place" (5-6). London's status as a city of languages rests on its prominence as a commercial hub; hence much of Hsy's focus like many of his examples derives from or connects with merchants and mercantile-driven enterprise (lawyers, guildsmen, the printer William Caxton, Chaucer, with emphasis on his commercial associations through the staple, etc.). In this regard, Hsy's book is a good companion to Craig Bertolet's "Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and the Commercial Practices of Late Fourteenth-Century London" (London: Ashgate, 2013)--a study Hsy acknowledges in a footnote (7-8, n. 12) that was at press simultaneous with his own. Indeed, Hsy and Bertolet discuss many of the same passages, especially from the MO, where Gower's sharpster Triche (Fraud) receives commentary from both, but importantly to different ends. Hsy's concern is invariably linguistic: he wants to show how Gower's (and Chaucer's, Caxton's, etc.) language works, where it comes from, who its target audience might have been: e.g., Hsy concludes a comparison of the Constance story in his second chapter, "Overseas Travel and Languages in Motion," as told by Trevet, Chaucer and Gower, noting that "by transforming Constance's story from a cleric's narrative into a merchant's tale, both poets find a new literary mode that exploits the transitory and fluid potential of language transversal" (73). In his third chapter, "Translingual Identities in John Gower and William Caxton," Hsy brings the poet and his first printer--also a polylingual--together in enlightening ways, as he sees them as similar spirits. He offers, he says, "a sustained assessment of Gower's polyglot persona and Caxton's literary ambitions . . . . Through first-person prologues and autobiographical excurses, Gower and Caxton develop innovative discourses for discussing cross-linguistic exchange and literary production, and each invests a considerable amount of thought into how his own translingualism informs an ever-shifting literary persona" (92). This chapter contains the extended discussion of the merchant section of the MO noted previously, and draws occasional examples from the CA, stressing the interplay of the Latin with the Middle English in both the verses and the commentaries, and helpfully reminding us that the great majority of Gower manuscripts (and none of those thought to devolve from his own likely oversight of an exemplar) are trilingual. Of particular interest also in this chapter is Hsy's close reading of Cinkante Balade XVII, pointing out the multiple valences Gower achieves with the shift from the lover's French to the lady's rejection of his suit in Middle English: "nay" (113). The example in many ways is a good one to stand for Hsy's larger purpose for the book--"to change our views of medieval writing" (209) from monolingual and nationalist to polylingual and transcultural. He writes of "nay": "Gower foregrounds the alterity of the lone English word spoken by a fictive French speaker, and he dramatizes this word's increasing estrangement from its original moment of utterance. Through this ensuing narrative, the poet suggests the corresponding unease an English speaker experiences when acquiring (and using) a second language like French, a tongue that is at once very close to the speaker but perpetually eluding his grasp" (113). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hsy, Jonathan Horng Published Hsy, Jonathan Horng. "Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature." Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013 ISBN 9780814212295 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Cinkante Balades Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Ohio State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 Edwards, Robert R Published Edwards, Robert R. "Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late-Medieval England." Swiss Papers In English Language and Literature: SPELL 25 (2011), pp. 51-73. ISSN 0743-7226 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis In Praise of Peace Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review For Edwards, "John Gower is arguably the paradigmatic author in late-medieval England" (57). He seeks to defend this claim via a replacement, and hence a redefinition, of the relevant critical terminology. Rather than adopting the standard dichotomy of the past thirty years, of "exegesis and pedagogy" and the attempt to align authorship in the Middle Ages with "the influence of Latin traditions on European vernaculars" (52), Edwards proposes "a second set of terms--imitation and refusal--to complement exegesis and pedagogy as sources for describing medieval authorship" (52). By the former, Edwards intends a practice of "reproducing, revising, and reimagining canonical sources" with the ultimate goal of producing "an original copy that rivals yet remains subordinate to its models." (53) The contradiction inherent in this framing of purpose necessitates "refusal . . . a literary strategy that relocates authorship within a new set of terms, as a possibility strategically denied in favor of other possibilities of invention. Refusal thus repositions authors and their works with respect to literary canons, institutions, and tradition. As a gesture of difference, it also points toward the stakes of authorship in the domains of society, politics, and culture" (53). Edwards' strong claim for Gower rests upon his view, developed here in outline, that the Latin prose commentaries found in the Confessio Amantis, whether copied in the margin or into the column of text, represent Gower's adaptation of the commentary tradition by transforming its essential neutrality into interrogation. Such positioning allows Gower a form of authorial space throughout; his staged withdrawal from the poem's fiction--Amans then "John Gower," then John Gower who put pen and ink to parchment--is precisely the refusal necessary to establish authorial status. This occurs, Edwards points out, when Gower self-consciously emulates himself in his later works. On a lesser scale, the balade sequences, the minor Latin poems, and "In Praise of Peace," replicate the French-Latin-English "cursus" of his earlier, larger M), VC, and CA--the three big books, in other words, on which the head of Gower's tomb effigy rests, looking for all the world like a classical "auctor" (62-63). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 32.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late-Medieval England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Calling" embraces both "summoning" (or "vocation") and "naming," not only in Modern English but also in Middle English (by way of the verb "clepen") and in the Latin "vocare," as used, for instance, in the Vulgate in 1 Corinthians 7:20, the ultimate source for many of the passages that Davis discusses: "Unusquisque in qua vocatione vocatus est, in ea permaneat." Davis explores the notion of "calling" in four late fourteenth-century texts ("Piers Plowman," "Vox Clamantis," "House of Fame," and the "Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale"), countering, along the way, Weber's oversimplification of pre-Lutheran notions of "calling," especially with regard to significance of activity in the world and the possibility of salvation for those in secular life. "Instead of earthly names and estates being naturalized, fixed, and God-given, or alternatively, alien and anathema to God, God temporarily suffers imperfect human 'callings' at the same time that he issues his own call. Thus, although human and divine 'callings' are not identical, they are also not necessarily distinguishable and in fact often coincide; as such, the characters within these poems, and sometimes the poems themselves, do not always disambiguate them" (55). Davis's analysis expands to include discussion of "use" vs. "possession" and "precept" vs. "counsel," and it perhaps offers its richest insight into WB and PP, especially where she draws parallels between the Wife and Langland's Will. Her discussion of VC centers on the narrator's role in Book I. Taking issue with those who, conflating poet and narrator, blame Gower for the disturbing allegorical depiction of the revolting peasants as animals in the vision in Book I, Davis emphasizes how "the poem reframes its invective as self-scrutiny" (80). Wisdom, exercising a role similar to that of Conscience in PP C XXI, "alerts the narrator to the call to redemption and does achieve his contrition, which is signaled by his kneeling. This call forces two related recognitions on the part of the narrator: first, that the revolt and storm are divine instruments and, second, that the target of God's displeasure is the narrator himself, who, despite having fled the terrors of revolt, has internalized and carries it within: he is the revolt. . . . In recognition of his own sinfulness, Gower's narrator evacuates the cavities of his heart. This thorough cardiac examination enables him to hear, on or over the wind, the divine voice to which Wisdom has already alerted him. Once the storm has subsided, . . . the narrator kneels in thanks . . . . The narrator's contrition and prayers, which culminate in this act of kneeling, are the turning point around which the whole poem pivots. . . . His own crying to God and God's answering call produce an antiphonal that emerges from, rather than being antithetical to, the tumult of other calls, which together constitute the revolt" (79-81). Elsewhere, Davis describes both the narrator's loss of his own voice and Gower's well-known use of the words of other poets as acts of "kenosis," in imitation of Christ's setting aside of his divinity upon assuming human form, as described by Paul in Philippians 2:5-11 (85-88). She concludes by setting side by side the ending of VC and the close of Alain de Lille's "Anticlaudianus" (91-97), illustrating "a commitment [in Gower's, Langland's, and Chaucer's work] . . . to imagine--although perpetually defer--the spiritual recoverability of the imperfect life" (97). This subtle and wide-ranging essay deserves to be read in full. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.2]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 257-79. Author/Editor Author/Editor Davis, Isabel Published Davis, Isabel. "Calling: Langland, Gower, and Chaucer on Saint Paul." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 34 (2012), pp. 53-97. ISSN 0190-2407 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 Calling: Langland, Gower, and Chaucer on Saint Paul. 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 Review Bertolet describes a London fully embracing a newly mercantile present, which brings with it "all the temptations a rich market can provide." Drawing upon passages from the MO principally, the CA secondarily, and the VC occasionally, he demonstrates that for Gower as for Chaucer and Hoccleve, "the principal tensions in London focused on commerce--how it worked, who controlled it, how it was organized, and who was excluded from it" (both quotes from the foreword). Although the book is relatively short--150 pages, excluding bibliography and index--Bertolet covers a surprising amount of ground. Despite the relative narrowness of his title, his subject is in reality the sweep of London life, for in the city as portrayed here all were engaged in buying and selling, from the nobility to the street beggars to the rituals and practices of the church. To supplement his close reading of textual passages Bertolet produces copious evidence from cases entered into the London Letter-Books and the Plea and Memoranda Rolls. The reality of these vignettes helps shore up his larger, rather ambitious theoretical framework for which he relies primarily on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Michel de Certeau and the recent economic studies of Christopher Dyer, Martha C. Howell and Lianna Farber. Ultimately this is a book less about literature qua literature than it is an excursion into psycho-social theory by way of poetic texts and economic archaeology. As such, it is hardly surprising to find Bertolet invoking Fernand Braudel or John Maynard Keynes--though altogether refreshing in these jargon-ridden days to discover Max Weber and Thorstein Veblen judiciously and thoughtfully employed alongside. The value of Bertolet's work for Gower studies lies in the particularity of his angle; it is likely to be a book much mined by others. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society JGN 32.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E Published Bertolet, Craig E. "Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and the Commercial Practices of Late Fourteenth-Century London." Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2013 ISBN 9781409448426 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and the Commercial Practices of Late Fourteenth-Century London Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Ashgate, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 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 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 Review Urban begins by citing the rather horrific conclusion to Gower's version of the tale of Virginia alongside the passage in the Man of Law's Prologue (CT II.77-89) that has long been understood as a dig at Gower to demonstrate "Gower's marked preference, especially when compared to his contemporary Chaucer, for ever so slightly uncomfortable images and events and then pushing them to quite an extreme level of shocking detail, if not quite literally over the edge of normally acceptable behavior. Alongside Virginius, we have infanticide, incest, duplicity and other kinds of cruelty. . . .Gower's Confessio . . . is not for the squeamish" as the poet "situates himself on the edge between morality and 'unkynde abhominaciouns'" (157-58). In fact, Urban argues, "Gower uses all levels of his texts, from content to multi-linguality and manuscript layout, for his location of his poetry on the edge between acceptable and unacceptable behavior" (158). In the VC, the "edge" is actually an "edgy space" or "chasm" between "past and present, good and wrong, righteous and sinful" (159). The CA itself, in its unstable juxtaposition of two different languages, "is often confusingly situated on the edge between Latin and English, as well as between competing moral messages" (160); and in the passage at the beginning of Book 1 in which he defines his project, "Gower is situating his book quite specifically on the edge between lust and lore, and as he proceeds with the text, it soon becomes apparent that this is also an edge between good and bad, virtue and evil" (164). Urban's final two examples come from Gower's tales of the "Trojan Horse" and "Florent." The latter, in his reading, like the much more sophisticated "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," works "to highlight the cracks and fissures on the edges of the chivalric code. It is impossible for either Gawain or Florent to perfectly embody the code of chivalry, but their reactions to the pressures of specific situations display the kind of flexibility and creativity that Gower's texts in particular urge upon their readers" (168). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Urban, Malte Published Urban, Malte. "Cracks and Fissures: Gower's Poetics on the Edge." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 155-70. ISSN 0210-9689 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cracks and Fissures: Gower's Poetics on the Edge 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 Review Farber presents a defense of "a method of reading that explicitly guides the reader towards the ethical and didactic content of the text" (144), as opposed to "allegorical reading," which in the interpretation of the "Confessio Amantis" has (in the examples she cites, most from the 1970s and none later than 1992) placed more emphasis on what is not present in Gower's text at the expense of what is, and has been used to diminish or undermine Genius' authority as moral instructor. Following Minnis and others, she examines the background for the practice of "ethical reading" in the "accessus ad auctores," demonstrating that "a long tradition of allegorical interpretations [of a particular text] . . . does not rule out the possibility of using the text for other purposes" (146). Such purposes are evident, she maintains, in Gower's tales of "Phebus and Daphne" and "Ceyx and Alceone." In each, she notes, "the moral Genius provides is not a normative prescription. He is not giving Amans strict rules to follow, but rather, offering him exemplary scenarios that highlight specific ethical issues. If Amans is going to find relief from his love, he must learn to read his own situation in terms of its broader ethical implications" (148). In that way, the poem enacts the "very process of reading" that Gower expects from his reader as well (151). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Farber, Annika Published Farber, Annika. "Genius and the Practice of Ethical Reading." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 137-53. ISSN 0210-9689 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genius and the Practice of Ethical Reading 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 Review Burke focuses on the way in which the two nearly precisely contemporary poets adopted, and adapted, the role of prophet, the one who "speaks truth to power," from biblical tradition, Gower in his VC and CA, Christine in her "Lamentacion sur lex maux de la France," which was written during a time when Christine feared that on-going disputes between the factions of Armagnac and Orléans might lead to civil war. Burke explains how each poet made a strategic selection of tropes associated with the "vox clamantis," as she depicts two writers "who struggled to engage with the moral and political challenges of their troubled situation. Clearly, neither saw any contradiction between their role as poets crafting works of pleasure and instruction, and as prophets calling on the powerful to repent and mend their ways, for the salvation of all their people. Indeed, they may have perceived the two roles as practically one and the same" (130-31). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 246-57. Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke, Linda Barney Published Burke, Linda Barney. "'The Voice of One Crying': John Gower, Christine de Pizan, and the Tradition of Elijah the Prophet." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 117-35. ISSN 0210-9689 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Voice of One Crying': John Gower, Christine de Pizan, and the Tradition of Elijah the Prophet 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 Review Peebles maintains that while he may simply have been following his source, Gower's choice to set his "Tale of the Three Questions" in Spain establishes a direct connection to issues arising out of debates concerning England's engagement with Spain during the late 1380s, when she presumes the story to have been written. Much of the essay is concerned with England's relation with Spain, beginning with Edward I's marriage to the sister of Alfonso X in 1254. More immediately relevant is John of Gaunt's involvement with the Spanish succession, which, Peebles points out, "began and ended with marriages" (106). The costs and even the necessity of England's Iberian engagement was the subject of repeated and fractious parliamentary debate, which Gower also addresses through the tale, offering a model less for the king than for those who would advise him. "The pointed advice that the tale offers is that members of a court should avoid direct challenge or pacifying acquiescence in favor of calming voices expressing an insistent logic that the king can accept. . . . Gower is using the Spanish setting of the tale to gain leverage for advisors not, perhaps, possessing great innate power [in their relationship with the king]. . . . He imagines and communicates a situation in which the strategy works, and that imaginative power offers a way to reframe the Spanish political situation and domestic politics in a way that suggests a more acceptable set of choices: intermarriage, alliance, and realignment instead of the absolutism of either conquest or avoidance. Thus, the Spanish setting of the 'Tale of the Three Questions' both reframes the political argument over Lancastrian Castilian engagements and models a role for counsel in domestic concerns" (110). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peebles, Katie Published Peebles, Katie. "Arguing from Foreign Grounds: John Gower's Leveraging of Spain in English Politics." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 97-113. ISSN 0210-9689 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 Arguing from Foreign Grounds: John Gower's Leveraging of Spain in English Politics 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 Review Schieberle finds the definition of Gower's ethical project in the "Confessio" in the passages in the Prologue that link political stability to the proper pursuit of love and in the lines that proclaim that "That we fortune clepe so / Out of man himself it groweth" (Prol. 548-49). Contrary to the notion that both Love and Fortune exercise their power uncontrollably and arbitrarily (as depicted in their "wheels"), Gower asserts man's power to control both, Schieberle argues, through the exercise of virtue in both the amatory and the political realms. For illustration, she cites the tales in Book I in which virtuous conduct is rewarded and vice is punished (as one would expect to find in a moral exemplum), even in the case of love. Schieberle traces this "anti-Boethian" view to Machaut, who also demonstrates, particularly in the "Remede de Fortune," the benefits that derive to those who practice virtue. (Others have argued that Machaut's views are quite consistent with Boethius', since he depicts Hope, like the practice of virtue, as constituting in itself a sufficient reward.) [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schieberle, Misty Published Schieberle, Misty. "Controlling the Uncontrollable: Love and Fortune in Book I of the 'Confessio Amantis'." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 81-96. ISSN 0210-9689 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 Controlling the Uncontrollable: Love and Fortune in Book I of the 'Confessio Amantis' 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 Review Mandel takes no interest in which came first, but in contrasting the ways in which conflicts are presented and resolved in the two poems, he says a great deal about the broader differences between the two poets. In the Wife's version, in contrast to her Prologue, in which somebody must win and might makes right, interpersonal conflicts "are resolved by appeal to authority-but that authority is constantly undermined, debated, and circumvented by negotiation" (72); and in the final scene, the knight and his new wife "have arrived at mutual common gain, at equal happiness, through a negotiation in which each gave up something--sovereignty, authority, the power to choose--to get something" (76). In "The Tale of Florent," on the other hand, the appeal to authority is absolute and there is no negotiation. All of the conflict takes place within Florent himself as he weighs his choices. At the end, "the hag's transformation to a naked eighteen-year old is completely gratuitous, the implicit reward of the true and honest man guided by principle who honors his pledges" (77). "'The Tale of Florent' reveals Gower as a poet who defines character in terms of an individual's thinking and commitment to the principles which ultimately define 'the good' and direct his behavior accordingly. Gower's is a moral tale designed to instruct. The 'Wife of Bath's Tale' reveals Chaucer as a poet who reveals character in terms of discussion, negotiation, compromise--the contingencies of business rather than the demands of absolutes. Chaucer's is a dramatic tale designed to entertain" (69-70). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mandel, Jerome Published Mandel, Jerome. "Conflict Resolution in the 'Wife of Bath's Tale' and in Gower's 'Tale of Florent'." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 69-79. ISSN 0210-9689 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 Conflict Resolution in the 'Wife of Bath's Tale' and in Gower's 'Tale of Florent' 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 Review McGerr introduces a new possible model for the discussion of kingship in Book 7 of the CA. The "Nova Statuta Angliae" ("New Statutes of England") is a compilation based on the Rolls of Parliament beginning with Edward III's first Parliament in 1327. It opens with an account of the deposition of Edward II meant to justify his removal from the throne that emphasizes his violation of the terms of his coronation oath in his failure to uphold the laws protecting the clergy, the nobility, and the commons. This document circulated widely, McGerr notes, among the same audience that might have read the CA (including a copy owned by King Richard himself), and Gower "was certainly familiar" with the text (54). Gower would have found in the account of Edward II's deposition an exemplum on bad kingship of the sort that he himself constructs. He would also have found a model for the emphasis upon the king's duty to uphold the law as a condition of his right to rule that runs through the discussion of kingship in Book VII, several passages of which might well have reminded his readers of Edward II's fate. And finally, McGerr suggests, Gower would have found in this section of the "Nova Statuta" a model of the type of "hybrid discourse" that he himself practices in Book VII: "Both texts interweave discourses of legal argument, romance narrative, mirrors for princes, and religious exemplum in ways that strengthen their representation of the English king's sacred obligation to uphold the laws of the land" (59). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor McGerr, Rosemarie Published McGerr, Rosemarie. "Gower's 'Confessio' and the 'Nova Statuta Angliae': Royal Lessons in English Law." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 45-65. ISSN 0210-9689 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's 'Confessio' and the 'Nova Statuta Angliae': Royal Lessons in English Law 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 Review Pérez-Fernández examines the use of language in the poem itself, in its original form and in the Portuguese and Castilian translations, as Gower's multilingual work became (somewhat ironically) monolingual as the translators either ignore or translate into their vernaculars the Latin apparatus that accompanies Gower's English text. The manuscripts in which the two translations are contained also add another type of apparatus, in the form of a detailed table of contents, constructed from the marginal summaries to the tales. Pérez-Fernández considers some of the puzzles posed by these indexes (in the Portuguese version, the table is in Spanish, though the surviving Spanish translation is based on the Portuguese), but she is most concerned with the alteration of the experience of reading the poem, as Gower's role both as learned auctoritas and as commentator is reduced with the loss of Latin and the reduction of the glosses to mere summaries, and his role as compiler is heightened, as the dialogue frame is de-emphasized and the stories themselves assume greater prominence. [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Pérez-Fernández, Tamara Published Pérez-Fernández, Tamara. "The Margins in the Iberian Manuscripts of John Gower's Confessio Amantis: Language, Authority and Readership." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 29-44. ISSN 0210-9689 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Margins in the Iberian Manuscripts of John Gower's Confessio Amantis: Language, Authority and Readership 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 Review Ma examines the different ways in which Gower and Pisan appropriate the authority of Latin in their respective vernacular works. In the passage on "Letters and Language" (as Macaulay termed it) in Genius' discourse on virtuous labor in CA 4.2633-74, Ma suggests that Gower holds up Latin writing as an exemplum to be imitated by writers in English. "Both Amans and Gower's vernacular readers stand to benefit from acquiring specific skills that Gower emphasizes in his representation of Latin's authority, and both need to transfer the benefits of studying Latin to their respective conditions, which are perceived as having inherent shortcomings that need to be 'confessed' in order to be redressed" (21). Gower adopts this process in his own writing, as he invokes the aid of Carmente (cited as the inventor of "the ferste letters of Latin" in IV.2637) in the Latin epigram that stands at the head of his Prologue. "Carmente symbolizes the transfer of learning from Latin into English, which Gower sees his Confessio as facilitating" (22). But while Gower theorizes the relation between Latinity and the vernacular, Christine enacts it palpably in the construction of her "Épître Othéa," with its fictional goddess figure and the divisions among texte, glose, and allégorie, as she "directly demonstrates the Latinate practices that further the literary capacities of the vernacular" (26). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ma, Ruen-chuan Published Ma, Ruen-chuan. "Vernacular Accessus: Text and Gloss in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' and Christine de Pisan's 'Épître Othéa'." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 17-28. ISSN 0210-9689 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Vernacular Accessus: Text and Gloss in Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' and Christine de Pisan's 'Épître Othéa' 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 Review Fisher's influential study reviews Gower's critical reputation (chapter 1), the Life Records (chapter 2), the chronology and historical context of his poetic works (chapter 3), his major themes (chapter 4), and his relationship with Chaucer (chapter 5). While Gower wrote complaint literature rather than satire (Chaucer's preferred mode), and has thus gone out of fashion, what we can appreciate in Gower is "his absolute integrity, his coherent grasp of the values and ideals of his day, and his fearless expression of the moral judgments growing out of these ideals" (v). Chapter 1 reviews the state of criticism, from the initial positive reception of Gower's work to the later accusation that Gower was a political opportunist. The shift began at the end of the 17th century, and since then literary taste has also preferred satire to the "generalized moralistic mode of medieval complaint" (3). Before then Gower was often seen as an older mentor figure for Chaucer, especially since Venus's words to Chaucer at the end of the CA were for a long time misread as Gower's own words. Fisher also reviews the manuscript tradition as well as important early editions (e.g., Caxton, Berthelette). For Fisher, more recent criticism is starting to correct many earlier mistakes (e.g., the association of Gower the poet with the Stittenham Gowers, or the belief that the collar on Gower's tomb showed that Thomas of Woodstock was Gower's patron). Gower did not suddenly change his allegiance, his social criticism is coherent, the idea of a quarrel with Chaucer is overblown, and Gower's influence on Chaucer is significant (35-36). Chapter 2 adds to what is known about Gower's life. Harris Nicolas had shown that Gower was related to Sir Robert Gower of Kent, rather than to the Stittenham Gowers, but Fisher believes that there may still be a different Yorkshire connection. Sir Robert Gower was in the service of David de Strabolgi, Earl of Athol. In the 1320's and early 1330's Sir Robert would have fought in Scotland. Robert Gower's wife was Margaret, daughter of Sir Philip de Moubray, and the Moubrays provide the most direct link between Robert Gower and the Langbargh Gowers of Yorkshire, who had a similar coat of arms. After David de Strabolgi died, his wife Katherine moved south to Kent to the Brabourn manor. Robert Gower must have moved too as part of her entourage. Gower the poet may have been "a precocious (or orphaned, or favorite) nephew (or cousin, or conceivably even much younger brother)" [who came along for] the advantage of a genteel education" (46). Fisher shows that Gower the poet's property transactions tie him closely to the Kent Gowers (especially Robert Gower's daughter Joan). Fisher also mentions that Gower's reputation may suffer from his participation in the "Septvauns affair," but Fisher exonerates Gower on the basis that "the other individuals involved in the sequence of events were eminently respectable" (54). Other evidence suggests that Gower was a civil servant, possibly a lawyer, before retiring to St. Mary Overeys. Gower's relationships (e.g., with Strode, Usk, Chaucer, Hoccleve) "cluster about the Inns of Court, Chancery, and Guildhall, reaching out into the Staple and the Custom House" (63). Chapter 3, on Gower's literary career, suggests that Gower started out writing amorous verses (the CB). Fisher speculates that Gower was a member of a literary organization called a "Pui" (78). With the MO, Gower moved on from youthful idealism. The MO seems to have been composed for personal edification, and it is only at the end (when Gower foresees the Peasants' Revolt) that Gower starts to see himself as a social reformer. Fisher believes that Gower had access to a scriptorium at St. Mary's, and so was able to focus on producing presentation MSS for important figures. Fisher discerns three versions of the VC, and agrees with Macaulay that when the CrT was later added the two texts became "a unified commentary on the tragic course of Richard's rule from 1381 to 1400, with a prologue (the Visio), a midpoint (the Epistle), and an epilogue (the Cronica)" (114). The CA manuscripts are the hardest to categorize, and Fisher struggles to explain why so many first recension MSS were copied after Richard's deposition (116). Fisher also suggests that in the second recension Gower excised the praise of Richard at the end of the poem because Gower was unhappy about Richard's conflict with the city of London in 1392. Since Chaucer was still in the king's employ at that time Gower also removed the allusion to Chaucer to protect him. However, Fisher admits that this theory is speculative since the second recension is dated to 1391 at the latest. The chapter ends with a discussion of the minor Latin poems as well as In Praise of Peace. Chapter 4 covers Gower's major themes, and Fisher notes that the "most striking characteristic of Gower's literary production is its single-mindedness" (135). Gower often picks up where he left off, as when the VC ends with the dream of Nebuchadnezzar and the CA starts with the same image. The three major subjects that Gower invariably returns to are individual virtue, legal justice, and the administrative responsibility of the king. This threefold argument is indebted to four different areas of influence: the penitential tradition, the popular sermon, belletristic poetry, and the political doctrine of medieval civil and canon law. The last of these shows Gower's legal interests, and while Gower tends to deal in legal commonplaces, Fisher nevertheless believes that Gower had personal knowledge of the law (157). In fact, the three types of law (natural law, the law of nations, and civil law) greatly influence Gower's stories, as does the frequent narrative pattern "sin-law-love" (163). This leads Fisher to a discussion of how Gower treats the fall into sin in the MO (the allegory of Satan, Sin, and Death) and the VC (the Peasants' Revolt). The solution for sin is the common good, which must be promoted by the king, and Fisher ends the chapter by arguing (against C. S. Lewis) that the CA is primarily political in stressing these aims. Chapter 5 takes up about a third of the book, and details the possible influence Gower exerted on Chaucer. In general, "Gower was a sort of conscience to his brilliant but volatile friend, encouraging him by both precept and example to turn from visions of courtly love to social criticism" (207). For instance, in the House of Fame, the eagle is Gower, rescuing Chaucer from the sterile wasteland of courtly love. The Knight's Tale and Troilus and Criseyde are indebted to Gower's moral philosophy: Troilus and Criseyde deals with "the eventual insufficiency of temporal human love" whereas the Knight's Tale treats "the relationship between natural passion, human law, and the ruler" (220). Fisher also argues that the CA and the Legend of Good Women "stem from the same royal command" (256). In the CA, Gower was influenced by Chaucer in realizing that he might restate his moral philosophy "in terms of Empedoclean love" (250). However, when Chaucer moved away from Gower's influence (he left for Kent from 1386-89) he started experimenting increasingly with immoral stories (the fabliaux). Gower may have been scandalized, and Chaucer then wrote the Man of Law's Tale to show that he could be more didactic than Gower himself. Nevertheless, Chaucer did give up on writing fabliaux and managed to bring together the comedy of the fabliaux with the more philosophical theme of "gentilesse" in the marriage tales. It was the marriage group that became Chaucer's true "testament of love" (301) that Gower's Venus had asked him to write. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fisher, John H Published Fisher, John H. John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer. New York: New York University Press, 1964 Gower Subject Biography of Gower Influence and Later Allusion Manuscripts and Textual Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Cinkante Balades Cronica Tripertita In Praise of Peace Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Minor Latin Poetry Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower: Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available New York University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1964 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Gallacher, Patrick J. Published Gallacher, Patrick J.. "Love, The Word, and Mercury: A Reading of John Gower's Confessio Amantis." Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975. Based on the author's Ph.D. Dissertation, "The Structural Uses of the Theme of Speech in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis,'" University of Illinois, 1966; open access at http://hdl.handle.net/2142/59792 . Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Gallacher argues that the CA provides a sustained reflection on the importance of the Word (Logos, Verbum) and that Gower's amorous and confessional themes are thus grounded in a broader philosophical and theological context. Gallacher mines the mythographical tradition for allegorical commentary on such recurring motifs as the figure of Mercury, who represents eloquence among other things. His central thesis is that the CA moves Amans from amorous persuasion and lust to a broader cosmic charity which has its fulfillment in prayer and in union with the divine Word. While Gallacher practices a kind of exegetical criticism, he does acknowledge that Gower does not ignore human love or the necessity for human action and politics. In chapter 1, "The Rhetoric of the Word," Gallacher notes that our use of language involves a paradox: "there is a natural progress towards perfection in the use of words motivated by an awareness of the inexpressible" (2). This tension is found from Boethius to Kenneth Burke. Burke, for instance, describes how words are used most thoroughly when they come to describe the transcendent concept of God. An example would be the word "grace," which means both God's forgiveness and can stand for the grace of a literary style or a hostess. This movement from the temporal to the divine goes both ways: "an awareness of the inexpressible leads inevitably to the Word and … this process is reversible and synecdochic. That is, the redemptive power of the Word traverses the way down, descending easily into such cognate spiritual actions as confession and prayer, but assuming flesh even in the amorous conversation itself" (4). The rest of the chapter shows how Andreas Capellanus reflects on the courtly love motif of speechlessness; how Gower's MO shows that confession is about finding truth through words; how prayer brings us closer to the divine Word, even though God already knows our thoughts; and how the CA's theme of "division" suggests both that our multitude of words proves our disunity and reminds us that the one Word is the solution. Chapter 2 deals with the annunciation motif present in a number of stories in the CA. Gallacher argues that medieval writers acknowledged the potentially seductive overtones of the annunciation. The annunciation was also said to teach Christians to accept the Word as Mary did. In the story of Mundus and Paulina, the Egyptian god Anubis equates to Mercury in the Latin tradition. The result is a kind of subversion of the annunciation, as Mundus plays the roles of both Gabriel and God. Book 1 ends with the story of Peronelle. She mentions the incarnation through Mary as an example of humility (1.3275ff.). Her father also trusts her council (her word) and allows her to speak for him. Finally, it is significant that Peronelle holds the king to his "word": "Peronelle's invocation of the solemnly binding and magically efficacious power of the king's word clearly evokes the connotations of the Verbum" (40). The third major annunciation story is the tale of Nectanabus at the end of Book 6. Though this is a false annunciation, the outcome (the birth of Alexander) is positive. The third chapter describes how the CA chronicles "a rejection of amorous persuasion in favor of Christian prayer, but the journey to this goal is by no means narrowly moralistic" (44). Gallacher argues that Gower praises open and honest speech. For instance, while "Cheste" (contentiousness) is a vice, it can also be "a means of overcoming ironia, an excessive self-dispraisal" (53). In particular, prayer is the kind of free speech in which you can say what is really on your mind. Something similar is true for counsel in a lord-subject relationship, as we see in Book 7, where flattery is opposed to a stinging honesty. Chapter 3 covers a range of stories (some allegorically) before focusing on tales from Book 4 that deal with the power of prayer. Some (Pygmalion, Iphis) are rather erotic and others (Cephalus) don't seem to fit Amans's predicament, but the overall point is that prayer brings us closer to the Word. In chapter 4, Gallacher uses the example of Dante's Beatrice to argue for the importance of the lady's speech: "The Speech of God on the way down to the lover manifests itself in the speech of the lady. Since the lover perceives that she is somehow ineffable, that his love is correspondingly inexpressible, and that some kind of prayer must characterize his conversation with her, the lady's verbal responses in turn appropriately demonstrate reversibility, the descent of God's words to the lover" (78). The song of the Sirens is an inversion of this process, whereas women like Constance, Alcestis, and even the hag in the Tale of Florent lead their lovers away from simple desire or from detraction and to a higher truth and wisdom. Chapter 5 describes how the counsel of Genius, the confessional mode, and the amorous discourse result in a double recognition scene in Book 8. First Apollonius becomes more dependent on the will of God, both through Fortune and through the effective speech of his wife and daughter. Secondly, Amans's solipsism is "transformed, through the penitent's verbal acknowledgment guided by the confessor's counsel, into a prayer for charity which will result in spiritual, social, economic, and political justice" (143). Stories that lead up to these final recognition scenes include Perseus and Medusa, Lycurgus, Constantine and Sylvester, and the tales on flattery in Book 7. Chapter 6 has two main sections. In the first, Gallacher describes Gower's sense of cosmic unity. For instance, in Book 7 the relationships between the elements, the stars, fortune, free will, speech, and truth remind us of the power of the word and especially of prayer. The second section examines how autobiographical or confessional writing fits within this cosmic setting. On the one hand, the speech of praise culminates in prayer, whereas the negative response is complaint. The CA, compared to Gower's other works, shows a softening of complaint. Gower uses the discussion of Avarice in Book 5 to show that "complaint, as a form of avarice, is unnatural. Opposed to this is an attitude of gratefulness to the generosity of nature" (152). The epilogue sums up the many faces of Mercury in the poem and in the tradition. Gallacher also returns to the importance of the "word" and ends with a reflection on formalist criticism's interpretation of poetic words. The words of a poem create internal unity in the poem. Together they form meaning. Northrop Frye refers to the poetic word as a "connector" – each word tends to link to all the other words and to a symbolic center. In the same way all works of literature refer to a kind of symbolic center. This formalist criticism is ultimately dependent on the theology of the Word that goes back to the Middle Ages and to writers like Gower. [CvD] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Love, The Word, and Mercury: A Reading of John Gower's Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of New Mexico Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, 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 Anonymous, Published Anonymous,. "John Gower and his Works." The British Quarterly Review 27.53 (1858), pp. 3-36. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Cinkante Balades Cronica Tripertita Review The anonymous author reviews Gower's works, life, and reputation, likely in response to the publication of Pauli's CA in 1857. After a description of Gower's tomb, the author suggests that Gower should be remembered mostly for his contribution to the rise of the English vernacular (4). A brief history of the decline of Gower's reputation follows, as well as a synopsis of Gower's life that borrows heavily from Sir Harris Nicolas. The author feels that Gower likely was not a lawyer, though he could have met Chaucer as a student at the Inner Temple. Gower was likely a "gay and courtly esquire" (6) in the reign of Edward III. Gower may also have seen the battlefield in France or at least jousted, given "the lofty views he entertained of the knightly character" (6). Gower's income from multiple manors gave him independent standing, although he was part of Richard II's court and likely took up service in the house of Henry of Lancaster. Gower's supposed shift in allegiance from Richard to Henry can be explained quite simply: "the dedication [of the CA] proves that Gower offered his homage to Henry of Lancaster while he was only Earl of Derby, and when the chance of his becoming King was scarcely within the bounds of possibility" (9). If there was one thing that may have been distasteful to Richard, it was Gower's sharp criticisms of the Lollards, since many of Richard's nearest relations favoured Wyclif's ideas (10). Chaucer may have been annoyed that Gower shared Lancastrian patronage, and perhaps this explains the rift in their friendship (11). After a brief discussion of Gower's will, the author gives summaries of Gower's major works. Lyrical works like the CB are preferred over the satire of the VC and once more the author notes Gower's contribution to the vernacular in the CA. Despite Gower's accomplishments, though, he is rated well below Chaucer and Langland (36). [CvD] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower and his Works. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1858 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 Kelly's book takes the middle road between the doctrine of courtly love as formulated by critics like Gaston Paris and C. S. Lewis and the sharp critique of such a tradition by exegetical critics like D. W. Robertson, Jr. Kelly disputes the idea that courtly love had to be adulterous and summarizes the medieval literary ethos as follows: "preference for marriage, but priority to love" (34-35). The book is rooted in an analysis of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, but has a chapter on John Gower as well as important sections on the Ovidian tradition, clandestine marriage, and canon law. Kelly argues that Gower and Chaucer both tie love and marriage to "trouthe" or loyalty. Yet, while Gower praises marriage, he does not always condemn adultery. The reason "lies in the nature of the exemplary technique … [as] an exemplum is normally told to illustrate one lesson alone, without much worry about whether it contradicts earlier or subsequent lessons" (131). Some characters also appear in multiple stories, which creates further inconsistencies. But Gower did not feel it necessary to iron out all the problems, since he clearly sets out his views on marriage elsewhere in the poem (135). For instance, at CA 7.5372-5383, Gower describes how reason is to modify nature and its instincts, although reason does not exclude pleasure. This does not resolve all the difficulties in stories such as those of Iphis or Canace, but Kelly feels that Gower generally believes that reason has to put a limit to nature. In discussing the treatment of incest in CA 8, Kelly returns to the question whether nature is not itself reasonable. His answer keeps nature and reason separate: "Natural law usually includes the moral law, but Gower makes it clear that for him, at least at times, it does not. Rather, natural law is the same law that God has given to men and animals alike; and positive law in this context refers to the law of reason that God has given only to men" (143-44). Nevertheless, nature does not merely consist of compulsive desire, and Kelly dismisses Genius's comments about the "absolute irresistibility of nature" in the story of Canace: "But the conclusion that we should draw from this is simply that Gower has once again let his confessor run away with himself; by overenforcing one lesson [against wrath] he damages another" (144). Kelly discusses at some length why the end of Book 8 seems to turn away from love. Certainly, the sudden turn away from love is not atypical for medieval narratives: "particularly at the end of treatises of spiritual instruction . . . one is to be left looking at the shortest way to heaven" (159). This focus on the foolishness of love may also explain why Gower omitted in later copies of the poem Venus's request to Chaucer to make his testament of love. Despite the concluding turn to charity as the better love, "We must not, however, allow this concluding description to make us forget that the treatise also marks out a via media of honest love, 'That alle lovers myhten wite / How ate laste it shal be sene / Of love what thei wolden mene' [8.2000-2002]" (160). Kelly also sees this via media in other parts of the CA, such as the story of Sara and Tobias (275-80). Similarly, Ballade 4 of the Traitie presents a good example of how the theoretical view of marriage (that its purpose is for companionship, children and the avoidance of lechery – according to MO 17197ff.) runs counter to more instinctive attitudes, namely that marriage is based on love, loyalty, beauty, and virtue. In this Ballade, the Latin rubric speaks of procreation, but the ballade speaks of the second set of motives (295-97). Marriage and love were thus seen as compatible in the Middle Ages, and Kelly is skeptical about whether the moralists' stern views against love where believed by the rest of the population. Instead we often see "an ideal of marriage as at once passionate and virtuous, in which both the sexual and the spiritual delights of love are unashamedly sought and enjoyed. That such an ideal could coexist with moralistic inhibitions is evident from the writings of both Chaucer and Gower" (334). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kelly, Henry Ansgar Published Kelly, Henry Ansgar. "Love and Marriage in the Age of Chaucer." Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Love and Marriage in the Age of Chaucer Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cornell University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Carlson presents his argument succinctly in the Introduction: "… to establish that poetry was written in fourteenth-century England by sponsorship of the monarchic state, in prosecution of state-official purposes, and that the … official verse-production culminated in the late writings of … John Gower" (1). The book is divided into two main sections: "Fourteenth-Century Panegyric Verse and Official Writing" and "Gower's State-Official Late Poetry." The term "propaganda" used in the title is not to be understood in its modern sense of a presentation designed to foster a state-proposed view of events or persons, likely a misrepresentation, but simply as a propagation of an official view which may or may not support it, more in the sense of classical panegyric. The reader is cautioned not to conclude that the fourteenth-century English state had anything like the unity of organization and purpose that would allow it to function in concerted support of the stated goals of monarchs and ministers in the manner we would today take for granted, even though it had centralized institutions and leaders at various levels who could enforce their conclusions. Chapter One, "Official Verse: The Sources and Problems of Evidence," begins and ends with poets associated with the defeat of Edward II's forces by the Scots at Bannockburn in 1314. Edward, expecting to win a great victory, took with him the poet Robert Baston to record and extol his accomplishments. Awkwardly, Baston was taken prisoner in the rout and required to win his release by celebrating the Scottish victory. Scots poets also celebrate the victory and at least one English author, Laurence Minot, records a generation later the avenging of the defeat. The case of Baston is intended to establish a "baseline of belief current amongst the English from early in the fourteenth century: this is what poets were, or were for, in some measure or other … promiscuous tools … to be used for propaganda production on behalf of commissioning agencies within the secular state" (6). No direct evidence of such commissioning survives prior to the mid-fifteenth century but Carlson discusses possible indirect indicators in a selection of poems, poets, and patrons, concluding that the indirect evidence is inconclusive. Chapter Two, "The State Propaganda," discusses pamphlets, newsletters (i.e. letters containing contemporary news) and official documents produced and circulated to propagate the state's achievements and "used by poets as matter for transmutation into metrical propaganda" (26). Rarely do such sources survive and they typically must be inferred from their traces, in which evidence of dependence is ephemeral. Where, however, such dependence can be established, we must conclude that the product, typically official Latin verse, can be characterized as state-sponsored. Carlson illustrates how the "only contemporary example of the pamphlet literature to survive directly in evidence, more or less complete, as it originally was, and unaltered" (32), an instance by one Thomas Favent supporting the Appellants in the coup of 1387, made use of state-documents and official records. He shows as well the presence of official documents and newsletters in Robert Avesbury's "Mirabilia gesta" and official documents and pamphlets in Henry Knighton's "Chronicle." All three authors had access to and employed state-sponsored versions of events whatever use they ultimately made of their sources and whether or not they were sponsored in their writings. Chapter Three concerns itself with "Occasions of State and Propagandistic Verse in Mid-Century," investigating such poetry written upon occasions of special significance in the reign of Edward III as epitaphs upon his claim to the French throne, heroic celebrations of his naval victory at Sluys, lamentations upon the death of his eldest son, and eulogies composed at his own passing. In all instances, "one suspects but may not confirm" (67) some sort of linkage between state and poet. Two poems which do evidence poets' "dependence on official sources, and so possibly of commissioning" (68) come in for special treatment in subsequent chapters. Walter Peterborough's "Victoria belli in Hispania," about the battle of Nájera in 1367, is the subject of Carlson's Chapter Four, and Richard Maidstone's "Concordia," written in 1392 to celebrate the reconciliation of Richard II with the city of London, is discussed in Chapter Five. These two poems "set precedent for what Gower was to take on in 1400 [in the CrT], making what he was to do not surprising or innovative, but perhaps only better and more effective, with the way having been prepared in advance by these near-contemporary local poets" (68). The evidence for the use of state-documents and the expectation of sponsorship is complex and resists easy summation. The reader will simply have to work through it in detail. Chapter Six, "Official Writing at the Lancastrian Advent," details official Henrician maneuverings and propaganda upon the occasion of the new king's usurpation of his cousin's throne in 1399, most especially the records of the Westminster Committee of Advisors that recommended various strategies to Bolingbroke as he schemed to attain the throne, and the so-called "Record and Process," a document purporting to be the official account of the parliamentary proceedings connected with Richard's deposition and Henry's installation that became a widely-circulated justification of events and a source book for subsequent apologists for the new king. Chapter Seven presents "English Poetry in Late Summer 1399," and suggests that there exists "some evidence to the effect that poets may have been … employed" as spokespersons "in propagating state-views of the Lancastrian advent," specifically five "contemporary local poems [one of them the CrT], all sharing the same curious array of properties" (121), specifically a "shared disposition of the same deliberately veiled manner of speaking, in riddling and opaque allegories of a specialized type" (135) and "their coincident concentration on the same group of minor Ricardian place-holders" [Scrope, Bussy, Green, and Bagot] (136) whose dispositions are presented as just accession to the "clamor populi" even if the people, in Carlson's view, are but the five poets themselves. "Rather than popular effusions … the contemporary English poems on the events of July and August [1399] are, on balance, more likely to be evidence again of the Lancastrian regime's labour of public self-fashioning and disposition to manipulate the verbal record" (152). Chapter Eight, "The 'Cronica Tripertita' and its Official Source," is the keystone in Carlson's argument for the presence of Lancastrian propaganda in late fourteenth-century Anglo-Latin poetry, concluding upon a study of correspondences in overall structure as well as "particular structures of selection, arrangement, emphasis, and interpretation" between the "Record and Process" and the Cronica Tripertita that "whenever possible, as much as possible, Gower used the 1399 parliamentary record" (169), although eventually forced to other sources simply because the "Record and Process" "gives out" on him. Finally, Carlson judges, the poem "is a technically complex reassembly, built out of a difficult, disorderly prose source, supplemented from disparate other materials. For the substance of events that the poem treats, Gower can be shown to have drawn from time to time on half a dozen sources and kinds of sources: on other parts of the public records, of the parliaments of October 1399 … and of 1388 … on talk in circulation … on his own personal connections among the grand … and, finally, on his own (considerable, professional) capacity to invent, especially when bound to tell of events he could know little about, remote from his base in London …" (196). Mostly, however, employing a copy of the "Records and Process," Gower, "like Walter Peterborough or Richard Maidstone … rendered the state verse service" (196). Chapter Nine, "Gower after the Revolution," presents the evidence in state papers and his own words of Gower's acknowledgement of his status as a client of Henry, although "nothing is directly in the evidence to the effect that Gower took the payment to write just what poetry he did deliver up, or that the payment from Henry was conditioned with an express understanding to the same effect on the royal part." In brief, "Henry took the throne, Gower entered the new king's pay, and his poetic apology for his usurpation appeared, along with some other, briefer poems" (203). Moreover, "Gower's poems written after the revolution--the epigrammata as well as 'In Praise of Peace'--served Henry, 'ad laudem serenissimi'" (209). Yet no sooner had the Lancastrian taken the throne than disturbing indicators of his own high-handed ruling style began to appear and it is probable that, "in the end, the same Gower who had made himself an official Lancastrian client-mouthpiece, Henry's poet like no other, when faced afterwards with an again altering social-political circumstance, remained still capable of speaking against the same authority's improprieties, with the 'vox clamantis in deserto'" (226). Carlson's book is an important contribution to the study of Anglo-Latin verse and Lancastrian historiography. His sensitive analysis of records and verse shows how, although we are inevitably dependent in various ways upon what they say, the records and documents are difficult to interpret because we know so little about them and their authors, who are typically in service to authority in some way albeit indistinctly and/or covertly. Gower offers the clearest instance of the relationship between poets and patrons in the fourteenth century, especially because his views of the two monarchs who occupied him most continually evolved. He moved from one extreme to another about Richard and proved critical of Henry even after going on the record in his support. Yet there is no reason to conclude that he adopted his positions for the sake of the support he received or hoped to receive. As far as anybody can tell, his positions are the result of his convictions even though at life's end he was in a favored status and receiving state subsidies. Both Richard and Henry were issue of an arrogant and willful ruling caste devoted to its own interests and authors of many questionable acts and decisions. As a devout and learned man committed to an ongoing analysis of English society, yet closely associated with and at various times both sympathetic to and critical of the two rulers about whom he writes, Gower might likely, as Carlson recognizes, have drawn the same conclusions about the pair whether his interpretations were solicited and supported or not. [Robert J. Mendl. Copyright JGN 31.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R Published Carlson, David R. "John Gower: Poetry and Propaganda in Fourteenth-Century England." Cambridge: Brewer, 2012 ISBN 9781843843153 Gower Subject Biography of Gower Cronica Tripertita In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower: Poetry and Propaganda in Fourteenth-Century England. 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 2012 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "The CA opens with its author's pledge to: "wryte of newe som matiere essampled of these olde wyse." Expressing a commonplace among writers of vernacular literature in late medieval England, John Gower describes authorial activity as the process of translating and assimilating pre-existing narratives. This dissertation argues that such conceptualizations of authorship were embraced by illuminators of vernacular literature in their burgeoning notion of invention before the ascendance of print: as translation and compilation provided a model of creativity founded on the alteration of models, illuminators located an ideal congenial to both the restrictions and freedoms of their own profession. The centerpiece of the study is Pierpont Morgan MS M. 126, a manuscript of the CA produced c. 1472 and made for Edward IV and his Queen Consort, Elizabeth Woodville. Although it has been acclaimed as one of the most impressive extant manuscripts of Middle English literature, it has never been the subject of a major study. The aim of the dissertation is to recognize and restore to the illustrator the power of his position between the conception of a text and the consumption of a book. Part One focuses on the illustrator's interactions with the textual voices of the CA, demonstrating how the images in nineteen manuscripts of the poem, including the Morgan CA, address the identity of the author of the poem (Chapter One); and how miniatures in the Morgan CA reinterpret its Ovidian narratives (Chapter Two). Part Two shifts attention to the illustrator's confrontation with his patrons. Although their impact on the production of this manuscript appears to have been minimal, I observe how, as patrons they furnished a visual context for the Morgan CA from within their own library of illustrated historical manuscripts (Chapter Three) and books on science (Chapter Four). Produced just before Caxton printed his first book in Westminster in 1476 and standing at the threshold of standardization, this manuscript offers a complex glimpse into the variance that epitomized creative activity in illustrated vernacular manuscripts." [JGN 33.2 and 34.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Drimmer, Sonja Published Drimmer, Sonja. "The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination: John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' (Pierpont Morgan MS M.126." PhD thesis, Columbia University, 2011. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination: John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' (Pierpont Morgan MS M.126. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower's choice to write in English, McCabe argues, is reflective of the poem's ambitious new moral project, to define a lay spirituality, accessible to a vernacular audience, free of clergial mediation, and focused on the immanence and accessibility of grace. McCabe's thesis touches on virtually every important issue in the recent criticism of the CA, and he can be found both drawing from and also drawing careful distinction from such scholars as Middleton, Simpson, Scanlon, Copeland, Wetherbee, and Mitchell, among several others. His argument is both wide-ranging and very closely grounded in the text, and it offers a novel view of what might be considered some of the most familiar aspects of the poem. Chapter one, on "Gower's Ovidian Voice in English," makes two main claims. First, the separate but parallel ways in which both the Prologue and the main body of the poem engage with the "Metamorphoses" helps establish the link between the larger concerns for moral and social reform of the former and the more personal amatory themes of the latter; and second (here following Wetherbee), Ovid provided an authoritative source that could be confronted directly, without mediation. In defense of the first claim, he points to the common emphasis on mutability and change (e.g. in the example of Nebuchadnezzar) and with political and psychological "division." To support its link to the "Metamorphoses," he traces the Prologue's depiction of the fallen world to the description of primal chaos with which Ovid's poem begins. He also draws an interesting link between the discontinuous argument in the Prologue and the "discontinuities and ruptures" that mark Genius' description of love. In support of his second claim, he draws a persuasive contrast between the CA and earlier medieval moralized retellings of Ovid, which substitute the glossator's authority for the poet's. Ovid speaks to us directly in the CA, McCabe asserts, and especially in the tales of metamorphosis, leaves the reader with implications that cannot be constrained even by Genius' moralization. Chapters two and three look more closely at the implications of Gower's choice to write in English. In chapter two, "English Writing and Lay Theology," McCabe detects no attempt on Gower's part to elevate the vernacular or to displace the authority of Latin. The form of the poem, he points out, preserves the hierarchy of languages, with Latin maintaining its position at the top. Gower chooses English as "an alternative medium," not only appropriate to the subject matter but also, both because of its marginal status and because of the much broader implicit audience, "likely to achieve quite different results" (89). One difference can be seen in the more reserved claims Gower makes in the opening of the CA about the reliability of the medium and the effectiveness of books, compared, for instance, to passages in VC. A more revealing difference lies in his treatment of theological subjects in the CA, which in contrast to both of Gower's earlier long poems are less abstract, less concerned with the subtleties of doctrine, and more indebted to the liturgy than to academic or clerical discourse, emphasizing "good works and due observance of traditional church practices, . . . the core of lay religious experience" (95). In chapter three, "At the Limits of Clerical Discourse," he extends the argument to embrace the other expository sections of the poem, notably Book VII and the discussion of the history of the sciences in Book IV, in both of which he finds a similar tentativeness, an awareness of their "belatedness" with regard to Latin, a similar refusal to draw upon clerical discourse, either to replace it or to claim its authority, and a similar accommodation to his vernacular audience. But far from being forced by circumstance, McCabe insists, Gower embraces his role as "burel clerk" (which he glosses as "lay," 68) and betrays his "enthusiasm for the intimate power available in the mother tongue" (101). In all three long poems, Gower appeals to the "vox populi" and he criticizes the clergy, and he "shows himself equally eager in all three poems to revitalize Christian doctrine of self and society" (116) by "finding out alternatives to clerical learning" (121). McCabe finds the key to Gower's method in the CA in the two most explicitly theological tales in Books I and II (which also provide their conclusions), "The Three Questions" and "Constantine and Sylvester." The first is marked by the inversion of weak and strong and by the exaltation of Humility, following the example of Christ, the paradox of whose incarnation (the doctrine of "kenosis") was an important theme in other fourteenth-century vernacular religious texts (121). "Constantine and Sylvester" privileges "bodies and actions" over "ideas and doctrines" (138). Together, the two tales provide a model for both the elevation of the vernacular and for the constitution of an accessible vernacular theology. Chapters four and five seek to define more precisely the nature of the poem's vernacular spirituality by examining key sections in which theological issues are not presented as explicitly. In chapter four, "Kinde Grace," McCabe returns to Ovid, particularly to the tales of metamorphosis, first as punishment, then as reward. These tales are significant first because in the very mystery of the transformations they invite a readerly response that is primarily affective and that cannot be contained by Genius' attempt to moralize, and second, because of the vagueness of agency yet the essential rightness of the outcome, they seem to display the immanence of grace in Nature, which is also to say that it is constantly present and accessible without the mediation of clergy. Love, implicated in Nature, is also shown to be linked to grace, but by way neither of allegory nor of moral prescription. "Rather, by emphasizing the provisional character of earthly love, these particular stories keep earthly love as their primary concern, but they additionally sacralize this love, thus encouraging readers to see spiritual realities that lie less beyond any textual sensus literalis than beyond earthly love itself" (190). In chapter five, "Ethics, Art, and Grace," McCabe turns to the conclusion to the poem, and he offers a reading of Amans' "beau retret" that reconciles his failure to achieve his love with the essentially optimistic theology of the rest of the poem. Amans' confession is marked in part by his effort to learn the "art" of love that will enable him to find success. The final and longest tale of the poem, "Apollonius of Tyre," is also concerned with "art," the "how to" not just of achieving love but also of ruling a kingdom; and it demonstrates how humans grow wiser through experience. The tale is also dominated by chance and unpredictability beyond the control of the best efforts of any human. The happy ending is brought about by Providence, acting, finally, in cooperation with the virtuous efforts of the characters. "On its own, art is inefficacious because good fortune does not depend finally on learning. However, in its penultimate movement through the wanderings of Apollonius, the poems affirms as a necessary coadjutor with providence a kind of learning that is reduced to the status of an improvisatory, inherently fallible art" (214-15). Such a trajectory provides a model for the final experience of Amans, whose lack of success with his lady is a reminder that failure is part of learning, and that no art can guarantee success. Amans' impotence is his final disqualification for love, and as such, it stands as a figure for all earthly love. But the ending is also a demonstration of the mysteriousness of grace, as Amans' rejection by Venus opens the way to a love that "mai noght faile" (CA VIII.2086). McCabe's conclusion emphasizes the "oblique didacticism" (227) yet strong moral commitment of Gower's "middel weie." "Gower's love ethic, like Ovid's, celebrates its evasion of textual capture, but ends not in despair but in grace" (230). McCabe's argument attributes both a greater subtlety and a greater complexity to the CA than we are accustomed to as it stakes out its own "middel weie" among recent readings of Gower's moral project. It is going to help shape our discussion of the poem for many years to come. [PN. Copyright JGN 31.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor McCabe, T. Matthew N Published McCabe, T. Matthew N. "Gower's Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the "Confessio Amantis"." Publications of the John Gower Society, 6 . Cambridge: Brewer, 2011 ISBN 9781843842835 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower's Vulgar Tongue: Ovid, Lay Religion, and English Poetry in the "Confessio Amantis" Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Faccon, Manuela Published Faccon, Manuela. "Il testimone mutilo della traduzione castigliana della 'Confessio Amantis'." eHumanistica 18 (2011), pp. 366-84. Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Review This Italian article by Manuela Faccon focuses on the only manuscript of the medieval Spanish version of CA, the "Confysion del Amante," translated out of the Portuguese. Her main purpose is to explain the lacunae in the translation (Book IV, chs. 17-26), which she undertakes both through a very detailed codicological examination of the manuscript and by comparing the omissions in Spanish with the Portuguese "Livro do Amante," where there is no textual gap. The thorough description of hands, layout, inks and watermarks of the "Confysion," as well as the edition of the Portuguese fragment intended to show what is missing in Spanish, are materials drawn from Faccon's dissertation, a comparative study and a critical edition of Books I-IV of the Portuguese and Spanish texts (Universitá degli Studi di Verona 2007; published in Zaragoza 2011; see the reviews in JGN 28.2 and 30.2). Here, after revision, Faccon very succinctly suggests the possibility that this fragmentary codex could be a composite of two different copies of the Spanish "Confessio" (381). Some further exploration of it would have been welcome, however, as hers is here only a suggestion, with no proof put forward. Fortunately, the increasing scholarly attention on the Iberian versions of the CA is giving us an opportunity to know these texts and their manuscripts better: some members of the Gower Society heard the paleographer Mauricio Herrero's in-depth study of the manuscript presented as a plenary lecture at the II Gower Congress in Valladolid in 2011; a revised version of his talk will be published in a collection of essays forthcoming from the University of Valladolid Press. [AS-H. Copyright JGN 31.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Il testimone mutilo della traduzione castigliana della 'Confessio Amantis'. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Fox, George G Published Fox, George G. "The Mediaeval Sciences in the Works of John Gower." Princeton: Princeton UP, 1931 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Review Fox compares Gower's scientific knowledge to that of his contemporaries and finds him wanting. For instance, Chaucer shows "eager curiosity and extensive learning in the sciences" (156), whereas Gower is more of an amateur. Gower's scientific passages have the feel of a popular encyclopedia (like the "Tresor"), for which one needed only a "literary facility, the ability to express one's thought in pleasing fancy" (157). At times Gower explains his subject matter quite well (e.g., alchemy), whereas at other times he is out of his depth. In fact, Gower's astrology is particularly poor and there is "no reason to believe that Gower could have used an astrolabe or cast a horoscope" (156). In chapter one (titled the introduction), Fox reviews Gower's general attitude to science. Gower sees all knowledge as aiming for a better understanding of God. This also leads him to connect science with a broad understanding of "kinde" as both nature and kindness. For the CA this means that Gower closely examines sexual desire, and while he finds its fulfillment in marriage, he is not a prude (8). The chapter ends with a discussion of fortune. Fox concludes that Gower is not fatalistic, but that fortune is "a manner of speech with Gower, a convenient phrase for an element of human experience" (15). Chapter two deals ostensibly with the theory of the microcosm, but in actuality covers a great variety of topics, from Gower's views on hermaphroditism to the four complexions of man. Fox also discusses medieval superstitions that result is in such areas of pseudo-science as physiognomy. Not surprisingly, medieval medicine has a tendency to be secretive, something that is reflected in the titles of books like the "Secretum Secretorum." Chapter three (titled "The Microcosm") deals primarily with Gower's discussion of the elements in CA 7. Fox shows that Gower does not always understand his source, Brunetto Latini, as when he accidentally forgets the doctrine that God created the universe "ex nihilo." Despite his limited knowledge, Gower does borrow also from other sources (e.g., Vincent of Beauvais) and Fox spends considerable time explaining technical terms like "intersticion" and "impressions." Chapter four covers astrology, a subject that overlaps with astronomy. Fox points out that while writers like Aquinas believed that the stars and the moon exert a controlling influence on human beings (especially on their senses), the intellect remains in principle free from direct influence. While Gower spends considerable time on astrology (e.g., he gleans not only from Brunetto Latini, but also from the more obscure Alechandrus on the mansions of the moon), he ultimately vindicates free will by using "arguments that are anti-astrological and non-scientific" (93). The remaining chapters cover dreams, alchemy, and magic in quick succession. Gower seems to have been ignorant of scientific discussions of dreams, and based on biblical narratives like the story of Nebuchadnezzar, he accepts that dreams sometimes foretell future events. Gower's discussion of alchemy in CA 4 assumes that transmutation of base metals into gold is theoretically possible although he does not hold out much hope of anyone actually doing it. Finally, Gower's references to magic are not very specific, and he likely had no specialized knowledge. [CvD]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Mediaeval Sciences in the Works of John Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Princeton UP, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1931 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 Eichinger's brief dissertation examines the sources Gower used for his Trojan stories. Eichinger argues that Benoît de Sainte-Maure is nearly always the main source ("Hauptquelle"; 19), and that when Gower borrows from Guido delle Colonne it is most likely from a Latin text. Most of Eichinger's work is taken up with precise comparisons of specific stories and their sources. Stories are classified as being indebted to Benoît (the majority), Guido (only Gower's description of the sirens), both writers (Medea), or either writer (Nauplus; Achilles' love for Polixena). While Eichinger does not emphasize any particular theme that Gower brings out, he does argue that from an aesthetic point of view Gower equals his sources (21). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Eichinger, Karl Published Eichinger, Karl. "Die Trojasage als Soffquelle für John Gower's Confessio Amantis." PhD thesis, Kgl. Bayer. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität zu München, 1900. 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 Die Trojasage als Soffquelle für John Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1900 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 Leonard argues that the double vision of comedy (what is versus what should be) is compatible with the doubleness of allegory (literal and allegorical meanings), and explores how Chaucer and related poets (Gower, Dunbar, Douglas, Hawes, Skelton, Spenser, and others) capitalize upon the connection in courtly love poetry. According to Leonard, the comedy of Gower's CA lacks Chaucer's exuberance; both poets agree that the "path to wisdom is outside the Court of Love," but Gower's comedy is "low-keyed because of Gower's apparent mistrust of either ecstasy or depression." Leonard comments on similarities between CA and Dante's "Divine Comedy," on the encyclopedic nature of CA, its digressions, and its confessional mode. She explores the "figurative and literal presence of Christ in the poem," and locates its comedy in only three of the exemplary stories, in Amans's recognition of himself as an Old Man in Venus's mirror, and in Genius's transformation from "encyclopedia to wisdom." This change in Genius from "love-tutor" to "true priest" is what "provides the human comedy of the poem," while Venus's "rise, however temporarily, from the level of cupidity to charity," helps us to "laugh at sin and error" and "find comfort in virtue." Author/Editor Author/Editor Leonard, Frances McNeely Published Leonard, Frances McNeely. "Laughter in the Courts of Love: Comedy in Allegory, from Chaucer to Spenser." Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1981 ISBN 0937664545 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 Laughter in the Courts of Love: Comedy in Allegory, from Chaucer to Spenser Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pilgrim Books, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 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 Goodall exemplifies Gower's structural and thematic sophistication in CA by discussing the three sets of father-daughter relationship in the tale of Apollonius of Tyre, by assessing the concern with Providence and Fortune in the tale, and by exploring how the "Epilogue" of Book 8 (Venus's eradication of the narrator's love) includes parallels with the tale's resolution of "unkinde" love. In the subplot of Antiochus and his daughter, improper love leads to the death of the wife; because of his love for Thaise, Apollonius's wife is "resurrected." [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Goodall, Peter Published Goodall, Peter. "John Gower's 'Apollonius of Tyre': 'Confessio Amantis,' Book VIII." Southern Review 15 (1982), pp. 243-53. ISSN 0038-4526 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource John Gower's 'Apollonius of Tyre': 'Confessio Amantis,' Book VIII Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1982 Type The nature or genre of the resource 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 Wimsatt classifies works of Middle English literature as examples of either personification allegory on the one hand or mirror (encyclopedic compilations) on the other, comparing them with classical and medieval Continental models and characterizing them by their unity, comprehensiveness, and/or didactic functions. He discusses works by Chaucer, Langland, Jean de Meun, Boethius, Vincent of Beauvais, Peraldus, and many others, including Gower. Ostensibly structured as a summa of sin, Gower's CA resists (or fails), according to Wimsatt, its primary principle of organization: it neither follows the systematic arrangement of, for example, the "Ancrene Riwle" or Robert Mannyng's "Handlyng Synne," nor is it as thorough or inclusive in its treatment of the sins and their subsets. The treatment of gluttony in Book 6, which Wimsatt offers as an example, discusses only two species of the sin and then digresses into tales about witchcraft, albeit "interesting" ones. In short, the "stories themselves are the chief merit" of CA (158), rather than its organization or unity. MO, on the other hand, is more successfully thorough and consistent as a mirror of society: "about 8,000 of 31,000 lines are devoted to a systematic condemnation of the estates," and most of "the remainder of the poem is taken up with descriptions of the Seven Deadly Sins with their offspring and of seven offsetting virtues and their progeny" (165). Wimsatt summarizes the "analysis of the decadence of monks" (166) in MO (20833-21180) to illustrate Gower's technique with estates satire, and mentions that VC is also structured as a "series of complaints presented against the Three Estates" (167). [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wimsatt, James I Published Wimsatt, James I. "Allegory and Mirror: Tradition and Structure in Middle English Literature." New York: Pegasus, 1970 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Allegory and Mirror: Tradition and Structure in Middle English Literature Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970 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 Like Ovid in his "Metamorphoses," Gower creates comedy in CA by manipulating traditional stories and their presentation. Hiscoe examines the authors' versions of the Ceyx and Alcyone story as examples of their comic, ironic techniques, and argues that Gower was aware of his place in a literary "chain of wisdom," modifying and adapting Ovid methods to the late-medieval context. Where Ovid's alterations of traditional details, tone, and perspective deflate love and thereby encourage readers to "evade rhetorical manipulation," Gower presents Genius as ignorant of the moral and spiritual allegorizations that were part of the medieval interpretive tradition of the "Ovide Moralisé" and, as a result, he depicts his "priest of love" as humorously insensitive to the Christian messages that inform his stories. Indeed, in his version of Ceyx and Alcyone, Genius is guilty of spiritual sloth when he tells the tale merely as an exemplum against Sloth and obscures its message of redemption. [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hiscoe, David W Published Hiscoe, David W. "The Ovidian Comic Strategy of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." Philological Quarterly 64 (1985), pp. 367-85. ISSN 0031-7977 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Ovidian Comic Strategy of Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985 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 As the title implies, Heather surveys folklore about precious stones in Gower's time period. Heather is quick to point out that for the fourteenth century no radical distinction is to be made between an illiterate "folk" and a cultured elite. As a result, Gower's learned references in the CA are frequently listed as examples of more widespread beliefs or superstitions. Along with Book 7 of the CA, tales that are repeatedly mined for evidence include the stories of Jason and Medea, Adrian and Bardus, and Lucius and the Statue. Occasionally Heather pauses to explain a point about a Gower quotation. For instance, Heather argues that in the description of the stones associated with the sun in Book 7, the name "Ceramius" might be a corruption of "Ceraunius," also known as the "thunderbolt," because this stone supposedly falls down with lightning. Aside from connecting stones with magic, royalty, and with other natural objects (stars, herbs, etc.), Heather briefly dwells on Gower's understanding of eclipses (394). [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Heather, P. J Published Heather, P. J. "Precious Stones in the Middle-English Verse of the Fourteenth Century." Folklore 42 (1931), pp. 217-264. 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 Precious Stones in the Middle-English Verse of the Fourteenth Century. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1931 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 Lücke's main aim is to demonstrate that Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale borrows directly from Nicholas Trivet in places, although Chaucer also knew Gower's version of the Constance story. After a brief overview of the criticism on the influence question, the rest of the essay is a meticulous plot summary of all three versions. While minor variations are noted, no general conclusions are drawn. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lücke, Emil Published Lücke, Emil. "Das Leben der Constanze bei Trivet, Gower, und Chaucer." Anglia 14 (1892), pp. 77-122. 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 Das Leben der Constanze bei Trivet, Gower, und Chaucer Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1892 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 Kaplan bases his analysis of Gower's English vocabulary on Macaulay's word list to the CA. The total number of words is 6006, of which 882 are proper names and 476 are variants of other words. The net number – 4648 words – seems much lower than the tally for Shakespeare, Milton, or even Chaucer. However, Kaplan ridicules the idea that "the greater the genius the greater the vocabulary" (396), and he finds the real interest in the percentage of loan words in Gower's vocabulary. Gower's diction is 54.9% Anglo-Saxon, 4.2% Latin, and 37.9% French, and a small percentage Other. However, when we take into account frequency of occurrence, then Gower's use of Anglo-Saxon words is likely around 90%. Kaplan further lists words from J to Z (Macaulay covered A to I) where Gower is the first citation in the NED (i.e., the OED). However, he concludes by casting some doubt on the value of first citations. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kaplan, Theodore H Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Published Kaplan, Theodore H. "Gower's Vocabulary." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 31 (1932), pp. 395-402. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1932 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource Gower's Vocabulary. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Ker's review of Macaulay's scholarly edition is wholly laudatory and provides a general appreciation of Gower's achievement that echoes or expands on Macaulay. Ker acknowledges that Gower will always remain a "foil to Chaucer" (437), but he praises Gower for his poetic correctness, for his ease and lack of affectation (439). This courtly style, Ker argues, shows Gower's debt to French poetry, marked as it is by a simple eloquence, by an "ironical self-possession" and "urbanity" (442), and by "an understanding between the poet and his readers, a social sympathy" (445). One sees this in other English poetry, as in the Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess" or in "The Owl and the Nightingale." Chaucer, however, is on the whole more influenced by Italian verse and is willing to accept metrical irregularities. Nevertheless, both writers in their use of decasyllabic verse ignored the caesura after the fourth syllable, and so foreshadowed much of the best heroic poetry in English poetry (453). Ker concludes with a rather wilting overview of Gower's French and Latin works, and with a short biography. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Ker, W. P Published Ker, W. P. ""John Gower, Poet"." Quarterly Review 197 (1903), pp. 437-458. Gower Subject In Praise of Peace Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Vox Clamantis Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "John Gower, Poet" Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1903 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 Hazelton discusses the Manciple's Tale's relationship to its sources: Ovid, Machaut, and Gower. In the second half of his article he argues that Chaucer set out particularly to mock Gower's tale of Phebus and the crow in the CA. Not only do Chaucer and Gower share the same plot details, but Chaucer picks up on a number of Gower's stylistic tics, including his habit of calling the stories "ensamples" and the pedantic use of "my sone." There must have been a serious rivalry between the poets, as Chaucer contrasts Gower's "romance blandishments . . . courtly cliché, hollow rhetoric and sterile moralizing" (25) to his own "comic realism" (25). Chaucer associates his own authorship with the lewdness of the Manciple and with the brazen honesty of the crow. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hazelton, Richard Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Confessio Amantis Published Hazelton, Richard. ""The 'Manciple's Tale': Parody and Critique."." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 62.1 (1963), pp. 1-31. Dublin Core The Dublin 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 1963 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Title A name given to the resource "The 'Manciple's Tale': Parody and Critique."